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April 2011 |
EVGA have an EvE-themed PC up for grabs in a new contest, thanks Bullus. You do not have to be an EVE Online subscriber to win, and this promotion is open to our global community! Sign up today, fill out the short questionnaire and you're eligible to win!
South Australia, once the stumbling block for the R18+ games debate, now say they will have adult ratings for games regardless of what the other states and territories do. O'Connor hinted at the possibility that each state and territory could adopt different arrangements should consensus not be reached. This is exactly what South Australia has now done.
Gigabyte have a video demonstrating their new touchscreen BIOS. With Touch BIOS™, GIGABYTE engineers have completely re-imagined how users can interact with their BIOS, allowing for a more familiar icon-based user experience. In fact, with a touch screen monitor, GIGABYTE Touch BIOS™ is as easy to use as most apps on your iPhone. Hrm, I'm not sure if system-pwning settings should be made too easy for newbies to fiddle with.
Sniper meanwhile spotted this video about uranium maybe being useful for data storage in the future. Would you buy a hard drive containing uranium? One of our team has made a significant breakthrough involving a uranium compound which acts as a molecular magnet.
HardOCP have some 3-way action from both sides of the video card camp. We've seen what a Radeon HD 6990 can do when paired with a Radeon HD 6970 for "Tri-Fire" performance. Now it is time to find out what three NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 video cards in 3-Way SLI game like in comparison. We will look at A2A performance comparisons and discuss which setup offers the best gameplay experience. Discussion here.
ArsTechnica have a cool article testing if racing games make you a real racer or not. All of this has been great fun for racing fans, but is any of it really true-to-life? What do racing video games teach you about racing real cars? I was recently able answer to this question when I got the opportunity to go ChumpCar racing.
NeoWin remind us that Microsoft's anti-trust shackles lift soon. Thirteen years later a federal judge has ruled that on May 12, 2011 the antitrust case will expire. Since 2002, U.S District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has dealt with the case and today said that "May 12 will close an important chapter in the history of antitrust law."
Check out this zombie-proof house. Also quite an effective response to religious/political doorknockers, I imagine.
Microsoft's talking paper clip is back, in a way. After killing off the cartoon paper clip, Microsoft decided to revive him (I guess it's a him?) in limited fashion as part of a learn-how-to-use-Office game called "Ribbon Hero 2: Clippy's Second Chance."
The Chaser weren't allowed to put their live spin on the Royal Wedding as it progressed, but sabz spotted these sample clips so you can still get your fix.
Shuttle Launch
(4 Comments)
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Saturday, 30-April-2011 02:22:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The Space Shuttle Endeavour is preparing to launch in 3 hours or so for its final mission, and the second-last ever Shuttle mission. Atlantis is flying that one in late June.
During the 14-day mission, Endeavour and its crew will deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) and spare parts including two S-band communications antennas, a high-pressure gas tank and additional spare parts for Dextre.
There's a launch blog and you can watch the launch on NASA TV.
Friday again!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Folding@Home Chimp Challenge 2011
(0 Comments)
(link)
Friday, 29-April-2011 12:25:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Remember, the annual Chimp Challenge is starting soon. This is a Folding@Home competition between 9 online communities, including OCAU. I'm sorry to report that last year we came dead last in the competition. Surely this year we can do better, with your help? :)
Full details in this thread.
Forum Projects
(1 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 28-April-2011 21:23:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some more interesting things from the forums:
Thursday Evening Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 28-April-2011 20:27:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
PowerColor Radeon 6670 1GB on PureOC.
HIS 6950/6970 Fan Turbo 2GB and HIS 6850 IceQ X Turbo 1GB Graphics Cards on iXBTLabs.
AMD Radeon 6790 (Barts LE) on RBMods.
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 2WIN 2GB dual-GPU on PCPerspective.
Software:
Microsoft Windows Intune on BusinessComputingWorld.
Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 on Tweaktown.
Cases:
Boogie Bug Dub Style M (Zalman Z-Machine GT1000) on eTeknix.
Cooler Master CM Storm Enforcer on ThinkComputers.
BitFenix Colossus Window Gaming Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Zalman Z9 Plus Mid-Tower on Bjorn3D.
Thermaltake's Level 10 GT enclosure on TechReport.
Audio Visual:
Top 5 hottest headphones for you this summer on TBreak.
A quick listen to Psyko's Carbon surround-sound gaming headset on TechReport.
Tritton AX Pro True 5.1 Headset on HWHeaven.
Monster iClarityHD Bluetooth Speaker 100 on TBreak.
Canon PowerShot Elph 500 HS on TechReviewSource.
Westone ES5 Custom In-ears on TechPowerUp.
Portable & Prebuilt:
BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet on TechSpot.
Motorola Xoom Tablet on HWSecrets.
Apple iPad 2 on BusinessComputingWorld.
Acer Iconia 6120 Dual-Screen Notebook on BenchmarkReviews.
Power Supply:
Enermax NAXN 82+ 750W on VR-Zone.
Zalman ZM850-HP Plus 850W on TechPowerUp.
Xigmatek NRP-MC1002 1000W on Tweaktown.
Cooling:
Corsair H60 Water Cooling Kit on OCClub.
Antec Formula 6 Nano Diamond Thermal Compound on eTeknix.
Swiftech Polaris 120 on PureOC.
Storage:
Mach Extreme MX-GX 16GB USB 3.0 on OCOnline.
LaCie XtremKey Thumb Drive on Metku.
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB Portable (USB
3.0) Hard Disk Drive on TechARP.
Synology DiskStation DS411+ on LegionHW.
Intel series 320 SSD on Guru3D.
Input Etc:
SteelSeries QcK mass Mousing Surface on APHNetworks.
DIATEC Filco Majestouch-2 Tenkeyless NKR ASCII with Red Switch Keyboard on MadShrimps.
Misc:
TP-Link Ultimate Wireless N Gigabit Router on TechWareLabs.
Mushkin Ridgeback 996991 PC3-16000 8GB on OCClub.
Gigabyte G1.Assassin motherboard on HWSecrets.
The SETI project has had to temporarily shut down due to financial difficulties. The array has been put into hibernation mode, with a skeleton crew to keep it from deteriorating, while SETI looks for new sources of cash. With that and the second-last Shuttle mission ever launching on Friday, it's a kinda depressing week to be a space nut.
But cheer up, because Australia's internet is the world's 4th most free, apparently. US-based research and civil liberties advocacy group Freedom House studied connectivity barriers, content restrictions and user rights in 37 countries between January 2009 and December 2010.
The BBC have an interesting video about gaming experiences when colourblind. The BBC technology journalist is colour blind and unable to detect the difference between red and green. The colours are used to identify players in some of the world's most popular games. He has discovered that some developers are introducing options to help people with his condition, while other games leave him confused.
XbitLabs checked out the performance of a few graphics cards in Crysis 2. Today we are going to take a look at one of the most highly anticipated ??? titles of 2011 - Crysis 2 First-Person Shooter video game. The predecessor is still the benchmark to beat even for the latest AMD Radeon HD 6990 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 dreadnoughts and the second part is expected to raise the performance bar even higher.
There's a report doing the rounds of an innocent man busted for kiddy porn after leaving his wireless unlocked. Plenty of others would agree. The Sarasota man, for example, who got a similar visit from the FBI last year after someone on a boat docked in a marina outside his building used a potato chip can as an antenna to boost his wireless signal and download an astounding 10 million images of child porn, or the North Syracuse man who in December 2009 opened his door to police who'd been following an electronic trail of illegal videos and images. The man's neighbor pleaded guilty April 12. So, password-protect your router. Or, don't, and blame everything you do on some guy who was parked in a van outside your house.
If you've got $100M spare, you could buy MySpace. Seems expensive? Not when you consider News Corp paid $580M for it in 2005. Parties reportedly interested in acquiring MySpace include private equity firm THL Partners, Redscout Ventures and Criterion Capital, owner of social network Bebo. Chinese Internet holding company Tencent is also reportedly interested as is Myspace co-founder Chris De Wolfe. What’s not yet clear is what any of these companies plan to do with MySpace if a sale goes through.
BrightSideofNews have some info on AMD's upcoming "Bulldozer" cores. Now a Chinese website published excerpts from datasheets explaining the technical specifications of various Bulldozer samples. These are not the usual engineering samples we are talking about here (those are ticking at 1.8 and 2.6GHz), but samples of actual products that are going to be launched on June 7, 2011 in Taipei, Taiwan.
Tech-Report checked out Dell's R810 server, which moves on a bit from the R610 currently powering OCAU. They also look at the Intel Nehalem-EX 8-core CPUs it uses. Crammed into the EX are fully eight CPU cores and 24MB of L3 cache—enough elements that the processor's architects decided the simpler internal communications arrangement in quad-core Nehalems wouldn't suffice. Instead, they gave the EX an internal ring bus, a high-speed, bidirectional communication corridor with stops for each key component of the chip.
Meanwhile VR-Zone explore the SSD caching feature of Intel's upcoming Z68 Express chipset. Of course, those who can't wait for the official launch can already purchase the Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 board from the retail market, first available in Taiwan and then the rest of the world in the coming weeks. Other brands like ASUS and ASRock are set to hit the retail next. Those enthusiasts hoping they can overclock their Sandy Bridge better on Z68 than the P67 will probably be disappointed but there is one important feature of Z68 that matters, and that is the SSD caching.
HardOCP visited Globalfoundries Fab 8 which is under construction. What you will see in our film is an hour long tour of the Fab 8 module 1facility condensed into about 8 minutes. You will get to see is a lot of the building's infrastructure that will be walled up soon. Just seeing a glimpse of what is going into the engineering and building of such a behemoth is something to behold first hand.
Wednesday Afternoon Reviews
(1 Comments)
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Wednesday, 27-April-2011 14:12:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Sharkoon XTATIC Headset on OC3D.
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Tactic 3D Sigma Headset on Tweaktown.
V-Moda Remix Remote Headphones on DragonSteelMods.
Olympus XZ-1 digicam on TechReviewSource.
FyreTV BoXXX Media Player on MegaTechNews.
Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 6790 1GB DDR5 on Motherboards.org.
ASUS GTX 570 vs HD 6970: Two DirectCU Cards Head-to-head on InsideHW.
HIS Radeon HD 6850 & 6870 IceQ X Turbo Crossfire on TechSpot.
HIS IceQ X HD 6790 Turbo on TBreak.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6570 512MB on ThinkComputers.
ASUS GTX 570 and GTX 580 DirecCU II on PureOC.
Sapphire Radeon HD6670 on OCClub.
GIGABYTE Radeon HD 6990 on Bjorn3D.
Motherboard & CPU:
Sandy Bridge and Lynnfield Quad-Core Processors Compared on iXBTLabs.
