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April 2009
Chimp Challenge 2009 - Folding@Home (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 30-April-2009  13:18:27 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY

Just quick reminder for anyone keen on participating in this year's Chimp Challenge. The start date is Tuesday, May 5th at 12pm, Pacific Daylight Time. That equates to 5AM Wed 6th AEST. It finishes when the last team crosses the line. You can find the full details and discussion here.

So what is 'Chimp Challenge' you say? It started a few years ago between 2 sub-teams from overclockers.com and Maximum PC Magazine that both happened to have monkey names. Last year we were invited to join in along with [H]ardocp. The teams each raced under the one monkey themed name to a predetermined point’s finish line. The first to it is the winner and gets the lucky jaded monkey which legend says brings with it wealth and fame! But it's not over then. The remaining teams fight it out for the minor placing trying to avoid being last and the cursed dreaded monkey’s paw that comes with it.

For any questions about getting involved with Folding@home and the Chimp Challenge, feel free to stop by the Distributed Computing section on the forum.



Thursday Afternoon (8 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 30-April-2009  13:01:55 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY

Microsoft has announced the release to manufacturing of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Today we are announcing the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. SP2 represents the latest step in Microsoft’s commitment to continuous improvement. It includes all updates that have been delivered since SP1, as well as support for new types of hardware and emerging hardware standards.

Tom's hardware has a look at how many CPU cores you actually need. How many CPU cores are right for me? Is a triple-core processor good enough for gaming, or should you splurge on a quad-core chip? Is a dual-core CPU good enough for the average user, or do more cores really make a difference? Which applications are optimized for multiple cores and which ones react only to specifications like frequency or cache size? We answer these questions.

Hexus compare ATI and NVIDIA hardware, evaluating which perform best under Linux. Almost five years have passed since my last formal comparison of ATI and NVIDIA on Linux. At the time, it was only a brief mention as part of a larger tutorial article, and the result was "an NVIDIA card three times cheaper is three times faster". Since then, I've let the impressions left on me remain, and have been pretty religious in buying NVIDIA hardware, to ensure performance under Linux.

HotHardware reviews Acers Aspire Revo SFF NVIDIA Ion PC. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Ion though, the platform is moving closer to public availability. We took a look at NVIDIA's Ion reference system a couple of months back and in our conclusion stated that "we want one - preferably sooner than later". Well, the wait is almost over as the first publicly announced Ion design win has landed in the HotHardware labs. Discussion on the forum.

TweakTown review Foxconn's Quantum Force X58 Flaming Blade Motherboard. Foxconn is going to try with their latest addition to their high-end board sector (known as Quantum Force) for enthusiasts and overclockers with this one being called the Flaming Blade. Today we are pitting the Flaming Blade against the already tested Blood Rage and the ASUS P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition board which is our test bed setup.

Gizmodo explains Bluetooth technology and why Bluetooth 3.0 is better. Have you heard? Bluetooth 3.0 sounds like a fantasy spec: Wi-Fi speeds, faster response time and more efficient power usage. Here's a quick primer on Bluetooth and why Bluetooth 3.0 is going to rock face.

The latest beta version of Firefox is now available as a preview release. Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform. Firefox 3.5 offers many changes over the previous version, supporting new web technologies, improving performance and ease of use, and adding new features for users.

A new version of the well know graphics card information tool GPU-Z has now been made available. You can grab the latest version here. CPU-Z also had an update this week. Download link.



Thursday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 30-April-2009  10:03:43 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY

Microsoft has released Service Pack 2 for the Office 2007 software suite which includes improvements in stability, performance and security as well as general product fixes. Includes all of the Public Updates, Security Updates, Cumulative Updates and Hotfixes released through February 2009.

Guru3D reviewed AMD's recently launched Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition CPU. AMD developed a new dual-core processor based on B3 revision/stepping, under codename KUMA. Much like the 7750 quite frankly .. it's a really interesting product. AMD is manufacturing these CPUs with 65nm process technology, and this model will have a 95W thermal envelope.

Cooler Master announced the HAF 922 Mid Tower Chassis. Following the overwhelming success of the full tower HAF 932, Cooler Master extends the HAF (High Airflow Flow) line to a mid tower in the HAF 922. This beastly machine comes with rugged looks, massive air flow cooling and the Cooler Master trademark interior.

General Electric announced technology enabling 500GB optical discs. The company has unveiled a new micro-holographic optical disc technology that can accommodate up to 500 GB of data per disc—that's the same capacity as about 100 standard DVDs. And although the company will first be pitching the technology as the electronic archiving industry, it may eventually make its way to consumers. Discussion on the forum.

Nvidia is planning to launch a single PCB, dual GPU GeForce GTX 295 card somewhere in mid May. Although the official launch date hasn't been firmed up yet, the card is based on a new P658 PCB which is 11" long and takes up 2 slots with a new cooler. The core clock remains unchanged at 576MHz while the memory is clocked slightly higher at 1100MHz. Discussion on the forum.

Anandtech get busy overclocking ATI's Radeon HD 4890 video card. When we first heard about the overclocking potential of the 4890 from AMD, we were a bit skeptical. At the same time, the numbers we were hearing were impressive and AMD doesn't have a history of talking up that sort of thing to us. There have already been some investigations around the web that do point to the 4890 as having some healthy overclocking potential, so we decided to try our hand at it and see what we could come up with.

Microsoft discusses Windows 7's XP mode in-depth. As part of the upcoming Windows 7 Release Candidate milestone, Microsoft will release a beta version of Windows XP Mode, which allows users of Windows 7 Professional and above to launch many older Windows XP productivity applications directly from their Windows 7 desktop.



Photography Gallery (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 29-April-2009  20:36:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum. Firstly there's a thread for ANZAC day photos:


and some other interesting ones:



















Contest Reminder (14 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 29-April-2009  16:40:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Western Digital is giving OCAU readers the chance to win 1 of 2 Velociraptor Hard Drives simply by entering their "Guess the Picture" competition now running at www.wdpromotions.com.au. The 2 Velociraptors are only eligible to OCAU readers, so make sure you select OverclockersAU from the "where did you hear about us" section on the entry form. OCAU readers are also eligible to win the main prize, this month being 1 of 3 Double passes to game 2 of the Rugby League State of Origin Series at ANZ Stadium in June! The 1st 3 overall correct entries will win a Double pass to the State of Origin and the 1st 2 OCAU entries will also win the Western Digital Velociraptor Drive!


Wednesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 29-April-2009  15:30:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg

CPU:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition on InsideHW.
AMD Phenom II 955 X4 Black Edition on LostCircuits.
AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition on ThinkComputers.

Video Cards:
PNY 9400 GT & Gigabyte 9600 GT on DriverHeaven.
ASUS EAH4770 HTDI/512MD5/A Radeon HD 4770 on PCStats.
ATI Radeon HD 4770 on HWZone.
EVGA GeForce GTS 250 on Motherboards.org.

Cooling:
CoolIT Domino A.L.C. Liquid-Cooling System on XbitLabs.
Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme GTX 280 VGA cooler on XbitLabs.
Noiseblocker Black Silent XL1, XL2, XLP Fans on VerdisReviews.
Scythe Mugen CPU cooler on Tweaktown.
Nyko Intercooler TS for PS3 on FutureLooks.
Reeven RCCT CPU cooler on XSReviews.
Targus Chill Mat for Mac laptop cooler on HWZone.

Portable and Prebuilt:
Gateway P-7808u FX Edition notebook on DigitalTrends.
Dell Adamo notebook on HWZone.
Acer Aspire Revo NVIDIA Ion SFF PC on HotHardware.
Acer Aspire Revo on HWZone.

Input Etc:
QPAD CT – KODE5 Collectors Edition mousepad on Tech-Reviews.
SteelSeries World of Warcraft Mouse/Mat Set on ARM3D.

Storage:
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB ST9500420AS HDD on HWLogic.
Vizo Ares II Dual 2.5-inch SATA Drive Adapter on Tweaktown.

Case and PSU:
Lian Li PC-A05N & Maxima Force 470W case and PSU on TechPowerUp.
Antec Twelve Hundred case on Tweaknews.
Rosewill Xtreme RX950-S-B PSU on DriverHeaven.
InWin B2 Stealth Bomber case on VerdisReviews.
InWin X-Fighter midtower on PureOC.



ATI Radeon HD 4770 Review Round-up (2 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 28-April-2009  19:19:28 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY

The NDA has been lifted on ATI's new value-oriented video card. The ATI Radeon HD 4770 graphics processing unit (GPU) offers an unbeatable combination of HD gaming performance1 and price. Featuring the industry’s cutting-edge 40nm process technology and the most advanced GDDR5 memory technology, this GPU delivers seamless frame rates with incredible speed and processing power. Proof that high performance gaming and price can co-exist without compromise.

Coverage on Benchmark Reviews, Bit-tech, EliteBastards, ExtremeTech, FiringSquad, Guru3D, HardOCP, Hardware Canucks, HardwareZone, Hexus, HotHardware, Legion Hardware, Legit Reviews, NeoSeeker, PC Perspective, TechPowerUp, TechSpot, Tom's Hardware, TweakTown and X-bit Labs.


Click to join the forum discussion!



Starlight and NSW Fire Brigades (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 28-April-2009  16:29:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg

From Lucus Maximus:

Just a reminder Starlight Day is this Friday 1st May which is the biggest fundraiser every year for the Starlight Children’s Foundation which brightened the lives of seriously ill and hospitalised children, and their families, throughout Australia. The economic downturn has meant a decline in incoming funds which means public support is vital to ensure Starlight can help every child. There’s only one choice. Donate generously this Starlight Day. Donate Online, or head into Any EBGames store to Trade, Donate or Buy to help Support Starlight from the 27th April till the 3rd May.

And from Zippy7:

Last year, I read about the NSW Fire Brigade open day on your news list on OCAU. It was definitely worth my effort of dragging my 2 young kids along - when they got there, they had a great time! Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but it is on this coming Sunday 3 May.



Tuesday Afternoon (10 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 28-April-2009  16:13:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg

You may have noticed the outage yesterday afternoon - during that time I upgraded our forum/database server BBQ from 8GB to 16GB of RAM, giving it a bit more headroom during busy times. It's getting a little long in the tooth now, but with four 2.4GHz Opterons, 16GB of RAM and four 15k-RPM U320 drives in RAID 10, it's still no slouch. :)

The ISP Exetel are apparently going to trial a white-box filtering technology, independent to the Government's own trials. Unlike ISPs participating in the government's trial, Exetel will not allow its customers to opt-out of the filter. However, using a hybrid of BGP routing and a proxy-like filter, the ISP expects there to be no performance impact.

From IntelInside: Lian-Li introduces PC-C33 and PC-C34F HTPC enclosures. More info here and here. Details on features and extras available for the Lian PC-C33 here and for the PC-C34F here.

TechCrunch look back at how Google Earth was used to find Steve Fossett's crash site. And now the family is hoping to help others do similar types of search and rescue using Google Earth. The family has set up a system called MARSI, which stands for Mapped Archive of Rescue & Search Information.

OCModShop looked at some Star Trek Breakfast Cereal.. riiight. :) The bulk of the cereal is made up of oat swirls that are supposed to be galaxies. I find this hardly representative of the real universe. For one, there are four types of galaxies, and none of them look like a cinnamon roll.

OCClub are the latest to compare Crossfire and SLI. ATI has great price points, but they just can't deliver overpowering performance for that price. On the other hand, Nvidia delivers the performance but at a steeper price. The old adage "you have to pay to play" comes to mind here.

