Overclockers Australia!
Make us your homepage. Add us to your bookmarks  
Major Sponsors:

News
Current
News Archive
SEND NEWS!

Site
Articles & Reviews
Forums
Wiki
Podcast
Pix
Search
Contact

Team OCAU
Folding Team
Seti@Home Team
Climate Prediction

Misc
OCAU Sponsors
OCAU IRC
Online Vendors
Motorcycle Club

January 2011
Gigabyte P67A-UD3R Sandy Bridge Motherboard (5 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 31-January-2011  14:22:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg

DiGiTaL MoNkEY has a motherboard review for us today, with a look at Gigabyte's P67A-UD3R Sandy Bridge board. The second Intel Sandy Bridge motherboard on our test bench is a real treat in that it's the first of GIGABYTE's P67 range of motherboards that utilises a black PCB design. This is a big change from the blue design that we've known for many, many years, but does this colour change bring with it the features and performance expected? Let's find out!


Click for the review!



Monday Midday (6 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 31-January-2011  12:10:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Egypt has gone dark, with the government ordering internet links disconnected, mobile phone services shut down and ejecting press agencies from the country. More detail here. Of course, there are some ways around it. Discussion here.

TechRepublic have some photos from a new Computer History Museum exhibit. Nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley, the Computer History Museum has opened a spectacular exhibit that traces the birth of the computer. Several industry pioneers showed up for the launch on Tuesday.

Amazon has a password flaw affecting older passwords. The fix is straightforward for those with older passwords: Simply log on to Amazon.com, and change your password. You can even then change your new password back to your old password, and you’ll magically be safer than you were before. Meanwhile Sourceforge are forcing all passwords to reset after a recent attack on their servers, thanks mpot.

Mpot also sent in the grimly amusing tale of a suicide bomber who exploded too early because she recieved a spam SMS. Security sources believe a message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her at a safe house.

The FBI have been raiding "Anonymous" members. I used LOIC during that whole Wikileaks fiasco. The FBI showed up at my door with a search warrant for any electronic devices that may have been used in the attack. That means any and all computers, unless I pointed out to them which one was used in the attack. I'm not retarded, I invoked my 5th amendment rights and didn't say anything so now they are taking everything.

It's been 25 years since the Challenger Space Shuttle was lost. The NASA community paused Friday to remember the sacrifice of the Challenger crew 25 years ago. Families of the seven astronauts and agency officials gathered Jan. 28, 2011, to mark the anniversary.

There's an iPad-only newspaper on the way from News Corp and Apple. That digital publication, the Daily, will cost 99 cents per week. According to Reuters, the original Jan. 19 unveiling date was scrubbed “because of technical glitches.” News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Apple Vice President of Internet Services Eddy Cue will headline the new launch event, scheduled to take place in New York City.

IntelInside noticed that the CIA World Fact Book for Australia has been recently updated.

From Brian, news that the IPv4 allocation will run out this week, leaving ISPs around the world about 6 months worth of stock. Mr Newton says many Australian internet consumers will need to upgrade anyway. "As the Federal Government rolls out the NBN, one of the necessary side-effects of that is that broadband router that you have in your house, you will need to replace," he said. "The NBN will already be compatible with IPv6: the act of connecting to it will solve this sort of problem for the households that choose to do so.

Facebook are soon requiring app developers to use their virtual currency and give 30% to Facebook. At first glance, the move suggests Facebook has become a monetary autocracy, forcing the companies critical to its success to use its currency, and to pay a fee for doing so. But on second thought, isn't that more or less how taxes work? As Facebook grows and starts to host all sorts of commerce, perhaps it's time to stop thinking of the social network as a company. Maybe it's best to think of it as a country.

Timbot sent in this 1923 BBC anti-piracy video. As threats go, it is probably the cutest we have seen. But we're guessing that being called a chimp for not buying your radio license back in 1923 was pretty insidious. To put the clip into context – the BBC only began broadcasting radio in 1922 and just a year later it was already trying to battle 'pirates' who were listening to the company's received pronunciation illegally.



Sunday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 30-January-2011  20:38:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte P67A-UD7 VS ASUS Maximus IV Extreme on TechReaction.
MSI P67A-GD55 Intel P67 LGA1155 board on ThinkComputers.
Sapphire Pure Black X58 LGA1366 board on OCClub.
MSI P67A-GD65 Intel Socket 1155 Motherboard on LegitReviews.

Video Cards:
GeForce GTX 560 Ti Review Roundup - Galaxy, MSI and Palit Compared on PC Perspective.
AMD Radeon HD 6970 & HD 6950 on CHW.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti on CHW.
Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Ti Golden Sample on Tweaktown.
PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 PCS++ on HWHeaven.
Asus Radeon HD 6870 DirectCu on OC3D.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti - Titanium is Back on Techgage.
HIS Radeon HD 6970 Turbo on HWHeaven.
Axle GeForce GT 430 on XbitLabs.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti on XbitLabs.
MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB Twin Frozr II on Tweaktown.

Audio Visual:
Arctic Sound P311 Bluetooth Headset on eTeknix.
Harman Kardon MS 100 Audio System on TBreak.
Corsair SP2500 2.1 232W Audio Speaker Kit on LegitReviews.
Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910 on TestFreaks.

Cooling:
Top 5 Low Profile Heatsink Charts on Frostytech.
Zalman CNPS5X CPU Cooler on Tweaknews.
Noctua NHC-14 CPU Cooler on XSReviews.
Spire Thermax Eclipse II CPU cooler on FunkyKit.
Evercool HPL-815 Low Profile Heatsink on Frostytech.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.

Storage:
Kingston's HyperX Max USB 3.0 SSD on TechReport.
Corsair Force Series F180 180GB SSD on OCOnline.
ioSafe SoloPRO USB 3.0 1TB Disaster Proof External Hard Drive on FutureLooks.
Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 64GB on XSReviews.

Misc:
NZXT Bunker lockable bay device on TechGage.
Cooler Master Elite Power 350W PSU on HWSecrets.
Lian Li X2000F full tower case on PureOC.
Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz CL9 12 GB DDR3 memory on TechPowerUp.



Project Hypnocube (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 30-January-2011  17:42:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Symon spotted this cool project from Decromin. Check out the worklog and video in the thread:


Click for the thread!



Misc Pics (47 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 28-January-2011  14:30:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Thanks to Gibbon, Flecktone and Matthew today!






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



Sponsor Specials (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 28-January-2011  14:06:19 (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 threads with deals on air conditioning, storage, digital radios, fitness supplements, office chairs, VoIP phones, photo studios, keyboards, media players, PC components and a range of other goodies. Worth a look!


Friday Afternoon (3 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 28-January-2011  14:02:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg

There's a Folding@Home Challenge running in our Team OCAU forum - you can win a GTX 460 video card by participating.

Mpot spotted these two 360 degree interactive videos which are quite neat. One is flying in a helicopter and the other is at a MUSE concert. Actually I just noticed in the MUSE one you can even choose different cameras to view from.

Sciby noticed that Zero Punctuation have reviewed Minecraft in the usual way. Yahtzee is a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder. When he isn't talking very fast into a headset mic he also designs freeware adventure games and has a novel coming out soon.

AMD have given a sneak peak of their Radeon HD 6990. What does the next great superpower of desktop graphics look like? Well, it shares an unmistakable family resemblance to the current champ, but its dimensions have somehow been made even larger. Yes, we're talking about AMD's Radeon HD 6990 -- a dual-GPU monstrosity that's set to serve as the company's 2011 flagship -- which has just been shown off at an Asia Pacific Fusion Tech Day gathering.

XbitLabs have a 120mm Fan roundup. We continue testing 120 mm fans and today we are going to check out 32 models, which rotation speed exceeds 1350 RPM. We will check out their acoustic performance and airflow.

Tech Report checked out a Sandy Bridge powered laptop. As Intel was rolling out its desktop Sandy Bridge processors earlier this month, it also unleashed a whole family of mobile variants. Join us as we benchmark a behemoth of a laptop powered by Intel's second-quickest mobile Sandy Bridge CPU.

A hacker has impersonated Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook, thanks Sam. Facebook said a software bug let a hacker impersonate the social network's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, in a comment posted to his public fan page on the website. The bogus update posted late Monday suggested that Facebook turn to its users instead of banks for money and got "liked" by more than 1,800 members of the social network before it was erased.

Sony have unveiled the new PSP, thanks dasuperham. The soon-to-come PSP2 promises a PS3-level experience with a much faster, quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and a multi-core PowerVR SGX543MP4 graphics chip four times faster than seen before. It centers on a massive five-inch, 960x544 OLED screen that promises a much larger experience than on a smartphone. More here, discussion here.



Tweaktown Flood Appeal Contest (8 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 28-January-2011  02:43:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Tweaktown are running a contest where you can win a dream PC by donating to the Flood Appeal. We have teamed up with some of our closest technology company friends and rounded up some of the hottest new products on the market to build the TweakTown Aussie Flood Appeal Dream System. Currently the system is valued at $4871.81 USD (based on Newegg price where applicable), but keep in mind that value will only increase as we adding some extras such as Windows OS, games, monitors and anything else that comes our way from kind companies who are getting involved.

How do I win it? Donate! Donate! Donate! Donating $10 USD will give you one raffle ticket into the Dream System draw. For example, if you donate $120 USD, you will get 12 raffle tickets entered and of course a better chance of winning.



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 28-January-2011  00:38:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
Sony Internet TV with Google TV (NSX-46GT1) on DigitalTrends.
D-Link Boxee Box media player on TBreak.
Phiaton MS 400 (Second-Generation) headphones on DigitalTrends.
ZOTAC ZBOXHD-ID34BR-U HTPC on Bjorn3D.

Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i5-2500K LGA 1155 “Sandy Bridge” Processor on LegitReviews.
ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution (Intel P67 Express) Motherboard on Tweaktown.
Gigabyte P67A-UD4 Socket 1155 Motherboard on Pro-Clockers.
AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition 3.6 GHz Socket AM3 Processor on PCStats.
Zotac's H67-ITX motherboard on Tech Report.
Intel Sandy Bridge on DigitalTrends.
Intel Core i5 2500K Sandy Bridge CPU on TechWareLabs.

Cooling:
Thermalright HR-02 CPU Heatsink on TechWareLabs.
Zalman CNPS5X-SZ Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Corsair Air Series A50 CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Viewsonic Viewpad 7 tablet on TechReviewSource.
TomTom XL 350 TM on TechReviewSource.
MSI GT680 Sandy Bridge Gaming Laptop on HotHardware.
Targus XL Laptop Backpack on RBMods.
ASUS G53JW-3DE Core i7 GTX 460M 3D Vision Gaming Notebook on PCPerspective.
RIM BlackBerry Bold 9780 on BusinessComputingWorld.

Input Etc:
Roccat Kova + gaming mouse on XSReviews.
JSCO Noiseless Gaming Mouse JNL-101K on eTeknix.
CM Storm Spawn Gaming Mouse on NeoSeeker.
ROCCAT Kova+ on Vortez.

Cases:
Ikonik Optimus 1200 Mid Tower on TechWareLabs.
Lian Li Mini Q PC-Q08 on Modders-Inc.
Fractal Design Define XL on TechPowerUp.
Lian Li PC-V352 mATX on ThinkComputers.

Video Cards:
XFX 6870 Black Edition (Dual Fan) vs Inno3D GTX 560 Ti OC vs GTX 570 OC vs Radeon 6950 OC on HWHeaven.
MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC on HWSecrets.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti SOC on LegionHW.
Sapphire HD 6950 on Tweaknews.
MSI N560GTX Ti Twin Frozer II on Guru3D.
NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 560 Ti on FutureLooks.
AXLE GT 430 Classic on OCClub.
KFA2 GeForce GTX 560 White edition and Anarchy on Guru3D.

Memory:
Patriot G2 Series 4GB DDR3-1600 – Value DDR3 for Overclockers on TechReaction.
Crucial Ballitstix Smart Tracer 1600MHz DDR3 4GB Kit on eTeknix.

Storage:
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 500 GB Portable USB 3.0 Hard Disk Drive on TechARP.
OCZ Revo X2 240GB on PureOC.
Zalman N Series SandForce 128GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.

Power Supply:
Zalman ZM850-HP Plus Power Supply on OCIA.
XFX PRO 750 W Power Supply on HWSecrets.
Zalman ZM-PCM1 / ZM-VPM1 CPU AND VGA Power Consumption Meters on Tweaknews.

Misc:
Epson Stylus Office BX625FWD on BusinessComputingWorld.



Forum Projects (1 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 27-January-2011  21:26:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some more interesting things from the forums. Remember if you see anything cool in your travels, send the link to news@overclockers.com.au and we'll check it out!


ozdavo reviewed the
Asus AN300 500GB 2.5" USB3.0 HDD

Zedd02 reviewed the
Lian Li Q08B Mini-ITX case

AMD2400 compared 5850 and 6870
and reviewed the 6870 DirectCU


windwithme reviewed the
CORSAIR AX750W PSU

youngpro checked out the
GSKILL Ripjaw 2x4GB and 4x4GB kits

while Team Australia had fun
in Perth with LN2 and 4 GPUs



Wednesday Night (1 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 26-January-2011  23:51:56 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I hope your Australia day went well. I spent mine sunburnt and with a hangover, so that's at least traditional. :) Probably worth remembering that some folks are doing it tough at the moment, and if you want to help them out, you can donate to the QLD Flood Appeal or Red Cross VIC Flood Appeal. If you've got some PC bits you don't need, you can donate them to help people and businesses get back up to speed.

The Space Shuttle Discovery is rolling back to the launch pad soon, preparing (again) for its last mission before retirement. Steve Bowen replaced Tim Kopra as Mission Specialist 2 following a bicycle injury on Jan. 15 that prohibited Kopra from supporting the launch window. Wow, that's gotta suck.