Intel Core i7-990X Extreme Edition Processor and DX58SO2 Motherboard on FutureLooks.
ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional LGA 1155 Motherboard on PCPerspective.
ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe Motherboard on Vortez.
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4-B3 LGA1155 on XbitLabs.
ASUS P8P67 Evo Motherboard on NinjaLane.
ASRock E350M1 Motherboard on iXBTLabs.
Gigabyte P67A-UD7 Sandy Bridge Motherboard on Overclockers.com.
Memory:
Crucial Ballistix DDR3-2133 (3×2GB) – DDR3 with Thermal Monitoring on TechReaction.
Kingston HyperX 8GB 1866MHz SO-DIMM Memory Kit For Notebooks on LegitReviews.
G.Skill RipjawsX 1600MHz CL7 4GB DDR3 Kit on VR-Zone.
Cooling:
GELID Rev. 2 Icy Vision GPU Cooler on Techgage.
GlacialTech Siberia CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
BeQuiet! Dark Rock Pro C1 CPU cooler on XSReviews.
Thermolab Trinity CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Cooler Master Turbine Master Mach 0.8 Fan on eTeknix.
NZXT Sentry LXE Fan Controller on BigBruin.
Arctic Freezer 13 Pro CPU Cooler on RBMods.
Cases:
Lancool PC-K57 on HWSecrets.
3R System L-900 V.REX F8 on HWSecrets.
In Win BUC Gaming Computer Chassis on HWSecrets.
Thermaltake's Level 10 GT enclosure on TechReport.
Cooler Master Centurion C5 II Red Edition on TechReaction.
Thermaltake Armor A30 on HWSecrets.
Sentey Arvina GS-6400B on APHNetworks.
Xigmatek Elysium on TechPowerUp.
Corsair Obsidian 650D on Guru3D.
Lian Li PC-AO4 Mini-Tower on BenchmarkReviews.
AZZA Toledo 301 Mid-Tower on Techgage.
Power Supply:
Antec High Current Gamer 620W on HWHeaven.
Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1000W on Vortez.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 760 W on TechPowerUp.
Corsair TX850 V2 PSU on VR-Zone.
Corsair Gaming Series 800 W on TechPowerUp.
FSP Aurum 600 on TechWareLabs.
Storage:
Zalman N128 128 GB SSD on TechPowerUp.
Seagate Barracuda ST3500418AS 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 500GB Slim Hard Drive on DragonSteelMods.
LG BH10LS30 10x Blu-ray Burner on BigBruin.
Thermaltake Silver River II 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure on APHNetworks.
Seagate Barracuda ST31000528AS 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/s 1TB Hard Drive on DragonSteelMods.
Portable & Prebuilt:
HTC Arrive: Sprint's First WP7 Smartphone on HotHardware.
Samsung Galaxy S II - Thin smartphone on ComputingOnDemand.
ASUS N53SV Notebook on HWSecrets.
ASUS Eee PC 1215N Review: Atom and Ion, Back Together Again on PCPerspective.
Maingear eX-L 15 Gaming Notebook on HotHardware.
Low Carbon PC WIND Mini Computer on ComputingOnDemand.
Tweaktown Commander PC on Tweaktown.
Misc:
Canon Pixma MG6120 multifunction printer on TechReviewSource.
TrendNET TEW-691GR and TEW-687GA Wireless-N Gaming Router and Adapter on XbitLabs.
QPAD HeatoN XL Gaming Mouse Pad on eTeknix.
PSN Data Theft
(0 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 27-April-2011 13:09:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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PlayStation users will probably have noticed that the PSN has been down for a few days, and now Sony has explained why - a huge theft of personal data has occurred, possibly including credit card details. Despite its PlayStation Network being knocked offline for the past week, Sony waited until today to notify its 77 million customers that an "illegal and unauthorised person" gained access to their names, addresses, email address, birthdates, usernames, passwords, logins, security questions and more. The company also could not rule out credit card numbers and expiry dates being stolen. But even if no credit cards were stolen, the other details are enough to cause significant identity theft issues.
Discussion here.
Forum Projects
(2 Comments)
(link)
Tuesday, 26-April-2011 18:33:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some interesting things from the forums:
Interesting Forum Threads
(5 Comments)
(link)
Monday, 25-April-2011 20:25:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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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.
CoolerMaster Hyper 212+ Review in Overclocking & Hardware.
Japanese Overclocker Reach 6Ghz On Sandy Bridge in Overclocking & Hardware.
Noob Moments in Extreme Cooling.
Martins LiquidLab.org Water Cooling Optimiser Calculator in Extreme Cooling.
Mineral Oil in Extreme Cooling.
Kogan starts selling Ubuntu-based netbooks in Other Operating Systems.
My quest for the perfect monitor in Video Cards & Monitors.
Games with natural enviroments? in Games.
Sanctum - Indie FPS Tower Defence in Games.
Portal 2 in Games.
disposing of 30+ HDDs.. recommend a method of destruction in Storage & Backup.
Going ZFS, need some advice in Storage & Backup.
USB key RAID Array. Is it worth it? in Storage & Backup.
Movie: Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) in Entertainment.
Denny's Baconalia in Geek Food.
The Hot Chip survey in Geek Food.
Eviction, a landlord's view in Career, Education & Finance.
7,500 Words by the Chinese State on U.S. Human Rights Abuses in Politics & Policies.
Tyre ratings in Motoring.
Historic photos from 1994 Adelaide F1 in Motorsport.
Electrifying your brain makes you a pro gamer in The Pub.
Nanotechnology in clothing (quick survey) in The Pub.
Today is of course ANZAC Day, so take some time to remember, and give thanks.
There's still a few days left in the MSI Master Overclocking Arena AUNZ Qualifier + Giveaway. This year the benchmark will be 3D MARK VANTAGE by FUTUREMARK, the 2 highest scores will earn an invite to the APAC MOA grand final in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Here's a behind-the-scenes video of a Google datacentre. This video tour of a Google data center highlights the security and data protections that are in place at our data centers. Also, Valve's snack bar. Valve discusses their fantastic snack bar.
If you were worried about your Google Videos vanishing into the ether, Google have decided they will help you move them to YouTube, and may be even moving it all over automatically. Google Video users can rest assured that they won't be losing any of their content and we are eliminating the April 29 deadline. We will be working to automatically migrate your Google Videos to YouTube. In the meantime, your videos hosted on Google Video will remain accessible on the web and existing links to Google Videos will remain accessible.
Mpot spotted this slightly embarrassing story about the hazards of using stock photography. The US Postal Service regrets issuing a stamp featuring a photo of a Las Vegas casino's replica Statue of Liberty rather than the original in New York harbour, a spokesman has said.
Dailytech report on AMD's return to profit, largely thanks to Fusion. After a couple years of losses, AMD finally appears to be turning the corner this year. The company reported [press release] an impressive net income of $510M USD on revenue of $1.61B USD.
Meanwhile Sniper spotted a story about Intel maybe using liquid cooling for next-gen enthusiast processors. For many years Intel has been bundling rather simple cooling solutions with its boxed chips, but recently the company started to offer coolers with heat-pipes for microprocessors in LGA1366 and LGA1156 form-factors. At the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing, China, Intel’s engineers presented a paper called “Overclocking Intel Processor Based Desktop and Mobile Platforms”, where they discussed past, present and future of the company’s support of overclocking as a phenomenon.
If your router is too hot, maybe you need a router cooler. Or you could cut a hole in the top and install a fan, like many people do already. Not to be outdone, Scythe have a new crazy-huge CPU cooler called the Susanoo. Susanoo measures 210 x 210 x 160 mm, weights 1,565 grams and features a D.B.S (Double Block Structure) design with no less than 12 copper heatpipes. Also included are four 100mm Slip Stream fans which can operate at 500 to 2,000 RPM, and have a sound output of up to 37.69 dBA.
Oh Smeg has more info on the USA's Internet ID plan. There's "no reliable way to verify identity online" at the moment, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said, citing the rising tide of security threats including malware and identity theft that have grown increasingly prevalent over the last few years. "Passwords just won't cut it here."
He also noticed that the Australian Pirate Party is looking for details of negotiations between copyright holders and the federal government. "We want to see what figures they're giving to the government because we believe in transparency and the right for people to know what representations are being made. If (the government) is basing policy direction on (content industry supplied) figures it's especially important that we can scrutinise those figures," Mr Serkowski said.
Rage pointed out this Minecraft-like game called Ace of Spades. Ace of Spades is a freeware, multiplayer Minecraft-alike that takes Minecraft’s cuboid building mechanics and drapes a World War 1 setting on top of it, with the end result being a huge, immersive, dynamic game of capture the flag. Some discussion here but it seems a bit problematic.
Carl sent in this 3D scanner app for iPhones etc. Trimensional works by using the iPhone’s screen to shine four different lighting patterns on the subject while also using the device’s front-facing camera to snap photos. It produces a full 3-D model that you can zoom into, pan around and view from any angle.
This isn't a game, but it'll waste 7 minutes of your time: an amazing Lego Mindstorms contraption, thanks JH.
Sunday Afternoon Reviews
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Sunday, 24-April-2011 14:25:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Power Supply:
OCZ ZX Series 1250W on TechPowerUp.
Enercell Portable Power Bank for iPod and iPhone on TechWareLabs.
Corsair TX750 V2 750W on TechPowerUp.
Corsair TX850 V2 PSU on Vortez.
Motherboard & CPU:
AMD E-350 vs. Intel Core i3-2100T CPUs on XbitLabs.
Core i3-2120 and Core i3-2100 Processors on XbitLabs.
ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution on Bjorn3D.
ECS P67H2-A2 on Phoronix.
Gigabyte G1.Sniper X58 on Guru3D.
ASUS Sabertooth P67 - B3 Revision on HWHeaven.
ASRock E350M1 AMD Fusion APU Motherboard on Pro-Clockers.
ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional Motherboard on MadShrimps.
Gigabyte X58-OC on OC3D.
Foxconn P67A-S on iXBTLabs.
ASUS Rampage III Formula Intel X58 on ThinkComputers.
MSI Big Bang Marshal (B3) on FunkyKit.
MSI P67A-GD65 Socket 1155 on Pro-Clockers.
Video Cards:
Asus DirectCU NVIDIA & AMD Graphics Card Round-Up on HotHardware.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6670 and Radeon HD 6570 on HWHeaven.
Zotac GeForce GTX 580 AMP, Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti AMP, Zotac GeForce GTX 460 SE on iXBTLabs.
PowerColor LCS HD6970 on OC3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6670 on NeoSeeker.
MSI R6970 Lightning on Vortez.