The winner of the third annual TIME Magazine online poll of "The World's Most Influential Person" is 4chan's founder, moot. The 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, whose real name is Christopher Poole, received 16,794,368 votes and an average influence rating of 90 (out of a possible 100) to handily beat the likes of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Oprah Winfrey.



Tuesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 28-April-2009  01:58:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio / Visual:
Cowon iAudio D2+ 4GB personal media player on TrustedReviews.
Asus VW226H Monitor on RBMods.
Lenovo L215P monitor on DigitalTrends.
Ultimate Ears 700 Noise-Isolating Earphones on I4U.

Case and PSU:
SilverStone Zeus 1200W on Bjorn3D.
GMC R4 Bulldozer case on XSReviews.

Storage:
Seagate 250 GB Momentus 5400.4 SATA Notebook Hard Drive on TechARP.

Cooling:
Coolermaster V10 Hybrid TEC CPU Cooler on CPU3D.
Evercool Forumula 2 VC-RHE Videocard Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Coolermaster Hyper N520 Heatsink on FrostyTech.
GlacialTech UFO V51 Silent on HW-Pacers.

Motherboard and CPU:
ASRock X58 SuperComputer LGA1366 board on LegitReviews.
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition AM3 CPU on ITReviewed.
DFI X58 T3H6 JR mATX LGA1366 board on OC3D.



Monday Morning (9 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 27-April-2009  09:59:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg

There may be an outage this afternoon - I'll be near the datacentre and might duck in and upgrade some memory if I get a chance.

A few people sent word that Ubuntu 9.04 has been released. Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition delivers a range of feature enhancements to improve the user experience. Shorter boot speeds, some as short as 25 seconds, ensure faster access to a full computing environment on most desktop, laptop and netbook models. Enhanced suspend-and-resume features also give users more time between charges along with immediate access after hibernation. Intelligent switching between Wi-Fi and 3G environments has been broadened to support more wireless devices and 3G cards, resulting in a smoother experience for most users. Wiki here, discussion here.

HWZone looked at AMD's new Phenom II X4 955, as well as looking at the upcoming six-core Opterons. It's been six years since AMD debuted its Opteron server chips that shook up the industry. And the chipmaker marked the occasion by launching a whole slew of new Opteron models, including a surprise announcement.

PCPerspective have some sneak peek info of Istanbul, the 6-core technology, too. TechReport say there'll be 12-core and 16-core versions within a couple of years. Among other revelations, the company said its 12-core Magny-Cours processors will launch in the first quarter of 2010. A 16-core, 32nm successor based on the next-gen Bulldozer architecture will follow in 2011, as well.

Apparently Windows 7 streams to Xbox360 and PS3 seamlessly, according to HardCoreWare. Since Windows 7 adds native support for these programs, we tested the streaming capabilities with both consoles. Will you be able to stream MP4 and MOV files straight "out of the box"? Read on to find out!

NinjaLane compared dual vs triple channel memory on i7. We left this testing session with the opinion that the triple channel configuration is a definite plus for the consumer and happens to be very logical progression in the ever increasing performance of memory. We also got a glimpse into how far the technology has come when compared to an older DDR2 system.

Today's timewaster is this geography puzzler from Lufthansa, thanks Mezla. Can geography, adrenalin and brain-teasing all be combined to good effect on a web site? This little game from Lufthansa made me smile, and also slap myself in the face.



Orange Box Deal (20 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 26-April-2009  18:09:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Chris pointed out that Valve's Orange Box is $9.99 USD this weekend. So that's Half-Life 2, plus the two expansions and Lost Coast, plus Portal, plus Team Fortress 2. I've managed to resist signing up to Steam so far, but hrm. Discussion here.


Sunday Afternoon (7 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 26-April-2009  14:39:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg

OCAU forums member thargs is raising funds for men's mental health, in the "Banish the Black Dog Ride". Ride is on the 16-17th May. Starts in Townsville and then to Clare, overnight Clare and returns to Townsville next day. The whole event has been organised by the Townsville Rotary Club.

GoN report on the impending release of a discussion paper on an R18+ rating for computer games in Australia. As such, Bob Debus, the Commonwealth Minister of Home Affairs will "soon" release a revised version of the yet-to-be-seen discussion paper to the public, which will outline the potential changes to Australian classification guidelines and laws. The discussion paper has been a long time in the making, and the issue is not something which will quickly be resolved.

Windows 7 will apparently contain a WinXP classic environment. Available as a free download for Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate users, it's a fully integrated and licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 in a VirtualPC-based environment, with full "coherence" support. In other words, it's Microsoft's variant of Apple's Classic environment, and it's coming to Windows 7, for free.

IceTV has won their case in the High Court against Channel Nine. Although program information is published daily in print and on other web services, Nine claimed IceTV was infringing copyright by displaying the station's shows in its electronic program guide (EPG). Discussion here.

TorrentFreak report that the Judge in the Pirate Bay trial may have had a conflict of interest, with some calling for a re-trial. Former Director of Public Prosecution Sven-Erik Alhem said, “You cannot hide controversial facts. The attention this gets only leads to unnecessary questioning of bias in Swedish courts. Of course the judge should have informed people of the situation prior to the process and thereby allowed the involved parties to decide if it was suitable or not.”

EA got a bit carried away with promotional goodies, and sent illegal "brass knuckles" to some members of the press, and now wants them back. Brass knuckles or metallic knuckles are illegal in many of the states that they were shipped to. They're also illegal in California, where EA is based.

Youngpro pointed out this Suzuki Mighty Boy electric vehicle conversion. In 2007, I was given a model helicopter as a Christmas present. This lead to the purchase of a Blade CX-2 helicopter. I soon became amazed with the Li Ion battery technology used to power these devices. The next step was discovering this cell technology was being used in electric vehicles. At the same time, I was looking around for a suitable semi retirement project; hence the Mighty Boy electrical vehicle project commenced.

Wayne noticed this game where you can plan your own Federal Budget 2009.



Sunday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 26-April-2009  02:14:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi LGA775 board on ITReviewed.
Asus M4A79 Deluxe AM3 board on NeoSeeker.
ASUS ROG Rampage II Gene mATX X58 LGA1366 board on Tweaktown.

Input Etc:
XtracPads Hybrid Mousemat on BurnOutPC.
Razer Mamba Wireless Laser Gaming Mouse on HWZone.
Razer Goliathus mousepad on TechPowerUp.
Revoltec FightMouse Pro on OC3D.
Enermax Aurora Micro Wireless Keyboard on HWSecrets.

Video Cards:
XFX GeForce GTS250 on Motherboards.org.
TwinTech GeForce GTS 250 XT OC 1GB on Tweaktown.
MSI N250GTS-2D1G OC GeForce GTS 250 on Motherboards.org.
ZOTAC GeFORCE GTX 275 896MB on FutureLooks.
ASUS EAH4890/HTDI/1GD5 AMD Radeon HD 4890 on OCWorkbench.

Audio / Visual:
Samsung B7000 Full-HD LED TV on HWZone.

Memory:
OCZ Blade DDR3 6GB 2000MHz CL7 on LegitReviews.
OCZ Blade Triple Channel DDR3-1600 6Gb Kit on CPU3D.

Storage:
Think Xtra AutoSave Encrypt CDSoft-R Cryptex disks on TrustedReviews.
Seagate 250GB Momentus 5400.5 SATA Notebook HDD on TechARP.
Corsair Flash Survivor USB Drive on TheTechLounge.
Vantec NexStar 3i Power Management External Hard Disk Enclosure on TBreak.

Cooling:
Vigor Gaming Monsoon III LT CPU cooling system on PC Perspective.
Thermaltake SpinQ CPU cooler on Bjorn3D.
Noctua NH-U12P SE1366 CPU cooler on PureOC.

Software:
Runes of Magic PC game on GamingHeaven.
Grand Ages Rome PC game on GamePyre.
Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Uprising PC game on GamingNexus.

Prebuilt:
MSI NetOn AP1900 prebuilt mini-PC on InsideHW.
Supermicro SuperServer 5035L-IB prebuilt server on Virtual-Hideout.

Case and Power Supply:
Enermax Liberty ECO 500W on DriverHeaven.
Enermax Galaxy Evo 1250W on JonnyGuru.
NZXT Zero 2 Gaming Chassis on Hi-TechReviews.



ANZAC Day (37 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 25-April-2009  04:21:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg

They shall grow not old
As we who are left grow old
Age shall not weary them
Nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them

Lest We Forget



Misc Pics (35 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 24-April-2009  16:22:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Friday again!

         

         



AMD Phenom II X4 945 and X4 955BE (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 24-April-2009  04:02:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg

AMD have unveiled their fastest quad-core CPUs to date, the 3GHz Phenom II X4 945, and the 3.2GHz Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. Discussion in this thread.

Coverage on HotHardware, Guru3D, LegionHW, Neoseeker, Tech Report, TrustedReviews, DriverHeaven, Bjorn3D, OCClub, ExtremeOC, BenchmarkReviews, I4U, TechSpot and PC Perspective.



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 24-April-2009  03:24:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
Radeon HD 4890 CrossFireX vs. GeForce GTX 285 SLI on XbitLabs.
BFG GTX-275 OC Edition & SLI Testing on Bjorn3D.
Zotac GTX285 Infinity Edition on OC3D.

Audio / Visual:
Pioneer LX03BD 5.1-channel Blu-ray System on TrustedReviews.
iBasso D2 Boa Headphone Amplifier on TrustedReviews.
Sony CyberShot DSC-T900 digicam on Digitaltrends.
Lovecraft Designs Cain & Cain Abby Loudspeakers on MadShrimps.
Elgato EyeTV Hybrid USB TV Tuner (2009 Model) on EverythingUSB.
Cresyn C750E In-Ear Earphones on OCIA.
Audio2 FX Force Feedback Gaming Headphones on OCModShop.

Motherboards:
Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi LGA775 board on TrustedReviews.
Gigabyte MA790XT-UD4P AM3 board on XbitLabs.
EVGA X58 SLI Classified 760 (Non NF200) Run-Through LGA1366 board on VR-Zone.
MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 board on CPU3D.
Asus M3A78-T AMD AM2+ DDR2 board on FutureLooks.

Software:
Battleforge PC game on GamingHeaven.
A Vampyre Story PC game on ITReviewed.

Cooling:
Vizo Master Panel II fan controller on Tweaknews.
Coolermaster V10 CPU cooler on DriverHeaven.
Cogage TRUE Spirit CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.

Power Supply:
OCZ Fatal1ty 700W on Tech-Reviews.
FSP POWER_MOD 700 Watt Modular on Tweaktown.

Cases:
RV01 Silverstone on GeekYarn.
In Win Metal Suit GD AL-13 Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
Cooler Master Storm Sniper on HWLogic.
Antec Fusion Remote Max HTPC case on DriverHeaven.

Input Etc:
Ulti-Mat Mousepad Roundup on RBMods.
QPad CT Grin mousepad on XSReviews.
Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard on ITReviewed.

Misc:
Patriot Extreme Performance Viper DDR3 6GB Kit on Modders-Inc.
HP Pavilion dv6t laptop on TechReviewSource.
Logitech Cooling Pad N100 on ITReviewed.



Sponsor Specials (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 22-April-2009  21:37:08 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY

Just a quick remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around. In there many sponsors have special offers and deals on media players, laptops, netbooks, office chairs, photography gear and a range of PC components.


Wednesday Night (7 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 22-April-2009  21:26:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg

From Skullomania: Just a heads up that there is a short 5 paragraph article on page 15 of today's West Australian newspaper featuring forum member Tesla Downunder.. Seems to be regarding his recent modern thinker project.

