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April 2010
Misc Pics (22 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 30-April-2010  13:58:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Another week goes whizzing by..





And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.



Friday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 30-April-2010  13:30:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
Phenom II X6 1090T - AMD Enters the Six-Core Arena on Techgage.
AMD's $300 6-Core CPU: Too Good to Be True? on MaximumPC.
ASUS Crosshair IV Formula (AMD 890FX) on Guru3D.
MSI 890GXM-G65 Socket AM3 on Pro-Clockers.
Phenom II X6 1090T - AMD Enters the Six-Core Arena on Techgage.
MSI 890FXA-GD70 AMD 890FX on PCStats.
MSI 890GXM-G65 on OCClub.

Storage:
Kingston SSDNow V SNV425-S2BN 128GB Solid State Drive Bundle on Tweaktown.
Patriot Zephyr 128GB SSD on NeoSeeker.
ASUS TS Mini Home Server on HotHardware.
RunCore Pro-V SandForce SF1200 SSD on BenchmarkReviews.

Cases:
Zalman Z7 Plus Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
Microcool Banchetto 101 on TechPowerUp.
In Win IW-R300 3U Server Chassis on OCClub.
Kingwin DockMaster USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docking Station on Tweaknews.



Thursday Afternoon (13 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 29-April-2010  14:58:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Rezin spotted this amazing three-axis LED orb. If I had that thing on my desk I'd never get any work done.. the pics seem broken at the moment but there's a cool video here.

PC Perspective have a SandForce SSD roundup. Since the Vertex LE hit the streets a couple of months back, we've been waiting for a larger market push of the excellent SandForce controller. Today we review three new models that have just arrived on the market, comparing offerings from both Corsair and OCZ.

James sent word of BlackBerry OS 6.0, which makes a refreshing change from all the iPhone stories lately. There's a sneak-peek video here. It's still very BlackBerry (which is definitely a good thing), but with BlackBerry 6 we'll be getting a bunch of new features and refinements throughout the operating system. The best news here is that Lazaridis said we'll see it launch in the next calendar quarter, so we won't have to wait too long to get our hands on it.

A handful of hardcore Halo 2 fans have kept playing despite Microsoft turning off the Xbox Live service. Throughout the past week, a small group of dedicated Halo 2 players kept their Xbox's on so that they could enjoy the game for a while longer. (As long as we don't turn off our Xbox's, or lose connection, we can stay online. Our Xbox's have been on for nearly 14 days straight!) Each day the amount of people decreased, at a rapid rate.

StarCraft II will have regional servers. This means, from day one at least, StarCraft II gamers will be locked into playing against gamers from their geographic region. US gamers will play north American opponents, Europeans against Europeans, and Asians against Asians. AusGamers clarified that Australia's servers will be in Asia.

I thought I'd mention DansData because, well, it's been a while since I last mentioned it and I thought of it today for some odd reason. Turns out it's still going, and he's still writing about stuff, including command-line nerd skills, a media player, hard drives, etc.

Meanwhile Khalil spotted this street on Google Maps which looks oddly familiar.

The Boy Scouts now have a video game badge. Or belt loop or pin or something. I have no idea, I was too busy playing video games to be in the Scouts.. wait a second..

Speaking of which, a few people sent in today's timewaster: Super Mario Crossover.



Forum Projects (1 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 28-April-2010  21:10:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some interesting things from the forums:


Azrael reviewed a
mini-NAS/Torrent/Linux box

bundymania shows us the
Tecnofront Hardwaredock Benchtable

windwithme built a Micro-ATX
PC using Intel's i3-530 CPU


Zee visited a
cable company factory

@rt added an LCD
to a webserver-in-a-box

iwkyb is reviving
an old Lian Li case



Wednesday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 28-April-2010  18:15:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T AM3 CPU on iXBTLabs.
AMD Six-Core Phenom II X6 1090T & 1055T Processors on EOC.
AMD's Phenom II X6 processors on TechReport.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition and Phenom II X6 1055T CPU on XbitLabs.
ASUS P7P55D-E Deluxe Socket 1156 Motherboard on Pro-Clockers.
Intel DH55TC MicroATX Mainboard on XbitLabs.
MSI H57M-ED65: MicroATX Mainboard on Intel H57 Express on XbitLabs.

Storage:
Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB Solid State Drive on BigBruin.
ASUS BC-08B1ST Blu-ray on PureOC.

Memory:
Chaintech Apogee & Corsair XMS3 DDR3 2x2GB Kits on RBMods.
OCZ DDR3 PC3-12800 Black Edition on Phoronix.

Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon 5870 2GB TOXIC on HWHeaven.
ZOTAC Geforce GTX 470 and GTX 480 on FutureLooks.
Sapphire Toxic HD 5970 4GB on OCClub.

Cooling:
"Heat Terminator": Thermalright Spitfire and VRM Heatsinks on XbitLabs.
CoolIT ECO A.L.C. CPU Cooler on BenchmarkReviews.

Cases:
DimasTech Easy Test Bench Ver. 2.5 on Hi-TechReviews.
Thermaltake DH-202 HTPC case on TechPowerUp.

Misc:
Alganon - After the Dawning MMORPG on GamePyre.
Auzentech Bravura X-Fi 7.1 sound card on XSReviews.



Balcony Modding (26 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 27-April-2010  20:46:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Simon sent in this cool sequence of pics. I don't have a balcony, but now I'm looking at some of the wasted space around here, hrmm..






Tuesday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 27-April-2010  20:21:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
Asus Rampage III Extreme Intel X58 Express LGA1136 board on VR-Zone.
Jetway JNC96FL-510-LF Mini ITX on Modders-Inc.
Asus ROG Crosshair IV Formula AM3 board on OC3D.
ASRock X58 Extreme3 Intel X58 LGA1366 board on ThinkComputers.
ASUS P7P55D-E Deluxe Intel P55 LGA 1156 on OCIA.

Cooling:
Evercool HPKC-10025EA CPU Heatsink on APHNetworks.
Thermaltake Frio CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler on TechGage.

Video Cards:
HIS HD 5830 Turbo on Tweaknews.
Gainward GTS250 512MB GDDR3 "Deep Green" on PCShopTalk.
Sapphire HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition on Motherboards.org.
ASUS Radeon HD EAH5850 DirectCU TOP on LegitReviews.
PNY GTX-470 on Bjorn3D.
HIS HD5830 on OC3D.

Power Supply:
Ultra X4 850 Watt Full Modular on Tweaktown.
Antec Truepower Quattro 1200W on OCClub.

Misc:
OCZ Solid 2 Series SATA II 2.5" 60GB SSD on TestFreaks.
Kingston HyperX PC3-15000 (1866MHz) LoVo 4GB Kit on Tweaktown.
NZXT Hades case on PureOC.
Mionix Naos 5000 Mouse on OCOnline.
Lenovo Thinkpad X100e notebook on InsideHW.
Nikon D90 w/18-200 VR II Lens Mini Review on RamblingThoughts.



Upcoming Chimp Challenge 2010 (3 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 27-April-2010  19:56:06 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY

Just an early reminder for anyone keen on participating in this year's Chimp Challenge. The start date is 5:00AM Thursday May 6th 2010 EST, and it finishes when the last team crosses the line. We would love see the majority of OCAU pledge to run their system(s) during this event to help the team. 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. Each year teams race under the one monkey themed name per team 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.



Tuesday Afternoon (4 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 27-April-2010  17:33:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The Gizmodo iPhone 4 leak story has taken a more serious twist, with Police raiding the editor's home and seizing equipment. This is interesting because it's apparently against the law to do that to journalists in the USA. More info on Gizmodo themselves.

PCAuthority report that the Core i7 CPU in a Macbook Pro they're testing hit 100C and higher. This loaded the CPU pretty seriously, and the 50 degree Celsius idle temperature of the Core i7 rocketed up to 84 degrees within the space of minutes. As this happened the Macbook's exterior began to heat as well, starting at the underside near the hinge where the CPU sits, and eventually spreading until the left side of the laptop was uncomfortably warm, and the underside was almost too hot to touch. It'll be interesting to see if this is a one-off or if they all do it.

AMD's most recent workstation video card was the FirePro V8800, but now there's two more budget-focussed siblings, the V5800 and V3800. Coverage on PC Perspective and Phoronix, while PC Perspective also looked at the FirePro 2460. By using mini-DisplayPort connections the FirePro 2460 Multi-View can support running four monitors at a time in half-height mode using only 13 watts of power!

PC Perspective also report on NVIDIA's mobile driver with 3D. This means that all you need to access 3D gaming (or 3D Blu-ray or other 3D content) is a 3D-ready TV, this NVIDIA 3DTV Play software and a compatible NVIDIA GPU. This is crucial as it means you will be utilizing not NVIDIA's own 3D Vision glasses, but the technology required and provided by your display, whether that is active or passive designs.

Enigma spotted that Windows Home Server "Vail" Beta is available for downloading. Microsoft have indicated that they have moved their new underlying server platform that will only run as a 64-bit OS hence running Vail on a 32-bit PC is not recommended.



AMD Phenom II X6 (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 27-April-2010  17:07:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The reason why it's been so quiet the last couple of days (apart from me recovering from the endless stream of enormous family meals I had while interstate, mmmm) is that everyone has been working on their AMD Phenom II X6 reviews. These are of course the much-anticipated 6-core desktop chips. Now that second processor, the Phenom II X6 1055T, is in fact even more surprising as it is a budget six-core processor, the 1055T at 2.8 GHz which is going to cost 199 USD. That's right, a six-core CPU clocked at 2800 MHz for less than 200 USD. That means sheer processing for very little money.

Coverage on Guru3D, Bjorn3D, BenchmarkReviews, PureOC, LostCircuits, LegitReviews, NeoSeeker, LegionHardware, OCClub, Tweaktown, HWSecrets, TechSpot, HWSecrets, PC Perspective, HWHeaven, HotHardware, OC3D and Anandtech.

Discussion towards the end of this thread.



Tuesday Morning (21 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 27-April-2010  03:13:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Very quiet out there..