Cooling:
Noctua NF-S12B FLX Fan on ReviewStash.
Evercool HPK-10025EA Low Profile Cooler on Tweaknews.
Noctua NH-C14 CPU cooler on TechPowerUp.
Cases:
Sentey Optimus GS-6000 Mid-tower on OCIA.
Corsair Obsidian Series 650D on HWSecrets.
CM Storm Enforcer on HWSecrets.
Sentey GS-6400R Arvina Extreme Division on Pro-Clockers.
Cubitek Magic Cube 8HDD on OCClub.
Thermaltake Level 10 GT Full Tower Gaming Chassis on Tweaktown.
Xigmatek Elysium Super Tower Chassis on Modders-Inc.
Cubitek Tank Mini-ITX on XSReviews.
Audio Visual:
Roccat Kave Headphones on TBreak.
Plantronics Gamecom 777 Gaming Headset on eTeknix.
Genius Pen Mouse on HWSecrets.
Roccat Kulo on XSReviews.
Soundscience by Antec Rockus 3D 2.1 Speaker System on FutureLooks.
Input Etc:
Genius SlimStar 8000 Wireless Desktop Combo on OCOnline.
World of Warcraft Cataclysm Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Wireless Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
Logitech Performance Mouse MX on Techgage.
XTRACPADS Logic mousepads on OCClub.
Storage:
Hornettek Viper U3 USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure on DragonSteelMods.
Crucial m4 Solid State Drive Tests on BenchmarkReviews.
OCZ Vertex 2 160GB 25nm SSD on APHNetworks.
Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 2 Plus Network Storage Server on LegitReviews.
SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC UHS -I Card 8GB on TBreak.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Sony Vaio Y Series Review: Proving Fusion's Potential on PCPerspective.
Creative ZiiO 7" Tablet on TBreak.
HP Pavilion g6x laptop on TechReviewSource.
HP Pavilion dv3 4305se on TBreak.
Software:
Rocksmith Preview guitar game on ComputingOnDemand.
Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 Blu-ray Software on MissingRemote.
Firefox 4 on BusinessComputingWorld.
Portal 2 on Techgage.
Total War: Shogun 2 Performance w/ AMD Radeon HD 6850 on LegitReviews.
Misc:
Epson WorkForce 840 Inkjet Printer on TechWareLabs.
Folding@Home Chimp Challenge 2011
(5 Comments)
(link)
Saturday, 23-April-2011 19:50:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The annual Chimp Challenge is starting soon. This is a Folding@Home competition between 9 online communities, including OCAU. I'm sorry to report that last year we came dead last in the competition. Surely this year we can do better, with your help? :)
Full details in this thread.
Have a happy and safe Easter!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
NanoDuke pointed out that Skynet attacked us yesterday. Skynet was now implemented on April 19, 2011 and will begin its attack against humanity on April 21. So keep an eye on your gadgets.. just in case.
Top story today would be the allegations that certain Apple products track your movements without your consent. If you haven't yet enabled encrypted backups for your iPhone or iPad, now's definitely the time to start. Two security researchers have discovered a simple way to map out where you've been almost anywhere in the world—without any hacking involved. The ABC have a video story about it. US Senator Al Franken has some questions for Apple, and Privacy International have sent an open letter to Steve Jobs. Warcom have taken a look at one of their own files and found some worrying things. There's a tool here to let you view your own data.
Next up, concerns about wake/sleep cycles in certain WD HDDs under certain conditions. This sounds oddly familiar, but I can't remember if it was WD last time. Anyway, more info here on NGOHQ. Western Digital has released a DOS-based utility to modify the behavior of the HDD to wait longer before invoking idle mode. However, since most of their latest HDDs still ship with the default setting of 8 seconds, we strongly recommend users with affected HDDs to use the utility immediately. Discussion here.
Sniper spotted these photos of the NBN rollout in Brunswick. We consider this one of the best photo galleries we’ve seen of the actual NBN, as it goes into great detail about the actual NBN equipment, as well as the fibre being rolled out in the street and so on.
Hulu are coming to Australia. I've only ever seen their stuff on YouTube and didn't really get the point of it at the time. Hulu, which offers free ad-supported on-demand streaming of TV shows and movies, has been a runaway hit in the US, where it garners hundreds of millions of streams a month on desktop computers and internet-connected TVs.
Samsung are planning to counter-sue Apple, apparently. "We think Apple has violated our patents in communications standards," Chung Jae-woong, a spokesman at Samsung Electronics, said by phone. "We are considering a counterclaim."
MaximumPC report on tonnes of e-waste. Ultimately, one can say with some confidence that literally billions of cell phones have been discarded over the course of the last three decades, all of which are now in the process of breakdown.
There's a special OCAU Iron Chef contest this weekend, thanks mrs_dan77: The theme for this Iron Chef is - Easter. The theme must be referenced in the dish. You can opt for a dish that you typically cook at easter, take advantage of all the available chocolate and seafood, or cook something of cultural/traditional significance to you. As it is that time of the year, you may also submit a dish with the theme ANZAC. If that is open to loose interpretation, please explain your thought process in selecting the dish you choose for submission. Thread here.
Thursday Night Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 21-April-2011 22:56:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
AMD's Sub-$100 Line-up: Radeon HD 6450, 6570 & 6670 on Techgage.
HIS IceQ X HD 6850 on TBreak.
Sapphire Radeon HD6570 on TechWareLabs.
AMD Radeon 6950 1GB on eTeknix.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6570 on Phoronix.
AMD Radeon HD 6670 and HD 6570 on PCPerspective.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti Overclocked Roundup on XbitLabs.
Cooling:
Arctic NC Laptop Cooler on OCOnline.
Coolermaster Storm SF-19 Strike Force notebook cooler on MadShrimps.
Cases:
Thermaltake Level 10 GT on NeoSeeker.
Xigmatek Elysium Super Tower on Tweaktown.
In Win BUC on OCClub.
Zalman Z9 Plus Mid-Tower on Techgage.
Coolermaster CM 690 II Advanced on MadShrimps.
Thermaltake V9 BlacX Mid-Tower on Bjorn3D.
Cubitek Mini-Tank Case on TechWareLabs.
Xigmatek Elysium Video Review on OC3D.
Storage:
OCZ RevoDrive 80GB on TechREACTION.
OCZ Revodrive X2 SSD on Overclockers.com.
Vantec NexStar SE Dual 2.5-inch Hard Drive Rack on ThinkComputers.
Western Digital My Passport Essential SE 1TB USB 3.0 HDD on Tweaktown.
Thecus N4200 Pro Four Bay NAS on Tweaknews.
Wednesday Midday
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Wednesday, 20-April-2011 12:48:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Whirlpool have published the results of their 2011 Australian Broadband Survey. The Australian Broadband Survey for 2011 was conducted over a four week period — from 1 January 2011 to 1 February 2011, during which the survey was successfully completed and verified a total of 23,513 times.
MSY have been fined over $200k following a court case with the ACCC, over warranty concerns. In early November, the ACCC alleged MSY Technology sold computers, components, software and other tech products to customers, and made a number of false or misleading representations about consumer warranty rights. The ACCC alleged that by making the representations, MSY and each of its related companies breached sections 52 and 53(g) of the Trade Practices Act 1974.
Samsung have been my preferred HDD brand for a little while now, so I'm not super-thrilled to hear they're going to be selling their HDD business to Seagate. Just last month, Seagate rival Western Digital Corp. agreed to buy Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $4.3 billion. Wedbush Morgan analyst Kaushik Roy said that once both deals are completed, Western Digital would own about half of the hard drive market and Seagate roughly 40 percent. Toshiba Corp. would be a distant third with 10 percent of the market. More here, discussion here.
Apple meanwhile are suing Samsung over patent infringements, thanks dasuperham. In the latest intellectual property suit to hit the smartphone industry, Apple is suing Samsung, alleging the Galaxy line of phones and tablets infringe on a number of the company’s patents and trademarks.
It seems one man's plans to make a functioning AT-AT from Star Wars have been derailed. Or tripped by oversized hamsters with vines? Anyway, at least we can have the toilet of the future, thanks Carl. This bathroom bad boy has a motion-activated lid and seat; integrated air dryer; a heated seat; feet warmers; ambient lighting; built-in speakers with FM radio and an MP3 player input jack. Still not convinced this is your next toilet? It's all controlled by a detachable touch screen remote that can save settings for up to six users.
Also the sci-fi front, some Aliens replica guns have been stopped from entering QLD. Ms Stilgoe said Mr Beckett considered the guns to be artefacts, pieces of movie memorabilia, or perhaps novelty items, but not weapons in any real sense of the word. The police, without the benefit of an inspection, had classified them as weapons. "When viewed from Mr Beckett's perspective, his frustration at the bureaucracy is understandable," Ms Stilgoe said. Seems he's not the only one with that issue.
R18+ Gaming Classification, Adelaide
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Wednesday, 20-April-2011 03:36:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Adelaide folks with an interest in the R18+ gaming debate, this is on today: The Minister for Home Affairs and Justice Brendan O’Connor is in Adelaide and has the following media engagements:
Arguing the case for the introduction of an R18+ classification for computer games in Australia, to provide better guidance for parents and remove unsuitable material from children and teenagers.
When: 10am, Wednesday 20 April 2011
Where: EB Games, Level 2, City Cross Shopping Mall, between Rundle Mall and Grenfell Streets, ADELAIDE
Wednesday Morning Reviews
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Wednesday, 20-April-2011 03:32:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte GA-E350N-USB3 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo on OCIA.
Zotac H67-ITX: Sandy Bridge for Mini-ITX on SilentPCReview.
Gigabyte E350N-USB3 on OCClub.
ASUS P8P67 PRO P67 Motherboard on APHNetworks.
GIGABYTE G1 Assassin X58 Motherboard on LegitReviews.
Audio Visual:
ASUS O!Play HD2 HD Media Player on ThinkComputers.
Nikon Coolpix S9100 digicam on TechReviewSource.
Cyber Snipa Sonar 5.1 Championship headphones on OC3D.
brite-View Air SyncHD Wireless HDMI Bridge on MissingRemote.
Storage:
Kingston Versus IronKey - Who Has The Fastest FIPS Flash Drive on LegitReviews.
Thermaltake Max 5G USB Drive Enclosure on BigBruin.
ICY DOCK MB974SP-B HDD dock on Vortez.
Tsunami D-35 USB 3.0 HDD Enclosure on eTeknix.
Cases:
In Win Dragon Rider on Modders-Inc.
Xigmatek Elysium Super Tower on HWHeaven.
InWin BUC on PureOC.
In Win Dragon Rider Full Tower on TechWareLabs.
Thermaltake Armor A30 Small Form Factor Gaming Case on Pro-Clockers.