GoN have an interview with NVIDIA about PhysX and the GTX 275. Meanwhile DriverHeaven talk to ASUS about motherboards and GamingNexus find out what a US Army veteran thinks of the game "Six Days in Fallujah".

There's an Iron Chef cooking competition going on in the Geek Food forum, and there's already some tasty-looking entries. You will need to take photos during the preparation of your meal, and submit a minimum of four to prove you actually cooked, though you can submit more than four if you wish.

PCPerspective report on the CausticOne ray tracing accelerator card. If you think the ray tracing and rasterization debate was interesting before, wait until you see what this new player has to say.

HotHardware look into Google searching for "me". Starting on Tuesday, if you enter just the word "me" in their search box, users will be given an opportunity to create or modify their Google Profile. Doesn't seem to do it yet. And it's a little scary.

People in Europe are protesting against conditional internet access being debated in the EU Parliament soon. Under the proposed new rules, broadband providers will be legally able to limit the number of websites you can look at, and to tell you whether or not you are allowed to use particular services. It will be dressed up as ‘new consumer options' which people can choose from. People will be offered TV-like packages - with a limited number of options for you to access. Sounds like the "net neutrality" issue is rearing its head again.



Wednesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 22-April-2009  17:18:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AM3 board on InsideHW.
ASUS Rampage II Gene (Intel X58) LGA1366 board on HWZone.
Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H AM3 board on Motherboards.org.

Power Supply:
NZXT Performance Power 800W on RBMods.
Enermax Revolution85+ 950W on Tech-Reviews.

Video Cards:
ASUS GeForce GTS 250 Dark Knight on Tweaktown.
HIS Radeon HD 4870 IceQ 4+ Turbo on LegionHW.
NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 1024MB on iXBTLabs.
Zotac GeForce GTS 250 AMP! Edition on ITReviewed.

Storage and Memory:
Kingston SSDNow 80GB on PureOC.
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB 2.5 inch SATA Notebook HDD on FutureLooks.
OCZ Blade Series DDR3-2000 6GB Low Voltage Triple Channel Memory Kit on ThinkComputers.

Cooling:
Cooler Master Hyper N520 CPU cooler on OCOnline.
Asus Axe Square CPU cooler on TBreak.
Xigmatek Nepartak S983 CPU Cooler on VerdisReviews.
Thermaltake Big Typ 14 Pro CPU cooler on Bjorn3D.

Cases:
Antec Solution NSK4480BII on OCModShop.
Antec P183 Mid-Tower on Tech-Reviews.

Audio / Visual:
Prolink PCC8020A 8-Megapixel Web Camera on HWZone.
Raptor LH1 Gaming Headset on XSReviews.
Nanovision Mimo 7" USB Powered LCD Monitors on HotHardware.
Toshiba Regza 52XV555DB 52in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Logitech Harmony 1100 remote on DigitalTrends.
Optoma ThemeScene HD82 projector on TrustedReviews.

Portable and Prebuilt:
Asus Eee Top ET1602 PC on DigitalTrends.
Asus Eee PC 1000HE Netbook on DriverHeaven.
Targus Netbook Accessory Kit on FutureLooks.
HP EliteBook 6930p notebook on InsideHW.



Press Releases (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 22-April-2009  14:55:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Top story would have to be Oracle buying Sun Microsystems for $7.4B. “Oracle and Sun have been industry pioneers and close partners for more than 20 years,” said Sun Chairman Scott McNealy. “This combination is a natural evolution of our relationship and will be an industry-defining event.” They pick up Java, Solaris and presumably MySQL in one move. Discussion here.

Luxa2 have some new HTPC cases, more info here. From any angle of view, the LM100 Mini is remarkable. Its size is amazingly slim and compact with an all aluminum finish body. It fits the tone of your home decoration and is the ideal mate to build your miniature entertainment system. With its extremely tiny size, LM100 Mini instantly gives more space and tidiness to your living room and redefines your home entertainment system.

Noctua have some new fans. Normally not that exciting a product release, but these have interesting-looking "Bevelled Blade Tips" which apparently improve airflow and lessen noise. Photos here, product info here and here.

OCZ have announced their Vertex EX 2.5” SLC-based SSD aimed at servers. Offering a server-class storage upgrade from traditional hard disc drives, OCZ Vertex EX SSDs have a compact form factor and no moving parts resulting in a quiet storage solution with significantly higher performance. For crowded server environments, the OCZ Vertex EX SSDs offer space and cost-savings with a compact form factor that use significantly less power thanks to the benefits of high-quality flash-based storage.

Super Talent unveiled what they're calling the world's first 512GB 2.5" SSD. The MasterDrive RX features Super Talent’s proprietary RAIDSSD™ Technology to enable extremely fast sequential read and write speeds. The MasterDrive RX with MLC NAND Flash comes in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB densities and is rated for a maximum sequential read speed of 230MB/sec and a maximum sequential write speed of 160MB/sec. The MasterDrive RX with SLC Flash comes in 128GB and 256GB densities and is rated for a maximum sequential read speed of 230MB/sec and a maximum sequential write speed of 200MB/sec.

Transcend have a shock-resistant portable HDD. Hidden inside the StoreJet 25M-R’s alluring exterior is a sophisticated dual-stage shock protection system that incorporates a rugged hard casing and vibration-absorbing anti-slip silicone outer shell that evenly distributes the force of an impact, along with a complete array of internal hard drive suspension dampers as a last line of defense. ... For added piece of mind, the StoreJet 25M-R protects stored data with a level of shock resistance that fully meets rigorous U.S. military drop-test standards (MIL-STD-810F 516.5 – Transit Drop).

VMWare announced VMWare vSphere 4. With a wide range of groundbreaking new capabilities, VMware vSphere 4 brings cloud computing to enterprises in an evolutionary, non-disruptive way – delivering uncompromising control with greater efficiency while preserving customer choice.



Wednesday Morning Reviews (6 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 22-April-2009  02:38:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Input Etc:
OCZ Behemoth Gaming Laser Mouse on ARM3D.
Microsoft Sidewinder X6 Gaming Keyboard and Sidewinder X8 Wireless Gaming Mouse on HW-Pacers.
Saitek Cyborg gaming mouse on PureOC.
Raptor-Gaming K1 Keyboard on VerdisReviews.

Cases:
DimasTech Bench Table Easy V2 testbed on TechPowerUp.
Thermaltake M9 video review on ReviewStash.
Silverstone Raven RV01 on DriverHeaven.

Storage:
Seagate Momentus 2.5 inch 500 GB Hard Drive on Bjorn3D.
OCZ, SanDisk, Corsair & Patriot USB Drives on TBreak.
Solid State Drive Round-up: Intel, OCZ, G.Skill, and Super Talent on TechSpot.
WD Scorpio Black 320GB Hard Drive on LegitReviews.
HighPoint RocketRaid 4310 SAS/SATA RAID Controller on PCPerspective.

Software:
Raxco PerfectDisk 10 Professional on ITReviewed.
Ipswitch FTP_Professional 12.0 on ITReviewed.
Demigod PC game on GamingHeaven.
The Godfather Part II PC game o GamePyre.
Death Track - Resurrection PC game on GamingHeaven.



Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 21-April-2009  17:27:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
Zotac Liquid-Cooled GeForce GTX 285 Infinity Edition on HotHardware.
ECS GeForce GTS 250 1024MB on Guru3D.
Asus EAH4870 Dark Night on OCClub.

Portable:
Panasonic ToughBook Executive CF-F8 on TrustedReviews.
Kogan Agora netbook on TechnologyAndBusiness.

Cooling:
Thermaltake TMG IA1 CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake ISGC-300 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Thermalright AXP-140 Heatsink on NinjaLane.
Scythe Kama Angle CPU cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Scythe Kabuto CPU Cooler on XbitLabs.

Audio / Visual:
ASUS LS221H and LG Flatron W2284F Monitors on XbitLabs.
NEC MultiSync P221W Monitor on XbitLabs.
Razer Carcharias Gaming Headset on OCModShop.
SanDisk Sansa SlotRadio on DigitalTrends.
Logitech Harmony 1100 Universal Remote Control on I4U.
Cresyn CS-HP500 Headphones on OCIA.



Interesting Forum Threads (2 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 20-April-2009  18:52:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A quick snapshot of what's going on. You can also find new interesting things you might have missed via the Who's Online page, the New Posts page and the Live forum view. Also something a lot of people don't know about is the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu).

BSOD debugging basics guide in Troubleshooting Help.
GPU protest in Modding.
Virtual pinball! in Modding.
OCZ PC26400 2GB Reaper owners beware in Overclocking & Hardware.
It's "official" ..... Giga X58 boards *WILL* run the Xeon W3520 in Intel Hardware.
Netbooks - handling sun light glare? in Portable & Small Form Factor.
Zotac's Atom-based M-ITX Mobos For Ion Platform in The Works in Portable & SFF.
CIVONY - Online Game in Games.
Off board 580EXii - no poppers, no cables in Photography.
Adelaide Clipsal 500 - The Girls in Photography.
Gigabyte iRAM: More useful than you might think in Photography.
The Pirate Bay Trial: The Official Verdict - Guilty in Current Events.
"Special Anti Riot" operation taskforce (60 Minutes) in Current Events.
Technical vs Fundamental Analysis in LIQUID Financial Markets in Career, Education and Finance.
Dyson in Science.
Winching up a missile. Physics problem? in Science.
'Robot scientist makes autonomous discovery' (human scientists obsolete) in Science.
Microsoft Covers E74 Error under Three Year RROD Warranty in Microsoft Consoles.
EVGA have clocked a 5 MILLION point day in Team OCAU.
Ferrari F50 clutch install in Motoring.
Caprica (BSG SPINOFF!!!) Green light in Entertainment.



Monday Afternoon (4 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 20-April-2009  15:37:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Tesladownunder has been busy, with his take on Rodin's Thinker sculpture. I decided upon a real life posture like the thinker with a lot of electrical activity around me with sparks onto my body.

Tweaktown have been setting up a PC with no moving parts for totally silent computing. For years I’ve always wanted a computer that made absolutely no noise at all and looking at all the "noise reducing" products on the market would begin to make my wallet cry at the cost of silencing my current system.

President Obama has named the USA's first Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra. In this role, Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities - from creating jobs and reducing health care costs to keeping our nation secure.

However there's still another job going for gadget freaks, as Mi5's real-life "Q". Britain's domestic intelligence agency, commonly called MI5, is seeking a chief scientific adviser "to lead and co-ordinate the scientific work of the Security Service so that the service continues to be supported by excellent science and technology advice", its website said.

An increasingly common but unpopular gadget is the car shut-off device. Business is booming for makers of shut-off devices, which turn engines off when car payments are late.

HWZone look back at 10 years of portable entertainment. Take a good look at your portable media player and discover its evolution through the decade as we reminiscence its key developments and noteworthy implementations over the last ten years.

PC Perspective have some thoughts about Intel's Core i5 Processor. It has long been known that Intel will be releasing more mainstream versions of the Nehalem core, but these will be branded i5 and will utilize DMI for communications with the chipset instead of the server and workstation oriented QPI. More i5 discussion here.