It's nearly the end for floppy disks, with Sony ending sales in almost all regions. The move was prompted by the wide spread of large-capacity storage devices such as USB flash drives. Other domestic manufacturers have already pulled out of the market.

The Hubble Telescope meanwhile celebrates its 20th birthday. The telescope's achievements are immense. Few instruments in the history of science have had quite the same "wow factor"; and anyone who looks at its iconic pictures cannot fail to question - just a little bit - their place and significance in the grand scheme of things. Viljar sent in this slideshow of images from and about Hubble.

Avatar fans will enjoy this tree of souls in London's Hyde Park, thanks JM. The UK's "real-life" Tree of Souls will be re-created using 20 miles of fibre optic "branches." Sensors within the tree's trunk will change the colour and intensity of its glow in response to movements made by visitors to the tree. Local Wi-Fi and Bluetooth networks will allow members of the public to upload images and messages to a screen built into the tree, as well as being able to make social networking status updates with an Earth Day message, via their mobile phones. In addition, by plugging portable music systems including iPods, MP3 players and phones into the tree, it will glow and pulsate in time with the music being played. Pictures here and here, video here.

Gigabyte are enabling their motherboards to charge your Apple products even when your PC is turned off. Many mobile devices can be charged via a desktop PC’s USB ports as long as the system is connected to an active power source, however this is not the case with the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Even when the PC is being used and charging is enabled, these devices usually only draw a mere 0.5A for a trickle charge that can take 3 hours or more to fully charge the device. The benefits of GIGABYTE On/Off Charge are that users can reduce their charge time by around 40% while also acting responsibly and shutting down their PC system while it is not in use, e.g. while they sleep.

McAfee are offering to reimburse for damage caused by their recent patch problems, thanks mpot. "If you have already incurred costs to repair your PC as a result of this issue, we're committed to reimbursing reasonable expenses," the company said.



Sunday Night (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 25-April-2010  21:06:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A recent McAfee update is breaking WinXP, thanks fabricator. The update releasted at 6 a.m. PT caused it to attack a legitimate operating system component known as SVCHOST.EXE. In this case, McAfee's application incorrectly confused it with malware known as the W32/Wecorl.a virus.

While we've all been keeping an eye on the soon-to-retire Space Shuttles and their eventual replacements, the USAF (as opposed to NASA) have launched a new classified spaceship called the X-37B. It's unmanned, but reusable, and looks like it could take on some of the Shuttle's role. It was launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral on 22 April 2010, and is currently operating in low Earth orbit. More info here.

Facebook has made some potentially worrying changes recently with privacy implications - PCWorld advise that you might want to change the defaults of some settings. Here's a list of five essential privacy settings you should review now and tweak accordingly to ensure your information remains safe.

A Newcastle business has held a class on bypassing the planned internet filter. The class was held last Thursday by David Campbell of Newcastle-based service provider Clear Computers on behalf of euthanasia advocacy group Exit International. Campbell told around 70 senior citizens about the filter and how to get around it.

Bluetooth 4.0 has been announced. Bluetooth 4.0 will focus on low-energy technology, which will allow for the creation of sensor-type devices that run off a button cell battery. Foley suggests that health, fitness, security, and home entertainment could see major developments in this area, allowing for fully (and wirelessly) automated homes, assistance in athletic training, use in blood glucose monitors, and more.

IBM are working on a nano-manufacturing technique, thanks Kosta. Reaching a resolution of 15nm, the technique could enable future nanoelectronic devices to be produced more cheaply and efficiently than state-of-the-art electron beam lithography (EBL) systems.

JC spotted this funny video about life in a video game not being so different from real life.



Sunday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 25-April-2010  14:26:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cases:
Raidmax Typhoon on OCClub.
Nexus Edge on OC3D.
Ikonik Ra 2000 Black IC-RBDAB-C000 Full Tower Chassis on Tweaktown.

Audio Visual:
Auzentech X-Fi Bravura sound card video overview on APHNetworks.
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX7 on DigitalTrends.
brite-View CinemaTube 1080p HD Media Player on DigitalTrends.
Psyko's 5.1 PC Gaming Headset on TechReport.
Sony Bloggie MHS-PM5K camcorder on DigitalTrends.
Grado GR8 headphones on DigitalTrends.
Asus Xonar Essence STX Sound Card on Tweaknews.
Compro VideoMate E750 PCIe Dual DVB-T TV Card Dual Tuner on Technoyard.
Asus MS238H LCD Monitor on HotHardware.

Portable:
Asus U30Jc 13.3-inch notebook on Tech-Report.
Dell Vostro V13 laptop on BusinessComputingWorld.

Input Etc:
Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse on HWHeaven.
Razer Orochi, Naga & Imperator Mice on OCClub.
Razer Orochi Mobile Mouse on OC3D.
Mionix NAOS 5000 Gaming Mouse on Guru3D.

Storage:
Kingwin DockMaster USB 3.0 HDD Dock on OCIA.
Stardock USB 3.0 HDD Dock and Card on XSReviews.
Super Talent RAIDDrive USB-3.0 Flash Drive on BenchmarkReviews.
Corsair Flash Padlock 2 on RBMods.
Clickfree Transformer SE on iGadgetLife.
SilverStone HDDBOOST SSD/HDD adapter on Phoronix.
Western Digital Caviar Black 2 TB Hard Disk Drive on TechARP.

Misc:
Patriot Viper II DDR3 1600mhz Triple Channel Memory Kit on TechWareLabs.
Splinter Cell Conviction PC game on GamingHeaven.
NETGEAR GS605AV 5-Port Gigabit Network Switch on Tweaktown.
Zalman ZM600-ST on HWSecrets.



Sunday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 25-April-2010  02:09:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I've been away for a few days, so expect some catchup news posts soon. Also don't forget today is Anzac Day - spare a thought for those who gave their lives to protect our way of life.

Motherboards:
ASRock X58 Extreme3 LGA1366 board on LegitReviews.
Asus Rampage III Extreme LGA1366 board on ITShootout.
ASRock 890GX Extreme3 AM3 board on HWSecrets.

Cooling:
Coolink Corator DS CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme Ultra Quiet CPU Cooler on FutureLooks.
Prolimatech MK-13 VGA cooler on LegionHW.
XtremeGear HP-1216B Five Heatpipe Copper CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Prolimatech Armageddon CPU cooler on PureOC.
Thermalright Venomous X Heatsink on NinjaLane.
Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
AeroCool V12XT Touch LCD Fan Control on Hi-TechReviews.
Lamptron Fan Controller FC5 on TechPowerUp.

Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD5870 EyeFinity 6 Edition 2GB on Tweaktown.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB on Tweaktown.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 & 5570 on InsideHW.
HIS HD 5850 iCooler V Turbo on TechPowerUp.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB on Tweaktown.
PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 PCS+ on Techgage.
ASUS GeForce GTX 470 ENGTX470 on LegitReviews.

Storage:
NZXT IU01 USB Expander on BigBruin.
Vantec NexStar3 SuperSpeed Hard Drive Enclosure on OCModShop.
Kingston DataTraveller 256GB Flash Drive on PureOC.
Corsair Force F100 SandForce SSD on BenchmarkReviews.
ICY DOCK MB561US-4S-1 Quad Bay External Enclosure on ThinkComputers.
A-DATA Nobility NH01 USB 3.0 Portable HDD Video Review on Tweaktown.
Kingwin DockMaster USB 3.0 HDD Dock on OCIA.



Misc Pics (32 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 22-April-2010  03:17:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I'm going to be away from my desk tomorrow, so here's some early Misc Pics. It's just like Friday, except it's one of those Fridays where you have to go to work tomorrow. Which is the worst kind of Friday, really. Anyway, thanks to Chris, Martin and JSA this week.





And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.



Thursday Morning (8 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 22-April-2010  01:49:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg

NASA will be adding a human-like robot to the crew of the ISS. R2 will be confined to operations in the station's Destiny laboratory. However, future enhancements and modifications may allow it to move more freely around the station's interior or outside the complex. Obviously NASA hasn't seen enough scifi/horror movies to know what a bad idea this is. :)

Enigma sent info about Light Peak, which aims to be the successor of USB. More info here. It will reach 100 gigabits per second in the next decade, said Jason Ziller, Intel's director of optical input-ouput program office, in an interview. The company envisions Light Peak as a replacement for the cables that currently lead to monitors, external drives, scanners, and just about anything else that plugs in to a computer.

The mandatory internet filtering legislation has been delayed, with no indication of when the draft bill will be completed. The Labor party has delayed its internal vote on mandatory filtering indefinitely and revealed the draft bill has not been completed. The vote was originally expected to be held mid-March. According to a spokesperson for the Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, the final draft to be considered by caucus will be completed after considering the 174 submissions it received on its filtering discussion paper.

Anandtech have an article explaining Sandforce SSD controllers. It turns out that while I finally know the difference between the SF-1200 and the more expensive SF-1500, not all drives based on the SF-1200 will offer the same performance. In fact, some drives that are currently on the market will actually drop in performance (in one metric) if you upgrade them to SF’s mass production firmware. Yep.

Boston.com have some amazing photos from the Iceland volcano. Obviously the ash in the air is wreaking havoc, but it's not doing much good when it falls on the ground, either.

Laptops also aren't too good when they fall out of helicopters and just miss people. Grayson said the computer made a loud sound when it hit the ground, almost like a gunshot. The 10-year-old's aunt was nearby when she heard the same noise. "'What's that?' It was really loud and not more than two seconds later my little nephew comes around the corner and says 'Auntie Laura, something just fell out of the sky and it almost hit me,'" said Laura Colon.

YouTube have been busily deleting Hitler-meme videos. The Downfall, or Hitler-parody, meme has been, arguably, a viral spat of publicity for Constantin Films in the past few years. The meme takes a now-infamous scene from the movie (the scene in which Hitler reacts to the news that Germany is about to lose the war) and puts satirical subtitles over the action (the movie is in German). Discussion here.