Input Etc:
GIGABYTE Aivia M8600 Wireless Gaming Mouse on Techgage.
Tt eSPORTS Azurues Gaming Mouse on Vortez.
Razer Nostromo Gaming Keypad on Metku.
Logitech Wireless Trackball M570 on Virtual-Hideout.
Roccat Alumic mouse mat on XSReviews.
Cooling:
Evercool Transformer 4+ Plus CPU Cooler on Tweaknews.
Noctua NH-D14 CPU "Monster" Cooler on MadShrimps.
Portable & Prebuilt:
GIGABYTE T1125N-CF1 11.6-inch Tablet Convertible Notebook on Tweaktown.
Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet on HWSecrets.
HTC Thunderbolt Android Smartphone on HotHardware.
LG Optimus Pad / T-Mobile G-Slate Tablet on TechSpot.
HP Pavilion g6x laptop on TechReviewSource.
Alienware m18x Laptop on HWHeaven.
PSU:
Enermax MODU87+ 800W Modular Power Supply on eTeknix.
Club 3D CSP-X1000CB 1000W on TechPowerUp.
Misc:
ASUS RT-N56U Wireless-N Gigabit Router on BenchmarkReviews.
Bigfoot Networks Killer 2100 network card on Vortez.
Patriot Gamer 2 Series DDR3 4GB 1600MHz memory on ViperLair.
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews
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Tuesday, 19-April-2011 18:23:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Here's some reviews, not that anyone is going to be reading them now that Portal 2 is out. :)
Video Cards:
Radeon HD 6670 on Guru3D.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6670 and HD 6570 on Tweaktown.
AMD Radeon HD 6670 & HD 6570 on NeoSeeker.
AMD Radeon HD 6670 and 6570 Mainstream GPUs on HotHardware.
AMD Radeon HD 6670 1 GB on TechPowerUp.
AMD Radeon HD 6450 & 6570: The Line-up is Complete on InsideHW.
XFX's Radeon HD 6950 1GB takes on Zotac's GeForce GTX 560 Ti AMP on TechReport.
AMD Radeon HD 6450 1 GB on TechPowerUp.
PowerColor HD6850 1GB GDDR5 and PCS+ HD6870 1GB GDDR5 on iXBTLabs.
MSI N550GTX-Ti Cyclone II on Bjorn3D.
MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II Golden Edition on FunkyKit.
ASUS Radeon 6970 DirectCU II on Guru3D.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-C14 CPU Cooler on iXBTLabs.
Evercool Transformer 4 Heatsink on Overclockers.com.
Thermaltake Frio CPU cooler on ComputingOnDemand.
Cooler Master Storm SF-19 Laptop Cooler on XSReviews.
Evercool Arctic Cooling MX-4 Thermal Paste on eTeknix.
Cases:
Antec Six Hundred v2 on TechWareLabs.
Cooler Master Elite 343 mATX on BenchmarkReviews.
Sentey GS-6500 Burton High Tower on TechReaction.
GoPro HD HERO Camera
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Monday, 18-April-2011 16:05:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Something a little different from me today. I've reviewed the GoPro HD HERO video camera. This is a tiny, tough, HD camera, intended for filming all kinds of extreme sports. So how extreme can a thirtysomething geek get? Not very, as it turns out. :)
Click for the review!
Portal wedding cake is not a lie.
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Sunday, 17-April-2011 21:19:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Congrats to forum members sahie and R31 on their recent marriage - and check out their Portal-themed wedding cake!
Click for the thread!
The release of Portal 2 is looming, and there's essentially a giant internet treasure hunt going on during the leadup. You can catch up on the previous stages on this Wiki page, with more info here, and see the current status here. Discussion continues here.
Online poker fans are in dismay today, with some of the largest sites taken offline by the FBI. Eleven people, including the owners of Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker and PokerStars, were charged with violating U.S. anti-Internet gambling laws, according to charges filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. More info here.
The FBI have also pulled the plug on another Botnet. Coreflood is the latest botnet to get the axe. The FBI used bold, precedent-setting maneuvers to take the Corefloood botnet offline--reducing the volume of spam polluting your Inbox, and making the Internet a little safer.
If you have favourite or personal videos in Google Videos, be aware that they will soon disappear when Google shuts down the site, presumably in favour of the vastly more successful YouTube, thanks Rage. On April 29, 2011 videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the Video Status new window page, so you can download videos that you want to save. If you don’t want to download your videos, you don’t need to do anything.
Facebook have a new enormous datacentre in Oregon, and here's an interesting look inside. Today I was very fortunate to have gotten a tour of Facebook’s new datacenter up in Prineville, Oregon (map). This datacenter is the most energy efficient in the world and only a handful of press got a look.
Today's timewaster is this surreal but amusing Sushi Cat 2, from Loop Goose. Pinball with a sushi-eating ever-expanding cat, and something about a pig.
Actually here's another timewaster from Shawn - the world's biggest PACMAN!
Sunday Afternoon Reviews
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Sunday, 17-April-2011 15:19:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
MSI GeForce GTX 580 Lightning on Guru3D.
ASUS GeForce GTX 550 Ti DirectCU TOP Overclocked on Tweaktown.
ASUS HD 6970 Direct CUII on TBreak.
Motherboard & CPU:
Intel P67 Motherboard 5-Way Shootout on TechSpot.
ASUS P8P76 WS Revolution on InsideHW.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Dell XPS x8300-5215NBK on TechReviewSource.
Zotac Zbox HD Blu-Ray All-in-One Mini-PC on OCIA.
Cases:
In-Win BUC on TechReaction.
Antec Six Hundred Gaming Case on Tech-Reviews.
InWin Dragon Slayer on NeoSeeker.
Cooling:
Evercool Buffalo CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Swiftech Polaris 120 CPU cooler on TechReaction.
Storage:
Kingwin DM-2356 Dockmaster II on Virtual-Hideout.
Promise SmartStor NS4700 on BusinessComputingWorld.
Intel 320 Series SSD 300GB on HWHeaven.
Patriot SuperSonic 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on OCClub.
Misc:
Powermat Wireless Charging Unit & Receiving Unit on eTeknix.
Corsair AirFlow Pro Memory Temperature Monitor on Techgage.
G.Skill Ripjaws-X DDR3-2133 8GB Dual Channel Memory Kit on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake Challenger Pro Gaming Keyboard on OCClub.
TRENDnet TV-IP612WN ProView Wireless N Pan/Tilt/Zoom Internet Camera on MadShrimps.
Friday friday gotta post pics on Friday.. thanks to Mark and BeanerSA this week!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
We still have some OCAU mugs available - get yours before they're all gone!
Click for info!
Here's some yummy threads from our Geek Recipes forum:
There's a security advisory for Adobe Flash Player, Reader, etc - thanks Thexder. This vulnerability (CVE-2011-0611) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks via a Flash (.swf) file embedded in a Microsoft Word (.doc) file delivered as an email attachment, targeting the Windows platform. At this time, Adobe is not aware of any attacks via PDF targeting Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Adobe Reader X Protected Mode mitigations would prevent an exploit of this kind from executing.
Issue 14 of The Overclocker magazine is now available.
Intel will be opening up Thunderbolt to developers soon, but won't ignore USB 3.0. We were just pondering this very thing yesterday -- would Intel dedicate itself to Thunderbolt and give USB 3.0 the cold shoulder -- and now we have our answer from the Santa Clara crew, albeit delivered from Beijing.
Intel's Developer Forum is on at the moment in Beijing, with Day 0, Day 1 and Day 2 coverage on Funkykit. Meanwhile the Gadget Show is also on, with coverage from OC3D and some booth babes on XSReviews.
On the other hand, a recent "Reality Rocks Expo" for fans of reality TV had almost nobody bother to turn up. Though our friend Andy Dehnart at Reality Blurred reports that the staff projected an audience of 15,000 attendees, come convention weekend, nobody actually showed up. Seriously -- check out these photos of the event from B-Side blog, featuring crowds as large as 12 amassing to watch former 'Idol' finalist Andrew Garcia, empty autograph lines for 'Paranormal Files' hosts, and a 'Big Brother' panel with the same amount of panelists as audience members.
Just when I thought the internet held no more surprises, Rezin discovers unboxing porn. I'm here to unbox some sexy products and kick ass, and I don't have it in me to hurt a fly.
Paul sent in these pics and info on the new Mars rover. This week, Boing Boing was invited to visit NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the first and only opportunity for media to enter the Pasadena, CA clean room where NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, and other components of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft have been built for launch in late 2011 from Florida.
Google has invested a truckload in the world's largest solar-power plant, thanks Simon. Google has chipped in a US$168 million investment in what will be the world's largest solar power tower plant. To be located on 3,600 acres of land in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) will boast 173,000 heliostats that will concentrate the sun's rays onto a solar tower standing approximately 450 feet (137 m) tall.
Here's a cool giant nintendo controller, with worklog photos here.
Overclockers.com have a watercooling beginner's guide, while Techgage wonder how things are going with overclocking on Intel motherboards. I used to think that doing my taxes was more fun than overclocking on an Intel motherboard, but since it's been a while, I decided to spend some honest time with the DP67BG this past weekend to see if my mind could be changed.
From Kieran: The Federal Government razor gangs are out, and are looking for soft-targets to cut spending in the forthcoming federal budget. It seems, from cabinet discussion leaks, that the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) budget could be cut by $400 million over 3 years, from an annual budget of $768million. As the major medical granting body in Australia, this will massively affect the research capacity of Australia. More info here, photos from a rally here and discussion here.
I think we've seen today's timewaster before, but it looks fun, so here's IndestructoTank AE, thanks Sam.
Friday Morning Reviews
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Friday, 15-April-2011 02:23:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Diamond Xtreme External 7.1 USB Sound Card on OCClub.
ROCCAT Kulo Stereo Headset on Vortez.
Trendnet TV-IP121WN Night and Day Security Camera on RBMods.
Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i3 2100 CPU on Bjorn3D.
MSI E350IA-E45 Motherboard on iXBTLabs.
MSI P67A-GD65 LGA 1155 ATX Motherboard on PCPerspective.
Storage:
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD on TechSpot.
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 120GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
OCZ RevoDrive X2 240GB PCI-Express Solid State Drive on eTeknix.
Eagle Tech Consus P-Series 2.5" SATA to USB & eSATA Enclosure on eTeknix.
Video Cards:
Sapphire Roundup - Radeon 6950 fleX, 6870 fleX, 5850 Xtreme, 5830 Xtreme and X58 Pure Black on HWHeaven.
Sapphire HD 5830 Xtreme on TechWareLabs.
Sapphire HD 6950 FleX 2GB on TechWareLabs.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Xtreme 1GB on Techgage.