Photography Gallery (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 19-April-2009  20:28:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum:



















Sunday Evening Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 19-April-2009  17:45:19 (GMT +10) - by matthudson

Motherboards
ASRock X58 SuperComputer on Virtual Hideout
Gigabyte EX58-UD4P on Overclockers Club
VIA IVP-7500 on VIA Arena
Gigabyte EX58-UD3R & EX58-UD4P on Hot Hardware
Intel D945GCLF2 Kit on Hardware Zone

Storage
LaCie iamaKey on OZHardware
WD Caviar Black 1TB HDD on Overclock Intelligence Agency
Seagate FreeAgent Desk on TechReviewSource
Intel SS4200-E NAS on OZHardware
OCZ Vertex 120GB v1.10 MLC SSD on Legit Reviews
Hard Disk Drive Performance Comparison on Tech ARP
Amacom Data Locker on ITReviewed

Graphics
Galaxy GeForce GTX 285 2GB on Tweaktown
Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD4850 512MB on Big Bruin
DisplayLink USB Graphics Adapter on OCModShop
ASUS RADEON HD 4850/4870 and GeForce GTX 285/295 on iXBT Labs
ASUS Extreme NGTX260 Matrix on Legion Hardware
GeForce Graphics Card Roundup on Driver Heaven
Asus 4850 on RBMods.com
Hyundai W240D (translation) on Spielesuechtig

Cases & Cooling
Sunbeam Acrylic HTPC Case on Think Computers
Cooler Master Sileo 500 on InsideHW
Cooler Master V8 on NeoSeeker
Aerocool AVN 1000 Hard Drive Cooler on Pro-Clockers
Xigmatek Cuirassier-N002 Memory Heat Spreaders on TweakTown
SilenX iXtrema Pro IXG-80HA2 on Motherboards.org

Portables
HTC Touch Cruise 2009 on Hardware Zone
Dell Vostro A860 on InsideHW
Gateway MD7826u 15.6" Notebook on Techgage
HP Pavilion dv2-1030ea on Trusted Reviews
HP DV2 & DV3 on Digital Trends
HP Pavilion dv2 on Hardware Zone
Motorola Aura on Trusted Reviews

Software
Braid on Gaming Heaven
Company of Heroes - Tales of Valor on GamePyre
Zoho Sheet on VIA Arena
Ubuntu on the Inspiron Mini 9 on Phoronix

Showbag Assortment
Rosewill RMS-HDA5000 & RMS-DA7600 Antenna on Bjorn3D
Sharkoon X-Tatic Digital 5.1 Headphones on Tweaktown
Saitek Cyborg Keyboard (translation) on Spielesuechtig
Corsair TX850W on Overclockers Online
PCO Group Intel i7 Gaming PC on OVerclock3D
EOS Digital Wireless iPod Speakers on Trusted Reviews
Panasonic DMR-EX769 DVD/HDD Freeview PVR on Trusted Reviews



Saturday Morning (8 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 18-April-2009  03:22:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Well the verdict is in, and it seems the Pirate Bay's four Swedish founders were sentenced to prison today. Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstroem were given jail sentences of one year each by a Stockholm district court today. The court ordered the defendants to pay compensation and damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million), below the more than 100 million kronor claimed by prosecutors. The defendants said they plan to appeal. More info all over the net, but try here, here and a sort've rambling official video statement from TPB here. Discussion here.

Rezin spotted this project to convert an old hard drive into a flash drive, kinda. Take an old outdated hard drive and teach it new secret tricks by increasing it's capacity and speed.

Thermaltake are running a ghetto modding comp. Let's face it, not everyone is up to date on the latest and greatest gear. The ghetto DIY mods have always been around and occasionally ones which are extremely practical or just downright CHEAP pops up and are generally loved for their ingenuity at little or no cost to the owner! Discussion here.

The people behind TheOverclocker have created MacTheMag, for Apple enthusiasts. MacTheMag is an all-digital magazine, with the latest in news, reviews, analysis and tutorials on everything related to the Mac and iPhone. Check out our own Apple Hardware & Software forum, too.

An Aussie inventor has won over Microsoft. AN Australian inventor is set to share in a damages payout of more than $500 million after a US court ruled that Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, infringed a patented technology used to deter software piracy.

Australian Domain Registrar Bottle Domains is in court to fight for their future, in the wake of a customer data leak. In January this year the personal account details, including credit card numbers of up to 60,000 Bottle Domain customers were posted for sale at an online forum by a computer hacker.

Guru3D have a GeForce GTX 275 shootout. For this article, a total of five GeForce GTX 275 graphics cards will be put to the test. We take the NVIDIA reference sample, two reference clocked products and two pre-overclocked products to see where we are at in terms of performance, cooling and features among the difference AIB/AIC partners.



Misc Pics (46 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 17-April-2009  16:09:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Friday again!

         

         



Forum Projects (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 17-April-2009  14:51:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Firstly, windwithme has a huge article/guide to building a mid/low-priced PC, comparing various parts and overclocking etc:


Click for the article!

Here's a few more interesting things from the forums, mostly case mods this time:


Soviet Tank Headphones
by toje

Project: Orange Wasp
by DeejW

Project: FUGGDIVINO
by sethnmalice


MAME Cocktail Cabinet
by Slamma

Not the Silverstone Raven RV01
by archibaw

Project "Biggest Dickus"
by PacketStorm4


TJ07 Project - Mortal
by dingdong555

Various case mods
from EpicPcCases

6-second SuperPi
by youngpro



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 17-April-2009  03:05:30 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Storage:
QNAP TS-439 Pro Intel Atom Powered Four Bay NAS on Tweaknews
HornetTek Rhino 2.5" SATA to USB Enclosure on Bjorn3D
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB Hard Drive on I4U
HornetTek Hover 3.5-inch eSATA/USB Drive Enclosure on Tweaktown

Display:
JVC LT-32DR1BJ 32in LCD TV on Trusted Reviews
Samsung PS50B650 50in plasma TV on Trusted Reviews

Joystick/Mouse/Keyboard:
Thrustmaster T. Flight Hotas X / HAWX on Driverheaven
OCZ Eclipse Laser Gaming Mouse on OCIA.net
Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard on Hardware Zone
Logitech G13 Advanced Gameboard on Hardware Logic
Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet on Hardware Secrets
ZOWIE Gear P-RF Mouse Pad on Overclockers Online
Logitech G19 Gaming Keyboard on Driverheaven.net
Aten Laptop USB KVM Switch on Techspot.com

PSU:
Zalman 770 XT PSU on XSReviews
PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 860W PSU on Tech-Reviews
Ultra X3 800w Power Supply on OCModShop
Corsair TX850 850W Power Supply on PC Perspective

Software:
Monsters vs. Aliens - The Video Game on Gamingheaven
The Godfather II on Trusted Reviews
Demigod on Neoseeker
Unreal Tournament 3 - Titan Pack on GamingHeaven.net
Empire: Total War on YouGamers

Case:
SilverStone Fortress FT01 on PureOverclock
Cooler Master Storm Sniper on Neoseeker
CM Storm Scout Gaming Chassis on CPU3D

RAM:
GSkill Pi Black Triple Channel PC3 12800 6GB Memory on Ninjalane
Kingston HyperX 6GB 2000 MHz DDR3 Triple Channel Memory Kit on Futurelooks
OCZ Reaper TC DDR3 1866 6GB on Bjorn3D

Motherboard:
Gigabyte MA790GP-UD4H Motherboard on iXBT Labs
Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 on Trusted Reviews
Asrock A780GMH/128M AM2+ on Pro-Clockers
Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME on ITReviewed

Videocard:
HIS Radeon HD 4890 Turbo Graphics Card on Tweaktown
ASUS ENGTS250 DK Geforce GTS 250 Videocard on PCStats
Sapphire Vapor-X HD4850 512MB Videocard on Tweaknews
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX Video Card on I4U

Notebook:
Kogan Netbook Pro on Draco II's Blog.
OCZ DIY 15.4in Notebook on Trusted Reviews
Sony Vaio P on Digital Trends

Misc:
Toshiba SD-P73S Portable DVD Player on Trusted Reviews
Speedblack Gaming Platform on XSReviews
Diamond-based heat transfer compound on Frostytech.com



Folding@Home - Team 24! (8 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 16-April-2009  18:33:03 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY

OCAU's Folding@Home team has been working hard this year, but we still need your help. While the team has been contributing over 1.9 Million points per day, we still need your help to increase this number and make sure we hold onto our number #2 spot in the ranking.

The team is looking for Nvidia GeForce 8XXX, 9XXX and 260/28X/295 GPU's (ATI Radeon GPU's Too!) to help increase our output. If you are ready to start, then check out this thread for instructions. Don't have a GPU to spare? Folding@Home works on your CPU as well! There's a guide to getting started here. If you have Sony Playstation 3 you should already have the client pre-installed and ready for you to start producing!

So, if you would like to help scientists learn about diseases like Cancer, Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Osteogenesis Imperfecta - possibly help find a cure for it and put OCAU back in the number one spot - then drop by the Distributed Computing section (open to the public) and see how you can be a part of it.

Remember, every idle CPU, GPU and PS3 counts, so what can you commit to the cause?

 



Thursday Afternoon (11 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 16-April-2009  14:09:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

It seems the first game banned from Australia in 2009 is NecroVisioN, as reported by GoN. The title, which takes gamers all the way from World War I battlefields into a demon-infested underworld, is officially the first game to be Refused Classification in this country in 2009, effectively banned from release due to in-game "depictions of violence that exceed a strong playing impact".

NASA's Mars rovers are still exploring, although Spirit is having issues. Spirit and Opportunity, which are both working on the Mars equator but on different sides of the planet, have been on Mars for five years, far outlasting the three-month projection set by engineers at its launch.

Speaking of NASA, they had a minor PR issue after Stephen Colbert used his TV show to swing the voting in a poll of what to name the next space station module. NASA eventually went with "Tranquility". "However, NASA is naming its new space station treadmill the 'Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill,' or COLBERT. We have invited Stephen to Florida for the launch of COLBERT and to Houston to try out a version of the treadmill that astronauts train on."

Wow, this anti-piracy campaign is almost hilariously bad, and not just for the pronunciation of "warez" as war-ezz (juarez?). Cnet report that the BSA are equating software piracy with real actual Somalian pirates as well.

OC3D checked out ATI 4xxx series cards from XFX. This collaboration has produced a new range of graphics cards and the ones I will be looking at today are the overclocked XXX editions of the budget 4850, the 4870, the latest release 4890 and the stock clocked but mighty 4870x2. I will also be calculating these card's cost per frame to evaluate how much bang-per-buck you get for your cash.

Tech-Report have a system guide posted for April. Say what you will about the recession and the global economy, but we've seen some absolute bargains in the PC hardware market these past few months—and that trend only seems to be accelerating.

VIAArena report on some mini-mobos from VIA, namely the double-sided Em-ITX and the super-tiny Pico-ITXe. The VIA P710-HD Module adds HD capabilities and DirectX 10.1 support in embedded devices based on the Pico-ITXe platform.

Tweaktown report on how Kingston's rebadged Intel SSD responds to the recent Intel firmware update. Meanwhile Guru3D looked at OCZ's 120GB SSD. With the Vertex series SSD, OCZ offers an extremely high performing SSD with a new controller and ... in addition to that a nice phat 64MB cache to tackle the slow small file write issue.

Today's timewaster is deepleap, a fast-paced word game.



Thursday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 16-April-2009  04:05:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
Galaxy GeForce GTX 275 Overclocked Tri-Fan on Tweaktown.
Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 OC 896M on TechPowerUp.
Inno3D GeForce GTX 275 Overclock on LegionHW.
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4890 XXX Edition on Motherboards.org.

Cooling:
Cooler Master Aquagate Max Liquid Cooling System on ThinkComputers.
Coolink GFXChilla GPU Cooler on VerdisReviews.
Evercool Rifling Fan on XSReviews.
Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler on VerdisReviews.
Thermalright AXP-140 HTPC CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Xigmatek Cobra Cooler on DriverHeaven.
Xigmatek Thor's Hammer CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.