Thursday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 22-April-2010  01:18:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Storage:
Corsair Nova Series 128GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Corsair 128GB Nova Series SSD on OCClub.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB (Gen 2) SSD Desktop Bundle on ExtremeOC.
ASUS Blu-ray Combo Internal Drive on Modders-Inc.
Mach Extreme MX-DS 100GB SSD on XSReviews.

Memory:
GSkill ECO 1600 on Bjorn3D.
OCZ 4GB PC3-10666 Platinum Low Voltage Dual Channel on OCOnline.

Video Cards:
PowerColor HD 5570 1024 MB on TechPowerUp.
GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5870 1GB GDDR5 (GV587UD-1GD) on FutureLooks.

Cooling:
Swiftech Komodo 5870 GPU Water Block on PureOC.
Cooler Master Vortex Plus: A Vortex of Good Cooling on InsideHW.
Zalman VF900-Cu LED VGA cooler on HWSecrets.

Motherboard & CPU:
ECS A890GXM-A AM3 board on iXBTLabs.
ASUS Rampage III Extreme LGA1366 board on Guru3D.
EVGA P55 FTW LGA1156 board on Tweaktown.
Asrock A330ION mini-ITX ION board on RBMods.
ASRock ION330 on Motherboards.org.

Portable:
Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t Multi-Touch Tablet / Netbook on HotHardware.
Sony VAIO Z laptop on BusinessComputingWorld.

Misc:
Microsoft Office 2010 RTM on TechReviewSource.
Cooler Master GX 750W PSU on HWHeaven.
Thermaltake V3 Black Edition case on BenchmarkReviews.



Wednesday Afternoon (1 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 21-April-2010  17:55:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The current industry drama revolves around Gizmodo's recent iPhone 4 preview which, with 6.7 million views and counting, was apparently gifted to them by an Apple employee accidentally leaving a prototype phone on a stool in a bar. Gizmodo went so far as to reveal who the guy was, which has resulted in a bit of a backlash. Apple, unsurprisingly, want it back.

Google has a government requests info page. Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products. The map shows the number of requests that we received between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, with certain limitations. 17 for Australia, apparently.

NeoSeeker have a 4-way CPU cooler roundup. Breaking in at $60, the more expensive Coolink Corator DS and Thermaltake Frio are in direct competion with each other and between these two, I'd pick the former. While the two controllable fans on the Frio are nice, Coolink offers a superior performance to noise ratio and the best in class mounting system seals the deal.

XbitLabs meanwhile compare 1TB and 2TB HDDs. This new roundup will discuss the latest hard disk drive modes with 1 TB and 2 TB storage capacities. We will talk about ten new solutions from Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital.

A few people pointed out this article about Intel's next-gen enthusiast platform on VR-Zone. Intel will stick to using differentiated desktop platforms for the purpose of market segmentation in 2011. The LGA1155 Sandy Bridge-MS we've heard about over the past months will join the Cougar Point family of chipsets to corner the Mainstream and Essential market segments. For the highend segment, Waimea Bay will take the lead by joining Sandy Bridge-E processors to the Patsburg Platform Controller Hub (PCH). Because Sandy Bridge on LGA1155 will only be available in 2 core and 4 core versions, those looking forward to having 6 cores or more will have to put their money where it counts: on the Waimea Bay platform.

Kosta sent in this (translated) article about 3-way GTX 480 SLI. Only scores of three nVidia cards is obviously only half story. Daarom hebben we ondermeer ook twee Radeon HD 5970's en drie Radeon HD 5870's ons testparcours laten doorlopen, met als belangrijkste vraag: met welke combinatie van kaarten krijg je nu écht de beste scores? Therefore, we also include two Radeon HD 5970 Radeon HD 5870 and three programs run through our test course, the key question: which combination of cards you really get the best scores?



Gigabyte GOOC Australia 2010 (5 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 21-April-2010  03:18:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Gigabyte have announced their "GIGABYTE Open Overclocking Championship for Australia 2010". There's lots of info in this thread:


click for the thread!


GOOC Australia 2010 is going to be bigger and better this year.

  • Huge amount of competition prizes
  • All expense paid trip to Indonesia for the extreme OC finals winner (18-6-2010 until 21-6-2010)
  • Door prizes from event sponsors
  • Booth babes galore
  • Three times bigger venue with threefold increase in guests compared to last year
  • Food and drink tab upped to $6,000
  • 7x competitors in live finals (4x extreme + 3x enthusiasts)
  • Up to $500 travel budget for extreme OCers and $100 for enthusiasts

....and many more awesome reasons to come so register now to book a spot and come watch the live overclocking competition and more in Sydney on 15th May (limited to 150 people). REGISTRATION WEBSITE WILL GO LIVE AT THE END OF THE WEEK AND WILL BE OPEN UNTIL 14th May. You must be over 18 years old to register!



Wednesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 21-April-2010  01:34:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cooling:
Thermaltake Frio CPU Heatsink on APHNetworks.
Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Cooler Master Vortex Plus on OCClub.
Dynatron EVO-11 and Dynatron G950 Coolers on XbitLabs.
Dynatron Genius G950 Heatsink on FrostyTech.

Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB on Tweaktown.
PowerColor PCS+ AX5870 on BenchmarkReviews.
XFX Radeon HD 5830 on XbitLabs.

Cases:
GMC H-80 ATX Mid-Tower Gaming PC Case on LegitReviews.
Thermaltake V3 Black on TechPowerUp.
Microcool Banchetto 101 on ThinkComputers.

Motherboard & CPU:
CPU Roundup April 2010 on HWHeaven.
Jetway NC84-LF mini-ITX AM3 board on Phoronix.
ASRock X58 Extreme3 LGA1366 board on LegionHW.
ASRock H55M Pro LGA1156 board on iXBTLabs.
DFI MI P55-T36 Mini ITX LGA1156 board on PureOC.
Six Cores for a Desktop: Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition CPU on XbitLabs.

Power Supply:
IDAPT i3 Desktop Charging System on MegaTechNews.
Ultra Products 1050W Modular PSU on Hi-TechReviews.

Misc:
Logitech G110 Gaming Keyboard on EverythingUSB.
Toshiba NB 305 Netbook on TBreak.



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 20-April-2010  12:22:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg

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

Liquid nitrogen overclocking at RFLAN, PIMPED PC, ASUS in Overclocking & Hardware.
GIGABYTE Prepares to Launch GOOC 2010 in Overclocking & Hardware.
Oldest computer you still use? on Overclocking & Hardware.
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9 Dual 8-pin power, Seven PCI-E x16, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0 in Overclocking & Hardware.
Asus Maximus III gene & i5 670 @ -180.1 on LN2 in Overclocking & Hardware.
Gazza's M-ITX Build in Modding.
Phenom II X4 hidden cores can be unlocked, turning it into X6 in AMD Hardware.
TSMC skips 22 nm, rolls 20-nm process in Video Cards & Monitors.
Koolance CPU-360 Skinnee Labs Review - What CPU Block will you choose? in Extreme Cooling.
The Big UnRAID Thread in Storage & Backup.
Western Digital HD Model Numbers explained in Storage & Backup.
Business laptops - what are people using at the moment? in Business & Enterprise Computing.
What April Fools Jokes Has Your IT Dept. Done? in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Official "Google Summer of Code 2010" Discussion in Programming & Software Development.
Friend's sound library 13000 sounds royalty free app in Programming & Software Development.
Wiimote + GuitarFX Box = Win in Musicians.
Al Qaeda "Scammed" Buying Phony Nukes in Current Events.
How much are you worth? in Career, Education and Finance.
Lamborghini Ankonian in Motoring.
Hybrid under fire from crash-test authority - ANCAP in Motoring.



Tuesday Morning (3 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 20-April-2010  02:57:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg

There's a quite cool thing going on in the forums, with people posting a CPU around Australia and taking local photos with it. I've offered up some OCAU stubby holders as encouragement too. :)

News.com.au are running a survey about illegal downloading, possibly as market research for their own future services. We want to find out why people use tools like BitTorrent to download media illegally — that is, without paying for them when they should. Is it because your favourite show doesn't air in Australia? Or because you want to see a certain film before it comes out in the cinema? Or is it just because it's free? Please tell us — we won't judge you. Discussion here.

Sabretooth spotted this cool pixels video which brings lots of classic video game references into the real world. New York invasion by 8-bits creatures! PIXELS is Patrick Jean' latest short film, shot on location in New York.

BugsBunny spotted that StarCraft II has been blocked from Korean youngsters. The government attempts to improve gaming behavior and curb compulsive gaming and addictions may also have influenced the over-18-rating for StarCraft II. The measures, which are clearly focused on younger players who are apparently more vulnerable, include requiring games companies to introduce "fatigue systems," which force disadvantages in game play when the advised limit for playing time is exceeded.

Gizmodo have a sneak hands-on preview of Apple's iPhone 4. You are looking at Apple's next iPhone. It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it. We disassembled it. It's the real thing, and here are all the details. Discussion here.

TechSpot checked out some value CPUs. With so many choices at your disposal, we understand it's hard not to become overwhelmed. Therefore we have taken a dozen processors priced within the $100 - $200 price range and pitted them against each other, so you can draw clear conclusions on what will suit you the best. We have also added a segment that compares all 12 processors on a clock-for-clock basis.

MSI's new AfterBurner software offers GPU voltage adjustment - Tweaktown and Guru3D both checked it out with a GTX 480. Guru3D also tried it with a GTX 470. Now as you guys probably know the default clock frequency for the GeForce GTX 480 is 700 MHz on the core, 1400 MHz on the shader domain and 3700 MHz on the memory. With an additional voltage we where able to push close to 850 MHz on the core and roughly 1700 MHz on the shader processor domain.

Proving that nobody reads Terms & Conditions anymore, one UK games store now owns the souls of 7,500 customers, thanks Kosta. While all shoppers during the test were given a simple tick box option to opt out, very few did this, which would have also rewarded them with a Ł5 voucher.

Daniel reminded me about The Guild, an online TV show about gamers, which seems to now be in its third season, with another on the way.



Tuesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 20-April-2010  01:16:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
Gigabyte GA-MA890GPA-UD3H & GA-MA790X-UD3P AM3 boards on RBMods.
ZOTAC IONITX-A-U on Motherboards.org.

Audio Visual:
QNAP NMP-1000 Network Media Player on LegitReviews.
ASUS Designo Series MS238H 23-in LCD Monitor on PCPerspective.
Canon S90 Best Compact Pocket Digital Camera for SLR Owners? on RamblingThoughts.
Samsung SyncMaster XL2370 LED LCD Monitor on Tweaknews.

Video Cards:
PowerColor Radeon HD 5870 and 5850 PCS+ on HotHardware.
ASUS GeForce GTX 470 Fermi on TechPowerUp.

Misc:
Viewsonic Viewbook Pro notebook on TechWareLabs.
G.Skill Pi DDR3-2400 4GB Memory Kit on Overclockers.com.
SteelSeries Kinzu Optical Gaming Mouse on BenchmarkReviews.



Monday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 19-April-2010  21:16:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cooling:
Aerocool V12XT Fan Controller on 3DXtreme.
Swiftech Apogee XT CPU Water Block on Bjorn3D.
Zalman VF3000N VGA Cooler on Guru3D.
CoolIT ECO A.L.C. CPU Cooler on DragonSteelMods.

Storage:
Corsair V128 Nova SSD on OC3D.
Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 256GB SSD on Techgage.
Corsair Voyager GTR 32GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive on LegitReviews.
KINGMAX Super Stick mini USB Flash Drive on PCShopTalk.
Four WD Green HDDs Compared on InsideHW.
QNAP TS-459 Pro Turbo NAS on TestFreaks.

Video Cards:
HIS Radeon 5850 Turbo on ViperLair.
HIS Radeon HD5830 1GB Turbo on Tweaktown.
Diamond Radeon HD5770 XOC on OCClub.
HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo 1GB on OCOnline.

Power Supply:
Cooler Master GX 750W on Tweaknews.
Cooler Master Silent Pro M 1000W on PureOC.
SilverStone Strider Essential 500W on Phoronix.



Sunday Night (28 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 18-April-2010  21:24:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg

OCAU Sponsor Data Retriever are accepting votes for the winner of their competition. You can win an 8GB flash drive simply by voting. :) Entries close Monday morning, so get to it!

The annual Folding@Home Chimp Challenge is going ahead soon, so if you want to participate, now's the time to get your Folding PCs in shape so we get off to a strong start.

It seems there'll be no penalty for bypassing the mandatory internet filter. The office of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy this week confirmed it would not be an offence to bypass the Government's planned mandatory internet filter once it was introduced. I have not the words.

Despite the continuing economic gloom, AMD have reported another quarterly profit. By business unit, AMD’s computing solutions division - desktop, server and notebook processors saw revenue jump 23 percent from a year ago. Graphics chip revenue was up 88 percent in the first quarter from a year ago. Simply put, strong PC sales are lifting all boats. More info from the source here, discussion here.

Probably also making a profit is Blizzard, with things like fancy horses flying out the door. The fancy horse costs $25 and offers no new abilities to players, only riding as fast as a character's riding skill will enable it to go. According to wow.com, the download queue as of 1:45 Pacific time was at 80,000. At $25 a pop, this means that this noble steed has generated sales of $2 million since its approximate debut at 9:30 this morning, or around $500,000 an hour.

HotHardware have a 2TB HDD roundup posted. The vast majority of systems that use some sort of fixed drive for storage----be they desktops, workstations, or servers--still use HDDs. And when it comes to maximum storage capacity in a 3.5-inch form factor, you simply can't get any higher these days than a 2TB HDD.

HWHeaven meanwhile compare heatsinks. Today we will present you four coolers from different manufacturers, ranging from the cost-effective versatile Gelid Tranquillo to the monstrous NH-D14 from Noctua and will be discovering what they can offer to end users.

Stmok sends word that the Zeus botnet is exploiting an insecure default setting in Adobe Reader. Instructions for fixing Adobe Reader are here (note you must do it for every user account on the machine). I recommended using Foxit Reader but apparently that has the same flaw, and doesn't even give a warning.

Today's timewaster is Only Connect, associated with the UK TV show of the same name. The goal is to find connections between words, and they are sometimes fiendishly difficult. I really like this one and there's 30 sets of words, so that should keep you busy..



Geek Recipes (1 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 18-April-2010  16:28:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some more yummy stuff from our Geek Food forum:


Vietnamese salt/pepper pork
by goodguy82

Wood Fired Roast Duck
by nanaglenmum

Rib Eye Steak w/ Salad
by !nsane


Chicken Kara-age
by LoBeS (BB)

Home-made Chili Sauce
by Quan-Time

Steak with Balsamic Mushrooms
by Alper


Chilli Poppers
Baringa

Crossoints
by AussieHusky

Marsbar/Snickers Slice
by AERO



Saturday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 17-April-2010  20:35:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3 board on iXBTLabs.
Intel Core i7 930 on OC3D.

Storage:
Thermaltake Max 4 2.5-inch Hard Drive Rack on ThinkComputers.
Kingston SSD NOW V Series 128GB on OCClub.
Corsair Padlock 2 flash drive on Guru3D.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 30GB Solid State Boot Drive on BigBruin.
Super Talent RAIDDrive 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on LegitReviews.

Portable:
Lenovo ThinkPad X100e on TechReviewSource.
NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready Notebook - Asus G51J 3D on PCPerspective.

Video Cards:
Gigabyte Radeon HD 5670 1GB on LegitReviews.
MSI Radeon HD 5830 1GB Twin FrozrII on Tweaktown.

Input Etc:
Mionix Naos 5000 Laser Mouse on APHNetworks.
Jelfin Gel-covered Mouse on ThinkComputers.

Power Supply:
Cooler Master Elite Power 400W on HWSecrets.
GlacialPower GP-AX950AA 950W on Bjorn3D.
Antec CP-1000 on HWHeaven.
Coolmax CUL-750B 750W on HWSecrets.



Misc Pics (25 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 16-April-2010  14:37:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Thanks to Simon, Alex and timbot this week. The last one is possibly NSFW, I guess:





And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.



Friday Afternoon (3 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 16-April-2010  13:05:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

This seems like quite a sudden turnaround, but President Obama has set the USA's sights on Mars. He was laying out the details of his new policy for the US space agency. Mr Obama said he was giving Nasa challenging goals and the funding needed to achieve them, including an extra $6bn over the next five years. Hooray! Discussion here.

There are some new MacBook Pros, but if you had your heart set on an iPad, you're going to have to wait. Faced with this surprisingly strong US demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May. More info here.

Seagate is partnering with movie studios to preload HDDs with unlockable movies. Seagate and Paramount’s digital entertainment division will announce on Monday that some of Seagate’s pocket-sized 500-gigabyte FreeAgent Go portable hard drives sold in the US will be preloaded with 20 popular movies including contemporary movies such as GI Joe and The Love Guru, which will cost from $9.99 each to unlock.

It seems most piracy estimates are bogus according to a US Government study. In a new report out yesterday, the government's own internal watchdog took a close look at "efforts to quantify the economic effects of counterfeit and pirated goods." After examining all the data and consulting with numerous experts inside and outside of government, the Government Accountability Office concluded that it is "difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts."

Tech Report have a SSD roundup. SSDs are finally cheap enough to be tempting for use in high-performance desktops. The market is teeming with new entrants, too. But which one is best? We look at new drives from Corsair, Kingston, Plextor, and WD to find out. Meanwhile PC Perspective respond to BenchmarkReviews' earlier article about AHCI or IDE mode for SSD performance.

Bjorn3D take us through flashing a GPU BIOS. Having had to do that today it struck me that other people might want easy access to a 'How to make a USB drive windows 98 bootable' for flashing their boards. Hours later here I sit with pictures in hand, bootable USB drive flashing my GPU BIOS and half wondering how I got here.

There's some concerns about slave labour like conditions in Chinese factories that produce many of our techno goodies, thanks Rory. Recent reports reveal our insatiable lust for the latest gadgets is having a shocking impact on workers in countries such as China, who are being made to work more than 80 hours a week in sweatshop conditions for as little as 52 cents an hour.

GoN report on the continuing Ubisoft DRM nightmare, thanks Mockier. It's now been three DRM-plagued weeks since the launch of The Settlers 7. Two facts rear their unsightly heads from the public relations nightmare of the last twenty-one days: that some unhappy gamers are still unable to play the game they paid for, and that Ubisoft have failed to make any statement on the problems.



Thursday Afternoon Reviews #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 15-April-2010  15:21:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
ECS H57H-MUS LGA1156 board on HWSecrets.
Gigabyte H55M-UD2H LGA1156 board on iXBTLabs.
ECS H57H-MUS (V1.0A) LGA1156 on PCShopTalk.

Input Etc:
Enermax Acrylux Wireless Keyboard on PureOC.
Razer Imperator Gaming Mouse on RBMods.
Mionix Naos 5000 on OCClub.

Video Cards:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 SLI on TechPowerUp.
Sparkle GeForce 210 1GB on ThinkComputers.
MSI R5830 Twin Frozr II on Guru3D.
ASUS RADEON EAH5850 TOP on LostCircuits.
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 480 on Tweaktown.
Zotac GTX480 on OC3D.

Memory:
G.SKILL Pi Series F3-12800CL7T-6GBP Tri Channel 6GB on OCClub.
Kingmax Hercules PC3-17600 (2200MHz) 4GB Kit on Tweaktown.
12GB Corsair Dominator 1600MHz DDR3 RAM on BenchmarkReviews.

Portable & Barebones:
HP EliteBook 8440p on DigitalTrends.
MSI WindBox Barebones-PC Kit on BenchmarkReviews.
Alienware M11x Ultra-Portable Gaming Notebook on HotHardware.

Misc:
Titan G9T 3-IN-1 Laptop Cooler on Tweaknews.
OCZ ModXStream Pro 500W on HWSecrets.



Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 15-April-2010  14:12:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cases:
NZXT Hades Computer Case HADE-001BK on BenchmarkReviews.
Universal Cases: Cooler Master 690 II Advanced and Zalman MS1000-HS2 on XbitLabs.
Microcool Banchetto 101 testbench on OCClub.
NZXT Hades Black PC Gaming Case on LegitReviews.
Lian Li PC-B25F on HWHeaven.

Audio Visual:
Samsung B2430 monitor on InsideHW.
ASUS Xonar DX Dolby Gaming Sound Card on Modders-Inc.
AirLink 101 SpyIPCam747W Wireless Network Camera on ThinkComputers.
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W370 on TechReviewSource.
Griffin Hands-Free Mic + AUX Cable on Virtual-Hideout.
Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Deluxe Review: The Penultimate HTPC Soundcard? on PCPerspective.

Storage:
Lite-On eHAU424 External DVD Writer on CCEReviews.
Icy Box IB-318STU3-B USB3 HDD enclosure on TestSeek.
Corsair Nova Series V128 SSD on LegitReviews.
Corsair's Force SSD Reviewed: SF-1200 is Very Good on Anandtech.
Synology DS210j and DS410j Network Attached Storage Devices on XbitLabs.
Kingwin DockMaster USB 3.0 Docking Station on PureOC.
VIZO SPEED-UP USB 3.0 ExpressCard on Tweaktown.
Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB Hard Disk Drive on TechARP.
Patriot Torqx 128GB SSD on NeoSeeker.
Kingston SSDNow V Series 30GB Boot Drive on PureOC.



Wednesday Afternoon (3 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 14-April-2010  14:55:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A few people sent in this article about ACTA making a criminal of you. The 'Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement' (ACTA) might sound like it's aimed exclusively at the crooks selling pirated DVDs at the markets, but it's really about curbing the behaviour of individual internet users, according to one of Australia's leading legal academics. There's a second part of the article here, covering a three strikes system.

Apparently this season's final episode of House was filmed entirely on a Canon 5DMkII digital SLR. This is quite an endorsement for Canon, with a network giant entrusting the finale of one of its most popular shows to the 5D Mark II (which happens to be the first digital camera to take the Presidential portrait as well). Discussion here.

HotHardware have some info on the world's first 6-core notebook. The planet's first six-core notebook has arrived, with options for the 980X or the Xeon W5680 available. Users can also equip the machine with up to 2.6TB of storage (room for four hard drives!) and up to 24GB of DDR3-1333 memory.

Opera Mini has approved for Apple's App Store and is available for free. "We are delighted to offer iPhone and iPod touch users a great browsing experience with the Opera Mini App," said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software.

An American eBay user is being sued for negative feedback on the site. Michael Steadman accused Elliot Miller of having the "ethic of a car salesman" after the $US44 clock arrived in pieces, Florida Today reported. Mr Miller, a lawyer, claims the negative feedback has ruined his "100 per cent" eBay rating and commericial reputation and is suing for damages.

Gigabyte are soon to launch the 2010 open overclocking championship. The 3rd year of the GIGABYTE Open Overclocking Championship (GO OC) is about to launch. Are you ready? Time to sharpen up your extreme overclocking skills and show the world you have what it takes to become GO OC 2010 overclocking champion. Discussion here.

HWSecrets have a 128GB SSD roundup posted. Looking for a 128 GB solid state drive (SSD) for your computer? Today we are going to compare the performance of seven different models from Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, Intel, Mushkin, Patriot and Western Digital. Which one you should buy? Check it out.

Thousands of Star Wars fans have combined forces, each creating a 15-second scene which will be joined together into a giant fan film. Of those, 473 scenes were collated into remaking the entire full-length feature, which will premiere at the CPH:PIX festival in Copenhagen on Monday night. The result is a mind-bending mix of hilarious, cringe-inducing, mystifying animation and live action, all done with the approval of Lucasfilm and featuring the original John Williams score. There's a 15-minute trailer here.

Kingsley noted a StarCraft cheating scandal unfolding in Korea, rocking the pro gaming world. At this stage, we hear that various pro gamers have been found intentionally losing matches, as well as leaking their team’s replay files to illegal gambling groups. ... The story has been likened to the 1919 Black Sox scandal, which saw eight members of the Chicago White Sox World Series team intentionally losing several games – giving the series to the Cincinnati Reds.

XbitLabs consider CPU overclocking vs power consumption. Processor power consumption is closely connected with their clock frequency. That is why when overclockers increase their system performance they sacrifice energy efficiency. But how serious this problem actually is? We tested nice different processors from Athlon II, Core 2, Core i3, Core i7 and Phenom II families overclocked to different levels and are ready to give you an extensive answer to this question.

Today's timewaster is cantyouseeimbusy, with 3 games that look like you're actually working.



Wednesday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 14-April-2010  12:20:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
Sapphire 5750 and 5750 Vapor X on XSReviews.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5970 TOXIC 4GB on Tweaktown.
HIS HD 5570 Fan 1GB on OCOnline.

Power Supplies:
Xigmatek NRP-PC602 600W on HWHeaven.
Antec Quattro TPQ-1200 Modular 1200W on FutureLooks.

Cooling:
Gelid Tranquillo Heatsink CPU cooler on FrostyTech.
Coolit ECO A.L.C. CPU watercooler on OCClub.
Prolimatech Megahalem CPU cooler on OC3D.
Thermalright Spitfire + VRM-R5 VGA cooler and RAM heatsinks on LegionHW.
Tuniq Propeller 120 CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
CoolIT Systems ECO A.L.C. Liquid Cooler on OCIA.

Motherboard & CPU:
ECS H55H-I LGA1156 board on Motherboards.org.
ECS H57H-MUS LGA1156 board on Guru3D.
Gigabyte P55A-UD6 LGA1156 board on iXBTLabs.

Portable:
MSI Wind12 U230 Netbook w/ AMD Athlon Neo X2 L335 CPU on LegitReviews.
Lenovo ThinkPad X100e Ultraportable on HotHardware.
ViewSonic VNB141 14-inch Ultraportable Notebook on Tweaktown.
ASUS UL50VF: Optimus in Action on InsideHW.



Photography Gallery (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 13-April-2010  21:48:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg

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



















Overclockers Australia Joins the 2 Billion Club (5 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 13-April-2010  19:34:25 (GMT +10) - by DiGiTaL MoNkEY

OCAU's Folding@Home team has surpassed a MASSIVE milestone this morning, contributing over 2 billion points since we started!

The team is looking for more 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.

Want to start straight away? Then just click the CPU or GPU links below to download the client you want. Insert your preferred username and team as 24, and away you go.

 



Tuesday Morning (7 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 13-April-2010  02:27:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg

ACPA have launched a protect your PIN website, in response to the increase in "card skimming" fraud at Australian ATMs. All pretty basic suggestions, but they recommend getting into the habit of blocking the keypad even when nobody else is around. The most common way your PIN can be captured at an ATM is by a hidden camera secretly filming what you enter on the keypad. These are fitted to look like a genuine part of the ATM and can be difficult to spot. The most effective way to prevent this is to use your free hand or purse / wallet to block the view of any cameras.

Speaking of which, Dubbo's airport is in the news for having a security PIN taped to a gate. A photograph of the secure entrance showed the code written on a piece of paper taped to the gate. The note, headlined "Gate Access Code," revealed the code and advised people to "please touch pad softly" and "remember code to re-enter." If it's anything like other rural airports you can probably just jump a fence regardless.

There's been a few versions of this rumour recently, with Hoopstar spotting the latest: Commodore will be back with a C64-like all-in-one PC. Essentially, the Commodore Phoenix will be somewhat akin to a "netbook," or a modestly powered but lithe and efficient laptop or compact desktop (minus the monitor, sold separately). At just 17.5 inches wide and no taller than 2 inches at its peak, the Phoenix will have the same small (albeit swollen) footprint of a standard computer keyboard and reportedly consume less than 5 watts. I'm an Amiga fan from way back but after so many false starts from Commodore it's hard to get excited anymore, at least until actual products hit the market.

From Robert: Master LEGO manipulator, Sheepo, has unveiled his latest and possibly most impressive creation yet: a functional Bugatti Veyron that comes complete with a function seven-speed (plus reverse) transmission, working brakes, independent suspension system and a retractable roof and rear spoiler. There's a video of it all, too.

BencdhmarkReviews ponder SSD performance with AHCI vs IDE. Each SSD processor has unique behaviors, with some working well with TRIM and offering improved performance in AHCI mode, while others include Garbage Collection (GC) and work best in IDE mode. In this article Benchmark Reviews demonstrates how SSDs are tested by the manufacturer, and illustrates how real-world performance is different for end-users.

Samsung's 3D TVs will arrive in Australia within days. While the high-end Samsung Series 8 and Series 9 televisions will be released later in the year, the mainstream Samsung Series 7 model is the first 3D television to be sold in Australia. Samsung's Series 7 models are priced competitively, with the 50in Series 7 plasma the cheapest 3D TV available from the manufacturer.

MadShrimps have been playing with an AMD Sempron 140. Let's see what this little puppy can do under air and more extreme cooling : Phase and LN2.

Kosta spotted this Star Trek cologne. Sadly out of stock. :( TIBERIUS Cologne for men is a casual yet commanding cologne spiked with freshness and sensuality. Citron, black pepper, and cedar create refreshingly clear top notes, layered over warm vanilla, white musk and sandalwood base notes. TIBERIUS Cologne for men is difficult to define and impossible to refuse. In any universe. There's a "Red Shirt" one too, which I assume is poisonous.

PCPerspective have more info on the Turbo Mode in AMD's 6-core CPUs. When the processor determines that three or less cores are being fully utilized, it will place the underutilized cores into a lower power, low clockspeed state. In this case the cores will be clocked at 800 MHz and will have their voltage decreased. The other three cores will be placed into a boost mode, with their clockspeeds increased as well as their voltages per core increased.