IntelInside sends word of some unusual tamper-resistant screws being used in some Apple products. The comments in that article say these pentalobular screwdrivers are not perhaps as rare as that article makes out, but there's no appropriate bit in my many-bitted electronics screwdriver set. Still, it didn't take long to find some. Contrary to what has been widely reported elswhere, this is not a security Torx screw. Security Torx have a post in the middle. Apple would never use a real Torx security screw with a post for two reasons: they’re ugly, and the posts break off easily with screw heads this small.

Bored geeks are at it again, thanks Epi. This time, it's launching 200 paper planes from the edge of space. Each plane is carrying a Samsung SD Memory Card with a message that someone, somewhere in the world has uploaded. The planes were dropped from 36,500 metres over Berlin, Germany.

From drayzen: The much awaited AMD Catalyst 11.1a driver, especially by owners of 69xx cards like me, has been leaked and then an official update provided by AMD. I would recommend only using the official AMD download, also linked to in the 'Update, 23. Jan. 2011' section near the bottom of that page. Discussion here.

Tweaktown checked out Thermaltake's new HQ. Today Thermaltake opened its shiny new doors to customers, partners and press today to celebrate the opening of their new Taipei Neihu based headquarters. We got an invite to go along and check out all three floors which are home to Thermaltake, Tt eSPORTS, LUXA2 and the Tt Apollo's Pro Gaming Team.



NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 26-January-2011  09:13:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a pile of reviews of the new GPU, thanks to DM:

Anandtech
BenchmarkReviews
Bit-Tech
Bjorn3D
Guru3D (and here and here)
HardOCP
HWCanucks
HWZone
Hexus
HiTechLegion
InsideHW
LanOC
LegitReviews
NeoSeeker
NinjaLane
OC3D
OCAU
OCClub
PC Perspective
TechPowerup (and here, here, here and here)
TechReport
TomsHardware
Tweaktown
VR-Zone (and here)
XbitLabs

Discussion continues here.



Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic 1GB (8 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 26-January-2011  01:12:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg

So, nVidia have a new GPU today, the GeForce GTX 560. DiGiTaL MoNkEY has checked out the launch-day offering from Palit, their "Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic 1GB":


Click for the review!



Gigabyte PH67A-UD3 Review (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 25-January-2011  16:30:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg

DiGiTaL MoNkEY starts the year with a review of the PH67A-UD3, an entry-level Sandy Bridge motherboard from Gigabyte:


Click for the review!



Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 25-January-2011  15:29:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Storage:
Patriot Xporter XT Rage 32GB flash drive on ViperLair.
Seagate Constellation.2 1TB 2.5-inch SAS RAID on Tweaktown.
Kingston SSDNow V100 128GB SSD Solid State Drive on Tweaknews.

Audio Visual:
Samsung UN55C6500 55 inch Series 6 LED TV on OCOnline.
Tritton AX180 Gaming Headphones on TBreak.
Zotac Zbox Blu-ray AD03 HTPC on TBreak.
Thermaltake Shock Gaming Headset on Tweak.dk.
Olympus PEN E-PL2 camera on DigitalTrends.

Motherboard & CPU:
Sandy Bridge, Part 4: Core i5-2400, i5-2500K and i7-2600K CPUs on SilentPCReview.
ASRock P67 Extreme4 LGA1155 board on MadShrimps.
MSI E350AI-E45 AMD Fusion Motherboard on HWHeaven.
Foxconn P67A-S LGA1155 board on FunkyKit.
Zotac H67-ITX & ECS H67H2-I motherboards on TBreak.
Intel Core i5 2500K Linux Performance on Phoronix.
ASUS P8P67 Deluxe on iXBTLabs.
AMD Fusion Mini-ITX Preview on MiniITX.

Cases:
Lian Li PC-V1020 on Overclockers.com.
Thermaltake Armor A30 Mini Tower on TechSpot.
Lancool First Knight PC-K63 on BenchmarkReviews.
CoolerMaster Lab Test Bench V1.0 on eTeknix.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Samsung Galaxy Tab - Android takes on the iPad on PCPerspective.
Lenovo IdeaPad U260 notebook on TechReviewSource.

Video Cards:
HIS Radeon HD 6850 1GB IceQ X Turbo on Tweaktown.
Sparkle GeForce GT430 1024MB DDR3 Low Profile on TestFreaks.
ZOTAC GTX 580 on Vortez.
Gigabyte GV-R685OC-1GD Radeon HD 6850 1GB OC on APHNetworks.
MSI GeForce GTX 570 1280MB on APHNetworks.

Cooling:
CoolIt Vantage A.L.C. CPU Cooler on DragonSteelMods.
Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus GPU Cooler on OCCafe.
Titan Hati CPU cooler on OCClub.
NZXT Sentry LXE Fan Controller on HWSecrets.

Misc:
SilverStone Strider Plus 600W Power Supply on OCOnline.
Kingston HyperX - KHX2133C9AD3X2K2/4GX memory on Bjorn3D.



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 24-January-2011  14:39:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a snapshot of what's going on in some of the forums. 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 try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the handy Who Quoted Me? feature.

Switch SuperNap - The new reality in hyper scale data centres in Busness & Enterprise.
The Cloud: What it is, isn't and what it can/can't do for you in Business & Enterprise.
Cheap/Free Web Filtering & Antispam Gateways in Business & Enterprise.
IPv6 - where are you up to? in Business & Enterprise.
Does anyone know anything about breathalysers? in Electronics.
Detecting air leaks in transmit feeder in Electronics.
WiFi bridge over 150m or so - possible? in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
One remote to rule them all! in HTPC.
Commodore 64x in Retro & Arcade.
Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 is out in Windows Operating Systems.
Games for seniors in Games.
Help me become better at coding large programs in Programming & Software Development.
AMD 11.1a driver preview release - not WHQL in Video Cards & Monitors.
NVIDIA GeForce 266.35 Beta Driver Brings Performance Tweaks, SLI, 3D Vision Updates in Video Cards.
Beer recommendations - Australian only in Geek Grog & Homebrew.
Gran Turismo Photomode Thread in Sony Consoles.
A Phenomenal Recently Discovered Woman Street Photographer in Photography.
So you decided to try out for SAS *gulp* in Sport, Fitness & Health.
2011 F1 discussion thread inc Silly Season and Testing in Motorsport.



Monday Morning (24 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 24-January-2011  02:47:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Congrats to FearTec who won our recent Gigabyte contest!

Everyone's talking about the new Duke Nukem Forever teaser video. The King is back and here is the trailer to prove it. Duke Nukem Forever is finally coming on May 3rd, 2011 in North America for the 360, PS3, and PC and on May 6th Internationally. ESRB Rated M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol.

Vint Cerf has a few things to say to Australia, including that internet censorship isn't effective, but he likes our NBN plan. Vint Cerf, who helped develop email and TCP/IP technology, told The Australian during a visit to Sydney yesterday he thought the NBN was a "stunning investment". "I continue to feel a great deal of envy because in the US our broadband infrastructure is nothing like what Australia has planned," he said.

Tony spotted a video from earlier this month about Razer's Switchblade. I didn't realise it had a funky Optimus-like keyboard. The Razer Switchblade concept was designed to bring the full keyboard/mouse experience on the desktop on a handheld device. The dynamic keyboard and the ultra-sensitive multi touch screen are the key elements that give this portable gaming device the ability to play on the go without sacrificing precision and control.

Gainward meanwhile sent out a press-release for their new video card with 3GB RAM. This is officially getting silly now. These beefy 3GB frame buffer are to be filled quickly owing to the most powerful and enhanced GF110 chipset, Fermi 2.0 architecture; it is a tribute to enthusiastic hardcore gamers worldwide with the screaming performance and quiet cooler design.

TomsGuide report on a tank with active camouflage. When you've got an unstoppable machine in the battlefield, giving it invisibility almost seems like cheating. BAE Systems doesn't care; as part of their Future Protected Vehicle program, the weapons manufacturer is developing a camouflage system that will make tanks almost invisible.

A Queensland man's retro gaming collection was destroyed by the flood. PC-Engines, old Sega consoles, Neo Geos, Spectrums, FM Town Martys, old Nintendo Game & Watch handhelds...all gone.

From a different Tony, this handy PCI database site. Just the thing I needed when trying to find what model of network card was in a friend's laptop I was fixing a few days ago. Which reminds me of a conversation we had in IRC recently, about what to do when you find yourself dropped into the "computer guy zone" for your family & friends. What do you do? Charge them? Grin and bear it? Swap for favours in their own areas of skill? Let me know in the comments. :)



Geek Food (5 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 23-January-2011  20:39:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some yummy things from our Geek Food forum:


No-Stir Mushroom Risotto
by Amfibius

Lamb Tikka Curry from scratch
by mrs dan77

Steak, Greens & S/Potato Mash
by hosh0


Choc Mousse w/ Raspberry Compote
by grimninja

Fettucini w/ Greek Chicken Sauce
by FE2 Chook

Sultan's Delight
by death


Lamb Cutlets & Herb Wedges
by RETARD

Basic Sponge Cake
by tunagirl



Sunday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 23-January-2011  15:42:39 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Motherboard & CPU:
ASRock P67 Pro3 Motherboard at Hardware Secrets.
MSI P67A-GD65 Motherboard at Hardware Heaven.
Core i7-2600K CPU at Hardware Secrets.
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3 and GA-PH67A-UD3 at Xbit Labs.
Intel Core i5-2400S CPU at Xbit Labs.

Memory:
Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 PC3-15000 at NeoSeeker.
Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3–2133MHz RAM at TBreak.
Kingston HyperX Genesis 4GB 2133MHz DDR3 Memory Kit at LegitReviews.

Video Cards:
GIGABYTE Radeon HD 6950 2GB Video Card Overclocked at TweakTown.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6970 BFBC2 Vietnam Edition at TechGage.
Zotac Amp! Edition GeForce GTX 480 Graphics Card at OCIA.
Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 1GB WHDI Edition - Wireless HDMI Streaming at PC Perspective.
HIS Radeon HD 6970 2GB Video Card Overclocked at TweakTown.
MSI HD 6950 Twin Frozr II 2 GB at TechPowerUp.
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC at Guru3D.
ASUS Radeon 6950 and 6970 at PureOC.

Cooling:
Cooler Master Turbine Master: Turbo-ventilation at InsideHW.
Noctua NH-U12P SE2 at TechReaction.
Zalman CNPS9900 MAX CPU Cooler at Hardware Secrets.
120 mm Fan Roundup at Xbit Labs.
Corsair H50 Water Cooling System at ProClockers.
Prolimatech Super Mega Heatsink at Overclock 3D.

Storage:
LSI WarpDrive 300GB PCI Express SSD at Hot Hardware.
Western Digital's Scorpio Black 750GB notebook hard drive at TechReport.

Cases & PSU:
Lian Li PC-V354 MicroATX Mini Tower at Silent PC Review.
Zalman Z9 Plus Mid-Tower Computer Case at Benchmark Reviews.
Innergie mCube Mini Auto/Air Power Adapter at Vortez.
Galaxis ARES Mid Tower Chassis at TweakTown.

Modifications:
NZXT Bunker USB Security at PureOC
Sunbeamtech Rheosmart 6 Fan Controller at Overclockers Club.

Audio/Visual:
Antec Soundscience Rockus 3D 2.1 Speaker System at ThinkComputers.

Input Devices & Misc:
Logitech M305 Wireless Mouse at TBreak.
Mionix Propus 380 at XS Reviews.
Cooler Master Spawn Gaming Mouse at TechReaction.
Razer Naga Epic Gaming Mouse at Hardware Heaven.
ZOWIE Celeritas Keyboard at Vortez.
Asus RT-N56U Dual-Band Router at Bjorn 3D.

Software:
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm at YouGamers.



Misc Pics (27 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 21-January-2011  13:39:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Thanks to Dale, Allen and Tim this week!






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



Google CEO Eric Schmidt steps down; Larry Page takes over. (5 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 21-January-2011  10:32:54 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

In what is apparently a surprise to many people in the tech world, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has stepped down from CEO and handed over the reins to Larry Page:

Google's Q4 financial results press release contains a bombshell: as of April 4, co-founder Larry Page will replace Eric Schmidt as CEO and assume responsibility for day-to-day operations and product development and strategy.

However, Schmidt will be staying on in a more strategic role:

According to the company, he will focus on deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership. He will also continue to act as an advisor to co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

What does this mean for Google's users? Very little, I'd say. Schmidt, Page and Brin ran Google as a triumvirate, so nothing should really change in terms of products, services or goals.

Sources:
CNN, Washington Post, Engadget, Schmidt's blog.



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 21-January-2011  01:21:31 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 AMD 880G Motherboard at Think Computers.

Memory:
Quick Review: Corsair Dominator Series PC3-17000 4GB Kit at TweakTown.

Video Cards:
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 460 SOC (1Gb GDDR5) at Funky Kit.
EVGA GTX 580 FTW Hydro Copper 2 at Hot Hardware.
MSI HD 6850 Cyclone Power Edition at Tech Powerup.

Cooling:
Zalman VF3000F VGA graphics card cooler at TweakNews.
Coolermaster Turbine Master Mach 0.8 at XS Reviews.
Cooler Master Blade Master R4-BMBS-20PK-R0 Cooling at RB Mods.
GBU Larkooler Extreme Performance G1/4" Liquid Cooling Kit at PureOC.

Storage:
Seagate Constellation.2 1TB 2.5-inch SATA Hard Drive at TweakTown.

Cases & PSU:
Lian Li PC-X2000F Case at Hardware Heaven.
Seasonic X Series 760W Power Supply at Overclockers Club.
In Win Dragon Rider at Vortez.

Modifications:
Cooler Master Turbine Master Mach 0.8 Fan at Vortez.