Audio / Visual:
AAXA P1 Pico Projector on I4U.
Canon PowerShot SX1 IS on InsideHW.
Kensington Dual Monitor Adapter on ITReviewed.
Sennheiser IE6 Earphones on TechPowerUp.

Networking:
Air Live WN-300R Wireless 11N Broadband Router on Tweaktown.
Belkin Powerline AV+ Starter Kit on ITReviewed.
Edimax nMax Wireless 802.11n Gigabit Router on OC3D.

Portable:
Dell Adamo notebook on DigitalTrends.
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Netbook on Phoronix.
OCZ Neutrino DIY Netbook on TechReport.

Misc:
IOGEAR (GCS1204) 4 Port Dual-Link DVI KVMP Switch on FutureLooks.
TRENDnet TK-IP101 KVM IP Switch with TK-423K KVM on Tweaktown.
Asus M4N72-E 750a AM3 motherboard on Bjorn3D.



Misc Pics (33 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 14-April-2009  16:42:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Very delayed from last week due to Easter and flu etc! Feeling much better now, btw.

         

         



Tuesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 14-April-2009  16:11:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg

PCPerspective report on a new firmware from Intel for their X25-M solid-state drives, to address the fragmentation performance issue. I quickly scanned the release notes and my jaw dropped when I came across this gem: "In addition to addressing the bug you pointed out". I stopped right there in amazement. Could they really have fixed these issues with something as simple as a firmware update? More info on Intel's site here.

On a related note, MadShrimps are upgrading from hard drives. As an alternative to the slow platter-based hard drives there already a few ram disk-based solutions on the market. Acard recently designed their ram disk product, which allows users to use DDR2 memory as storage method. Today, we have a look at the performance of the Acard ANS-9010 and compare it with normal hard disk drives, SSD technology and other ram disks.

Four Socket AM3 Motherboards are compared on TechReport. Socket AM3 boards have started trickling onto the market, and we've thrown a trio from the usual suspects—Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI—into the ring with a wild card from Jetway to see whether we can find the best Socket AM3 platform for a Phenom II build.

Sniper spotted this CrunchPad tablet. The concept behind the CrunchPad is simplicity in itself: a slim and lightweight ‘Web tablet’ designed purely for the Internet. No keyboard, just a touch-sensitive 12 inch screen with the obligatory virtual keypad. Linux as the OS, of course, loaded onto a solid state drive for super-fast boot times and nimble performance.

iXBTLabs consider Phenom II efficiency and cooler selection. As we have already found out, Phenom II has relatively low requirements to a motherboard and a PSU, so moderate overclocking requires no extra expenses. However, it will be good to find out how many Watts this "moderate" implies for real applications. And also what cooler is sufficient for low-noise cooling.

Apparently Australians pay more for their groceries than anyone else, according to the new head of Choice. The Australian supermarket duopoly, the big four banks and the telecommunications industry is a three-headed hellion Choice has pledged to do battle with under its new chief executive.

Telstra may be open to a break-up plan, despite years of opposing the idea. The radically different and more conciliatory approach is part of an attempt to ward off the threat of much greater government intervention in Telstra's business. The company's board has set up a special committee of directors and executives to come up with a new approach and to negotiate with the Government.



Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 14-April-2009  15:20:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
MSI 790GX-G65 AM3 board on Motherboards.org.
MSI 790GX-G65 AM3 board on LegitReviews.
Gigabyte EP45-UD3L LGA775 board on HWSecrets.

Audio / Visual:
Panasonic Viera TX-L37S10B 37in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Samsung T240 24-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor on ThinkComputers.
Panasonic HDC-HS300 video camera on DigitalTrends.
Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ on XbitLabs.
Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision Stereoscopic Glasses on XbitLabs.

Cooling:
Vizo Propeller Dual-Fan Card slot cooler on ReviewStash.
Thermaltake TMG IA1 CPU Cooler on OCIA.
Thermaltake BigTyp 14 Pro CPU Cooler on BigBruin.
SilenX iXtrema IXG-80HA2 Noiseless VGA Cooler w/IXG-3F2 Fan Kit on ThinkComputers.
NOX Sirocco Laptop Cooler on VerdisReviews.
Xigmatek Thors Hammer CPU cooler on XbitLabs.
Hiyatek HY-CF-6288-1 Laptop cooler and stand on RBMods.

Video Cards:
ZOTAC GTS 250 AMP! Edition on InsideHW.
HIS HD 4850 IceQ4 1GB on Bjorn3D.
Asus ENGTS 250 on OCClub.
AMD RADEON 4890 on LostCircuits.

Input Etc:
Thrustmaster Run-N-Drive PC/PS3 Wireless Gamepad on BenchmarkReviews.
Hiper Slim Aluminum USB/PS2 Keyboard on Tweaknews.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Asus W90Vp 18.4" Gaming Notebook on HotHardware.
ASUS EeeTop PC ET1602 Touchscreen PC on Techgage.
Refurbished Acer Aspire One AOA 110-1722 Netbook on FutureLooks.

Software:
Wheelman PC game on GamingHeaven.
Codename: Panzers Cold War PC game on GamePyre.

Storage:
Silverstone RAVEN 2.5" HD Enclosure on ExtremeMHz.
Hitachi 2.5-inch 500GB 5K500.B Hard Drive on I4U.
G.Skill Titan 128GB SSD on Guru3D.
Seagate 250 GB Momentus 5400.4 SATA Notebook Hard Drive on TechARP.

Case & Power Supply:
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W on Pro-Clockers.
Nexus RX-8500 850W on Tech-Reviews.
Hiper M300 300W Media Center PSU on JonnyGuru.
GlacialPower GP-AL650AA 650W on HWSecrets.
Gigabyte Setto 1000 & ODIN 470W PSUs on TechPowerUp.
In Win Gundam case on PureOC.



AMD Winners and Western Digital Contest (4 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 14-April-2009  03:14:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The winners of the AMD Dragon PC contest have been announced, with at least one person from OCAU winning. Congrats to James Scott, although some of the other names look familiar too. Anyway, well done to all 5 people, each scoring a brand new PC.

So, on to the next contest! Western Digital is giving OCAU readers the chance to win 1 of 2 Velociraptor Hard Drives simply by entering their "Guess the Picture" competition now running at www.wdpromotions.com.au. The 2 Velociraptors are only eligible to OCAU readers, so make sure you select OverclockersAU from the "where did you hear about us" section on the entry form. OCAU readers are also eligible to win the main prize, this month being 1 of 3 Double passes to game 2 of the Rugby League State of Origin Series at ANZ Stadium in June! The 1st 3 overall correct entries will win a Double pass to the State of Origin and the 1st 2 OCAU entries will also win the Western Digital Velociraptor Drive!



Forum Articles (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 13-April-2009  14:39:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some interesting things from the forums:


DIY 6Ch Surround Amp Build
by rainwulf

RAID 0 in a MacBook
by mkusanagi

Photofast G-Monster V3 SSD
reviewed by vk4hdi


DFI LANParty DK X58-T3eH6
review by windwithme

ASUS Xonar Essence STX
vs Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1

Hori FS3/EX2 button mods
by antstar


Creative Vado HD Pocket Cam
review by Dangerous_Dave

Cactus V4 Flash Trigger
first impressions by mglazer

Traditional Ginger Beer
made by Wolfy



OCAU Demographic Surveys (10 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 13-April-2009  12:44:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Reminder: please take a moment to fill out our member surveys on Age and Gender. They're completely anonymous and voluntary, and we'll only be making the overall numbers public. Thanks!


Monday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 13-April-2009  01:13:06 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Motherboard/CPU:
ASRock A780GMH/128M Motherboard on Motherboards.org
Intel Xeon W5580 Cpus & S5520SC Motherboard on Driverheaven
AMD Phenom II X3 710 CPU on Motherboards.org
Intel Q9400 CPU on Bjorn3D
Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME Ultra Durable 3 Motherboard on Futurelooks
Foxconn Flaming Blade (Intel X58) on HardwareZone

Audio:
ASUS Xonar Essence STX Soundcard on Techgage
Tritton AX Pro Gaming Headset on Gaming Nexus
Creative Zen X-Fi on InsideHW
Logitech Z-5 on InsideHW

Notebooks:
Asus Eee 1000HE on Digital Trends
Gateway MD7826u 15.6-inch Multimedia Notebook on Tweaktown

Videocard:
Gainward 295 GTX Graphics Card on Metku
ASUS EAH4890 TOP/HTDI/1GD on ITReviewed
Gigabyte GTS 250 1GB on Neoseeker

Cooling:
Zalman CNPS 9900LED on Bjorn3D
OCZ Gladiator Max on t-break

Misc:
Aerocool CoolPanel 3 on Pro-Clockers
Kodak EasyShare Z1285 12.1MP Digital Camera on Think Computers
Ulti-mat Mouse Pads on Hardware-pacers
OCZ Vertex 120GB SATA2 SSD on OC3D
Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (PC) on OCModShop
LG HB354BS 2.1-Channel Blu-ray System on TrustedReviews
Samsung SC-MX20 Digital Memory Camcorder on CCE Reviews
Thermaltake Toughpower XT Cable Management Series on Legion Hardware



Sunday Afternoon (5 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 12-April-2009  17:03:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Tweaktown report from the recent Gigabyte OC Comp Asia finals, while MadShrimps cover the European equivalent. These six overclocking teams confronted each other an attempt to reach the best score in three different benchmarks: SuperPi 8M, 3DMark06 and 3DMark06 SM3.0/HDR subtest score. For the 2D round, SuperPi, all teams had an hour and a half to go as fast as possible. For the 3D session, the timeframe was a bit longer: 1h 45min.

Dopefish spotted this 1993 video about id Software. In 1993, Dan Linton, owner of a hugely successful BBS called Software Creations, visited Texas and made his way to id Software. This is the footage he recorded one night in November 1993. ... This video has 21 minutes of me playing DOOM before the sound effects were put in as well as some early deathmatching with Shawn Green.

More recently, OCModShop interviewed id's Peter Sokal. Recently I got the chance to speak with Peter Sokal, Community Manager of id software about the pending latest chapter in the Castle Wolfenstein series. I want to thank Peter for answering our questions and Robert at Activision for arranging the interview.

Bill Gates has turned his attention to car engines. While the patent mentions a "reactant," that doesn't necessarily indicate fuel used today. The patent talks about a liquid reactant injector and a carburetor that would deliver the reactant mixture to the first port of the engine. Another interesting note was the patent's use of a "plasma injector," a terminology widely used in the Star Trek universe.

Here's a cool project: tweenbots. Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

HardOCP have a thermal paste shootout. We take 10 high profile thermal pastes used for mating heatsink surfaces to CPUs and other components and subject those to over 1200 hours of testing to find out which one reigns supreme.

Murray wanted me to warn everyone, that Australia is forecast to disappear on Tuesday at 10pm. So if you suddenly find yourself in the middle of the ocean, that's why. :)



Saturday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 11-April-2009  17:39:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Memory:
The Big X58 Triple Channel DDR3 Memory Roundup! 8 Mid-range Kits Tested on MadShrimps.
OCZ Intel Extreme Series PC3-12800 6GB Memory Kit on HWLogic.
Mushkin DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600 MHz) 6GB on NeoSeeker.
Kingston HyperX T1 Series DDR3-2000 3GB Triple Channel Kit on ThinkComputers.
Corsair Dominator GT 1866 on Bjorn3D.