Portable & Prebuilt:
HP Proliant MicroServer on SilentPCReview.
Asus G73SW Sandy Bridge Gaming Notebook on HotHardware.
RIM Blackberry Playbook tablet on TechReviewSource.
System76 Serval Professional Sandy Bridge notebook on Phoronix.
Cases:
In Win BUC Mid-Tower on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake Level 10 GT on Tweaknews.
Cooler Master Storm Enforcer on PureOC.
Fractal Design Define R3 ATX Tower on SilentPCReview.
Silverstone Fortress FT03 microATX Tower on SilentPCReview.
NZXT H2 Classic Silent Case on Overclockers.com.
Cooling:
Thermal Compound Roundup on HWSecrets.
Thermaltake Jing Silent CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Prolimatech Genesis CPU Heatsink on SilentPCReview.
Input Etc:
Roccat Kova Plus mouse on OC3D.
Roccat Alumic Gaming Mousepad on OC3D.
CM Storm Spawn Gaming Mouse on Metku.
Misc:
Dell V715w multifunction printer on TechReviewSource.
NZXT Blue Sleeved LED Kit on BigBruin.
Breffo Spiderpodium and Spiderpodium Tablet gadget holders on MegaTechNews.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 14-April-2011 17:01:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It seems to be a week for leaks, with leaked Intel slides revealing upcoming processors, AMD internal documents describing future performance and a Windows 8 build doing the rounds.
New Zealand has passed a controversial file-sharing law. The new law will allow copyright owners ask for a six-month suspension of internet service to homes that have been found to have repeatedly infringe on copyrighted material. It will also introduce a “three strikes” regime, an introduction of a Copyright Tribunal that will impose a maximum penalty of NZ$15,000. ISPs will also be legally required to send notices of copyright infringement.
SMH have an article tipping Bing to overtake Google next year. I.. don't share their confidence. Google still clearly leads Bing more than 2 to 1. But when you consider that that ratio was 3 to 1 last fall, the gap appears to be closing. Bing is growing by five or six percent each month, whereas Google is losing two to three percent.
GillR sent in this promotional video about the future of glass and the high-tech ideas it allows. Watch "A Day Made of Glass" and take a look at Corning's vision for the future with specialty glass at the heart of it.
An interesting legal outcome has someone promising not to visit a specific Facebook page for 20 years. Yesterday morning, Ms Grierson arrived at the Melbourne Magistrates Court seeking to have the temporary intervention order extended. A few hours later she left after agreeing in an out-of-court settlement not to ''look at [Mr Cox's] Facebook page'' or ''cause her servants or agents to look at or otherwise monitor [Mr Cox's] Facebook page'' for a period of 20 years.
Thursday Morning Reviews
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Thursday, 14-April-2011 01:13:08 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Audio Visual:
Atrio M5 Special Edition (ASE) Earphones on TestFreaks.
Sennheiser HD 800 Headphones on TBreak.
Tt eSports Shock One USB Gaming Headset on HWHeaven.
Roccat Kulo Gaming Headset on OC3D.
Asus PA246Q ProArt 24-Inch LCD Monitor on HotHardware.
Samsung UN46D6400 TV on TechReviewSource.
Pure Piper A-1 DAC on Guru3D.
Schiit Valhalla Headphones Amplifier on TBreak.
Corsair SP2500 2.1 Speaker System and HS1A Headset on HotHardware.
Cyber Snipa Sonar 5.1 Championship Gaming Headset on Techgage.
Corsair SP2200 2.1 PC Speaker on LegitReviews.
Storage:
Thermaltake Max 5G External Hard Drive Enclosure on OCClub.
Patriot Supersonic 32GB USB 3.0 drive on XSReviews.
Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 External USB 3 128GB SSD on TheSSDReview.
OWC Merc Extreme Pro 6G 120GB SATA 3 on TheSSDReview.
QNAP TS-219P+ Turbo NAS on XbitLabs.
Seagate GoFlex Slim 320GB Portable Hard Drive on Tweaknews.
LaCie FastKey USB 3.0 Flash Drive on EverythingUSB.
Video Cards:
Sapphire HD5830 Xtreme & HD5850 Xtreme on OCClub.
XFX Radeon HD 6870 1GB Black Edition on Tweaktown.
Inno3D GeForce GTX 580 HAWK Edition on HWHeaven.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 Extreme on Phoronix.
Sapphire 5850 Extreme on Bjorn3D.
MSI Radeon HD 6970 Lightning 2 GB on TechPowerUp.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 550 Ti OC on eTeknix.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 550 Ti AMP! Edition and Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti SLI on XbitLabs.
Sapphire HD 5830 Xtreme 1GB on ThinkComputers.
Cases:
CM Storm Enforcer on Vortez.
CM Storm Enforcer on OCClub.
CM Storm Enforcer on NeoSeeker.
Cooler Master Storm Enforcer Case on BenchmarkReviews.
Cooler Master Storm Enforcer on APHNetworks.
Cooler Master Storm Enforcer on NinjaLane.
CM Storm Enforcer on HWHeaven.
CM Storm Enforcer on Guru3D.
Thermaltake V9 BlacX Edition on TechReaction.
CM Storm Enforcer on Pro-Clockers.
Cooling:
Nexus Real Silent Case Fan Basic Series on eTeknix.
Antec KÜHLER H2O 920 CPU Liquid Cooling System on Tweaknews.
Antec Kuhler H20 920 CPU Water Cooler on LegitReviews.
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler on TBreak.
Thermalright Archon CPU Cooler on Vortez.
Prolimatech Genesis CPU cooler on LegionHW.
Thermaltake Massive 23 LX Notebook Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
Portable & Prebuilt:
ASUS N53 Core i7-2630QM Sandy Bridge 15-in Notebook on PCPerspective.
MSI CX640 15.6-inch Notebook on Tweaktown.
Lenovo IdeaCentre K330-11691AU prebuilt desktop on TechReviewSource.
Misc:
Epson Stylus Office BX925FWD multifunction printer on BusinessComputingWorld.
Crysis 2 on Bjorn3D.
Akasa ES Series 450W PSU on eTeknix.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 13-April-2011 03:22:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Warcom have an open day this Friday to check out some of their networking and telephony goodies. You will be able to get a hands on experience with some of the latest and great VoIP products currently available in Australia.
There's another Humble Bundle available. You can support charity. Choose exactly how your purchase is divided: Between Frozenbyte, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the Child's Play Charity. Also, if you like this deal, a tip to the Humble Bundle itself would be much appreciated! More info here.
Speaking of which, video game soundtracks will now be able to win Grammy Awards. The Recording Academy has revealed that it will put videogames on the same level as television and film by adding them to the descriptors of four awards. Prior to the change, games were lumped in with "other visual media" while movies and TV got top billing, which only helped to discourage videogame music from being submitted.
Apple have apparently ordered 12 petabytes for iTunes storage. And you thought YOUR mp3 collection was big, thanks David. Apple placed the order with Isilon Systems for videos on iTunes, according to StorageNewsletter.com. The information was attributed to an "inside source" at EMC, which announced its intention to acquire Isilon for $2.25 billion in late 2010.
Also on the impressive storage front, StorageReview checked out an enterprise SSD from LSI. With features like 300GB of SLC flash, six SF-1500 controllers, and a SATA6 533Mhz LSI RAID controller tying it all together, this card promises extremely high transfer speeds, extremely low latency, and an extremely high high price tag. LSI promises up to 1,400MB/s sustained throughput, .5 microsecond seek time, 240,000 4K read IOPS, and 200,000 4K IOPS for the low, low MSRP of $11,500 ($7700 street), which puts it firmly out of reach of most power users.
Intel have launched their Oak Trail tablet processor. The new microchip is smaller and uses less power than other models in its Atom range. Despite being the world's largest manufacturer of microprocessors, Intel has been largely pushed out of the growing tablet market.
Sony have settled their lawsuit against GeoHot, for jailbreaking the PS3. Sony dropped its jailbreaking lawsuit against PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz on Monday in exchange for promises the New Jersey hacker would never again tinker with the game console or any Sony product, records show.
Twitter has been banned from the Logies, thanks John. Invitations to the ceremony at Crown carry, in very small print, the words: ''Please note, mobiles will not be permitted. Your co-operation is appreciated.'' ''It is because of the tweeting,'' a Logies source confirmed yesterday. ''I think we saw the tweeting in the past as being a bit mean-spirited and felt it detracted from the evening.''
Today's timewaster is filler, from Sam.
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews
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Tuesday, 12-April-2011 16:32:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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CPU & Motherboard:
Intel Core i7 990X Extreme Edition CPU on Hexus.
Intel DX58SO2 Motherboard (LGA1366) on Xbit Labs.
ASUS Rampage III Black Edition (LGA 1366) on Ocaholic.
ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution P67 Motherboard on APHNetworks.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX DDR3 1800MHz 4GB DC Kit on eTeknix.
Crucial Ballistix Finned DDR3 1866 MHz CL9 4 GB on TechPowerUp.
Cases:
Thermaltake Armor A30 SFF Case on Vortez.
SilverStone Temjin TJ11 Tower Case on Bit-tech.
Sentey GS-6400R Arvina PC Case on DragonSteelMods.
Cubitek HPTX Tank on Vortez.
Cooling:
Antec Kuhler H2O 620 CPU Cooler on Overclockers Club.
Thermaltake Jing CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Antec Kühler H2O 920 Liquid Cooler on BenchmarkReviews.
Cooler Master SF-19 Strike Force Notebook Cooler on Virtual-Hideout.
Video Cards:
VisionTek Radeon HD 5770 1GB on RealWorldLabs.
PNY GeForce GTX 570 EE 1280MB on Kit Guru.
AMD Radeon HD 6450 512MB on Rage3D.
MSI GTX550 Ti Cyclone OC on NinjaLane.
MSI Radeon HD 6970 Lighting on Guru3D.
MSI GeForce GTX 580 1536MB Lightning Overclocked on Tweaktown.
ASUS GeForce GTX580 1536MB DirectCU II on InsideHW.
HIS 6870 IceQ X TURBO X on ViperLair.
Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 & HD 5830 Xtreme on NeoSeeker.
Sapphire 5830 and 5850 Xtreme on PureOC.
KFA2 GeForce GTX 560 EX OC 1024MB, Gigabyte GV-N560SO-1GI cards on iXBTLabs.
Club3D GeForce GTX 550 Ti CoolStream OC Edition on Metku.
Input Etc:
Touch Mouse 3-way Roundup on TechSpot.
SteelSeries Shift Keyboard and Keyset on Overclock3D.
Thermaltake Azurues Gaming Mouse on OC Online.
SteelSeries Xai Pro Gaming Mouse on Tech Reaction.