Audio/Visual:
Sansa Fuze+ MP3 Player at Hardware Secrets.
SanDisk Sansa Fuze+ 8GB MP3 Player at Legit Reviews.
Kogan Elite 100Hz LED 32 inch TV at Rambling Thoughts.

Input Devices, ETC:
VisionTek CandyBoard Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard at Benchmark Reviews.
Thermaltake eSPORTS Challenger Pro Gaming Keyboard + Dasher Mouse Pad at Pro-clockers.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Toshiba Portege R705 at Digital Trends.
Gateway ZX6951-53 at Tech Review Source.
HP EliteBook 8740w Mobile Workstation at Testfreaks.
MSI GE600 Laptop at TBreak.
Dell Inspiron One 2305 at TechReviewSource.



Thursday Afternoon (12 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 20-January-2011  14:07:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Winning today's award for "shortest notice ever", Antec and Altech are inviting "50 members of your overclocking community" to celebrate Antec's 25th birthday tonight at Star City in Sydney. Product demos, prizes, food, drink, "Antec Show Girls", etc. Starts at 6pm, so if you're working nearby and you're bored, why not.

ABC have put together one of the most dramatic views of the Brisbane flooding using a fancy scrolly-image thing. This set of photos of the Toll Brisbane facility paint a pretty grim picture too. That's a lot of parcels going nowhere. Axe sent word of an IT Flood Relief Programme to get businesses and schools back up to speed with donated hardware, with more info here and here.

IGN have another video showing gameplay in Portal 2. It looks cool and all, but hrm, I really worry that all the extra stuff they're adding in will ruin one of the main strengths of Portal, which was its simplicity. I don't really need another HL2 with a fancy gun.

GamePron report on hackers using a medical server to host a game. Unknown hackers broke into the servers for New Hampshire-based Seacoast Radiology, potentially accessing sensitive patient information for more than 230,000 people, the medical company now admits. The hackers’ rationale was simple – they wanted to play Call of Duty: Black Ops and couldn’t find a server.

LegionHW have a DDR3 memory roundup. Today on the menu we have six impressive looking dual-channel DDR3 memory kits that are designed for AMD and Intel platforms. These dual-channel kits are all price around $100 US for the 4GB version and for our article we will be taking two kits from each manufacturer to compare how they perform when populating all banks.

TechSpot have some Sandy Bridge Fun Facts from Intel. For the launch of their 2nd-gen Intel Core CPUs (a.k.a. Sandy Bridge), they have compiled another interesting list of fun facts. We have selected the ones we find more amusing and are republishing them with Intel's permission.

Tech Report have a look at chipset PCI Express performance. Finally, Intel has a mid-range chipset with proper PCIe 2.0 lanes. We test the P67's PCIe implementation to see how it stacks up against the competition.

From Rob: Just a FYI. The Pegasus Datacenter In Brisbane is moving this weekend. This means a pile of websites will be offline over the weekend, as a lot of shared and VPS hosting is done there (including dedicatedservers.net.au, which is probably one of the biggest in .au).

Here's 10 Apple Patents To Get Excited About, thanks IntelInside. Apple was granted 563 patents in 2010, some of which will show up in future products and might well change the consumer technology landscape just like the iPod, iPhone, App Store and now the iPad have. Apple patent expert Jack Purcher of Patently Apple has been monitoring the company’s patents since 2006.

Tweaktown checked out the HP Smart Home in Cupertino, California. What is the Smart Home? It's literally a house that sits in one of the parking lots and is used as a very effective way to showcase the latest and greatest products to come from HP. It was first setup and displayed several years ago at CES in Las Vegas as a means to show customers and media a true to life implementation of connected HP technologies inside the home."

On a related note, Sniper sent word that Arnie is no longer governor of California, and will be back (urgh) in movies soon. Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has confirmed he’s getting back into the movie business and has even gotten down to the task of picking his first role. “Currently I’m reading three scripts,” Schwarzenegger tells Kronen Zeitung, a newspaper in his native Austria.

Darkness sent in this video of the Mario Theme played with RC Car and Bottles. Not a lot more to say about that one. :)



Wednesday Night Reviews (2 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 19-January-2011  22:08:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
FaceVision TouchCam N1 720p on XSReviews.
Arctic Sound P531 5.1 Channel Gaming USB Headset on ThinkComputers.

Motherboard & CPU:
MSI P67A-GD55 Sandy Bridge Motherboard on TBreak.
ECS P67H2-A2 Intel 1155 board on TechPowerUp.
ASRock P67 Extreme4 & Fatal1ty Professional P67 vs X58 / i7-950 on HWHeaven.
Gigabyte GA-E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion motherboard on Bjorn3D.
ECS P67H2-A motherboard on Guru3D.

Storage:
Samsung 470 Series 256GB SSD on LegitReviews.
QNAP TS-259 Pro+ NAS on MissingRemote.

Cases:
Corsair Graphite Series 600T Mid-Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Cooler Master HAF 912 on Tweaknews.
Enermax LuxuRay on HWSecrets.
NZXT Bunker on OCClub.

Input Etc:
Evercool Booster Wrist Pad on eTeknix.
Tt eSports Challenger Pro Keyboard on BigBruin.
Logitech G700 Wireless Gaming Mouse on Techgage.

Cooling:
Corsair H70 CPU Water Cooler on HWSecrets.
Deepcool Gamer Storm and Ice Warrior CPU coolers on PureOC.

Video Cards:
HIS Radeon HD 6970 2GB Turbo on Tweaktown.
Sparkle Nvidia GeForce GT240 OC 1024MB GDDR5 on TestFreaks.
ASUS Radeon HD 6970 2GB on TechReaction.
GIGABYTE Radeon HD 6850 on BenchmarkReviews.
MSI GeForce GTX 580 1536 MB in SLI Overclocked on Tweaktown.

Portable & Prebuilt:
HP Pavilion dm1z notebook on TechReviewSource.
Serenity i7 Sandy Bridge PC, SPCR Edition, by Puget Computers SilentPCReview.



Photography Gallery (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 18-January-2011  20:30:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a quick snapshot (ho ho) of what people are up to in our Photography Gallery forum:



















Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 18-January-2011  18:11:15 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Next Generation Core i5-2500K and i7-2600K "Sandy Bridge" Processors at Futurelooks.
Intel Core i5-2500, Core i5-2400 and Core i5-2300 CPU Review at XBit Labs.
Crucial 4GB kit, Ballistix 240-pin DIMM, DDR3 PC3-12800 Memory at Modders Inc.
Sandy Bridge, Part 3: Gigabyte P67A-UD4 & Intel DP67BG P67 Motherboards at Silent PC Review.
ASUS P8H67-M EVO Socket 1155 Motherboard at ProClockers.
ZOTAC H55ITX-C-E Mini-ITX Motherboard Review at Futurelooks.
ASRock P67 3-Way Motherboard Roundup at PureOC.

Memory:
Corsair Vengeance 12GB DDR3-1600 at PureOC.
Corsair Vengeance 12GB DDR3 1600 at Overclockers Club.
Patriot Viper Xtreme P3-16000 - 2000MHz at Bjorn3D.

Video Cards:
Zotac GTX 570 AMP! Edition at TBreak.
GeForce GTX 460 SE at Guru3D.
Gainward Phantom GTX570 at Overclock 3D.
ASUS EAH6870 DirectCU at Overclockers Club.

Cooling:
Evercool Transformer 4 CPU Cooler at FunkyKit.
Noctua NH-C14 Heatsink and Fan at Overclockers Online.

Storage:
Thermaltake BlacX 5G ST0019U HDD Docking Station at Overclockers Online.
2TB Seagate Barracuda LP Green Drive at Techware Labs.
Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 64GB SSD at eTeknix.
Patriot Xporter XT Rage 32GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive at Legit Reviews.

Cases & PSU:
Lian Li PC-V1020B Mid Tower Chassis at TweakTown.
Thermaltake Armor A60 Chassis at TBreak.
Lian Li PC-V1020B Mid Tower Chassis at TweakTown.
Antec Dark Fleet DF-30 ATX Case at PC Perspective.

Modifications:
NZXT Bunker USB Locking Device at OCIA.
SilverStone Air Penetrator SST-AP121-L Fans at APH Networks.

Audio/Visual:
Denon AH-D1100 at Digital Trends.
iHome iP49 Studio Series Portable Rechargeable Audio System at Mad Shrimps.
Zalman ZM-NSP100 Clip-On Notebook Speakers at Mega Tech News.

Input Devices, etc:
ASUS RT-N16 GIGABIT SUPERSPEED-N ROUTER at Tweak News.
Mionix Naos 3200 USB Optical Gaming Mouse at Benchmark Reviews.
Logitech K800 Wireless Illuminated Keyboard Review at XBit Labs.
Cyborg R.A.T 3 Gaming Mouse at TBreak.
Mophie juice pack powerstation at TeatFreaks.
Nikon Coolpix S8100 at TechReviewSource.
Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution at RBMods.com.
Thermaltake Challenger Pro Keyboard at Hardware Secrets.
VisionTek CandyBoard Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard at Benchmark Reviews.

Portable & Prebuilt:
PhotoFast iPADock at TweakTown.



Tuesday Afternoon (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 18-January-2011  17:18:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Prime Minister Gillard has backed a Freedom of Information exeption for NBN Co. As an incorporated company, NBN Co will avoid FOI scrutiny, unlike Australia Post, the ABC, SBS and Telstra before it was privatised. The Prime Minister today confirmed the public would not get access to information held by the company rolling out the $36 billion National Broadband Network.

Steve Jobs is taking medical leave from Apple. Apple's CEO is taking a medical leave from work, his second in as many years, with Tim Cook filling his role during that time. In an email to the Apple team, Steve Jobs says he'll be on leave to "focus on [his] health," though he will retain the position of CEO and will remain involved in the major strategic decisions -- Tim Cook will be picking up the slack on day-to-day operations. No further details have been provided, save for Steve expressing his love for Apple and wish to return to his duties as soon as he can. Apple shares dropped 8% in response, thanks The_Shadow.

SMH have an article about saving data, for flood victims returning to their homes and in some cases flooded PCs. Despite repeated warnings from computer security companies for people to keep regular backups of their personal data, most don't. And for those who do, it's likely that the backups are kept in the same place as the computer itself, which is no help if your house is flooded.

On a somewhat related note, Choice have looked at ruggedised USB drives to see just how tough they really are. Torture testing 18 products, including putting them through the wash and running over them with a car! Surprisingly, some of the normal ones fared better than the so-called 'ruggedised' versions. See the report to find out which brands and models survived.

Lexar have an amazing video of their memory manufacturing process, including lots of people in bunny suits, lots of robotic arms and hopefully, no dust. Lexar, a division of Micron technology, is a leading global provider of memory products for digital media. Check out this behind the scenes look at the extensive work and care put into each Lexar product.

Another cool video from Sniper, this time of autonomous quadrotors building things. Teams of quadrotors autonomously build tower-like cubic structures from modular parts. Work done by Quentin Lindsey, Daniel Mellinger, and Vijay Kumar at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Those cage-building skills will come in handy when they inevitably enslave humanity.

There are new Facebook privacy concerns. If you you aren't already paranoid enough to remove your address and cell phone number from Facebook, today might be the day. Facebook has decided to give its third-party app developers API access to users' address and phone numbers as they collectively get more involved in the mobile space, but privacy experts are already warning that such a move could put Facebook users at risk.

Wired have an interesting article about nuclear missile silos that are still manned. America and her nuclear warriors have an odd relationship. For decades, missileers (as we’re known in the military) have quietly performed their duties, custodians of a dying breed of weapon. But American citizens have no real connection with the shadowy operators who stand the old posts of the Cold War, despite the fact that they spend up to $8 billion a year to maintain our country’s nuclear deterrent.



Forum Projects (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 17-January-2011  21:23:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some more interesting things from the forums. Remember if you see anything cool in your travels, send the link to news@overclockers.com.au and we'll check it out!


dinos22 tried for a
Unigine Heaven world record

Barnzz compared P55 and X58
for EyeFinity CrossFire

dinos22 also checked out
Corsair Vengeance 16GB


windwithme took his i7 2600K to
5.1GHz on BIOSTAR TP67XE

Sin0822 has a
P67A-UD7 in-depth review

as well as an Ultimate
Sandy Bridge Overclocking Guide

Finally, ShadoX has a PSU sleeving video tutorial:




Monday Morning (14 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 17-January-2011  02:10:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Over the last couple of weeks OCAU has emerged blinking into the light of social networking, setting up official twitter and facebook pages. We also set up Tapatalk (discussion here) recently too, which makes it a bit easier to view the forums on a mobile phone. The app isn't free, but if you keep an eye on tapatalk's twitter they are giving away serial numbers occasionally.

Telecommunications and lack of power are continuing problems in Queensland, and at least one PC retailer has been flooded. "The Milton store is completely submerged at this stage...in the store itself...we don't know anything. We can't get access to the store. We didn't really get much of a chance to get anything out of the store from what I've been told. By Tuesday lunchtime the store was completely covered. No-one was allowed to go back in to do anything or try to save anything."

CAPS LOCK wanted to warn us that the phone scammers are still active and ringing people in Australia. Again I don't think any OCAU readers would fall for this, but maybe remind your less tech-savvy friends and relatives that Microsoft does not ring you and ask you to install mysterious support software on your PC.

PCPerspective spoke with OCZ about their decision to exit the RAM module market. OCZ: In the short term nothing has changed and OCZ is continuing to sell and support memory through the wind down process, in the long term the focus of the company is shifting to our fast growing SSD solutions but rest assured we are continuing to fully support customers that have purchased our DRAM products.