Cases:
Antec P183 Computer Case on BenchmarkReviews.
Rosewill P901-P on DriverHeaven.
Thermaltake Spedo on NeoSeeker.
NZXT Khaos Welded Aluminum Full Tower on LegitReviews.
InWin Matrix Micro-ATX on XSReviews.
InWin Matrix on OCClub.
In Win Matrix on Hi-TechReviews.
GMC X7 X-Station Gaming Case on OCModShop.
Cooler Master Storm Sniper Mid-Tower on Techgage.
Cooler Master Storm Scout on Bjorn3D.
Cooler Master Storm Scout on TheTechLounge.
Cooler Master Storm Scout on Techgage.
Cooler Master Storm Scout on ExtremeOC.
Cooler Master Storm Sniper on Modders-Inc.
Cooler Master Storm Scout on BenchmarkReviews.
Cooler Master Storm Scout on HWSecrets.

Storage:
Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile 500GB External Hard Drive on ThinkComputers.
Solidata X2-256 MLC 2.5-inch Solid State Disk on Tweaktown.
Patriot XPorter Magnum 64GB on PureOC.
Patriot Xporter Magnum USB Flash Drive on RBMods.
Mobile Terabyte: Seagate FreeAgent Solutions Roundup on XbitLabs.
Corsair P256 256GB MLC Solid State Drive on LegitReviews.

Input Etc:
Saitek Cyborg Force Rumble Gamepad on OCModShop.
Razer Arctosa gaming keyboard on Bjorn3D.
OCZ Eclipse & Behemoth Laser Gaming Mice on TechPowerUp.
Razer Mamba Gaming Mouse on OC3D.
NZXT Avatar Gaming Mouse on Modders-Inc.
OCZ Eclipse Laser Mouse on OCOnline.
Evolution Gaming Gear: Mouse Pad MP3 on OCOnline.
MS Wireless Notebook Presenter 8000 on TBreak.
Logitech MX1100 Cordless Laser Mouse on Phoronix.
Logitech Harmony 1100 remote on InsideHW.
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard on I4U.
Microsoft Sidewinder X8 Bluetrack Gaming Mouse on FutureLooks.

Prebuilt:
CyberPower Gamer Ultra Perseus on DriverHeaven.
iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F970

Misc:
VisionRacer VR3 Racing Simulator on TrustedReviews.
Rosewill RNX-N4 Wireless N Router on HWLogic.
LaTosta Lightweight Laptop Stand on OCClub.



Saturday Afternoon (7 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 11-April-2009  14:45:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg

So, my present from the Easter Bunny seems to be an absolute killer flu.. urrrrggh.

Nvidia and Acer have released the first Ion-based desktop PC, the AspireRevo SFF. More on HotHardware and PC Perspective. Built on the NVIDIA Ion platform, looks a tad like Asus' Eee Box perhaps but with a bit more styling and of course a lot more GPU horsepower under the hood for multi-media and full HD video offload processing on the Ion platform IGP. Discussion here.

BenHeck has been busy, making a C64 laptop. The goal this time was to make something that looked exactly like a computer from the early 80’s, yet in a new form. Including the color beige and texture.

However I think this WALL-E PC with hugely detailed worklog takes the cake as the coolest PC project I've seen in a while. A solid-metal Wall-E computer case, each detail carefully cut from the metal sheets processed and put in place.

You can travel around in a somewhat WALL-E like manner, if you ride in a chariot wearable transporter. Wearable commuters do sound alien, but the Exmovere Chariot is the closest a commuter such as this has ever been. The fact that it is self-balancing and hands-free would make it a winner with amputees who otherwise find it difficult to stand and commute in the hubbub.

Meanwhile an inventor has turned two cardboard boxes into an eco-friendly oven. The trapped rays make the inside hot enough to cook casseroles, bake bread and boil water. What the box also does is eliminate the need in developing countries for rural residents to cut down trees for firewood.

Trent Reznor has urged musicians to ditch their labels, as he has, thanks deepspring. The singer describes the experience as "liberating" - insisting big labels make too much money from musicians and are completely out of touch with the industry.

Some hardcore Left 4 Dead fans have re-created scenes from the game in real life. These ten photos are just the first round, so keep your eyes out for another set in the next few weeks.

HotHardware cover Core i7 Overclocking, while GeForce 275 Overclocking is on Tweaktown. While overclocking on NVIDIA cards is slightly more involved due to the fact that the drivers don’t have any embedded overclocking software (unlike ATI with its Overdrive functionality), NVIDIA’s cards do only require the installation of a small program called RivaTuner to get around this.

PC Perspective look at upgrading a laptop to SSD, using Corsair's 128GB one. I take a slightly different approach on the evaluation looking at what advantages you can see when upgrading your notebook or system to even a lower cost SSD option.



Friday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 10-April-2009  23:51:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Hope your Easter is going well - stay safe if you're travelling!

Audio / Visual:
NeatScan to Office Portable Scanner on HWZone.
Panasonic DMR-EX79 DVD / HDD Recorder on TrustedReviews.
Samsung SP-P400B Projector on Accelenation.
Razer Carcharias gaming headset on Digitaltrends.
Razer Carcharias Gaming Headset on HWLogic.
Plantronics Explorer 370 Ruggedized Bluetooth Headset on LegitReviews.
MSI X58 Platinum LGA1336 board on PCPerspective.
Dell M109S Micro Projector on ITReviewed.

Cooling:
Zalman VF950 GPU Cooler on XSReviews.
Xigmatek Nepartak CPU cooler on DriverHeaven.
Xigmatek Thor's Hammer CPU cooler on PureOC.
OCZ Gladiator MAX CPU cooler on Guru3D.
NZXT Cryo Laptop Cooler on Pro-Clockers.

Motherboards:
Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi LGA775 board on HWZone.
ASRock A780GMH/128M AM3 board on OCWorkbench.
Asus M4A78T-E AM3 board on TrustedReviews.
ASUS P5Q PRO Turbo LGA775 board on LegionHW.
eVGA X58 SLI Classified LGA1366 board on Guru3D.
ECS A790GXM-AD3 AM3 board on LegitReviews.
ASUS M4N72-E AM3 board on Motherboards.org.

Portable:
HP TouchSmart tx2 tablet PC on HWZone.
Nintendo DSi portable game console on DigitalTrends.

Misc:
Air Live HP-3000E 200Mbps Power Line Adapter Kit on Tweaktown.
Pandigital Kitchen Technology Center on I4U.



Geek Recipes (1 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 9-April-2009  17:09:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some yummy stuff from our Geek Food forum:


Indian prawn curry
by strafer86

Toblerone Cheesecake
by Elyzion

Hot Cross Buns
by Sunset


15-minute Salmon Fillet
by scarletxfi

Kimchi
by bl4ck32

Individual baked alaska
by username_taken


Lemon Meringue Pie
by brenton1987

Beer Butt Duck
by Quan-Time

Turkish Pide
by Gigitt

Here's some more that are worth checking out:



MotoGP joins OCAU Tipping - starting this weekend. (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 9-April-2009  16:41:37 (GMT +10) - by Wolfy

The 2009 MotoGP season starts this weekend with the Grand Prix of Qatar, if you're a MotoGP fan you may like to join the OCAU MotoGP 2009 Tipping competition and make your predictions as to who will win.

For those involved in the OCAU AFL Tipping don't forget that this weekends first match is tonight between the Cats and the Pies, so get your tips in before the game starts.



OCAU Demographic Surveys (2 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 9-April-2009  15:15:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Please take a moment to fill out our member surveys on Age and Gender. They're completely anonymous and voluntary, and we'll only be making the overall numbers public. Thanks!


Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 9-April-2009  15:14:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Software:
Godfather II PC game on GamingHeaven.
Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 on PCReview.
HAWX PC game on GamePyre.
ESET NOD32 Antivirus v4.0 on ITReviewed.
Dark Sector PC game on ITReviewed.
Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena PC game on GamingHeaven.
Badaboom 1.1.1 transcoder on OCClub.

Cooling:
Thermaltake V1 CPU cooler on CPU3D.
Scythe Typhoon Fan on XSReviews.
Noiseblocker NB-Driveguard HD Cooler on VerdisReviews.
Choiix C-HL01-WS Air-Through Laptop Cooling Pad on BigBruin.
GELID Silent Spirit CPU Cooler on VerdisReviews.
Choiix Mini Air-Through Laptop Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
VIZO Mini Ninja & Ninja HS Notebook Coolers on Virtual-Hideout.

Storage:
Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green Power Hard Drive on HotHardware.
QNAP TS-439 Pro Turbo network storage on LegitReviews.
Mtron MOBI 3500 32GB SSD on HWLogic.
HornetTek External Enclosure on Bjorn3D.

Power Supply:
Antec Signature 650W on Tweaknews.
Tuniq Ripper 1000W on PureOC.
OCZ ModXStream Pro 600W on XtremeComputing.

Audio / Visual:
LaCie LaCinema Black Max media player on ITReviewed.
LG 42LH5000 42in LCD TV on TrustedReviews.
Linksys Media Hub NMH410 on ITReviewed.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS1 camera on DigitalTrends.
Teufel Theater 3 Hybrid Home Cinema Speakers on TrustedReviews.



2009 MS Walk (1 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 8-April-2009  16:24:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Admiral and Cee are once again entering the Sydney MS Walk and Fun Run, to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis sufferers. Last year they raised over $10,000 - this year they're aiming for the lofty goal of $100,000! Here's some photos from last year:


click for the thread!

The direct link to donate is here, and there's more info in this thread.



Wednesday Afternoon (4 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 8-April-2009  15:57:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg

HotHardware have a sneak peek at a new SSD from Corsair. The drive we received is branded as a Corsair S256, but we've been told that when the drive hits store shelved the official product name will be P256--the "S" is changing to a "P". We set it up for a quick round of HD-Tach and this SSD could actually give Intel something to think about.

I missed this when it first came out (check the date) but drayzen sent in this video of a new Opera feature, "Face Gestures. Face Gestures lets you perform frequent browsing operations with natural and easy to make face gestures. By using an internal technology dubbed Face Observation Opera Language, we are able to recognize pre-determined facial expressions and match them to commands on the Opera browser. Funny stuff.

Internode are gobsmacked, in a good way, about the Government's post-NBN plan. In these challenging economic times, such nation-building investment is exactly the right response to the telecommunications challenges Australia faces for the next decade.

A few people sent in this rack of 23 GeForce GTX295's. The article makes it sound like it's all in one PC, but it seems to be several motherboards in a rackmount setup. Still, plenty of grunt, I wonder if he's folding on it? Update: seems he is! more info here, thanks DM.

General Motors and Segway have combined forces to make a Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility vehicle for zipping around the city. Ideally, the vehicles would also be part of a communications network that through the use of transponder and GPS technology would allow them to drive themselves. The vehicles would automatically avoid obstacles such as pedestrians and other cars and therefore never crash, Burns said.

That passing comment I noticed the other day about the UK storing internet information seems to be true. Details of every email sent and website visited by people in Britain are to be stored for use by the state from tomorrow as part of what campaigners claim is a massive assault on privacy.

iXBT keep looking into CPUs and GPUs. We proceed with a series of practical articles, in which we analyze sufficiency of various CPU+GPU combinations for games, trying to keep our test conditions as close to popular realia as possible. We hope that such articles will come in handy to readers willing to reasonably distribute their budget between a graphics card and a processor.

TweakGuides have an update: The new versions of the TweakGuides Tweaking Companions (TGTC) for both XP and Vista are now available. All versions of the TGTC, both the Regular and Deluxe Editions, e-book and hardcopy, have been updated. This is a reasonably major update given the last time the Companions were revised was over 6 months ago.