Logisys MS6801 Notebook Mouse on Monster-Hardware.
Thermaltake TTeSports CONKOR and DASHER Mouse Pads on MadShrimps.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Magellan RoadMate 9055 GPS on TechwareLabs.
HTC Desire S Smartphone on T-Break.
Sapphire Edge Mini PC on XS Reviews.
Samsung Series 9 notebook on TechReviewSource.
Cyberpower Gamer Xtreme 4000 Sandy Bridge System on LegitReviews.
I had a few days away at my nephew and godson's 18th birthday this weekend - congrats again, Jared. Thanks to DM for keeping the news page busy. Anyway, at one point during the weekend I finally succumbed to the pressure and checked out Angry Birds.. and Quite Some Time passed before I put the phone down again. :) If you haven't checked it out there's a few free versions (original, RIO and Seasons) in the App Store, but if you don't have an iphone or similar, then this browser game (and many others no doubt) are a similar idea.
If you're a user of games.on.net, they have a quick survey to help them improve things.
A few people sent word that News Corporation are in hot water for allegedly hacking people's mobile phones to get information for news stories. Rupert Murdoch's UK news arm faces a flood of fresh compensation claims and could be exposed to criminal prosecution after admitting its role in a long-running phone hacking scandal, lawyers say.
Harvey Norman has joined the daily deals battle, with their own website. The unveiling of the site is a reversal for the head of electronics and furniture chain Harvey Norman, who in November lashed out at the government for allowing consumers to import merchandise, bought online and costing less than $1000, GST free.
Marty has a 2011 Web Browser Roundup on his site. We at TurnedOn have decided to find out exactly that, ‘which web browser is the best?’ Unfortunately, due to the sheer volume of web browsers online, we have decided to only test the most popular browsers and a couple others. Needs some proof-reading, Marty! :)
Wired have a gallery of microscopic art inside computer chips. But it’s not all business inside a chip fab, as these microscope photos reveal. In fact, the designers of microchips frequently hide tiny cartoons, drawings and even messages alongside the super-tiny circuits and semiconductors they create.
This Chinese USB drive is a amusingly dodgy. A couple of days ago a customer has brought a broken 500Gb USB-drive that he had bought in a Chinese store across the river, for an insanely low price. But the drive was not working: if you, say, save a movie onto the drive, playing the saved movie back resulted in replaying just the last 5 minutes of the film.
Tech-Report explore the world of multi-monitor computing. My favorite thing about living with so much screen real-estate is having a place for everything, with everything in its place. Outlook and Winamp (I kick it old school) go side by side on one monitor, while another is occupied by Skype, Pandora One, and various other widgets that display stock quotes, calendars, and vital system information. This arrangement frees up the bottom two displays for the main course - whatever I happen to be working on at the time. I certainly couldn't go back to one monitor now I've gotten used to two.
Callan and Aaricus sent in today's timewaster, a drag/click musical sandbox thingy.
Motherboards:
ASUS Sabertooth P67 B3 (LGA 1155) on Overclock3D.
MSI 890FXA-GD65 (AMD AM3) on PC Perspective.
GIGABYTE G1.Assassin (LGA 1366) on TweakTown.
Chassis:
Cubitek Tattoo Fire Tower Case on Pure Overclock.
SilverStone GD06 Grandia Series on TechReaction.
Storage:
Crucial M4 / Micron C400 256GB SSD on Legit Reviews.
OCZ Enyo 64 GB Portable USB 3.0 on Tech ARP.
Verbatim Store'n'Go Clip-it 4 GB on TechPowerUp.
Graphics Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 6790 1GB on Overclockers Club.
PowerColor HD 6870 PCS++ 1 GB on TechPowerUp.
ASUS HD 6870 DirectCU 1GB on Think Computers.
MSI Radeon HD 6970 2GB Lightning on TweakTown.
Input Devices:
Gigabyte Aivia M8600 Gaming Mouse on T-Break.
Roccat Kone Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
Portable Devices:
Nokia C7 Mobile Phone on Inside Hardware.
Dell Venue Android Smartphone on Hot Hardware.
Acer Aspire AS7552G Notebook on TechReviewSource.
Miscellaneous:
ROCCAT Kulo Stereo Gaming Headset on Mad Shrimps.
GorillaMobile Yogi for iPad on Test Freaks.
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 arcade cabinet gear, plasma TVs, VPS hosting, fitness supplements, office chairs, toner cartridges, media players, photo studios, notebooks and a range of other goodies. There's even some competitions in there!
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.
MSI Master OC Arena AUNZ Qualifier in Overclocking & Hardware.
Team.AU & MSI Overclocking in Overclocking & Hardware.
My first attempt at watercooling in Extreme Cooling.
Facebook OpenCompute in Business & Enterprise Computing.
BYO computer at Suncorp in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Is Hotmail alright these days? in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
GPU stress tester to ensure a stable overclock? in Video Cards & Monitors.
Soundblaster 1.5 CT1320C in Retro & Arcade.
Intel P67 vs X58 Gaming Performance in Intel Hardware.
NVIDIA To Allow SLI For AMD 990FX/F Chipsets in AMD Hardware.
What Anti-virus do you use? in Apple Hardware & Software.
Anyone else vLite'ing Windows 7? in Windows Operating Systems.
12 Ways Consoles Are Hurting PC Gaming in Games.
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City in Games.
Got My New Samsung 2011 UA55D7000LM in Audio Visual.
A gadget phone easy to live with? in Mobile Phones.
Piano composers/songs suitable for wedding? in Musicians.
Nikon D5100 DSLR Surfaces with 16.2MP Sensor in Photography.
Interplanetary Travel For Scientific Purposes in Science.
Breaking In - New FOX TV Comedy (USA) in Entertainment.
2011 Formula 1 Malaysia Grand Prix in Motorsport.
Diet: Just how important is it? in Sport, Fitness & Health.
What motivates your training? in Sport, Fitness & Health.
2012 Subaru Impreza in Motoring.
Haggling at JB Hifi? in The Pub.
Starting a Marine Tank in Pets & Animals.
Man to Man Ironing talk in Lifestyle.
Some recent photos from our Photography Gallery forum:
Motherboards:
ECS A785GM-M (AMD AM3) on eTeknix.
ASUS Rampage III Black Edition (LGA 1366) on Guru3D.
Gigabyte E350N-USB3 (AMD Fusion) on NeoSeeker.
Chassis:
Cubitek XL-Tank Tower Case on RB Mods.
NZXT H2 Classic Tower Case on Hardware Heaven.
SilverStone Fortress FT03 SFF Case on Phoronix.
Cooling:
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro CPU Cooler on Aph Networks.
Antec Kuhler H2O 620 CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro CPU Cooler on Hardware Secrets.
Corsair Hydro Series H60 CPU Cooler on Legit Reviews.
Storage:
Seagate GoFlex 320GB Slim Portable Drive on Everything USB.
Intel 310 80GB Mini-PCIe SSD on Hardware Heaven.
Verbatim Store'n'Go Executive Metal 8GB on TechPowerUp.
Verbatim Store'n'Go Netbook USB 16GB on TechPowerUp.
Graphics Cards:
Gigabyte GTX 560 Ti Super Overclock on T-Break.
AMD Radeon HD 6450 512MB on Tech Report.
HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X on Bjorn3D.
AMD Radeon HD 6450 512MB on Hardware Heaven.
Power Supply:
Antec High Current Pro 850W PSU on HardOCP.
LEPA G Series 700W Power Supply on HardOCP.
Corsair Enthusiast TX750V2 and TX850V2 on PC Perspective.
Corsair Enthusiast TX750V2 750W PSU on TweakTown.
Miscellaneous:
RODE Video Pro Shotgun Microphone on Rambling Thoughts.
Olympus Tough Cam TG-610 on Digital Trends.
Thanks to metamorphosis, Davis and Dopefish this week!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 7-April-2011 02:05:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Eva2000 has been playing with a 64-CPU server (well, 32 cores with HT) and has some database benchmark results. At work managed to get remote access to this beast of a server for a few days of benchmarking and testing Linux applications - particularly MySQL related.
Apparently a security breach at a marketing services provider has exposed personal info including the email addresses and real names of customers of many large companies. Epsilon sends over 40 billion emails annually and counts over 2,500 clients, including 7 of the Fortune 10 to build and host their customer databases. Discussion here.
This article is a year or so old but still interesting, with a look inside 10 large datacentres, thanks Embercide. As demand for cloud services increase these centers comprise tens or sometimes hundreds of thousands of servers, multi-petabyte storage systems and increasingly are situated in locations where cheap energy is plentiful.
eyeLikeCarrots sent word that there are new Commodore computers yet again. Commodore USA has opened a new Web store and is now taking pre-orders for its new Commodore 64, VIC-Pro, and VIC-Slim models that are based on the originals. The new Commodore 64 is the home of a mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a Dual Core 525 1.8GB Atom processor and a Nvidia Ion2 graphics card with 512MB of DDR3 memory.
HotHardware have some info on Intel's new 10-core Xeons. It's been just over a year since Santa Clara released its Nehalem-based octal-core Beckton processors. Whereas Beckton was focused entirely on performance and architectural efficiency, these new Xeons are more balanced. The new chips boost the core count to ten (up to 20 threads with HT enabled) and will be offered at a wide range of TDPs.
GamePron have the scoop on why Mortal Kombat was banned in Australia. We all know that the game’s appeal was denied, meaning that the upcoming brawler from Warner Bros. remains effectively banned Down Under, but the Board’s decision shows that this wasn’t a simple decision – nor a unanimous one.
Sniper spotted this report on free antivirus performance. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of free antivirus solutions, West Coast Labs has been running ongoing performance capability tests against a large number of samples from their ‘Real Time Project’, which leverages a geographically dispersed honeypot network to capture and provide a set of streaming samples 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Thursday Morning Reviews
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Thursday, 7-April-2011 00:29:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Video Cards:
Top Budget to Mainstream Graphics Cards on TechSpot.
PowerColor HD6950 1 GB on XbitLabs.
Audio Visual:
Sharp LC-60LE820UN TV on TechReviewSource.
Thermaltake eSPORTS Shock One Gaming Headset on EverythingUSB.
Nikon Coolpix P7000 digicam on DigitalTrends.
Motherboard & CPU:
Core i7-990X Extreme Edition vs. Core i7-2600K on XbitLabs.
Foxconn Quantum Force Rattler P67 Motherboard on Vortez.
Intel Core i7 990X Extreme on Phoronix.
Gigabyte G1.Sniper (Intel X58) board on LegionHW.
Cases:
Lian Li PC-V2120 on TechPowerUp.
Fractal Design R3 on ITShootout.