Forum Projects (5 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 12-April-2010  21:26:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some more cool things from the forums:


AMD2400 checked out the ASUS
M4A89GTD PRO/USB3.0 890GX board

Raminator has a wicked
watercooled 4-way SLI

windwithme looked at
Corsair's 128GB SSD



Monday Night Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 12-April-2010  21:08:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Storage:
QNAP TS-439 Pro on Bjorn3D.
A-DATA Nobility N002 128GB USB 3.0 + SATA-II Portable HDD on Tweaktown.
Rosewill RX358 USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure on OCModShop.
OnTop TurboJet Whisper 4GB USB Flash Drive on LegitReviews.
Vantec Nexstar 3 Superspeed USB 3.0 HDD Enclosure on Tweaknews.
Patriot Valkyrie NAS on PureOC.

Cases:
Corsair Obsidian 700D Chassis Video Review on PCPerspective.
VidaBox SLIMv3 vCase3 Premium mATX HTPC Case on MadShrimps.
Thermaltake V3 Black Edition on 3DXtreme.
Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced on DVHardware.

Cooling:
ProlimaTech MK-13 Multi VGA Cooler on OCClub.
Zalman 10X Performa on Guru3D.
Thermaltake Frio CPU Cooler on OCIA.
Thermaltake Frio CPU Cooler on DragonSteelMods.

Input Etc:
Logitech G9x Laser Gaming Mouse on HWHeaven.
Mionix Naos 5000 Laser Mouse on APHNetworks.
Apple Magic Mouse on TBreak.
Apple Wireless Keyboard on TBreak.

Video Cards:
Ladybird GTX 285 on NeoSeeker.
ASUS EAH5850 TOP Direct CU on PureOC.
Asus 5850 TOP on OC3D.
MSI HD 5830 Twin Frozr II on TechPowerUp.
ASUS ARES Dual GPU preview on PCPerspective.
AMD FirePro V8800 2GB workstation card on Phoronix.
GIGABYTE Radeon HD 5830 1GB on Tweaktown.
HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo on TechPowerUp.
MSI HD5870 Lightning on OC3D.
ASUS EAH5850 TOP on Bjord3D.



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 11-April-2010  17:52:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg

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

SuperPI 32m world record returns to Australia in Overclocking & Hardware.
Samsung unveils world's first 3D LED TV sets in Audio Visual.
Homemade CNC Worklog in Other Toys.
Guide: Powerware 5110 UPS monitoring/auto shutdown in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid in Other OSs.
Super low wattage AMD systems! 18w Phenom! in AMD Hardware.
980x +12gb RAM = fun in Intel Hardware.
The smallest Blu-ray Home Theater: Intel core i3-540 HTPC in Intel Hardware.
GIGABYTE X58A-UD9 doing some W.R. 2D/3D damage on ORB & HWBOT in Intel Hardware.
I3-540 Blueray system testing and hand made griffin in Intel Hardware.
Who uses an admin account as their daily account? in Windows Operating Systems.
Battlefield Veterans in Games.
OpenTTD 1.0 is released in Games.
Cash for Comments in Games.
How to completely over-do your home fileserver in Storage & Backup.
When Read Heads literally hit the platter [PICS] in Storage & Backup.
So, I accidentally converted my array from RAID10 to RAID5 in Storage & Backup.
Does Google build its own servers? in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
RTA to ban repairable writeoffs in Motoring.
MotoGP 2010 in Motorsport.
NSFW TV sends viewers to porn site in Entertainment.



Sunday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 11-April-2010  14:21:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg

TomsHardware have a detailed article about overclocking the Core i7-980X. Ultimately, Gulftown is a 32 nm processor, just like the Clarkdale-based Core i5s, which have shown amazing overclocking capabilities. Even with six cores, it should be possible to accelerate the i7-980X up to where it easily beats Intel's other offerings without consuming excessive power. Quite a lot of this going on in this thread and elsewhere in the Intel Hardware forum.

Meanwhile Anandtech have more info on the upcoming six-core Phenom II X6, thanks Sean. Officially branded the Phenom II X6, AMD won’t be launching these processors until some time in the future. But today AMD is disclosing some basic details about the parts. We’re also mixing in our knowledge of internal AMD roadmaps to paint a clear picture of AMD’s 6-core strategy.

FatMan350 sent word that heatsink manufacturers are being sued for allegedly violating a heatpipe patent. FrozenCPU is not alone in this fight, along with it, many other companies have been named: Altima Computers, CoolerGuys.com, CPUTopia, FrontierPC.com, IntraCom Holdings, LinkDAT, Marlin P. Jones & Assoc., NAC Group, OutletPC.com, VelocityMicro, Cybertron International, American Future Technology, Silicon Mountain Holdings, and Raidmax Tech.

There's anger in the UK about a recently approved digital piracy bill. Former minister Tom Watson had argued it would be a "catastrophic disaster" if the bill was passed as constituted. However, the bill was approved by MPs by a majority of 142 votes and it passed through the Lords on Thursday. Some ISPs have said they will refuse to comply with the new law. More info here, thanks Kosta.

Mozilla have a new Firefox Lorenz beta available for testing. Firefox “Lorentz” takes the out of process plugins work from Mozilla Developer Previews and builds it on top of Firefox 3.6.3. This beta offers uninterrupted browsing for Windows and Linux users when a problem causes a crash in any Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugin instance. If a plugin crashes or freezes when using Firefox “Lorentz”, it will not affect the rest of Firefox.

Google have added site speed to website rankings. You may have heard that here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. Quite a lot of chatter about this on the net - I've made a discussion thread here.

enigma spotted some rumours about NVIDIA's GTX460, the little brother of their top-flight card: here, here and here. Noteworthily, there won’t be a standard design of GeForce GTX460 – instead, the AICs have their own design rights. If things go well enough, the GeForce GTX 460 will make its debut on June 1st, with a similar price to Radeon HD 5850.



Saturday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 10-April-2010  23:04:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
Viewsonic VG2427wm on TechReviewSource.
3M MPro150 Pocket Projector on BusinessComputingWorld.
Plustek OpticFilm 7600i SE Film and Slide Scanner on TestFreaks.

Motherboards:
Zotac H55-ITX LGA1156 board on OC3D.
MSI 790XT-G45 AM3 board on iXBTLabs.
EVGA P55 Classified 200 LGA1156 board on NinjaLane.
ASUS P7P55D-E Premium LGA1156 board on iXBTLabs.

Prebuilt & Portable:
Smooth Creations Firestorm Game PC on Guru3D.
Apple iPad on HotHardware.
Acer Aspire AX1301-B1812 prebuilt desktop on TechReviewSource.
Gateway FX 6831-03 Gaming Desktop PC on TechSpot.
Apple iPad on Tweaktown.

Memory:
G.Skill ECO Low-Volt DDR3 on OC3D.
Crucial DDR3 1333 Value Ram Kit on TechWareLabs.
Kingston HyperX 4GB 2400MHz CL9 DDR3 on LegitReviews.

Power Supply:
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 750W on HWHeaven.
Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 550W on HWSecrets.
OCZ Z Series 850W 80+ (Gold) Modular on Bjorn3D.

Misc:
D-Link DHP-303 powerline networking kit on GamingNexus.
Metro 2033 PC game on GamingHeaven.



Misc Pics (15 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 9-April-2010  15:05:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Thanks to Chris and Matt this week:





And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.



Friday Afternoon (11 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 9-April-2010  14:19:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Sniper (coincidentally) noticed that the Australian Defence Force is using Segways for sniper training. The Australian Defense Force and Marathon Robotics took a number of two-wheeled RMP 200 Segway robots, placed hoodie-clad foam dummies on top, armored the bottoms, and then programmed them to wander randomly around a small village. A sniper perched up on a hill then picks off his target and, like magic, the remaining robots all scatter automatically in a game way more fun than Modern Warfare could ever hope to be. Meanwhile Engadget checked out another cool little personal mobility thing, the Honda UX-3.

eBay has to pay damages to a duped buyer in Austria. eBay advertised the company as a "power seller", a particularly trustworthy vendor according to the auction site's own criteria, despite complaints, notably regarding its times of delivery. Ordering eBay to pay €16,463 ($23,783), the court said the auction site had been aware of ML Agentur's record before the gold bar transaction was made and was therefore guilty of negligence.

Apple have unveiled their iPhone OS4 update, thanks Dukeymeng. iPhone OS 4 will have the ability for some applications to run simultaneously. Apple has enabled seven features to run while other applications are in operation. These functions include background audio, VoIP calls, navigation apps and push notifications. Is this going to pursuade me to reinstall iTunes on my PC so I can update my phone.. maybe.

Intel will apparently ship 48-core CPU samples later this quarter, thanks Kosta. Intel Corp. said on Wednesday that it would begin shipments of its experimental 48-core microprocessors dubbed single-chip cloud computer (SSC) late in the second quarter of the year. The systems-based on the central processing units (CPUs) will be sent to academic institutions. More info here.

A few people sent in this monster DVR from SnapStream. It has a grand total of 50 analog TV tuners recording to 125+TB of storage. (10 tuners and 18TB of storage per 3U chassis or 10 tuners and 30TB storage of 4U chassis). As a demo, this system shows both of our 3U and 4U chassis sizes. Depending on the storage requirements, one could do all 4U or all 3U boxes. Kinda big for your livingroom, though.

You'll have to update your periodic table tattoos, because there's a new element. Even though the name ununseptium (symbol: Uus) is only temporary, Russian and U.S. scientists still have made an important discovery of a new chemical element, one with an atomic number of Z=117. Parts of the discovery were made inside a particle accelerator in Dubna, Russia, during the time frame 2009-2010, when new element 117 was synthesized in the collision of isotopes of calcium (48Ca) and radioactive element berkelium (249Bk): in the reaction 249Bk + 48Ca.

But if you're in Canada don't mod your Xbox, because you could end up in prison. "Modifying a console and computer is considered an illegal act under section 342.1 of the Criminal Code and is punishable by imprisonment for up to ten years," the RCMP said in the statement.