Now, I'm fine with computers flying our planes and educating our children and wotnot, but when they start winning our gameshows, well, that's just not on. In today’s demonstration match for the media Watson played against Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, the two great (human) Jeopardy champions who will provide opposition for Watson in a two-day exhibition match. That man versus machine faceoff will air in February, and carries a prize of a million dollars. Bad news, humans: In today’s exhibition of about 15 questions, Watson tallied $4,400, compared to $3,400 for Jennings and $1,200 Rutter.

Lots of large technology websites have been sued over a patent on online press releases. Apparently whoever is behind Gooseberry got tired of simply trying to demand cash from mom-and-pop press release services, and has now decided to sue a bunch of online services, Digg, Reddit, Fark, TechCrunch, and others. What do any of those companies have to do with generating press releases online? You've got me.

Dasuperham sent in this kinda cute video of kids and vintage technology. Kids from a school in Québec, Canada, are in front of 80s 90s generation technologies have to find what are those objects used for.

Google are running a Science Fair for students around the world. The Google Science Fair is being conducted in partnership with CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American. Details on how to enter are here, but the basics are that students can enter by themselves or in groups of three by April 4. Finalists will be invited to participate in a live event at Google headquarters in Silicon Valley.

From Silicon Angel: Just a heads up for anyone considering the new Razer Vespula mouse pad with gel wrist rest - the Razer logo on the wrist rest is currently screen-printed rubber and is likely to wear off within a couple of weeks of even casual use (maybe as little as a day with a heavy gaming session). Razer RA have said they will replace Vespulas with this problem, even though it's only a relatively minor cosmetic fault. So if you get one and you're disappointed that it wears so easily, you can RA it direct to Razer or to the place of purchase. Hopefully Razer will come up with a better process for printing their logo on these in a future revision. Personally I think it really is only a very minor issue which the features of the pad more than make up for.



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 16-January-2011  21:07:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's another snapshot of what people are getting up to in the forums:

QLD Floods - Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans in Business & Enterprise.
AMD Zacate mini-ITX Motherboard Previews (AMD Fusion APU) in AMD Hardware.
New Silverstone Temjin TJ11, The True Successor to The Legendary TJ07? in Overclocking & Hardware.
MSI LGA2011 motherboard pictures leaked in Intel Hardware.
Intel and Nvidia do cross license agreement in Intel Hardware.
Microsoft mocks Google's H.264 decision in General Software.
Samsung Announces LED D8000, D7000 & D6400 HDTV line with 0.5 cm bezels in Audio Visual.
Trying to get better latencies in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
A selection of search results as assessed by Google's new reading level algorithm in Networking.
Host wikileaks - good or bad? in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
IPv6. Putting it into perspective in the present era in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
6950 flashed to 6970 in Video Cards & Monitors.
Why do all games look like dreams? in Video Cards & Monitors.
Games and motion sickness in Video Cards & Monitors.
Latest video card summary in Video Cards & Monitors.
OCZ intros Vertex 3 Pro, Vertex 3 EX and Z-Drive R3 PCIe SSDs in Storage & Backup.
SD card failure rate in Storage & Backup.
How's everyone's NAS handling the heat? in Storage & Backup.
Corsair Intros Vengeance Series of DDR3 Memory Kits in Memory.
Generic Guide to Getting Big 'N' Strong (v2.0) in Sport, Fitness & Health.



CES 2011 Final FINAL Roundup. (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 16-January-2011  16:55:07 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Here's a final, FINAL round up of CES stuff. It just seems to keep on trickling into the mailbox...

Rob Enderle’s favorite gadgets of CES 2011 at Digital Trends.
CES 2011: Patriot Memory at Think Computers.
OCZ Technology at CES 2011 at TechGage.
Thermaltake at CES 2011 at TechGage.
Best of CES 2011 at TechGage.
CES 2011 Coverage at Overclockers Club.
Digital Trends’ Best of CES 2011 Awards at Digital Trends.
Video: CES 2011 Recap & Highlights at Motherboards.org.
CES 2011: iBUYPOWER at ThinkComputers.
Brazos ultraportables come out swinging at TechReport.
Xonar DG sound card squeezed into USB thumb drive atTechReport.



Gigabyte Competition Voting (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 16-January-2011  13:19:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg

It's voting time in our Gigabyte motherboard competition, where people had to make a video about the new Sandy Bridge boards. We only had four entries, but they're all very impressive - so take a look and vote for your favourite!


Sunday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 16-January-2011  02:09:21 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Motherboard & CPU:
ECS H67H2-M and H67H2-I Mini-ITX Motherboards at Hardware Heaven.
Gigabyte P67A-UD7 at Overclock3D.
Gigabyte P67A-UD5 at iXBT Labs.
Zotac H67-ITX WiFi Motherboard at Funky Kit.
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme - Sandy Bridge VS The World at Tech Reaction.
Pure Black P67 & X58 Intel Motherboard preview at Legit Reviews.
ASUS Maximus III Gene P55 at Tech Powerup.

Video Cards:
AMD Radeon HD 6870 CrossFireX at InsideHW.
Sparkle GT240 Video Card 512MB vs 1024MB at TestFreaks.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 AMP! Edition 1536 MB at Tech Powerup.
MSI GeForce GTX 580 1536 MB Video Cards in SLI at TweakTown.
KFA2 GeForce GTX 460 Razor Single Slot at Guru3D.
AMD Radeon HD 6870 and 6850 Overclocked Round-up at Hot Hardware.
Sparkle GeForce GT240 1024MB DDR3 at TestFreaks.

Cooling:
Noctua NH-C14 CPU Cooler at Legit Reviews.
Deepcool Ice Matrix 600 at Pure Overclock.
Zalman CNPS8000A Cooler at TechReaction.
Deepcool N8 Notebook Cooler at Pure Overclock.

Storage:
Silverstone Treasure Series TS04 at TechReaction.

Cases & PSU:
Seasonic X-760 760W 80Plus Gold Power Supply at PCStats.
SilverStone Strider Plus 850W Power Supply at PC Perspective.
Cooler Master Elite 100 Case at Hardware Secrets.
Seasonic X-Series 850 W Power Supply at at Hardware Secrets.
Lian Li PC-B25S Mid-tower Aluminum Case at Silent PC Review.
Zalman ZM850-HP Plus Power Supply at Hardware Secrets.
XFX 850W Black Edition Modular Power Supply at eTeknix.
Coolermaster HAF 932 at RB Mods.

Modifications:
NZXT Sentry LXE External Fan Controller at Overclockers Online.

Audio/Visual:
Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3 at Digital Trends.
Audio-Technica ATH-AD700 at Digital Trends.
Audio-Technica ATH-A700 at Digital Trends.
Sharkoon X-Tactic 5.1 Dolby Digital Headset at Legit Reviews.

Input Devices:
Cooler Master Inferno Gaming Mouse at Techware Labs.
Thermaltake eSports MEKA G1 Keyboard at Benchmark Reviews.
SteelSeries Ikari Laser Mouse at eTeknix.
Razer Tron mouse and mat at XS Reviews.
LapWorks Crystal iPad Folio at OCIA.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Lenovo IdeaCentre Q150 at Digital Trends.

Phones:
Nokia N8 at InsideHW.



Misc Pics (38 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 14-January-2011  13:27:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Packing and posting lots of OCAU Mugs today - get yours before they're gone!






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



QLD Floods (1 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 14-January-2011  11:06:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg

You will of course be aware of the flooding that Queensland is suffering at the moment. If you want to donate to help recovery efforts, the QLD Govt has set up an appeal here, and the Salvation Army has one here.

People are posting pictures and telling their stories in this thread and there's a huge amount of info and links in the first post. Stuart from GGFLan has sent word that tomorrow's Brisbane LAN is now free entry with room for 130 gamers and they will be collecting donations for the appeal.

Tim sent in these pictures: Hey Agg, We live in Rocklea at Brisbane and we got two feet of water in our second storey. We went home yesterday and started cleaning up and we got over 4GB of shots for the insurance company, here are two of those photos! PS: its going to be hard going for a while, I was a bit disapointed when I found out RACQ won't be letting everyone claim all damage and that they were dispatching hydrologists, BUT the gaming computer was saved for a rainy day I guess.




Friday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 14-January-2011  02:32:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A couple of big tech news stories recently, with the first being AMD's CEO resigning - or was he pushed? However, the Board believes we have the opportunity to create increased shareholder value over time. This will require the company to have significant growth, establish market leadership and generate superior financial returns. We believe a change in leadership at this time will accelerate the company’s ability to accomplish these objectives. Discussion here.

The second surprise is that OCZ is exiting the RAM market, apparently to focus on SSDs, flash media and PSUs. More here, thanks Chris. Over OCZ's last nine fiscal quarters, revenues from its memory business have declined more than 71%. The company's SSD revenues have grown by nearly a factor of 20 over the same time span. OCZ raked in over $41 million in SSD revenues in its last quarter but generated only $6.3 million from its memory department. Discussion here.

Speaking of which, TomsHardware checked out the OCZ ReboDrive X2 PCIe SSD. The company’s new RevoDrive X2 steps thing up a notch, forsaking value altogether in the name of performance. Priced just north of $650 for 240 GB, you’re looking at a $100 premium over a quartet of 60 GB Vertex 2s. Does the price tag even matter once you’re in such a high-end niche of the storage market? A long look at performance will help answer that question.

They also compared some P67 motherboards. Improved per-clock performance and higher achievable frequencies are sure to put Intel’s latest K-Series CPUs on top of many builders’ whish lists, but they’ll still need a new socket to put it in. We test nine enthusiast-oriented LGA-1155 motherboards.

Intel have quite a clever YouTube ad for Sandy Bridge. To build excitement around the 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i5 processor, Intel is launching an action-adventure video titled "The Chase."



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 14-January-2011  01:04:40 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte H67MA-UD2H Motherboard at Funky Kit.
ASUS RoG Maximus IV Extreme (P67) Hardware Heaven.com.
Intel D525MW Mini-ITX at MissingRemote.
ASRock P67 Pro3 Socket 1155 Motherboard at ProClockers.
ASUS Sabertooth P67 Motherboard at Vortez

Video Cards:
Zotac GTX 580 AMP! Edition at TBreak.
AMD HD 6950 at Overclockers.com.

Cooling:
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 CPU Cooler at Hardware Secrets.

Storage:
Patriot Memory Extreme Performance Xporter XT Rage USB Flash Drive at Mad Shrimps.
Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 USB 3.0 Flash Drive at Tech ARP.
Seasonic X-460 Fanless 460W 80Plus Gold Silent PSU at PCStats.
SilverStone SOD01 Slimline DVD Writer at PureOC.
Corsair Force Series F90 Solid State Drive RAID Report at TweakTown.
KINGSTON TECHNOLOGY FLASH Kingston 256GB SSDNow V100 Series 2.5 SATA II at Legion Hardware.
Synology DS211 NAS at Vortez.

Cases & PSU:
Cubitek Tattoo Fire Case at TechPowerUp.
Antec Lanboy Air Case at Overclockers Club.
SilverStone Raven RV02B-EW Case at Benchmark Reviews.
Galaxis Atlus Mid-Tower Case at OverClock Intelligence Agency.
Thermaltake ToughPower XT 775W PSU at eTeknix.
3R System L-600 V.REX Jr. Case at Hardware Secrets.
In-Win Dragon Rider Case at Bjorn3D.
Ikonik Optimus 1200 at Overclockers Club.
Seasonic X-760 760W PSU at TweakTown.
Zalman Z9 Plus Case at TweakNews.

Modifications:
NZXT Sentry LXE Fan Controller at PureOC.

Audio/Visual:
Panasonic Viera TC-P50GT25 Monitor at TechReviewSource.
Sandberg Street Gear USB Play Headphones at XSReviews.
NIX Hu-Motion (12-inch) Review at Digital Trends.

Input Devices:
TRON Gaming Mouse & Mat at TBreak.
Zowie Celeritas Keyboard at XSReviews.
Gigabyte Aivia K8100 Gaming Keyboard at eTeknix.
Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse at Everything USB.

Portable & Prebuilt:
AViiQ Laptop Stand at TestFreaks.
Maingear 13.3" Clutch 13 Ultraportable Notebook at Hot Hardware.
Dell XPS 17 Gaming Laptop at TechReviewSource.



CES 2011 Continued (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 13-January-2011  23:37:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a final roundup of CES headlines:

CES 2011 – Everything You Wanted To Know About Tablets, Notebooks, and Netbooks on Futurelooks.
CES 2011 – Checking In with nVidia, Intel, MSI, Kingston, ZALMAN, and VIA on Futurelooks.
OCZ Technology on ThinkComputers.
Digital camera trends from CES 2011 on DigitalTrends.
CES 2011: Mad Catz AmBx Lighting & MIDI PRO-Adapter on LegitReviews.
CES 2011: DisplayPort Demos Wireless, Fiber and much more on LegitReviews.
CES 2011 – Funky Speakers from Speakal on MegaTechNews.
CES 2011 – Targus Offers Cases for Everything on MegaTechNews.
CES 2011 – Scosche Gets Fit and Offers Accessories A Plenty on MegaTechNews.
CES 2011: Booth Babes Gallery on TechWareLabs.
CES 2011: CyberPower on ThinkComputers.
Digital Experience Powered by Pepcom on TechWareLabs.



Geek Food (7 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 13-January-2011  21:31:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some yummy things from our Geek Food forum:


Bacon Delight
by Frankeh

Almond Biscuits
by Shaetano

Sumsa (Russian meat pastry)
by death


Rib Eye BBQ Tips
from dan77

Vegetarian Lasagne
by Kung F00L

While RETARD tried
making a Big Mac



Thursday Morning (11 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 13-January-2011  02:17:31 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Just a small update tonight before I crawl into bed.

First up, Wired have delved into why we humans are afraid of alien invasion. "In real life, humans are sucky and weak. If metropolis-sized spacecrafts actually plopped out of the skies, we’d toss over the keys to the planet in a nanosecond and surf away on waves of our own fear-pee."