Thermaltake Armor A30 mATX on ThinkComputers.
Thermaltake Armor A30 SFF Chassis on Tweaktown.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX T1 DDR3-1600 CL9 on TheSSDReview.
Kingston 12GB HyperX T1 Black Edition Memory Kit on Bjorn3D.
Software:
Crysis 2 (PC) on GamingHeaven.
Battlefield Play4Free on GamePron.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Lenovo IdeaPad U260: A Stylish Ultralight Notebook on HotHardware.
Acer Aspire 5830T notebook on InsideHW.
Asus U31JG-A1 laptop on TechReviewSource.
Lenovo IdeaPad U260: A Stylish Ultralight Notebook on HotHardware.
Misc:
OCZ ZX 850 Series 850W on Tweaktown.
Roccat Alumic Double-Sided Gaming Mousepad on HWHeaven.
ASUS Routers: Wireless Elegance on InsideHW.
AMD Radeon HD 6790
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Thursday, 7-April-2011 00:27:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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AMD released the Radeon HD 6790 recently. This is an upper mid-range card competing with the NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti. Coverage on Overclockers.com, iXBTLabs, Bjorn3D, OC3D, NeoSeeker, Guru3D, OCClub, LegitReviews, PureOC (and here), HWSecrets, Tweaktown, Techgage, TechReport, HotHardware, PC Perspective, HWHeaven, TechPowerUp and InsideHW.
Discussion in this thread.
Wednesday Night Reviews
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Wednesday, 6-April-2011 21:56:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Cooling:
Thermalright TR-360 Xbox 360 GPU Cooler Replacement on MadShrimps.
Antec Notebook Cooler 200 on eTeknix.
Noctua NF-P14 FLX Fan on eTeknix.
Prolimatech Genesis CPU Cooler on XSReviews.
Thermaltake Frio OCK CPU Cooler on OCIA.
Noctua NH-C14 CPU Cooler on BigBruin.
Noctua NH-C14 CPU cooler on OCClub.
Prolimatech Genesis CPU cooler on PureOC.
Xigmatek Gaia SD1283 CPU Cooler on Tweaknews.
Video Cards:
Sapphire HD 6950 Flex Edition on OCClub.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 FleX on NeoSeeker.
Gainward GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB 'Golden Sample' on iXBTLabs.
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 550 Ti on Pro-Clockers.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 Toxic on LegitReviews.
ASUS HD 6950 2GB – Voltage Tweak on TechReaction.
Storage:
Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB HDD on Bjorn3D.
USB 3.0 64GB Flash Drive Round-up on TechSpot.
Thermaltake MAX 5G 3.5-inch USB 3.0 External HDD Enclosure on Tweaktown.
Synology Disk Station DS411J NAS on XSReviews.
Synology DS211+ Network Attached Storage Device on ThinkComputers.
OCZ Vertex 3 Solid State Drive Tests on BenchmarkReviews.
Synology DS-211J Diskstation Two-Bay NAS on Tweaknews.
Patriot Memory 120GB Inferno Solid State Drive on FutureLooks.
Mach Xtreme Technology MX-GX 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on MadShrimps.
Seagate GoFlex Slim 320GB USB 3.0 Hard Drive on LegitReviews.
Western Digital My Book 3.0 1TB USB 3.0 External HDD on Tweaktown.
GIGABYTE HD 6970 OC 2GB
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Wednesday, 6-April-2011 11:09:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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DiGiTaL MoNkEY has checked out the GIGABYTE HD 6970 OC 2GB. This is a non-reference Radeon card with a custom 3-fan cooler:
Click for the review!
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 6-April-2011 03:03:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Time for some news catchup! Firstly a reminder that the Facebook Connect thing on Friday was of course this year's April Fools gag. So you can probably lay off the angry emails now, heh.
Gizmodo chuckle at some silly conditions on Australian websites. I kept the idea basic. Find Australian websites that had Terms & Conditions that either banned or inanely denied you linking to their website. I did not have to go far. And yes I am breaking their terms & conditions by linking their terms & conditions pages here. The irony does not escape me.
Kotaku meanwhile dismay at the state of the R18+ debate. Sadly, there is no such thing as a rational debate when it come to the R18+ issue in Australia. When it comes to R18+ rationality is dead. When someone, in the face of overwhelming evidence, refuses to adjust his or her opinions, you have to ask yourself – is this really a discussion?
Internode's CEO is concerned about anti-competitive impacts of the NBN, thanks BeanerSA. Last week, I stood up at a conference and described the NBN’s pricing model as “insane” for small Internet service providers. I said that the NBN’s pricing model would only be feasible for ISPs with desires for national coverage if those ISPs already have more than 250,000 customers – specifically limiting the potential directly attached national customer base for the NBN to little more than Telstra, Optus, TPG, iiNet and Internode.
Bohemyth sent word that the NBN's construction boss has resigned. Now in the latest blow to NBN Co's efforts to deliver the project on time and on budget, the company's experienced head of construction, Mr Flannigan, tendered his resignation yesterday.
If you like cracking codes, maybe you can help the FBI crack a murder mystery. Ricky McCormick, who was murdered and dumped in a field in St. Louis, Missouri, had two encrypted notes stuffed in his pockets when police found the body.
Google recently launched a +1 system, similar to Facebook's "like". More here. In order to +1 things, you first need a public Google profile. This helps people see who recommended that tasty recipe or great campsite. When you create a profile, it's visible to anyone and connections with your email address can easily find it.
There's two Duke Nukem videos out. Contains bad language and general bad behaviour. Here's another video, of a kinda clever ad for a wooden mobile phone. Also check out this LCD monitor disassembly. Bill takes apart an LCD monitor and shows how it works. He explains how it uses liquid crystals, thin film transistors and polarizers to display information.
Here's a new one on me, bacn, which is email that's better than spam, but not as good as real mail. Bacn differs from spam in that it has intentionally been signed up for, even though this could be sometimes construed as a misinformed decision. Bacn is not necessarily sent in bulk. Some examples of common bacn messages are news alerts, periodic messages from e-merchants one has made previous purchases with, messages from social networking sites, and wiki watch lists.
Speaking of which, PETA are offering $1M for in vitro meat. Scientists around the world are researching or seeking the funds to research ways to produce meat in the laboratory—without killing any animals. In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce.
Sony are the latest to draw fire from Anonymous, thanks JD. The hacking collective known as Anonymous has successfully taken down Sony’s official PlayStation website in revenge for the company’s lawsuit against George Hotz. Earlier today, the coordinated assault knocked Sony.com and PlayStation.com offline, with more attacks promised to come.
Tuesday Night Reviews
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Tuesday, 5-April-2011 22:48:50 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Motherboard & CPU:
MSI 890FXA-GD65 AMD 890FX Motherboard on ThinkComputers.
Gigabyte H67N-USB3-B3 Mini-ITX and Intel Core i5-2500T / Core i3-2100 on HWHeaven.
ECS H61H2-A Motherboard on TBreak.
Memory:
G.Skill RipjawsX PC17000 CL7 on NinjaLane.
G.Skill RipJaws X DDR3-2133 4GB on TBreak.
Audio Visual:
Powerbeats by Dr. Dre earphones on TBreak.
Samsung TL500 digicam on TechReviewSource.
Cases:
Fractal Design Define XL on APHNetworks.
Lian Li Lancool PC-K57 on Tweaknews.
Thermaltake Level 10 GT Full Tower on PCPerspective.
Enermax LuxuRay on RBMods.
Aerocool RS-4 on HWSecrets.
Thermaltake Level 10 GT on TechSpot.
Input Etc:
Thermaltake eSPORTS Challenger Pro Gaming Keyboard on Tech-Reviews.
Cooler Master SPAWN mouse on Guru3D.
MSI Master Overclocking Arena
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Monday, 4-April-2011 13:00:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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MSI are running their Master Overclocking Arena 2011 qualifier for AU and NZ, right here in our forums. MSI is proud to announce the AUNZ qualifier for MOA. MSI is calling upon overclocking aficionados from Australia and New Zealand to push their systems to the limit and submit their scores as the AUNZ qualifiers will start as of today! 2 of the best overclockers from Australia and New Zealand will earn flights, accommodation and hardware to compete and represent AUNZ in Jakarta at the APAC MOA finals in July.
So, get cracking with 3DMark Vantage and post your results here.
Motherboard & CPU:
Sapphire Pure Black X58 Motherboard at Legit Reviews.
ECS P67H2-A2 (B3) at iXBT Labs.
Memory:
G.Skill Sniper SR2 8GB Kit at Overclock3D.
Kingston HyperX Genesis 4GB 2133MHz DDR3 Memory Kit at Big Bruin.
Patriot G2 DDR3-12800 2x2GB Kit at RB Mods.
Patriot G2 (GAMER 2) 1600MHz CL9 8GB Kit at Vortez.
Video Cards:
ASUS HD 6970 at Overclockers Club.
ASUS Radeon HD 6850 DirectCU V2 at Pro-Clockers.
EVGA GTX 460 2WIN at Pure Overclock.
Sapphire 6950 FleX Edition at Pure Overclock.
HIS HD 6870 IceQ X Turbo X Overclocker Cafe.
Cooling:
Zalman ZM-F4 135mm Multipurpose Fan at Legit Reviews.
Storage:
Zalman N series 128GB SSD at the Guru of 3D.
Patriot Memory Supersonic USB 3.0 Flash Drive at Hardcoreware.
Intel SSD 510 series (250Gb) SSD at Funky Kit.
Thecus N4200 PRO NAS at Tweak Town.
Cases & PSU:
Thermaltake ARMOR A30 Case at Tech Reaction.
Corsair TX850V2 850 Watt Power Supply at Tweak Town.
Audio/Visual:
Able Planet NC300 headset at Gaming Nexus.
Corsair SP2500 2.1 Speaker System at Overclock3D.
Patriot PBO Core Media Player at Test Freaks.
SteelSeries Siberia V2 Headphones at TBreak.
Samsung UN55C9000 55 inch 3D LED TV at Overclockers Online.
Input/Output Devices:
Samsung CLP-325W Laser Printer at TBreak.
Software:
Angry Birds Rio for Android at Test Freaks.
If you're a bit peckish, we've always got some new recipes for you in our Geek Food forum. (I'm always hungry after looking through these threads, I dunno why...)
We've got a couple of interesting threads in the Geek Food forum as well:
Should pork belly have a strong smell? by Brad81.
KFC Double Down by username_taken.
Help! Cleaning a big cuttlefish by stedyedy.
Coffee Machines and Value for $$$ by jsp1511.
I love Sunday when you're full from lunch, and it's kinda quiet in the neighbourhood. It's even kinda quiet on the news front - I guess everyone's all tuckered out after the fun of April's Fools news posts.