I4U have info about upgrading a laptop with a SSD. I4U News published a report on upgrading the classic IBM Thinkpad X40 with the new KingSpec SSD that works as drop-in replacement of the noisy and slow 20GB 1.8 inch HDD.

GoN have a WoW interview. While recently in the US for GDC San Francisco, we dropped in on Blizzard HQ to see what they were up to - and ran into Tom Chilton, World of Warcraft lead game designer, who was more than happy to have a bit of a chat about the impending 3.1 content patch.



Wednesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 8-April-2009  04:12:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Portable and Prebuilt:
ASUS Eee PC 1000HE 10-Inch Netbook on Futurelooks.
Acer Aspire 8730G on InsideHW.
ASUS N80Vc laptop on ITReviewed.
Yoyotech 'Water Dragon' 940 Gaming System on CPU3D.
Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop on ITReviewed.
GameRigs Ego Custom Gaming System on Tweaktown.
MSI Wind Nettop D130 on InsideHW.
YOYOTech Water Dragon 940 prebuilt gaming PC on OC3D.
Asus N50Vc - 15.4in Blu-ray Notebook on TrustedReviews.
Novatech Zu PC on DriverHeaven.

Power Supply:
Antec TruePower 750W on DriverHeaven.
Coolmax V600 600W on RBMods.
In Win Commander 850 850W on Tech-Reviews.
Nexus Value 430W Eco on XtremeComputing.
OCZ Fatal1ty 700W on HWSecrets.

Cases:
Antec Twelve Hundred Gaming Case on JonnyGuru.
Antec Nine Hundred Two on Atomic.
NZXT Rogue SFF Gaming Chassis on ThinkComputers.
SilverStone RAVEN SST-RV01B-W Full Tower on Tweaktown.

Video Cards:
GeForce GTX 285 Round-Up, Asus, BFG and Zotac on HotHardware.
Radeon HD 4890 vs. GeForce GTX 275 on TechReport.
ASUS EAH4890 HTDI/1GD5/A Radeon HD 4890 on PCStats.
ASUS EAH4890 TOP Radeon HD 4890 RV790 on BenchmarkReviews.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Vapor-X on CPU3D.
Gainward GeForce GTX 275 on Tweaktown.
Sapphire HD 4890 on Bjorn3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB OC on TheTechLounge.
Sparkle Calibre P980X+ on OCClub.

Storage:
OCZ Slate 32GB USB-based SSD ExpressCard on EverythingUSB.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 HDD on Bjorn3D.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB HDD on BigBruin.
Solidata X2-128 MLC 2.5-inch Solid State Disk on Tweaktown.
Super Talent 16GB Pico C Flash Drive on Pro-Clockers.



National Broadband Network (65 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 7-April-2009  09:44:35 (GMT +10) - by BlaYde

This morning Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has announced that the Federal Government has terminated the National Broadband Network tender process after failing to find any of the NBN bids satisfactory.

Citing "deterioration of the economy" and flanked by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Treasurer Wayne Swan, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said at a Canberra press conference this morning that the government had not found any of the NBN bids by players like Acacia, Optus, Axia Netmedia satisfactory.

Instead of accepting an NBN bid, Rudd said, the Federal Government would establish a company in partnership with the private sector to roll out its own network, based on fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) technology, that would reach 90 per cent of Australians with speeds of up to 100Mbps. "This is the single largest nation-building infrastructure project in Australia's history," Rudd said, comparing the project to the Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme and the building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The remaining 10 per cent of Australians would be served by a combination of ADSL broadband, wireless and satellite.


More coverage:
NBN plan scrapped; govt seeks new partners
Government to build national broadband network



Congrats to dinos22 and Deanzo (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 6-April-2009  20:37:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Congrats to dinos22 and Deanzo for taking the overall win in the Asia Pacific finals of the Gigabyte Overclocking Competition, representing Australia. Next stop: Taipei, for the World Finals!

Share your congratulations in this thread.



OCAU Wiki (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 6-April-2009  18:33:53 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY

Just a quick mention of the OCAU Wiki :)

2009 Motorsport Calendar – Listing of events for various motorsport championships in 2009.
Australian Internet Filtering – A detailed listing regarding the Government's Plans for Internet Filtering.
LAN Party Listing – Listing LAN party event groups around Australia.
Buffet – A list of all-you-can-eat buffets/smorgasbords in Australia.
Aquariums – A comprehensive guide to tanks, fish, filtration, plants and much more.
Homebrew – A guide to the wonderful world of brewing beer at home.
Programs & Links For Overclockers – Handy programs and links to manufacturer websites.
Programming Interfaces & Utilities – A variety of languages/editors and websites.
Freeware & Open Source – A variety freeware, GPL & Open Source software.
Australian Apple iPhone 3G – Variety of handy information and popular applications.
OCAU Forum Greasemonkey Scripts - Handy scripts that can enhance your forum experience.
Vista Compatibility List – User updated list of games that are compatible with Windows Vista.
Team Fortress 2 – Handy information/links and OCAU player listing.
Audio Visual & Graphical – List of codec's, editors, conversion and media playback tools.
Photo Printing Vendors – Online based photo printing services available throughout Australia.
Playstation Network IDs – OCAU member listing for the Playstation Network.
Blu-ray – A comprehensive list of Frequently Asked Questions.
Xbox GamerTag Contact List – OCAU member listing for the Xbox Live Network.
New System Recommendations – Pre-design systems for a variety of applications.
Online Vendors – A lengthy listing of Australian PC vendors, categorised by state.
MythTV – Everything you need to know about MythTV.

The beauty of a Wiki is that you can make your own pages or edit other people's pages if you have information to share. So, what can YOU add?



Monday Evening (2 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 6-April-2009  17:59:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Sniper spotted this chat with Simon Hackett, the CEO of Internode. We talk about their upcoming 3G mobile and 3G broadband services, Basslink, Telstra’s ‘ridiculous wholesale pricing’, TiVo, unmetering of content and how they can afford to do it as well as their efforts to deliver ‘last mile broadband’ to those in the Yorke Peninsula area in Sourth Australia.

Apparently complaints about Telstra have shot up under their current leadership. "It's frustrating because you can't get through and when you do no one can tell you anything," Telstra Bigpond customer Michael Murray said.

Meanwhile the head of the ACMA has blamed the media for whipping up controversy about the blacklist. Mr Chapman said the watchdog was looking at ways to prevent further leaks. "The events of the past week have obviously and understandably raised concerns about the security of the distribution and protection of the list in use," he said. "As you would expect, we are investigating and pursuing this with a view to rectifying and improving it."

HWZone report from the Asian finals of the Gigabyte overclocking tournament. The best overclockers from Asia-Pacific had been gathered to form nine teams for this Asian final. While cash and prizes from the sponsors were prepared for the top three teams, only the best team will earn a spot in the world final to be held in Taipei.

Intel say their graphics chips are gaining ground in the gaming market. "There are games actually targeting integrated graphics chipsets at this time," according to Davies. "We found through engaging with these Triple A (AAA) game studios that within a relatively short amount of time, they can identify graphics bottlenecks in their code and resolve that to have their games running on integrated graphics chipsets."

From Drnrg: one of my friends at work linked me to this 'webtrends' map which basically maps the 333 most influential web domains and 111 most influential internet people onto a map of the tokyo subway.
check it out for more info
.

Guru3D have an overclocking guide for GTX 275 video cards. The end result of 2 minutes work is 10 to 15 percent more performance. Join us for a quick crash course in graphics card tweaking.

Rupert Murdoch has a few things to say about the online newspaper industry. "People reading news for free on the Web, that's got to change," said Murdoch speaking at The Cable Show, an annual cable television industry event, in Washington, D.C. The article also mentions they might be making their own e-book reader like Amazon's Kindle.



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 5-April-2009  21:17:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A quick snapshot of what's going on in the forums:

Tiered Power Supply List in Overclocking & Hardwarwe.
USB Key Benchmarks. Post em here in Storage & Backup.
Western Digital enters SSD market in Storage & Backup.
Build your own Apollo Guidance Computer in Electronics.
Nvidia Beta Forceware 185.66(Update) in Video Cards.
Asus XG external graphics card station in Video Cards.
When Will Telstra 100mbit start commencing in Networking & Internet.
First VM Ware server, HELP! in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Hyper-V Discussion in Business & Enterprise Computing.
MyBrute - Online game in Games.
'True HD' 1080 Console in the Next Generation? in Game Consoles.
PS3 Firmware 2.70 RELEASED! | Adds 16-Person In-Game Chat, Video Back Up in Sony Consoles.
Apple announces WWDC 2009 dates; iPhone, Snow Leopard countdowns begin in Apple Hardware & Software.
Photo to Forum - Flickr Firefox Plugin Guide in Photography.
Is there a decent plugin/filter for photoshop re portraits in Photography.
What is your "must have" at Yum Cha in Geek Food.
No smoking in cars with kids from July 1 in Current Events.
G20: New World Order and 1.4 trillion US$ stimulus in Current Events.
Obama shuts "spigot of defense spending" in Current Events.
Operation Rescue Kitten in Pets & Animals.
DSG Semi-Auto vs Manual Gearbox in Motoring.



Melbourne F1 Pics (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 5-April-2009  14:17:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg

F1 goes to Malaysia this weekend, but here's some photo threads from last weekend's Melbourne round, and some other recent motorsport photos from our Photography Gallery forum:









Keep on top of motorsport happenings with our 2009 Motorsport Calendar in the wiki, and the fairly new Motorsport forum.



Sunday Morning (3 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 5-April-2009  03:03:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Wing Commander Andy Green may be setting records in South Australia soon, thanks Sniper. Wing Commander Andy Green, an RAF fighter pilot, wants to steer his Bloodhound SSC rocket-powered machine past the 800 mph-mark (1287 km/h) next March.

It's been a big week for video cards. Guru3D and Tweaktown have both been overclocking the ATI Radeon HD 4890. Tweaktown are also looking at ATI Radeon HD 4890 in Crossfire, while Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 SLI is examined on XbitLabs.

Issue #4 of The Overclocker online magazine is out now. Discussion in this thread.

I'm wary of any news story dated April 1, but this is a cool article about Google's once-secret servers, thanks Brains. Google's big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there's a problem with the main source of electricity. The company also revealed for the first time that since 2005, its data centers have been composed of standard shipping containers--each with 1,160 servers and a power consumption that can reach 250 kilowatts.

From Chris: This month's Iron Musician topic was "Love". Although there were some skeptics, it brought out a variety of genres and even some first time entrants. Anyway, it's time to vote for this month's Iron Musician, so go download the tracks here and vote for your favourite!

Quan-Time spotted this safe cracking party. As any safe technician can tell you, there are not that many ‘penetration parties’ where lots and lots and lots and lots of high quality bank safes are waiting to be opened. In that respect Paul Crouwels parties are pretty unique.

Phoronix report on an open-source game called Nexuiz 2.5. This latest release of Nexuiz brings even better graphics capabilities along with a new HUD, network communication improvements that cut the bandwidth in half, smarter bots, even better graphics, and several new maps. In total more than 3,000 changes make up Nexuiz 2.5!

Intel recently released their Nehalem-based Xeon CPUs. Initial results seem to be pretty good, with coverage on iXBT, LegitReviews and Tech-Report. Intel's Nehalem-based Xeons are finally here, and they've left us gasping for air. This may well be the largest performance jump from one CPU generation to the next that we've ever seen. Idle power draw is way, way down, as well. The downside? We're still looking for one. Discussion here.