Not sure what to buy for your next PC? TechSpot has updated their buying guide: "The TechSpot PC Buying Guide offers an in-depth list of today's best hardware, spanning four unique, yet typical budgets. Whether you are a first time builder seeking guidance or a seasoned enthusiast, we've got you covered.

I gotta say, I loved the single player story for Call of Duty: Black Ops, but it seems that the author of it - one Wolfgang Hammersmith - has a bit of a problem with his credibility: "As a military veteran, he also took objection to the poster art for Call of Duty: Black Ops, claiming that the guns displayed 1911 A1 model pistols were either broken, or in an unusable state due to the position of hammers and triggers but then a bunch of Professional Soldiers got wind of Hammersmith’s antics, and suddenly Hammersmith was the one being taken objection to."

This is interesting: the guys at BigBruin have aimed a thermal camera at a Galaxy 1024MB GT430 just to get a visual representation of the heat exchange taking place. Pretty neat stuff.

We've got a pretty strong Folding@Home team as we all know, but a new game will help unravel the mysteries of RNA development. "Putting a ball through a hoop or drawing a better poker hand is the way we're used to winning games, but in EteRNA you score when the molecule you've designed can assemble itself," said Adrien Treuille, an assistant professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, who leads the EteRNA project with Rhiju Das, an assistant professor of biochemistry at Stanford. "Nature provides the final score — and nature is one tough umpire."

Finally, just to annoy all the Apple haters: How to Switch from a PC to a Mac. "They finally wore you down. Your friends' and co-workers' tales of the MacOS –an operating system with such elegance that anyone could master it, so safe that viruses barely exists, and with powers and abilities far beyond those of, well, Windows—have convinced you to switch. There's no better time than the holidays to make the leap, when you could receive a brand new Apple computer of your own as a gift."



Competition Reminder (1 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 12-January-2011  19:48:06 (GMT +10) - by Agg

There's only a few days left to enter the Gigabyte competition in the forums. All you need to do is make a video of why you like GIGABYTE's new range of Intel Sandy Bridge motherboards, and upload it to YouTube, and link it in this thread. There's some funny entries in there already, which are worth a look even if you're not going to make one yourself. Entries close this Friday at 9pm EDT!


OCAU Mugs! (1 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 12-January-2011  15:04:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg

It's been a while (since 2003, in fact) but we once again have some OCAU mugs available:


Click for info!



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 12-January-2011  11:28:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a snapshot of what's going on in some of the forums. 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 try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the handy Who Quoted Me? feature.

AIRCOOLING BITCHES. Do you have any?! in Overclocking & Hardware.
27th Chaos Communication Congress (27C3) videos in Overclocking & Hardware.
Razer Announce the Switchblade. A revouloution in PC Gaming in Overclocking & Hardware.
Why is Business Continuity Planning an IT problem? in Business & Enterprise.
Insulating for chilled water in Extreme Cooling.
Review: JayCar MP3083 4xAA USB Charger "To charge USB devices" in Electronics.
DSL network facts and figures in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
A Guide to Seedboxes in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
IGN: Who cares about graphics anymore? in Games.
Need help from the C gurus! in Programming & Software Development.
Fermi finds antimatter above thunderstorms in Science.
Do you use a graphic equalizer for your PC audio? in PC Audio.
Bad news for Sony in Sony Consoles.
The droids we have all been looking for (NSFW, ish) in Photography.
Couch to 5K in 9 wks running program in Sport, Fitness & Health.
F50 Adizero boot review in Sport, Fitness & Health.
Electronic Cigarettes in Sport, Fitness & Health.
Australian MotoGP under threat in Motorsport.
Getting into spraypainting in Motoring: Technical.
NSW Major demerit point restructure in Motoring.
What did you regret buying in 2010? in The Pub.



Wednesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 12-January-2011  00:19:52 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Motherboard & CPU:
AMD Phenom II x4 975 Black Edition 3.6GHz at Techware Labs.
Intel DH67BL Motherboard (H67 Chipset) at Funky Kit.
ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard at Hardware Secrets.
ECS A890GXM-A2 Motherboard at PureOC.
Sapphire Pure Black X58 Motherboard at TweakTown.
Gigabyte P67A-UD4 Motherboard at Guru3D.

Memory:
OCZ Platinum XTE PC3-16000 4GB Dual Channel Kit at OverClock Intelligence Agency.

Video Cards:
ASUS Radeon 6870 DirectCU at PureOC.
PowerColor Radeon HD 6870 PCS+ at Benchmark Reviews.

Storage:
Zalman ZM-MH200 U3 Dual HDD Dock at TechPowerUp.
Patriot Inferno 60GB SSD at Overclock3D.net.
MUKii TransImp TIP-230U3-BK USB 3.0 Drive Enclosure at BigBruin.
QNAP TS-419P+ Turbo NAS 4-Bay NAS at Legit Reviews.
Kingston SSDNow V+180 64GB SSD at Techspot.

Cases & PSU:
SilverStone Sugo SG07 Mini-ITX Case at eTeknix.
Cooler Master 690 II Advanced NVIDIA Edition at APH Networks.
IN WIN IW-PP689 Pedestal Performance Server Chassis at TweakTown
Brenthaven Elite Laptop Sleeve at XSReviews.
Antec High Current Pro 1200W PSU at PC Perspective.
Cooler Master HAF 912 Case at Neoseeker.com.

Mods:
NZXT Bunker USB Security Module at Overclockers Online.

Audio/Visual:
HP ZR30w 30" LCD at TechReviewSource.
Canon EOS-1D Mark IV at TBreak.

Portable & Prebuilt:
E Fun Next2 Nextbook at Techwear Labs.
Sennheiser PC 333D G4ME Headset at Hardware Heaven.

Input Etc:
Samsung CLX-3185FW Color Laser Multi-function Printer at Overclockers Online.
Gigabyte Aivia K8100 gaming keyboard at APH Networks.
Thermaltake Challenger Pro Gaming Keyboard at BenchmarkReviews.com.

Software:
Steganos Privacy Suite 12 at TechReviewSource.



CES 2011 Roundup - Part 2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 11-January-2011  22:14:13 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Don't go to Vegas - Tales of a journalist's first CES at TechReport.
Hottest Producst of CES 2011 at Hot Hardware.
Smarter Homes with Samsung and LG at FutureLooks.
CES 2011: ThermalTake at ThinkComputers.
CES 2011 Day 2 corverage at Tweaknews.net.
CES 2011 Days 2 & 3 at Overclockers Club.
MSI Masters of Overclocking Arena 2011 at Legit Reviews.
EVGA shows off upcoming dual-GPU video card at Legit Reviews.
Razer Onza, Sixense and Switchblade at Legit Reviews.
Crusial Technology shows off Ballistix 'Smart Tracers' at Legit Reviews.
GIGABYTE at CES 2011 at Techgage.
Corsair at CES 2011 at Techgage.
Video: MSI's new INTEL Sandy Bridge P67 and H67 Series Motherboard at Futurelooks via YouTube.
Video: AMD Has Some Fun With the FUSION Platform at Futurelooks via YouTube.
Video: SAMSON Shows Off The New AirLine Micro Wireless Camera Mic System at Futurelooks via YouTube.
Video: Liquid Image Corp's Summit Series 1080p Recording Ski Goggles Demo'd at Futurelooks via YouTube.
Video: nVidia Shows Off Beer Dispensing Gaming System the KegPuter! at Futurelooks via YouTube.
Joby Accessories for Apple iPad at MEGA Tech News. (Yup, they really do capitalise it that way)
Wicked Audio Brings Forth New 3D and Helix Series Headphones at MEGA Tech News.
Organizing Games with Level Up at MEGA Tech News.
Getting Ergonomic with Smartfish at MEGA Tech News.
Hot ASUS Eee Slate video demo from CES 2011 at Silent PC Review.
Lenovo's exciting IdeaPad U1 at Silent PC Review.



Tuesday Afternoon (8 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 11-January-2011  17:33:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Intel and NVIDIA have surprised everyone with a $1.5B 6-year cross-licensing deal which resolves their patent disputes and may end up with NVIDIA GPU cores inside Intel CPUs. More here. "The cross-licensing agreement allows Intel to integrate NVIDIA technologies and those that are covered by our patents into their CPUs, such as Sandy Bridge, for example," said Jen-Hsuan. "And a cross-license allows us to build processors and take advantage of Intel patents for the types of processor we're building—Project Denver, Tegra, and the types of processors we're going to build in the future."

Jarryd98 spotted this video from Porsche about their new racing hybrid, the 918 RSR. With the 911 GT3 R Hybrid, the future of motorsports began in 2010. After several races we could well say: mission accomplished. But that's not enough for us. Our most important finding: Hybrid can do more. The Racing Lab 918 RSR gives you an idea about this "more".

ASUS are showing off an enormous video card. he EAH6970 DirectCu is perhaps the largest among the company's graphics cards that use a "direct-copper" GPU cooler in which heat pipes make direct contact with the GPU die. Such is the size of the cooler, that the card requires three expansion slots in your system. To make optimal use of the expansion brackets, ASUS wired out all TMDS links from the GPU, yielding a display connectivity consisting of two DVI and four full-sized DisplayPort 1.2 connectors.

Nintendo keep making us get off the couch, what with the Wii and now a pedometer in the 3DS. Much like the Pokéwalker packed in with the latest Pokemon games, the 3DS includes a built-in pedometer that tracks how much you walk, recording the data in its Activity Log program. Of course, Nintendo puts a twist on this stay-fit concept by rewarding pedestrians with “Game Coins”, which are used unlock content in games. Think of it as Achievement Points you earn simply by doing some real-world walking, which can later be spent on new weapons, or items, or anything else you can imagine.

Alch sent in this Firefox live webcam. We’re streaming cuteness. We’re dedicated to doing good. We’re out to make the web a better place. Thank you for supporting Mozilla Firefox.

Apparently Australians are only using 15% of their broadband quota on average. I doubt OCAU readers fall into that average, somehow. The firm conducted its study — Broadband Download Behaviour in Australia — The Disconnect Between Allowance and Usage (available in full from its website), over a period of four years, from 2006 to 2010. Its results show Australian users are far from exceeding their average broadband quotas of 45GB, with residential usage being about 7GB per month.

Timbot sent in this Linux admin IQ test, to see how nerdy you _really_ are.

If you're in any of the flood-affected areas, I really wish you all the best and hope you come out of it mostly unscathed. To keep on top of the stories and images etc, keep an eye on this thread and this thread.



Monday Night... Blog? (23 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 10-January-2011  23:01:35 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Just to give everyone a bit of a change of pace on OCAU, we're occasionally going to put out some editorial articles focusing on a particular technology issue or development; something to get hopefully get you thinking or at the very least, you can tell us if we're right or wrong.

For want of a better phrase, we're calling them 'blog' articles, but I promise that we won't be posting any bad poetry about that cute girl in English class who's obsessed with Justin Beiber and doesn't even know we exist. It'll be nothing but hard-hitting discussion, honest.

In the first entry, I ruminate about the changes in technology we've seen over the last 11 years. Old-man-style rambling? Perhaps, but we've certainly come along way in a short time...


Click here for the article!



Monday Night Photography (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 10-January-2011  19:43:38 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Well, that's Monday over with, only four more days...











And finally, from Redav, we have a time lapse HD video of work being done on Wivenhoe Dam:

Wivenhoe HD Sample from Peter Cook on Vimeo.




Testing Tapatalk (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 10-January-2011  14:49:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Over the weekend I've been looking into a mobile solution for OCAU and Tapatalk does seem to be the way to do it, despite it requiring a paid app on most platforms. So we have it installed and have done some testing, and now it's ready for you guys to test. Currently we are not on the public listing and we don't have the nagging popup installed on the forum, so you can only find us by specifically searching for "OCAU" in the Tapatalk app.

So, check it out and let me know of any issues in this thread.



Sponsor Specials (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 10-January-2011  14:03:06 (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 storage products, digital radios, fitness supplements, VoIP phones, media players, office chairs, phone accessories, air conditioning, lifestyle products, headphones and more. Check 'em out!


Monday Morning (9 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 10-January-2011  01:46:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg

One interesting thing from CES is NVIDIA's announcement of Project Denver, an ARM-compatible CPU. With Microsoft making noises about Windows on ARM, people are wondering how it will pan out. Microsoft said Windows on Arm would initially work on Arm-based chips from Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, which mostly go into smartphones and tablets. Just as Microsoft announced Windows for Arm on Wednesday at CES, Nvidia announced its first CPUs for PCs and servers, code-named Denver, which are based on the Arm architecture. More here.

Intel have responded to the concern about DRM in Sandy Bridge. Intel Insider is a service that enables consumers to enjoy premium Hollywood feature films streamed to their PC in high quality 1080P high definition. Currently this service does not exist because the movie studios are concerned about protecting their content, and making sure that it cannot be stolen or used illegally. So Intel created Intel insider, an extra layer of content protection. Think of it as an armoured truck carrying the movie from the Internet to your display, it keeps the data safe from pirates, but still lets you enjoy your legally acquired movie in the best possible quality.

Apparently the US Government has subpoenaed Twitter with regards to the Wikileaks investigation. This possibly includes the 600,000 or so Wikileaks followers on Twitter. Twitter is in a difficult position. Considering their stance during the Iranian elections supporting the freedom of speech, it will appear as if the company is backtracking or giving into pressure by handing over details of its users to its government.

TBreak interviewed David Roman from Lenovo at CES. I had the opportunity to have a casual chat with Lenovo’s CMO, David Roman, who explained how fast Lenovo has been growing and what their plans are. Meanwhile HWHeaven spoke with Matt Davis from AMD. AMD is intentionally crafting a marketing message around the PC experience, not just the speeds and feeds. For many consumers, buying a PC can be overwhelming.