Speaking of which, you may have seen Google's effort, the Gmail Motion. Well, researchers at USC have responded with the real deal. As one of the comments says for the second video, there's nothing worse than someone making your April Fools joke into reality.
If you've ever wondered about the testing behind hard drive reviews, Tweak Town have expanded on testing SSD drives: "It would be difficult for most people to imagine the amount of testing that goes into a product review. I think most reading this have run a benchmark on their system before, but few can really grasp what it means to systematically run test after test without varying order or timeline. We run a lot of tests, several more than what makes it into a final review. Once you master the art of testing and the discipline of keeping a dedicated test machine, certain patterns emerge. Some of these show up in the tests that are published and sometimes they show up in others. When a test shows something of value and isn't redundant with another test, we typically bring that test into the review. This can sometimes be to explain something we saw in another test or at times add a way to look at a product."
If you're really not clued-in about CPU's, cores, hyperthreading and all that, you should read Funky Kit's article about just that: "When researching processors these days one runs into talk of Cores, Threads, HyperThreading, Turbo Boost, Turbo This, Hyper That, HT, mhz, ghz, it's a mess! This article aims to be a basic guide to what it all means, in as simple of terms as possible."
Ars Technica had a good look at high performance computing on gaming PC's this week: "It is hard to imagine performing research without the help of scientific computing. The days of scientists working only at a lab bench or poring over equations are rapidly fading. Today, experiments can be planned based on output from computer simulations, and experimental results are confirmed using computational methods. For example, the Materials Genome Project is currently plowing through the periodic table looking for structures and chemistries that may lead to enhanced materials for energy applications. By allowing a computer to perform most of the work, researchers can concentrate their valuable time on synthesizing and characterizing a small subset of interesting compounds identified by the search algorithm." The article should be particularly interesting for a lot of OCAU'ers involved in distributed computing, in our ever-popular Folding@Home Team 24.
MegaTech News have released small "Robo showcase": "It’s not uncommon for articles to be written over persons of valor. If someone does a good deed or meets a historic achievement, they will be praised, held up on the shoulders of the printed word for all the world to see. Extraordinary acts and those responsible are often showcased to set examples and instill hope in others. That isn’t what I’m doing here. This isn’t for showcasing weak humans and their paltry accomplishments. I’m here to talk about robots, our soon-to-be masters and overlords." I just want one that can serve drinks on my sail barge.
Still on robotics, watch this great vid of a surgeon folding a paper aeroplane, using the Da Vinci robot, a tool more often used for prostate surgery and other surgeries. Keep watching to the very end for a small twist. You can read more about the robotic system at http://www.intuitivesurgical.com/. Thanks to everyone who sent in links to this!
Finally, we've got another article from Ars Technica, but this one is a photoessay, collating the first images from various probes that we've sent to other planets in the solar system. "This week, NASA released the first images that its Messenger probe sent back after it went into orbit around the solar system's innermost planet, Mercury. These weren't the first images taken of Mercury from a spacecraft, nor even the first images of Mercury taken by Messenger, which had passed by the planet several times as it maneuvered into orbit. So why is entering orbit a big deal?"
If you're suffering some clock-related confusion this morning, it might be because Daylight Saving ended last night. So, 3am became 2am, and you got an extra hour's sleep-in. As always, if you notice the timestamps in the forums are wrong, check your timezone and daylight saving settings in UserCP.
Saturday Morning Reviews
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Saturday, 2-April-2011 10:52:56 (GMT +10) - by Sciby
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Motherboard & CPU:
Intel Core i5-2300 CPU at Techware Labs.
Asus P8P67 LE at IT Shootout.
Video Cards:
Zotac GTX 570 2GB at XS Reviews.
HIS Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X TurboX Video Card at TweakTown.
MSI GeForce GTX 580 Lightning 1536 MB at Tech Powerup.
HIS 6850 Fan 1GB GDDR5, HIS 6870 Fan Turbo 1GB GDDR5 Graphics Cards at iXBT Labs.
HIS 6870 IceQ X Turbo X at Metku.
Cooling:
Antec Kuhler H2O 620 CPU Water Cooler at Legit Reviews.
Prolimatech Super Mega CPU Cooler at Vortez
Storage:
OCZ Vertex2 60GB SATAII Solid State Drive at eTeknix.
Cases & PSU:
Corsair GS800 Power Supply at Hardware Heaven.
Thermaltake Level 10 GT ATX Case at Modders Inc.
Andyson Nuclear 850 Power Supply at Hardware Secrets.
Audio/Visual:
LG Flatron E2260 at TBreak.
Input/Output Devices:
Epson WorkForce 635 Multifunction Printer at Tech Review Source.
Tt eSports Azurues Gaming Mouse at eTeknix.
Mobile Phones:
Samsung Galaxy S 4G Android Smartphone at Hot Hardware.
Software:
Internet Explorer 9 at Inside Hardware.
Total War: Shogun 2 (PC) at Gaming Heaven.
Thanks to mpot, Skimmer333, Enthalpy and timbot this week! BTW, if you've seen any good April Fools jokes this year, add them to this thread.
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Well, thank god we avoided that Facebook disaster. Anyway, news!
First up, you may have read in the last few days that Samsung had been installing keylogger software on their freshly built laptops. Well, it seems that the anti-spyware software used to detect the alledged keylogger actually generated a false-positive. "Samsung has denied allegations it installed secret spyware software on its laptops that monitors and records users' activity - including their keystrokes - without their consent. Further, the security firm whose antivirus software was used to detect what it thought was spyware has published a statement on its blog apologising to Samsung." I say "Derp" on behalf of the anti-spyware people.
Most of us want to save as many pennies as we can when building a new computer and Benchmark Reviews have written a "Fast-Enough" budget PC article to show how it's done. "Just to be clear: I'm not trying to build the ultimate gaming box; rather, my goal is to build a gaming system that will play most modern games at an average frame rate of 30fps or higher at a resolution of 1680x1050 pixels for the least amount of money. A secondary goal is that the system should be easily upgradeable to increase its performance so that it can last at least a few years without requiring major expenditures."
Amazon recently announced their new "cloud" service for their digital music customers, Digital Trends have taken a closer look at the offering: "Music may have kicked off the digital media revolution with the rise of the MP3, but in recent years audio has taken a major backseat to video and communications. The more devices we pile up, the more fragmented our music collections become. Some don’t even bother downloading music at all anymore, instead opting for unlimited monthly services or radio alternatives like Pandora. Well, Amazon has taken a step toward changing that."
Know nothing about Intel's Core i7 products? Want to know more? Love obsessessing about obscure tech specs? (don't we all?) Then Hardware Secrets have you covered with a perusal of Intel's i7 chips currently available. I wanted to include a nice intro quote from the article, but it's just *bang* straight into the meaty techy stuff, so just go read it. Trust me. It's full of numbers.
TweakTown US have done an analysis of the AMD Catalyst v11.3 drivers: "I knew this driver was going to come, but I have to admit I was a little worried that for the first time in a few years AMD might just miss it. Of course they didn't, and today we're looking at the latest version of the Catalyst drivers - the 11.3s." Normally I'd write more, but it's kinda hard to jazz up a link about driver analysis.
While we're in a testing mood, Phoronix have looked at using Gallium3D on AMD FirePro Workstation GPUs: "How well do AMD's FireGL/FirePro workstation graphics cards work with the open-source graphics drivers for Linux? It's something we never have really focused on up to this point, since after all, most workstation users are satisfied with using proprietary display drivers on Linux. It is the workstation market that drives the proprietary Linux driver development after all for AMD and NVIDIA, and that is really the focus of development, not Linux gamers or enthusiasts. But curiosity got the best of me, so here's what happens if you try to use an expensive FirePro graphics card with the open-source driver stack and the Mesa Gallium3D driver."
While we're with Phoronix, they've also looked at the continuing improvement of Sandy Bridge performance: "At the beginning of the month I reported on a small patch to Mesa that resulted in a huge performance improvement for Intel Sandy Bridge graphics, but Intel's OSTC developers have bumped up the performance of the latest-generation graphics processors even more. With the LLC caching patch-set, which should be committed to the Linux 2.6.40 kernel (not the current 2.6.39 cycle), there are measurable OpenGL performance improvements."
Back into video card testing and performance, nVidia have released a "Subpixel Reconstruction Antialiasing Demo" - Er, righto. "Subpixel Reconstruction Antialiasing (SRAA) combines singlepixel (1x) shading with subpixel visibility to create antialiased images without increasing the shading cost. SRAA targets deferred shading renderers, which cannot use multisample antialiasing." Sounds great. Will it make the bodies in my games explode more prettily?
In an interesting move, nVidia are going to officially unlock SLI on AMD 990-chipset motherboards. "For so long, AMD enthusiasts have to resort to unofficial patches to make SLI work on their boards but not anymore. NVIDIA has finally agreed to make their SLI technology available for AMD 9-series chipsets boards supporting the Zambezi processors based on Bulldozer architecture. Only 990FX and 990X will be supported though so no luck for 7 and 8 series boards owners."
Onto portable computing and Techspot have taken a look at the latest in notebooks: "The year kicked off to a good start in the laptop sector with AMD finally delivering its promised Fusion chips -- five years in the making -- and Intel launching its Huron River platform powered by Sandy Bridge processors. Fusion is doing well at the entry level market with limited competition from the Atom, but things didn't go so smoothly for Intel. The company discovered a design flaw in its 6 Series chipset, which resulted in product launch delays across the board for new Sandy Bridge-based notebooks."
Finally, if 2011 just isn't to your liking, you can always buy yourself a DeLorean and drive off to a different year! "In 1995, a Texas business man bought the rights for the DeLorean brand and all the inventory of the short-lived company. Through the DeLorean Motor Company you can buy an original 1982 DeLorean DMC-12, buy a brand new DeLorean, built from scratch using new parts, or repair your used DMC-12. If this story wasn't amazing enough, a guy built a replica of the DeLorean used in the Back to the Future movies and is selling at eBay for USD 450,000." That's a lot of bucks just to be able to drive around and rant incoherently like Doc Brown.
We've made a bit more progress with our Facebook integration plans recently - just this morning I managed to get the plugins to work properly on OCAU's pages. I'm also looking into setting up an on-site Facebook Games Arcade, so you'll be able to play Farmville and Mafia Wars etc from within OCAU and have your high scores displayed via your forum signature.
Remember that in a month or so we will be switching over to using Facebook Connect for authentication, so you will need a Facebook account in order to use OCAU's features, including the forums. Here's to the continuing evolution of OCAU! As always, we welcome your feedback.
Update: APRIL FOOLS! :) Check out the previous pranks here.
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