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 9-April-2010  11:48:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Storage:
Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB SATA 6G Hard Drive on Tweaktown.
Corsair Nova V128 Solid State Drive on BenchmarkReviews.
Corsair Flash Voyager GTR 32GB USB Flash Drive on ThinkComputers.
Corsair Force Series 100GB SandForce 1200 SSD on LegitReviews.
Vantec SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Card on OCModShop.
2 Port PCI-e Express SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Adapter and Cable on DragonSteelMods.

Audio Visual:
Asus Xonar Xense - Under the Hood on VR-Zone, thanks Kosta.
Logitech S125i Portable Speaker Dock on Tweaktown.

Video Cards:
AMD FirePro V8800 Review - Evergreen and Cypress Go Pro on PCPerspective.
AMD ATI FirePro V8800 Workstation Graphics Card on HotHardware.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Toxic 2GB on OCClub.
MSI R5870 Lightning on LegionHW.
HIS Radeon HD 5450 1 GB on TechPowerUp.

Cases:
Thermaltake Element Q Mini-ITX on ThinkComputers.
NZXT Hades on Bjorn3D.
3R System R120-V3 on HWSecrets.
Thermaltake Wing RS 301 on Motherboards.org.



Forum Projects (1 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 8-April-2010  17:57:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some interesting things from the forums:


toasti0 has a
PC in a wheel!

DeejW is making a
clear case from scratch

INerTIal is mocking up
a cool mini-PC


windwithme checked out
DFI's LANPARTY MI P55-T36

and overclocked X4 910e
on GIGABYTE GA-785GMT-USB3

and finally reviewed the
"be quiet!" E7 CM 680W PSU



Thursday Afternoon (8 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 8-April-2010  15:47:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Ed Roberts, who created the first commercially-available PC, has died aged 68, thanks HyRax1. In 1975 Roberts designed and built the MITS Altair 8800, which is widely considered the first personal computer. The computer lacked a keyboard or monitor and was sold as a self assembly kit but it kickstarted the modern computing age.

Gamrpron have some possible bad news about R18+ games. Mr. Ward smugly confirms this pledge “throws cold water” on suggestions that John Rau will agree to reform, and that it was delivered on behalf of the “entire party” rather than just former Attorney-General Michael Atkinson – but Mr. Rau’s office is refusing to comment.

The iPad has apparently already been Jailbroken, thanks enigma. Meanwhile Blendtec wondered if an iPad will blend. Short answer: yes. Like everything else. :) There's a heap of new videos from them since last time I looked, this one made me chuckle.

XbitLabs have a solid-state drive roundup. Our today’s roundup will talk about eight SSD solutions from Kingston, OCZ, Super Talent and Wintec, which demonstrated dramatically different performance levels ranging from excellent to really mediocre.

Net Neutrality has hit a big setback, with a recent appeals court ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC's authority to impose such "network neutrality" obligations on broadband providers.

Tech Report have some info on the upcoming 6-core Phenom II. At its heart, Turbo Core is essentially similar to Intel's Turbo Boost. When not all of the processor's cores are fully occupied, this feature raises the clock speeds on active cores above the default frequency while staying within the CPU's defined thermal limits. However, Turbo Core is a little bit different from Intel's technology in its operation - and generally simpler.

An Asteroids player has smashed a 27-year old high score, thanks mpot. The official Asteroids high score of 41,336,440 is the longest-standing record in gaming history, having been set on November 14, 1982 by 15-year-old Scott Safran. He stayed awake for three days to accomplish this feat.

The new firmware update is apparently bricking older PS3s, so be careful. Plenty of people who have been lucky enough to get the install to work are saying that Internet connectivity after the upgrade is sluggish, non-existent or subject to frequent unexplained disconnections. Others are reporting problems with random screen resolutions and HDMI connections no longer working. Other reports say it's fine, but it might be worth holding off if you haven't updated it yet.

It seems your video game driving skills do not apply to real life. After mounting the camera on a Z-bar hitched to the truck's bumper, they then blacked out the windows so that the driver was forced to use the third-person perspective. God are they driving slow. And still hitting the traffic cones and inflatable pedestrians. Which is why I always drive in bonnet view. :)

From foxmulder881: Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu 10.10 will be called "Maverick Meerkat". Discussion thread on the forums starts here.



Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 8-April-2010  15:23:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Input Etc:
MS Arc Wireless Keyboard on EverythingUSB.
Microsoft Sidewinder X4 Gaming Keyboard on Metku.

Portable:
HP Mini 210 Netbook on TBreak.
AVADirect Clevo X8100 18.4-inch Core i7 Gaming Notebook on Tweaktown.
ViewSonic VNB108 Pinetrail Atom N450 10.1-inch LED-backlit Netbook on Tweaktown.
Toshiba Satellite U505-S2010 notebook on DigitalTrends.
Samsung N210 Netbook on PureOC.

Memory:
Kingston HyperX 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 Quad Channel Memory Kit on FutureLooks.
6GB Corsair Dominator-GT 2000MHz DDR3 on BenchmarkReviews.
Mushkin Ridgeback 998827 PC3 12800 3x2GB on OCClub.

Power Supply:
Memonex MOD EX 600W on OCClub.
Cooler Master GX-750W on InsideHW.
Cougar S550W on RBMods.
Gigabyte Superb 550P on HWSecrets.

Storage:
Corsair Flash Padlock 2 USB Thumb Drive on TechReport.
ADATA S599 100GB SSD (Sandforce SF1200) on Guru3D.
VIZO SPEED-UP USB 3.0 PCI-E Host Card on Tweaktown.
16gb Clickfree Traveler Automatic Backup Solution on TestFreaks.



Wednesday Night Reviews (3 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 7-April-2010  23:12:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
ASUS M4A785TD-M EVO mATX AM3 on BenchmarkReviews.
Jetway NC96-510-LF Atom board on TechWareLabs.
ASRock H55M-LE LGA1156 board on Motherboards.org.
Asus P6X58D-E LGA1366 on ITShootout.
ASRock P55 Deluxe LGA1156 board on iXBTLabs.
ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 and Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H AM3 boards on XbitLabs.

Cases:
GMC H-80 on OCOnline.
Enermax Staray ECA3171-BR-AP Mid Tower on Tweaktown.
NZXT Tempest Evo on Overclockers.com.
NZXT Tempest Evo on HWHeaven.
Xigmatek Utgard on TechPowerUp.
NZXT Gamma on PureOC.

Cooling:
Danger Den Summit GPU Water Block on PureOC.
NZXT Beta Evo on OCIA.
Spire TherMax Eclipse CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Zalman ZM-MFC1 Five Channel Fan Controller on Tweaknews.

Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD5830 HD 5830 Game Edition on Tweaknews.
Radeon HD 5870 Crossfire CPU Scaling Performance Part 2 on LegionHW.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 on XbitLabs.



Western Digital VelociRaptor VR200M - 600GB (3 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 7-April-2010  14:12:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Western Digital have unveiled the latest in their VelociRaptor range of hard drives - this time it's available in 450GB and 600GB. The new drive looks just like its older brother, with similar noise levels and power consumption. It may look and sound the same, but this new drive packs some additional punch in both speed and cost/GB.

Coverage on PC Perspective, Tech Report, HotHardware, Anandtech, LegitReviews, HWSecrets and TomsHardware, thanks Kosta.

Discussion here.



Misc Pics (20 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 6-April-2010  16:29:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Simon and mpot sent in a heap of pictures today, and it's pretty quiet out there, so what the heck. Here's a "welcome back from Easter" bonus:





And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.

Edit: moved 18 to pix.



Sponsor Specials (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 6-April-2010  13:41:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Remember to keep an eye on our Sponsor Specials Forum if you're shopping around. In there our various sponsors have specials and info on media players, smartphone stands, internet access, fitness supplements, office chairs, watercooling gear, monitor stands, cases, monitors, HDDs, web hosting and a range of other goodies. There's also a Glamour Photography Workshop coming up soon in Melbourne.


Tuesday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 6-April-2010  12:20:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
ASRock A330ION nVidia MCP7A-ION Mini-ITX on ThinkComputers.
GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD7 LGA1366 board on Tweaktown.
ASUS Maximus III Extreme LGA1156 board on LegitReviews.

Portable:
HP ProBook 5310m Notebook on TestFreaks.
Asus 13.3" U30Jc Notebook on HotHardware.
Apple iPad on DigitalTrends.
Apple iPad 32GB WiFi on TestFreaks.

Storage:
QNAP TS-259 Pro Turbo NAS on DragonSteelMods.
SandForce SF-1200 SSD Processor on BenchmarkReviews.
Thecus N4200 Zero-Crash with Dual Power NAS on Motherboards.org.
Corsair Flash Padlock 2 8GB 256-bit Encrypted Pen Drive video review on Tweaktown.

Video Cards:
Ladybird GTX 285 on OCClub.
MSI 5830 Twin Frozr II 1GB on PureOC.

Audio Visual:
Arctic Sound E352 earbuds on Guru3D.
Arctic Cooling Arctic Sound E352 earphones on APHNetworks.
Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 on HWSecrets.

Misc:
Fractal Design R2 case on XSReviews.
CoolIT ECO A.L.C. Liquid CPU Cooler on Techgage.
Gigabyte M8000 Xtreme Mouse on HWSecrets.



Tuesday Morning (6 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 6-April-2010  00:27:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg

New Zealand has moved against software patents in their new Patents Bill. Clause 15 of the draft Bill, as reported back from the Commerce Select Committee, lists a number of classes of invention which should not be patentable and includes the sub-clause “a computer program is not a patentable invention.”

A few people sent word that Quake II has been ported to HTML5 so can play in supported browsers (Chrome and Opera at the moment). We started with the existing Jake2 Java port of the Quake II engine, then used the Google Web Toolkit (along with WebGL, WebSockets, and a lot of refactoring) to cross-compile it into Javascript. You can see the results in the video above -- we were honestly a bit surprised when we saw it pushing over 30 frames per second on our laptops (your mileage may vary)! More info here and here.

CandG noticed that the One Laptop Per Child project has delivered 200 laptops to kids in the Northern Territory. Globally the organisation has shipped 1 million of its purpose-built budget XO laptops over the past 24 months in 31 countries to disadvantaged children. It began its Australian rollout in May 2009 and is aiming to deliver 15,000 devices domestically in 2010.