Following on from the arcade project linked earlier, deepspring spotted this tiny version, for iPad. The iCADE was first conceptualized by Thinkgeek and unveiled on April Fool's day last year and ION partnered with the retailer to develop and bring the product to market. The iCADE provides an analog interface for gameplay through a joystick and buttons, connecting to the iPad via Bluetooth.

Here's an interesting video called Reformat the Planet. Penny-Arcade have the whole thing viewable here. Reformat the Planet began with the intention of documenting the influence of video game culture on an increasingly diverse range of modern art. Originally titled Play, the project served as the genesis of 2 Player Productions in 2005. The fledgling crew set out conducting interviews with various artists, including several noted members of the game development community.

XbitLabs look back at 2010, and make some PC Predictions for 2011. The year 2011 is most likely to be a defining year of the personal technology industry. X-bit labs believes that in 2011 the war between ARM and x86 will officially start, the market of tablet PCs will skyrocket, Google Android will become the most popular operating system for smartphones and overclocking stereo-3D will become a "free" feature on premium HDTVs. In addition, the beginning of the APU era will blur the lines between netbooks and notebooks, whereas Intel's Sandy Bridge will change the approach to CPU overclocking forever.

A recent murder conviction was achieved with help from the suspect's browser history. On Wednesday, November 25, 1998, Julie Jensen volunteered to help out in her son's third-grade classroom in Kenosha, Wisconsin. While she was there, she confided in her son's teacher; she feared that her husband was attempting to poison her, in part due to his Internet search habits.

NASA is trying to get back in touch with a Mars rover. Nine months after losing communication with the Mars rover Spirit, NASA is bumping up its efforts to reconnect with the robot. Scientists fear the that the rover, stuck in the dirt on the surface of the Red Planet, has succumbed to the frigid temperatures on Mars. Meanwhile, you can bid on NASA goodies from the past. For example, shown here is the headset Charlie Duke (future Apollo 16 moonwalker) used as CAPCOM to talk to the Apollo 11 astronauts, and this was the very headset he used to listen to the first words spoken from another world!

Finally, from Scoobth: Speed Demos Archive, the home to video game speed runs, is proud to present our second annual speed running marathon: Awesome Games Done Quick, a 4-day event played for charity and streamed live for the world to watch.



CES 2011 Roundup (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 10-January-2011  00:52:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a big pile of headlines from CES:

Motorola Defy defies water and lives on YouTube.
CoolerMaster @ CES 2011 on Bjorn3D.
Video Game Accessorizing with Nyko on MegaTechNews.
Retro Gaming with Hyperkin on MegaTechNews.
Vizio 'Versus' offers two-player head-to-head gaming on one screen on Joystiq, thanks Adam.
Spotlight Shuttle PC on TechWareLabs.
PowerColor on Bjorn3D.
Dell launches dual-core Streak tabler on ITNews, thanks dasuperham.
CES 2011: The Booth Babes on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake Makes Level 10 for the Masses on PCPerspective.
New OCZ products make their debut on PCPerspective.
Storage goodies from the Intel booth on PCPerspective.
Corsair's new P3 series SSD's sports next gen Marvell SATA
6Gb/sec controller
on PCPerspective.
Video: Corsair Link technology looks to expand on monitoring
and control of your PC
on PCPerspective.
Corsair Announces 2.1 Speakers, Cases and Water Coolers on LegitReviews.
Bigfoot Networks on ThinkComputers.
OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs and ZX Power Supplies on LegitReviews.
Intel Demos Future Sandy Bridge Capabilities on LegitReviews.
CES 2011 Day 1 Coverage: Corsair | Kingston | Thermaltake | Trendnet on Tweaknews.
CES 2011 - Futurelooks Press Day Round Up on FutureLooks.
CES 2011: Gigabyte Press Conference on ThinkComputers.
CES Coverage Pre CES and Day 1 on OCClub.
Sneak peek at NVIDIA's next dual-GPU monster with EVGA on TechReport.
Zalman @ CES 2011 on Bjorn3D.
IOGEAR HTPC Keyboards and 3D/HD Media Streamer on LegitReviews.
AMD Compares Brazo Thermals, Throws Water On Atom on HotHardware.
Lenovo Showcase on TBreak.
NVIDIA Tegra 2 and LG Dual-Core Super Phone on LegitReviews.
ASUS unveils Eee Slate EP121 on PCPerspective.
Corsair Press Event on ThinkComputers.
NVIDIA Talks Tegra 2 and Outs "Project Denver" CPU on HotHardware.
Micron RealSSD C400 256GB 25nm SSD Speed Demo on LegitReviews.
SanDisk SSD, nPower PEG and House of Marley on LegitReviews.
CES Unveiled Roundup on TechWareLabs.
ASUS at CES 2011 on Techgage.
MSI at CES 2011 on Techgage.
VIA Releases Nano X2 on PCPerspective.
Storage tidbits from CES: Unveiled event on PCPerspective.
Lenovo CES 2011 Launch Coverage on Tweaktown.
MSI P67A Big Bang Marshal Unveiled on BenchmarkReviews.
Micron Unveils Bigger, Faster C400 SSD - Hands On on HotHardware.

CES 2011 discussion continues in this thread.



8MadDog8's MAME Cabinet Build (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 9-January-2011  15:33:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg

8MadDog8 has posted a huge photo-log of his scratch-built MAME cabinet buildup:


Click for the worklog!



Sunday Reviews (2 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 9-January-2011  13:57:59 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabye P67A-UD4 at PureOC.
MSI P67A-GD65 Socket 1155 at OCIA.
MSI P67A-GD65 Socket 1155 at Guru3D.
ASUS P8P67 Socket 1155 at Pro-Clockers.

Memory:
GeIL EVOTWO, Patriot Sector 5 kits at InsideHW.

Video Cards:
PowerColor PCS+ HD6870 1GB GDDR5 at Bjorn3D.

Cooling:
CoolIT Vantage at XSReviews.

Storage:
Kingwin DM-2356 Dockmaster II at Virtual Hideout.
Corsair Force Series F90 SSD at TweakTown.

Cases & PSU:
Enermax LuxuRay at PureOC.
Seagate Momentus 750GB 2.5" HDD at TechwareLabs.
Zalman ZM1000-HP Plus 1000W at TweakTown.

Audio/Visual:
OHKI 42-inch Full HD LED TV at TWeakTown.
Arctic Cooling P321 headset at RBMods.com.
Sennheiser PC 163D headphones at TBreak.

Input Etc:
Logittech Wireless Trackball M570 at Virtual Hideout.
Razer Nostromo Gaming Keypad at TBreak.
ThermalTake Challenger Pro Gaming Tools at TechwareLabs.



CES 2011 - Tablets & Phones (2 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 8-January-2011  23:42:42 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

As most of you know, CES 2011 is happening right now in Las Vegas and news of upcoming tech is coming thick and fast. It seems that mobile computing is really getting a lot of attention, understandably. In the last couple of years, smartphones have really taken off and not far behind are tablet computers. Apple obviously has the iPhone and the iPad and while we're seeing some competitors in the last year or so for the iPhone, CES 2011 has a bunch of manufacturers bringing out their own tablets to battle the mighty Apple Corp.

We've already had a brief preview of Asus' new tablet line up a couple of days ago, but HotHardware has a somewhat closer look at the four tablets on offer along detailed specs and what can only be described as 'vague' price points, with the exception of the 'Slate' model.

TBreak has an even closer look, with a large number of hands-on images, showing the new Asus tablets running Android 'Honeycomb' along with a couple of videos. "Out of the two Android tablets, the transformer and the slider stand out. Also impressive, was ASUS’ concept of stretchable LCD display called IRIS."

Still with TBreak, they've had a good play with the new RIM Blackberry Playbook. I gotta say, it looks pretty nice. I want one, except for this: "I would very much like the PlayBook to connect directly to a BES server. Right now, it can only do that when paired with a BlackBerry. What this means is that anytime I want to access my BBM or calendar or emails, I will need my BlackBerry within 30 feet of the PlayBook." (BES meaning Blackberry Enterprise Server)

Microsoft of course aren't going to be left behind and have their own tablets to preview. "The Windows tablets launched at CES, some of which were shown on stage, were not groundbreaking as far as the user interface is concerned and appeared to offer the regular version of Windows 7 shoe-horned into a tablet form factor." Is it me or does that first picture of Steve Ballmer make him look like the Emperor in 'Return of the Jedi' about to fire lightning at Luke Skywalker? He is not a photogenic man.

Onto phones, and one that really wow'd Agg and myself was one that the lucky Engadget guys got to have a play with: the Motorola Atrix 4G. "But the most impressive part of the entire package is the software and user experience that ties it all together. The Webtop app essentially turns the Atrix 4G into a full blown PC, complete with windowed UI, an Mac OS X-like application dock, a full version of Firefox with Flash 10.1 support, a file manager, and Citrix remote desktop support (shown connected to a PC running Windows XP full screen). Better yet, the state of the Webtop app is maintained between sessions, allowing the Atrix 4G to be undocked at any time without missing a beat."

Finally, nVidia talked about their Tegra 2 processor, which apparently will "usher in the era of the 'Super Phone'". LG have already developed the Tegra 2-based Optimus 2X and I have to say it looks pretty shmick, although I dunno how long that battery will last. In the same presentation, nVidia also mentioned "Project Denver", an ARM-based CPU that they're developing for HPC (High Performance Computing).

Don't forget to check out more CES 2011 discussion on the OCAU forums here!



Misc Pics (34 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 7-January-2011  10:49:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Busy busy busy, so posting these a bit early today - enjoy!






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



Friday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 7-January-2011  01:56:46 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Input Etc:
CM Storm Spawn mouse on Vortez.
CM Storm Spawn Gaming Mouse on HWHeaven.
Thermaltake Challenger Pro Gaming Keyboard on OCIA.

Motherboard & CPU:
Intel DP67BG Motherboard Extreme Series Edition LGA1155 board on FunkyKit.
GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD7 LGA1155 board on Bjorn3D.
AMD Phenom II X4 840 3.20 GHz CPU on TechPowerUp.
AMD Phenom II X4 975 BE 3.60 GHz CPU on TechPowerUp.
ASUS Sabertooth P67 TUF LGA1155 board on Guru3D.
GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD4 LGA1155 board on Bjorn3D.
ASUS P8P67 LGA1155 board on Vortez.
Intel Sandy Bridge Motherboards Roundup on TBreak.
Asus vs Gigabyte Intel H67 LGA1155 board on OC3D.
TR reviews Sandy Bridge motherboards from Asus, Gigabyte, Intel, and MSI on TechReport.
Biostar TH67XE Intel H67 LGA1155 board on PCStats.
ASUS P8P67 Pro Socket 1155 Motherboard on Pro-Clockers.
Intel P67 3-Way Motherboard Roundup on NeoSeeker.

Audio Visual:
Sony KDL-55NX810 LED 3D TV on TechReviewSource.
Corsair HS1 Gaming Headset on PureOC.
NEC 23 Inch MultiSync EX231W monitor on OCOnline.
Corsair SP2500 2.1 Speaker System on HWHeaven.
Patriot PBO Core Box Office Media Player on OCIA.

Cases:
Silverstone Raven 2 Evolution (RV02-E) on TechSpot.
HDPLEX H10.ODD Fanless Chassis on MissingRemote.
Zalman Z9 Gaming Case on Pro-Clockers.

Storage:
Solid State Drives Roundup: OCZ RevoDrive, Crucial RealSSD C300, and Others on XbitLabs.
Hard Disk Drives Roundup: Winter 2010 on XbitLabs.
Kingston SSDNow 100 V+ 96GB on XSReviews.
Silicon Power 32GB Class 10 SDHC Memory Card on TechWareLabs.
Intel X25-M Mainstream (SSDSA2MH080G2R5) SATA Solid-State Drive on TestFreaks.
Lite-On iHAS524 DVD Writer on Tweaktown

Portable & Prebuilt:
BlackBerry Bold 9780 smartphone on TBreak.
Toshiba Satellite L645D-S4050GY laptop on TechReviewSource.
CyberPower Gamer Xtreme 5000 Intel P67 Sandy Bridge System on ThinkComputers.
NuSport Duffle-Pak bag on TestFreaks.

Cooling:
Noctua NH-C14 CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Noctua NH-C14 CPU Cooler on PureOC.

Video Cards:
Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 Razor 1GB - Single Slot Gaming on PCPerspective.
ASUS GTX580 1.5GB on Vortez.



Friday Timewaster - "Upgrade Complete" (6 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 7-January-2011  00:54:15 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

"Upgrade Complete" is an interesting take on flash games: You basically buy parts of the game using in-game cash. Want to load it? You pay $200 for the preloader, then you pay for a game menu, then if you want the game to look.. well... not crappy... you pay for that too. Pretty much everything in the game can be upgraded.

Obviously you're not using real money here, and you earn game money via the actual 'game' itself, which is a cheap space invaders knock off, but it's plenty fun and there's lots of positive reviews. Addictive? I'm not sure, but it'll kill some of your Friday while the boss isn't looking.


Click here to play "Upgrade Complete"!



Thursday Afternoon (7 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 6-January-2011  18:26:40 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

First up, we've got a few interviews with some well-known people in the tech world:

Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech - Anything we recommend on AnandTech, anything we suggest that someone part with their hard earned money for, ends up fully integrated into the daily lives of at least one of our editors. If you're going to recommend it, you had better well use it. Not just benchmark it, but actually use it. It doesn't matter whether it's a CPU, some memory or a smartphone, we owe it to the readership to stand by our recommendations.