Sunday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 5-April-2009  01:13:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard and CPU:
ECS A790GXM Socket AM3 Black Series on Guru3D.
ECS A790GXM AM3 Black Series on PureOC.
AMD Phenom 2 940 CPU on RBMods.
Biostar TPower X58A v5.0 LGA1366 board on TrustedReviews.
AMD Phenom II X3 720 and X4 810 Processors on iXBTLabs.
ASUS Rampage II GENE LGA1366 board on Bjorn3D.
AMD Phenom II X4 940 AM3 CPU on Motherboards.org.
Gigabyte EX58-UD4P LGA1366 board on Techgage.
MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 board on NeoSeeker.
Gigabyte EP45C-DS3R LGA775 board on HWSecrets.
MSI 790GX-G65 AM3 board on OCClub.
Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi Mini-ITX LGA775 board on TechReport.
ASUS Rampage II Extreme LGA1366 board on PureOC.
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200S and Q9550S 65W CPUs on HotHardware.

Cooling:
Zalman CNPS9900 LED CPU cooler on PCPerspective.
Dragon F1 Extreme Edition LN2 COoler by K|ngP|n on MadShrimps.

Video Cards:
Zotac nVidia GeForce GTX 275 Amp! Edition on TrustedReviews.
ATI Radeon HD 4890 & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 on Techgage.

Portable:
Nintendo DSi Handheld Games Console on TrustedReviews.
ASUS Eee PC 1000HE netbook on ITReviewed.

Power Supply:
1500W Power Supplies: Thermaltake and Xigmatek on XbitLabs.
Thermaltake ToughPower XT 750W on Pro-Clockers.

Storage:
OCZ Vertex SSD RAID-0 Performance on BenchmarkReviews.
Super Talent Pico 16GB flash drive on Bjorn3D.

Memory:
G.Skill Triple-Channel 1600 MHz 6 GB Kit on TechPowerUp.
Mushkin HP3-12800 DDR3 on Bjorn3D.

Input Etc:
MX 1100 Cordless Laser Mouse on ITReviewed.
Handshoe Mouse Cordless on DriverHeaven.
Microsoft SideWinder X8 gaming mouse on DigitalTrends.

Misc:
ASUS RT-N15 SuperSpeed N Gigabit Wireless Router on Tweaktown.
SilverStone Raven RV01 case on Phoronix.



Daylight Saving (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 4-April-2009  18:10:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Tonight in NSW, VIC, SA, TAS and the ACT, daylight saving ends. So at 3am, set your clock to 2am.

If you find your forum time is out of whack, check the settings in UserCP. It's also a good opportunity to check your email is up to date in the forums.

Also, as recommended by various fire services, changing your clocks is a good time to change your smoke alarm batteries too.



Misc Pics (35 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 3-April-2009  14:41:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Thanks to Natalie and timbot for most of these!

         

         



Friday Afternoon Reviews #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 3-April-2009  14:39:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cases:
Thermaltake Element S on HWLogic.
NZXT Zero 2 on PureOC.

Portable and Prebuilt:
NEC Versa S1300 on HWZone.
Sony VAIO P-Series Netbook on ITReviewed.
HP Z workstation on HWZone.
SmoothCreations Neptune Xtreme Machine prebuilt gaming PC on Guru3D.

Networking:
D-Link DIR-825 Xtreme N Dual Band Gigabit Router on TechReviewSource.
ASUS WL-500g Premium V2 Multi-Function Wireless Router on Tweaktown.

Cooling:
Coolermaster N520 Dual Fan CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Thermaltake SpinQ CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Zalman CNPS 9900LED CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Mushkin eXtreme Performance Liquid on MadShrimps.
OCZ Gladiator Max CPU Cooler on XtremeComputing.
Evercool Hermes Notebook Cooler on OCClub.
Prolimatech Megahalems CPU Cooler on BenchmarkReviews.
Thermalright AXP-140 CPU cooler on Bjorn3D.

Memory:
OCZ Platinum Series DDR3-1600 Low Voltage 6GB Triple Channel Kit on ThinkComputers.
Corsair 6GB DDR3-1866 Dominator GT Memory on LegitReviews.
Mushkin Ascent XP3-14400 CL8 2GB Kit on TechPowerUp.

Audio / Visual:
Speedlink Chronos headset on XSReviews.
AUX Classic speakers on DigitalTrends.
Denon DVD-3800BD Blu-ray Player on TrustedReviews.
SanDisk Sansa slotMusic Player on HWSecrets.
HP DreamColor LP2480zx - 24in Professional LCD Monitor on TrustedReviews.
Dell M109S On-The-Go Projector on HWZone.
Argosy HV675 MediaPlay HDMI Media Player on BigBruin.
Samsung SyncMaster 2263UW LCD Monitor w/ Webcam on Tweaknews.
Sanyo PLV-Z3000 LCD Projector on TrustedReviews.
Logitech Squeezebox Boom network music player on Techgage.



Friday Afternoon Reviews (3 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 3-April-2009  14:05:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 on HWZone.
ATI Radeon HD 4890 on HWZone.
ATI Radeon 4890 on TechWareLabs.
AMD ATI Radeon HD 4890 on TrustedReviews.
Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme GTX 280 on HWLogic.
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890 1GB on Tweaktown.
HD4890 GPU on Bjorn3D.
Asus HD4890 Voltage Tweak Edition on Bjorn3D.

Storage:
Attack of the HDD Dockings: Sunbeamtech, Sharkoon, Thermaltake on MadShrimps.
HornetTek Hover 3.5" SATA USB Enclosure on BigBruin.
In Win ‘NA 3.5? Hard Drive Enclosure on CCEReviews.
D-Link DNS-323 Dual eSATA Network Storage Device on Hi-TechReviews.
Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320GB Notebook Hard Drive on LegitReviews.
Griffin Simplifi iPhone USB Dock w/ Media Card Reader on EverythingUSB.

Power Supply:
Lian Li MAXIMA Force Extreme PS-A650GB 650W on FutureLooks.
NZXT Performance Power 800W on ThinkComputers.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 610W on CPU3D.

Input Etc:
Logitech diNovo Keyboard for Notebooks on ITReviewed.
Gigabyte GM-M8000 Ghost Gaming Mouse on ARM3D.
Razer Arctosa Gaming Keyboard on Tweaknews.
Xtracpads Hybrid Mouse Pad on ReviewStash.
USB Geek USB Frog Mouse on RBMods.
Logitech G35 on Digitaltrends.
Logitech G19 Keyboard for Gaming on HWLogic.
Razer Goliathus Gaming Mouse Pad on TechWareLabs.

Software:
Silent Hill: Homecoming PC game on ITReviewed.
Drakensang PC game on GamePyre.
The Last Remnant PC game on GamingHeaven.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II PC game on GamingNexus.



GeForce GTX 275 and Radeon HD 4890 (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 2-April-2009  22:14:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg

NVIDIA and ATI have both announced new video cards today. In the green camp we have the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275. Based on the GT200 architecture, the GeForce GTX 275 GPU features 240 processor cores operating at 1404 MHz, 80 texture processing units, a 448-bit memory interface, and an 896 MB framebuffer. In price and performance, it sits between the GeForce GTX 260 and the GeForce GTX 285.

In the red camp we have the ATI Radeon HD 4890. The world’s most powerful graphics processor, the ATI Radeon™ HD 4890, boasts a whopping 1.36 TeraFLOPs of compute power, superior GDDR5 memory, and super-high clock speeds capable of approaching 1GHz. The ATI Radeon HD 4890 redefines HD gaming, delivering the best game experience in its price range, including brand new ground-breaking DirectX 10.1 titles.

GeForce GTX 275 reviews: Bjorn3D, OCClub, NinjaLane, TechPowerUp and HotHardware.

Radeon HD 4890 reviews: InsideHW, OC3D (and here), OCClub (and here), Atomic (and here), Guru3D, NeoSeeker, BenchmarkReviews, XbitLabs, TechPowerUp, (and here and here), HotHardware, Phoronix and Tweaktown.

Both: Hexus, LegitReviews, DriverHeaven, Guru3D and PC Perspective.

Keep on top of things in our Video Cards forum.



Thursday Night (5 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 2-April-2009  21:50:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Australia's CSIRO has won a landmark wifi settlement from HP. Since the Australian science agency received a patent for its IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g Wi-Fi products in January 1996, the technology has been adopted as an industry standard by most notebooks and desktop computers around the world. Discussion here.

Senator Conroy is under (more) fire for comments made about iiNet recently, thanks Iro. At the CommsDay telecommunications conference this week, Senator Conroy ridiculed iiNet in front of an audience of key industry figures.

From Danha: I was thinking you might be interested in linking to this quiz. It isn't a definitive history but it's a good memory jogger for some classic portable computing trivia, for those with some time on their hands.

Also from Dahna: thought you might be interested in this news story about how the NSW Government opted for Microsoft over Linux as its nominated operating system in its netbooks for schools offer.

Madshrimps have a video comparison of SSD vs HDD. While all those benchmark charts displaying 200+mb/s read and 150+mb/s write are impressive to see, it's also good to actually have some idea of what that extra performance brings you in real life. We prepared two identical laptops with Windows 7 and Windows XP, one had a conventional HDD, the other a brand new OCZ Vertex SSD. The result is worth checking out.

A couple of people pointed out this Conficker Eye Chart, a simple way of seeing if you are infected with the virus everyone's talking about. It's a simple idea, Conficker blocks access to anti-virus sites, so if you see missing images on that page, it might be time to worry. More info on Conficker in this thread.



Wednesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 1-April-2009  14:10:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Portable and Prebuilt:
Alienware Area-51 X58 prebuilt gaming PC on DigitalTrends.
ASUS G71V Gaming Laptop on DriverHeaven.
ASUS N81Vp Gaming Notebook on LegitReviews.
Fujitsu LifeBook U820 on DigitalTrends.
Gateway MD7826u Multimedia Notebook on I4U.

Power Supply:
Antec CP-850 850W on JonnyGuru.
Sapphire FirePSU 625W on DriverHeaven.

Storage:
Patriot WARP v2 128Gb SATA-II SSD on CPU3D.
Hitachi Deskstar E7K1000 1TB Enterprise Hard Disk on Tweaktown.
Honeywell SecuraDrive RFID USB hard driveon AseLabs.
Icy Dock MB882SP-1S-1 2.5” to 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Convertor on Tweaknews.
In Win NA eSATA & USB Enclosure on TechPowerUp.
Silicon Power 32GB eSATA/USB SSD on InsideHW.
Synology DS209+ NAS Diskstation on Modders-Inc.
OCZ Apex Series 120GB SSD on TrustedReviews.

Video Cards:
Asus GeForce ENGTX285 TOP on TechSpot.
Gigabyte Geforce GTS 250 OC (1Gb GDDR3) on CPU3D.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 285 on Guru3D.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 285 1GB AMP on TheTechLounge.

Cases:
Cooler Master Sileo 500 Mid-Tower on TheTechLounge.
CoolerMaster Sileo 500 on Hi-TechReviews.
InWin X-Fighter on XSReviews.
Lancool Metal Boned K6 on TechPowerUp.
NZXT Zero 2 Full Tower on Tweaktown.
NZXT Zero 2 Full Tower on ThinkComputers.
Coolermaster 932 HAF on NeoSeeker.
Silverstone Raven RV01 on HWLogic.
Thermaltake Element S on RBMods.
Thermaltake Element S Mid-Tower on PCPerspective.



April Fools! (14 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 1-April-2009  12:15:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Although I doubt it fooled many of you for too long, I hope nobody was too alarmed. :)

You can check out the fun from previous OCAU April Fools Day here. People are sharing jokes they find around the net in this thread.




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