Tech Report have a roundup of mini H55 Express boards. The latest mini motherboards use Intel's H55 Express chipset, which is compatible with both dual-core Clarkdale processors and quad-core Lynnfields. Keep reading for a detailed look at microATX mobos from Asus, Gigabyte, and Intel, along with a mini-ITX gem from Zotac.

Phoronix checked out an interesting linux-friendly NAS. The Pogoplug is a network attached storage device that is far more than a basic NAS like the Icy Box NAS4220, but the Pogoplug can integrate with social networks like Twitter along with providing a rich web 2.0 interface for accessing the device from anywhere in the world. The Pogoplug device runs Linux and is built upon popular open-source packages, but Pogoplug does not hide this fact and they actually encourage community developers to work on the Pogoplug with complete support for SSH-ing into these devices and making modifications.

Bjorn3D have a review of Seagate's Savvio 10K.4 HDDs. These drives come in different capacities including 450GB and 600GB, but what makes them so special is that they are 2.5" form factor, which is what you would use in laptop based system. This is the first time we see a 6Gb/s 10,000RPM 600GB SAS hard drive at such small form factor at this capacity. This is interesting because it's the latest generation of the drives we use in OCAU's two servers.

Teddy spotted this photo gallery of Geeky Weddings. I kinda get them all, except number 9..?



Discovery Launch (23 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 5-April-2010  19:48:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg

NASA will be launching the Space Shuttle Discovery in half an hour or so. The mission's seven astronauts are safely strapped in and the side hatch is closed and sealed for flight. Weather is excellent and expected to remain that way during this final hour before launch. As usual you can watch it live on NASA TV.


Monday Morning (13 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 5-April-2010  00:46:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg

AMD recently unveiled the 6-monitor EyeFinity, in the form of their ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 Edition. There's coverage on HardOCP, PC Perspective, HotHardware, Tweaktown, Rage3D, Guru3D and NeoSeeker. Meanwhile PCPerspective tried curved displays with EyeFinity. Engadget say there's a fatal flaw, though.

The other big thing that happened over the weekend was Apple's iPad hitting the streets. Engadget have an unboxing video and review. In fact there's a pile of reviews listed here on MacTalk. But's not all positive, with some people suggesting you wait before buying one or don't bother at all. Also, the Wall Street Journal will be $17.29 per month on your iPad. WTF.

Kosta spotted an interview on Atomic with AMD and NVIDIA about game physics. Nadeem from NVIDIA reckons the benefits of PhysX are clear. "PhysX makes a huge visual difference, and the most excited people every time we talk to a developer are the artists - their vision of what they want to do is always curtailed by the lack of technology". But if Richard thinks that PhysX doesn't offer enough to users, what about AMD's competing solution, Bullet?

Corsair have set a PC Mark Vantage world record with a SSD RAID setup and LN2. Using eleven Force Series F200 solid-state drives and the Corsair Dominator GTX2 DDR3 memory modules the record was set to 32,947 PCMarks. The system contained the brand new Intel® Core™ i7-980X six-core processor cooled with liquid nitrogen on the EVGA® X58 Classified. This combination would allow the CPU frequency upwards of 5.5GHz and memory clocks of 2000MHz+.

Ubisoft's "always online" DRM continues to annoy people, particularly Australians, thanks Brian. The problem reportedly strikes after the game has already confirmed an active Internet connection, and prevents the user from playing even the single-player campaign, and returning the error "server not available". But they are available, because other people are logged into them and merrily playing away. Seeming to affect players in every territory at random, and Australians in particular, the server error has caused both intermittent and continuous connectivity problems, with some players as yet unable to play the game at all.

HotHardware have a P55 motherboard roundup, with boards from Asus EVGA, Gigabyte, Intel and MSI. Shopping for a motherboard can be arduous and complicated. In particular, the mountain of options available only adds to the challenge, especially when you analyze the different features of each board at various price points. Fret not system builder, HotHardware has recruited a small army of P55 motherboards in order to compare the features and performance of each. HWHeaven meanwhile have a notebook cooler roundup.

To better understand the challenges of an expedition to Mars, six people are spending 520 days in a mock-up of a Mars mission. The facility, which mimics the red planet's landscape, includes a mocked up interplanetary spaceship and Mars lander. For the simulation, the crew will spend 250 days in a spacecraft traveling to Mars, then 30 days exploring it's surface, during which 3 people will move to the surface simulator and the others will remain in the spacecraft. The remaining 240 days will be spent traveling home.



Sunday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 4-April-2010  22:55:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
ECS H55H-I Mini ITX LGA1156 board on Guru3D.
GIGABYTE X58A-UD7 LGA1366 board on Motherboards.org.

Audio Visual:
Toshiba Camileo S10 Video Camera on TBreak.
21.5? Samsung SyncMaster 2233SW LCD Monitor on iGadgetLife.

Storage:
Corsair Padlock 2 USB drive on CCEReviews.
NZXT IU01 USB Expansion Board on DragonSteelMods.
Cirago Network Storage Link NUS1000 on TestFreaks.
ASMedia ASM1051 USB 3.0 controller on Tweaktown.

Cases:
XClio A380COLOR Plus on RBMods.
Raidmax Hurricane on OCClub.

Video Cards:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 on iXBTLabs.
Overclocking GTX-480 / EVGA Precision 1.9.2 on Bjorn3D.

Misc:
TRENDnet TEW-653AP 802.11n PoE Wireless Access Point on Tweaktown.
6GB Kingston HyperX 2000MHz DDR3 Memory on BenchmarkReviews.
Coolink Corator DS CPU cooler on PureOC.
Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W PSU on HWHeaven.



Daylight Saving (3 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 4-April-2010  03:19:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Tonight in NSW, VIC, SA, TAS and the ACT, daylight saving ended. So 3am became 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 reminder to change your smoke alarm batteries too.



Saturday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 3-April-2010  21:52:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
XFX Radeon HD 5830 on HWSecrets.
XFX Radeon 5830 on OCClub.
HIS Radeon HD 5850 Turbo 1GB on Tweaktown.

Storage:
Vantec SuperSpeed USB 3.0 2-Port PCI-E on Tweaknews.
ICY DOCK MB672 Internal 3.5-inch SAS / SATA HDD Enclosure on ThinkComputers.
ICY DOCK MB990SP-B Dual 2.5" to 3.5" SATA/IDE Adapter on Tweaktown.
Patriot Valkyrie 2 Bay NAS on CCEReviews.
Toshiba 640GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive on TechReviewSource.
QNAP TS-459 Pro Turbo NAS on LegionHW.

Cooling:
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler on OCIA.
Evercool HPK-10025EA Heatsink on OCModShop.
Noctua NH-D14 on TechPowerUp.
Thermaltake PWB 100 on Bjorn3D.

Cases:
In Win Allure on TechPowerUp.
NZXT Tempest EVO Mid Tower on LegitReviews.
In Win Ironclad on HWSecrets.
Antec P193 Mid Tower on LegitReviews.
NZXT Tempest EVO Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
Raidmax Hurricane on OCClub.

Portable:
Gateway NV7901u 17.3-inch Multimedia Notebook on Tweaktown.
Lenovo ThinkPad T510 Notebook on TechSpot.
Cooler Master NotePal ErgoStand Laptop Cooler on Pro-Clockers.



Misc Pics (21 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 2-April-2010  14:53:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Hope you're having a happy and safe Easter break! Thanks to Marty for the first one..





And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.



April Fools (2 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 1-April-2010  22:19:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Right, well, half of the fun of April Fools is that I can never be sure if submitted news is genuine or not. For example, this is surely not serious.. is it? Asked what percentage of all of the nasty material on the internet his filters would block, Senator Conroy dodged the question, responding that his filters were "100 per cent accurate - no overblocking, no underblocking and no impact on speeds".

But here's some things I'm pretty sure ARE April Fools gags, although I might be wrong there too:
Zillions more in this thread - feel free to share any more you've spotted!



Thursday Afternoon Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 1-April-2010  13:48:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
Zotac 9300-ITX Wifi Mini-ITX LGA775 board on RBMods.
ECS H55H-I Mini ITX LGA1156 board on PureOC.
ASUS P7P55D-E Pro LGA1156 on Futurelooks.
MSI 890GXM-G65 AM3 board on Motherboards.org.

Cases:
Antec P193 Advanced Mid-Tower on PCPerspective.
Danger Den Black-Series Tower 21 Bruiser on Tweaktown.
NZXT Gamma Classic Series Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Micro Cool Benchetto 101 test bench on Hi-TechReviews.

Cooling:
Nexus VCT-9000 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Zalman CPNS10X Performa CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler on OCIA.

Video Cards:
ECS NGT240-512QI-F on HWSecrets.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Toxic 2GB on OCClub.
Nvidia's GeForce GTX 480 and 470 on Tech-Report.
GeForce GTX 480 Gets a BIOS Update and Cooks an Egg on LegitReviews.
HIS Radeon HD 5670 IceQ on HWSecrets.
PowerColor HD 5750 Green on NeoSeeker.

Storage:
ADATA S599 SandForce SF-1200 SSD on BenchmarkReviews.
Addonics NAS2XU2 NAS 2.0 Adapter on Tweaknews.
Corsair Flash Padlock 2 8GB on OC3D.
KINGMAX “Turbo Vaccine” Antivirus (UD-01) Flash Drive on PCShopTalk.

Misc:
OCZ Z Series 850W PSU on HWHeaven.
Command & Conquer 4 PC game on GamingHeaven.



More OCAU Merchandise (127 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 1-April-2010  00:01:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Based upon the success of our recent OCAU Merchandise runs, I'm happy to announce the next lot. This time instead of having a vote for which items to order, we performed a heuristic analysis of the forums database to see which items would be most required by our members. Here's the top 6 items, with mockups made by Phill:



click images to enlarge

Final pricing and ordering info available soon - stay tuned!

Update: April fools! Obviously. :)




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