AMD's Terry Makedon - We recently had the chance to interview Terry Makedon, Manager of Software Product Management for discrete GPU's, from AMD and talked about the history, philosophy and future plans for AMD's world domination when it comes to video cards and drivers. Terry Makedon is well known in the gaming community and is well known as CatalystMaker on Twitter where he directly interacts with fellow gamers.

Allan Campbell of KitGuru.net - Seriously, to be honest, it is difficult to nail down ‘who the audience is'. When I started DriverHeaven.net it was purely a hobby, so I would come home from my day job and just work on the site. It would cost me money every month for hosting and site expansion but I didn't care - the fact I could actually earn money down the line wasn't even in my thinking. The site became quite large a few years later and began to take over my life.

Onto something that's truly close to my heart - or at least my fingertips with all this typing I do these days - CNN has interviewed Cliff Kushler, who developed the Swype input system for various touch-screen devices: In the mid-1990s, Kushler, along with Dale Grover and the late Martin King, invented a method for quickly inputting text on a standard phone keypad. Called T9, the technology allowed users to press fewer buttons in order to type words.

In other news, the fast-talking Yahtzee over at Zero Punctuation has released his list of the 5 best and 5 worst games of 2010. I feel bad because I haven't played a single one.

TweakTown has discovered how to turn your Radeon HD 6950 2GB into a HD 6970. It's kinda specific to that model, I know, but still... a free upgrade (kinda) is a free upgrade (kinda). Of course, if you break your card doing this, it's not their fault. (Or OCAU's)

Techcrunch has reported on Google releasing a sneak peak of their eagerly awaited Android 3.0 mobile OS:"Honeycomb is the next version of the Android platform, designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. We’ve spent a lot of time refining the user experience in Honeycomb, and we’ve developed a brand new, truly virtual and holographic user interface." Er... holographic user interface?

I'm sure the vast majority of people who read this will know exactly how to build a computer but in case you're not sure and you're wanting to throw together a home theatre PC, Ninjalane.com have whipped out a guide to do just that. "There are basically 2 schools of thought when it comes to HTPC components. One group (the vocal ones) typically push the ultra low voltage concept suggesting that you need Mini ITX systems coupled with expensive decoding chips and Atom processors to get the best experience. While this approach will render your system extremely compact it does limit what you can do with the system beyond basic video playback. Another option is to use regular PC components and mod them into a case of your choice. The advantage here is easier access to hardware and generally more power."

Tbreak have taken a quick look at Skype 3.0 via the iPhone 4, with a view to the video call function: "In the past I’ve done outlandish field tests on a prior release of Skype, where on holiday I was in a moving car going up a hill above sea level in stormy weather running on edge and was speaking to a friend on the Euro train using 3G and got a good 20 minutes of talk out of it, but none was as rewarding as using a 1mb connection on both ends 1000km or so away from each other speaking to my little nieces from the comfort of home and it never felt mechanical or devoid of life for a minute."

And finally we've got two snippets from dasuperham (I guess he likes cured pork): 1: Oversupply sends DRAM prices to one-year low and 2: Tesla Model S to have 17-inch infotainment console powered by Tegra The Telsa, if you don't remember, is a battery-powered sports car that looks awesome and can move it, but you still have to plug it into the wall at night, just like for your RC car when you were a kid.



Forum Projects (5 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 6-January-2011  14:33:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some more interesting things from the forums. Remember if you see anything cool in your travels, send the link to news@overclockers.com.au and we'll check it out!


NavidsonRecord has a
custom metal PC

while DeejW is building one
from aluminium and plexi

and fatslob222 has a
mini acrylic server underway


converge has a very tidy
watercooled PC

archibaw reviewed
some Microlab speakers

while FlyN modded
his headphone cabling


ICEW0LF has an external peltier
hooked up to his watercooler

MoMaN69 reviewed the
Optus My Tab

and pyriX checked out
Windows Home Server 2011 "Vail"

Also, mnpctech had fun with some Hot Wheels cars and made a video:




Thursday Morning (3 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 6-January-2011  02:47:10 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

First off, don't forget about our Gigabyte 'Sandy Bridge' motherboard competition! Go check it out!

CES 2011 is starting up all the way over in Las Vegas, so there'll be plenty of snippets on upcoming gadgets and computer gear, but one of the first stories was of a vendor who was displaying their new iPad 2 case with a mockup iPad 2 in it. I can't imagine that Apple will be too happy about that, considering they're still trying to hold some secrecy before their product launches. The iPad 2 is rumoured to be released this month.

Funnily enough, Apple used to be ridiculously tight on their security for upcoming products, but Mac Rumors has listed the leaks for Apple gear in 2010. Maybe Apple aren't really that worried anymore?

As a teaser of CES 2011 goodness, Asus have announced FOUR tablet computers. Clearly tablet computing is going to be the Next Big Thing, and about time too. Of course, more talk about CES can be found in our forums here.

Mind you, we'll still have a use for big desktops full of fast gear, and Samsung have announced that they've developed "industry's first DDR4 DRAM, using 30nm class technology".

Of course, you need motherboards to plug memory sticks into, like AMD's new Zacate mini-ITX motherboards, which are based around AMD's Fusion APUs. Discussion here.

VIA have finally announced their new Nano X2 processors: VIA Nano X2 processors are the first truly optimized, low power dual-core processors. Combining two 64-bit ‘Isaiah’ cores in one die, VIA Nano X2 processors deliver industry leading performance-per-watt and improved multi-tasking ability, without consuming more power. Again, there's discussion about it on our forums here.

Moving on to gaming and Rock Paper-Shotgun have looked at Precursor, an FPS/RPG sci-fi game that's been ported to the west from Russia. "Precursors is an absurdly ambitious project undertaken by a team that didn’t really have a hope of pulling it off. Except they kind of did. It’s clunky and quirky and unpolished, and that doesn’t really matter."

Finally, for something that 99.99% of us can't afford, Top Gear took a Koenigsegg Agera to a Chinese air base. "I press the accelerator hard and have a demi-second to register one clear, naive thought. "910bhp? This doesn't feel like 910bhp. What the hell was all th--" Then the V8 grabs 3,000rpm and the twin turbos fire, and the Agera takes off like a fighter jet on full afterburner." Now I wish I'd asked for one for Christmas. Bugger.



Wednesday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 5-January-2011  20:07:32 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Cases:
NZXT Phantom Full Tower Case at ProClockers.
CORSAIR GRAPHITE 600T at TweakNews.
In Win Dragon Slayer mATX Case at Think Computers.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Acer Veriton VZ410G at TechReviewSource.

Input Etc:
Epson Perfection V600 scanner at TechReviewSource.
Roccat Kone gaming mouse at Tweak.dk
Samsung NX100 digital camera at TechReviewSource.

Storage:
Western Digital Caviar Green 3TB Hard Drive at HardwareHeaven.com

Lite-ON eNAU108 Slim External DVD/CD Writer
at Overclockers Online.
QNAP TS-659 Pro+ Turbo NAS Server at TweakTown.
Intel X25-M 80GB SSD at Big Bruin.
Kingston HyperX Max USB 3.0 SSD Review at Everything USB.
Archgon MD-9102 Portable Slimline DVD Drive at PureOC.

Power supplies:
Thermaltake Toughpower XT 875W and Toughpower 1200W at Overclockers Online.
NZXT HALE90 750W at APH Networks.

Memory:
Patriot Viper Xtreme Series DDR3 4GB 1600MHz Low Latency Memory Kit at TestFreaks.
Exceleram DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz 4GB Memory - at eTeknix.
Patriot 8GB DDR3 Viper Xtreme RAM Kit at Techware Labs.
Corsair Vengeance Series PC3-12800 8GB Kit at TweakTown.

Video Cards:
Diamond Radeon 6870 XOC at PureOC.

Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i5 2300 2400 & 2500K Sandy Bridge Review at Vortez.
Intel i7 2600K (Sandy Bridge) Review at Overclockers.com.
Foxconn H67A-S H67 Sandy Bridge Motherboard preview at Eteknix.
ECS P67H2-A2 Socket 1155 Motherboard at OverClock Intelligence Agency.
Intel Sandy Bridge P67 3-Way Motherboard Preview at Neoseeker.com.
ASUS Maximus 4 Extreme at Overclock3D.
GIGABYTE P67A-UD7 (Intel P67 Express) Motherboard at TweakTown.
ASUS P8P67 and P8P67 Deluxe Intel Sandy Bridge Motherboard at Legit Reviews.
ASUS P8P67 5-Way Motherboard Roundup at PureOC.
ASUS P67 Motherboards: P8P67 Deluxe and P8P67 Pro at Bjorn3D.
MSI Computer P67A-GD65 Intel P67 Motherboard at PCStats.
Gigabyte P67A-UD4 Motherboard at FunkyKit.

Cooling:
DeepCool N8 Notebook Cooler at ThinkComputers.
Akasa Revo AK-925 Loop Thermosyphon Heatsink at FrostyTech.
Zalman ZM-MFC1 Combo 5-Channel Fan Controller at FrostyTech.
Sunbeamtech Rheosmart 6 Fan Controller at PureOC.
EKL Alpenfohn Groß Clock'ner 2010 Edition Heatsink at FrostyTech.
Enermax T.B.Silence UCTB8 Cooling Fan 1 x 82 mm at RBMods.
Thermaltake Massive 23 LX Notebook Cooler at Virtual Hideout.
Deepcool Ice Blade Pro CPU Cooler at Hardware Secrets.
TTIC nPowertek Hurricane NPH-105 Heatsink from FrostyTech. (again)
DEEPCOOL V6000 VGA cooler at TweakNews.

Displays:
7" 800×480 USB Secondary LCD Monitor/picture frame at TestFreaks.
7" Sylvania SDVD8732 Widescreen Portable DVD Player w/Additional LCD Screen at TestFreaks.

Audio:
Arctic Sound P311 Bluetooth Headset on TBreak Technology.
Mad Catz TRITTON AX 720 High Performance Audio System at Mad Shrimps. (Mad Shrimps? Seriously? That's what the site's called?)



AMD Phenom II X4-840 and 975BE (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 5-January-2011  16:24:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg

It's AMD's turn for a CPU announcement, with their Phenom II X4-840 and 975BE being unveiled. These quad-core CPUs aren't too revolutionary, just filling out the line a little, particularly at the top end - the 975BE is 3.6GHz. In a world of 6-core desktop CPUs and Intel's new Sandy Bridge they've got a lot to live up to.

Coverage on various sites:
Core i5-2500K vs. Phenom II X4 975 BE CPU on HWSecrets.
AMD Phenom II x4 840 3.2GHz CPU/Processor on TechWareLabs.
AMD Phenom II X4 975 BE & 840 Quad-Core Processors on ExtremeOC.
AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition on Bjorn3D.
AMD Phenom II X4 975 Black Edition on Guru3D.
AMD Phenom-II X4-975 Black Edition on BenchmarkReviews.
AMD Phenom-II X4-840 Processor on BenchmarkReviews.
AMD Phenom II X4 975 BE and Phenom II X4 840 (Socket AM3) CPUs on Tweaktown.
AMD Phenom II X4 975BE and 840 CPU Reviews on LegitReviews.
AMD Phenom II X4 975 and 840 on PureOC.
AMD Phenom II X4 975 & 840 on OCClub.
AMD Phenom II X4 975BE CPU and ECS A890GXM-A2 on HWHeaven.

Discussion continues here.



Win a Gigabyte Motherboard! (3 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 5-January-2011  14:42:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

We have a Gigabyte PH67A-UD3 LGA1155 motherboard to give away to a budding film star. Details in the thread!


Click for the details!



Tuesday Night (7 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 5-January-2011  02:44:04 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

More news on Intel's freshly-released Sandy Bridge-based CPU's: they apparently will prevent capture of streamed video. The lengths they're going to, to stop piracy...

On the other bank of the River CPU, AMD planning to bring back their performance CPU "FX" branding. Thanks to dasuperham for both those items.

VR-Zone have taken a different path with fiddling with Intel's new cores and have tested the performance with 2- and 3-way AMD Crossfire and nVidia SLI graphic card rigs.

Xbit Labs has a look back at the last 10 years and the technology breakthroughs, covering such things as dual-core CPU's, SDD's and the iPhone.

Following on with SSD's, one of the big selling points has been the supposed speed increase, but TechwareLabs squeezes a bit more speed out of traditional spindle drives.

I'm not sure how accurate the title is, but Phoronix has released "The Interesting Tale Of AMD's FirePro Drivers". At the very least, it has lots of graphs.

Finally, viruses are just an accepted part of owning a computer and being connected to the internet, but if you've ever been curious about the inner workings of modern anti-virus software, Norton have released this video. It goes into quite some technical detail, you have been warned. Thanks to Asteroid.



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 4-January-2011  20:46:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's another quick snapshot of what people are up to in the forums:

ASUS Brings Us The First Of The Kinect Clones For PC in Overclocking & Hardware.
How to make your PS3 controller work with WIN7 in Games.
Kart Racing Pro (Kart Simulator) in Games.
Top Ten Games of 2010 in Games.
Game Journalism in Games.
Sales: Retail vs Steam in Games.
Corsair Launching Gaming Audio Series SP2500 2.1 PC Speakers in PC Audio.
DLNA Server - Which ones are good? in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
DIY top quality Windsurfer Wifi Antenna Booster in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
Ideas for concealing network cables in apartment in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
AMD sheds light on Bulldozer, Bobcat & Desktop Plans (recent info) in AMD Hardware.
Indigo xtreme review AMD in AMD Hardware.
Google CR-48 Chrome OS Netbook in Portable & Small Form Factor.
HP Envy 14 - a short review in Portable & Small Form Factor.
Monitors and TV's - is there a difference? in Video Cards & Monitors.
WoW, SC2 CrossFire in Video Cards & Monitors.
Poll: Which hi-end GPU are you opting for in Video Cards & Monitors.
VirtualBox 4.0 is released in Other Operating Systems.
Australian Tax Office finally gives Open Source some lovin' in Other Operating Systems.
Release: Commodore - A Company on the Edge in Retro & Arcade.
Need a english name for my yum cha chinese restaurant in The Pub.
Mind-blowingly Realistic Dreams Thread in The Pub.



Forum Projects (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 4-January-2011  12:45:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Still fairly quiet out there, so here's a few more interesting things from the forums:


digamma has made a
DIY 10+1 HDD rack

ViperAMD has a
spider-themed case

miahallen has a
very tidy mini PC


mnpctech has a
UT3-themed PC

windwithme posted an
Intel OC performance guide

Zwany has a video showing
his wooden PC worklog



Monday Night (6 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 3-January-2011  23:51:30 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Following the wake of Sandy Bridge excitement (check the thread in our Intel Discussion forum), Phoronix explores how well Sandy Bridge chips will work with Linux.

"But Sciby!", I hear you cry,"I don't care about Linux, I just wanna play games!" Coolio, I reply, and give you an article from TweakTown about Sandy Bridge gaming performance. Aren't I nice?

And even more on Sandy Bridge: Intel's Sandy Bridge sucks up to Hollywood with DRM - Intel's sellout to the big media companies makes it 'safer' for Hollywood studios to offer premium movies to consumers on locked-down personal computers. Thanks to Lee for that.

AirQ mailed us with this snippet: Soon we could see light-based networking, using ceiling lights as a transmitter. Nice idea, until that one guy in every office who's obsessed about saving power comes in and turns off the lights.

From the "Didn't they go the way of the Dodo?" file, a SOYO Fusion APU motherboard has surfaced at EXPreview. Last time I saw a SOYO board was one I owned back in 1998 with a Pentium 75. Good for them!

In a move that will really surprise no-one, China has 'effectively' banned Skype and other non-state owned voip communications, apparently by making it illegal. Didn't Dubai do this as well, some time ago?

Use Hotmail? Missing all your email? Well, you're not alone! I somehow doubt you'll be able to sue Hotmail for the missing data though.



Intel's "Sandy Bridge" Chipsets Unveiled (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 3-January-2011  18:29:43 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

And another NDA has been lifted off an Intel product, this one being a particularly big release: the Intel "Sandy Bridge" 32nm microarchitecture and processors based around it.

From Techreport's article: At the heart of Sandy Bridge is an essentially new processor microarchitecture, the most sweeping architectural transition from Intel since the introduction of the star-crossed Pentium 4. Nearly everything has changed, from the branch predictors through the out-of-order execution engine and into the memory subsystem. The goal: to achieve higher performance and power efficiency, even on single-threaded tasks, where the integration of multiple CPU cores hasn't been much help. Additionally, each of those cores holds a revamped floating-point unit that supports a new instruction set called AVX. These instructions allow the processing of vectors up to 256 bits in width, and the hardware supports them quite fully. The result should be much higher sustained rates of throughput for floating-point math, giving new life to media processing applications and other sorts of data-parallel computation.

For a massive list of reviews, architecture diagrams and compatible motherboards being released, head over to our Intel Discussion forum with a suitably massive thanks to Digital Monkey for collating the reviews.



Photography gallery (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 3-January-2011  15:33:16 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Here's a collection of photos from our ever-popular Photography & Video forum, including a couple of special collections:




NSFW (non-nude)




And then we have two collections, both different and interesting in their own right: "Boxwars" from Scarletxfi and Auschwitz & Birkenau from Sir.Eos:


"Boxwars"

Auschwitz & Birkenau



New OCAU twitter feed. (21 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 3-January-2011  13:30:12 (GMT +10) - by Sciby

Maybe we've been avoiding it because we're just not that social, or maybe we've been wary of it because of all the warnings from our mothers about strange, dirty people that lurk on the Internet, but OCAU now has a Twitter feed!


Head on over and follow us on Twitter!


Honestly, it was that wonderful Social Network movie that really won our hearts over to the idea, but more importantly, it'll allow you to easily keep up to date on what's going on OCAU if you're unable to get to the site itself. We'll be "tweeting" site updates, any interesting snippets and whatever else grabs our fancy, so go follow us. You know you want to.

Also, don't forget we have an OCAU official page on Facebook, so join us on there too.



Forum Projects (2 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 2-January-2011  21:49:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a few interesting things from the forums:


n2p4u checked out the
Lenovo Y560 Core I7 laptop

Alkahestic walks us through
his first watercooling project

ChillerSR2 has a detailed
extreme cooling worklog


zfind looked at the
Huawei U8800 Android phone

EpicPC has a video review
of the HTC Mozart WinPhone7

thorpee has a DIY
all-in-one PC



Sunday Evening (1 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 2-January-2011  18:12:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Whirlpool have posted their Australian Broadband Survey 2010. As always, the survey is not about advertisers or marketing. We just want to discover and share your opinion on important issues like the NBN, prices, customer service and reliability of service. We ask many of these questions every year, but this helps us learn if things have improved, deteriorated, or stayed much the same.

Check out this cool beer robot. This is the maiden voyage of my mini fridge that now shoots beers via iPhone. It is controlled by an iobridge via a web based iPhone interface and shoots the beers from an air cannon in the housing.

The endless stream of phone chargers into landfill may come to an end soon, with a MicroUSB connection becoming an EU standard.

However Malware infected apps are also becoming more common, on Android at least. So far Gemini has been observed grafted onto legitimate apps — primarily games — that are downloaded to Android smartphones by unknowing patrons of third-party Android app stores. The infected apps reportedly then request an abnormal level of access to devices and then, boom, it’s a zombie-phone.

The image of a World of Warcraft player as a chair-bound cornchip-shredder may be about to change, with Kinect being used to control it and other PC games. To move the character forwards and backwards, the player simply leans in the corresponding direction. To turn the camera, the user moves the left hand from side to side. The left hand can also be used to target an enemy by moving forward in a grabbing motion while the right hand can be moved to trigger different attack spells.

From dasuperham, word of a version of Windows for ARM processors. Bloomberg, which broke the news this afternoon, reported that sources familiar with Microsoft's plans said this version of Windows will continue to work on x86 processors, but that it should improve battery performance on devices like tablets and other devices that use ARM processors.

InsideHW checked out 3DMark 11, as did OCClub. LostCircuits meanwhile wondered about the Physics benchmark. None of these questions should impact the value of 3DMark 11 as a benchmark, however, it is clear that under the circumstances the Physics benchmark cannot be considered a classic CPU benchmark since other factors can have an impact of up to 16% (from the limited sample we were running) in the score spread.



Sunday Midday (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 2-January-2011  13:02:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg

CNN look back at the Top 10 Tech Fails of 2010. Even tech titans such as Apple and Google had some rough moments in 2010. And some ambitious ideas that must have made sense behind closed doors just didn't translate well to the real world. Or if you prefer a more positive spin, here's the Top 10 Tech Trends of 2010 from them instead.

Speaking of technology failures, another problem with iPhone alarms has appeared in 2011, with info here, here, thanks Adam. Update: 9to5 Mac says that the bug will get fixed all by itself once the calendar hits January 3rd. We haven't confirmed this, but if it turns out to be the case, that's pretty good news. In less good news, the issue seems to be affecting iOS 4.1 and 4.0.2 as well.

Intel have some tiny new SSDs, with more info here. The new line promises X25-performance at just one-eighth the size, measuring a mere 51-mm by 30-mm and only 5-mm thick. The drives also weigh just 10 grams, making them ideal for dual-drive notebooks and AIO desktops, single-drive tablets and low-power, rugged embedded industrial or military applications.

Intel also have a video about anti-theft laptop technology. Actually there's a few videos about the technology in their channel.

TechARP checked out the HighPoint Rocket 620 from a performance perspective. Even though the Rocket 620 is a SATA 6 Gbps controller, there have been reports that it's slower than the Intel ICH10's SATA controller, causing the new 3 TB Caviar Green to run slower than the previous generation. So we put it to the test.

The last Kodachrome processing lab is shutting down. An unlikely pilgrimage is under way to Dwayne’s Photo, a small family business that has through luck and persistence become the last processor in the world of Kodachrome, the first successful color film and still the most beloved. That celebrated 75-year run from mainstream to niche photography is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday when the last processing machine is shut down here to be sold for scrap. Discussion here.

MomentumBlog have an interview with the guy behind IMDb. The founder of one of the most successful websites in the world has been unveiled as a self-confessed technology geek who still runs the website from his former family home in Bristol. Colin Needham, from Stoke Gifford, began the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) in 1990 as a hobby, and now the website is the 42nd most popular on the planet, attracting some 57million unique users every month.



Interesting Forum Threads (3 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 1-January-2011  17:28:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a snapshot of what's going on in some of the forums. 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 try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the handy Who Quoted Me? feature.

Can a washing machine damage computer hardware? in Overclocking & Hardware.
Come home, computer on. possible causes? in Overclocking & Hardware.
Fractal Design unveils the Define Mini PC chassis in Overclocking & Hardware.
Does Anyone Solely Use A Virtual PC or... How Much Do You Virtualise? in General Software.
WTF? FBI Paid OpenBSD Devs For Backdoors? in Other Operating Systems.
World's most powerful flashlight and bike lights in Electronics.
Phase out VGA in next 5 years in Retro & Arcade.
Anyone using SSD drives in your production servers in Business & Enterprise.
Physical building security and electronic access control in Business & Enterprise.
2010: historic year in science in Science.
Why don't boats have gearboxes in Other Toys.
My home surveillance thread (Build up) IP Cameras, software, etc in Audio Visual.
Network Ten's next channel - Eleven in Entertainment.
J-20: Chinese Stealth Fighter in Current Events.
Companies threaten mass-firings if they don't get their way.. $1000 online GST issue in Current Events.
Is the internet weakening the brain's background memory recovery abilities? in Current Events.
New Carport because of a knobhead hoon in Lifestyle.
How to transition from IT into Engineering, I'm bored of IT in Career, Education & Finance.
What is OCAU's level of education? in glasnt's face.
captainpotato's 50cc scootering odyssey in Motoring.
Man playing real-life Frogger hit by car in The Pub.



Saturday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 1-January-2011  16:32:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cases:
In Win Dragon Rider Full Tower E-ATX on LegitReviews.
In Win Dragon Rider on OCClub.
Antec ISK100 Mini-ITX Desktop / HTPC Chassis on Tweaktown.
Lian Li PC-V2120 Full Tower on TechSpot.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Toshiba's Portégé R705 13.3" Ultraportable Notebook on HotHardware.
HP Omni 100-5050 PC on TechReviewSource.
Samsung SF510 Notebook on PureOC.

Input Etc:
Speedlink Ferret Gaming Mouse on RBMods.
Razer Naga Molten Special Edition MMO Gaming Mouse on HWHeaven.
Thermaltake TT ESports Challenger Pro Gaming Keyboard on Tweaknews.
Thermaltake Challenger Pro Keyboard on NinjaLane.
Zowie EC2 Gaming Mouse on TechPowerUp.

Storage:
I-NA215U USB 3.0 enclosure and I-NPC01 USB 3.0 card on Bjorn3D.
Zalman ZM-MH200 U3 USB 3.0 Dual HDD Docking Station on ThinkComputers.
Kingston 32GB Micro SDHC Card on BigBruin.
LG Hitachi 8x Blu-Ray Burner WH08LS20 on OCIA.
Mach Xtreme MS-DS 120 GB SSD on TechPowerUp.

Memory:
Silicon Power - Xpower 4GB RAM Kit on TechWareLabs.
Corsair Vengeance 12GB DDR3 Memory Kit on Guru3D.
Patriot Viper Xtreme DDR3-2000 6GB Triple Channel on ThinkComputers.
OCZ DDR3 PC3-17000 ReaperX HPC 8GB Dual Channel Kit on Pro-Clockers.

Video Cards:
MSI Radeon HD 6850 Cyclone 1GB Power Edition on Tweaktown.
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II on TBreak.
EVGA GeForce GTX 570 SuperClocked on TechReaction.
MSI R6850 Cyclone Power Edition on TBreak.

Motherboard & CPU:
Asus Crosshair IV Extreme AM3 board on PCPerspective.
ASRock P55 Extreme4 LGA1156 ATX Motherboard on FutureLooks.
Gigabyte P67A-UD4 LGA1155 board on PureOC.
Gigabyte H55N-USB3 mini-ITX LGA1156 board on OCClub.
Jetway HA12-LF AM3 board on TechWareLabs.
Biostar TP67XE LGA1155 board on HWSecrets.
ECS Elitegroup P55H-AK LGA1156 ATX board on FutureLooks.

Cooling:
Thermalright HR-02 Heatsink on Overclockers.com.
Cooler Master CM Storm SF-19 Strike Force Gaming Laptop Cooler on TweakNews.
CoolIT Systems ECO A.L.C. 240 CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Deepcool Ice Matrix 600 Heatsink on Frostytech.
Zalman CNPS9900 Max on OCClub.
Hiyatek HY-CF-6505 Laptop Cooling Pad Plus Ball on TechArkade.
Deepcool Ice Matrix 400 Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Thermalright's Shaman VGA Cooler: The Quiet Giant? on TomsHardware, thanks IntelInside.
Xigmatek S128264 Aegir Stacked Heatpipe Heatsink on FrostyTech.
Corsair A70 CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler on eTeknix.




Advertisement:

All original content copyright James Rolfe.
All rights reserved. No reproduction allowed without written permission.
Interested in advertising on OCAU? Contact us for info.

Hosted by Micron21!
Advertisement:

Recent Content


Mini Server Rack
Gashapon



SpaceX Starlink



T-Force Cardea
Zero Z330 NVMe SSD



Team Group T-Force
Vulcan G SSD



Synology DS720+ NAS



Raspberry Pi 4
Model B 8GB



Retro Extreme!