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August 2011
Wednesday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 31-August-2011  20:48:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Portable & Prebuilt:
MSI CX640 Back to School Laptop on MadShrimps.
Asus U36JC Laptop on Tech-Reviews.

Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte G1.Sniper.2 on Guru3D.
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD5 Socket 1155 Motherboard on Pro-Clockers.

Cooling:
Cooler Master GeminII S524 CPU Heatsink on BenchmarkReviews.
Thermaltake Frio OCK CPU Heatsink on APHNetworks.
Enermax ETS-T40-TA CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Zalman ZM-SF2 Case fan on RBMods.
Phanteks PH-F140TS 140mm Fan on eTeknix.

Cases:
Rosewill Thor V2 tower on Anandtech.
ThermalTake Chaser MK-I on OCClub.
Silverstone Temjin TJ08-E Evolution on NinjaLane.
Corsair Carbide 400R on TechPowerUp.

Storage:
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD on Phoronix.
OCZ Technology RevoDrive 3 X2 PCI-E 480GB SSD on Tweaktown.

Input Etc:
Thermaltake eSports Meka G1 Gaming Keyboard on LegitReviews.
ZOWIE EC2 Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.



Elated jQuery Mobile contest! (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 30-August-2011  15:58:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg

It's contest time, again! Matt from Elated.com, an Australian web development blog, is giving away 3 copies of his latest eBook to OCAU readers. Master Mobile Web Apps with jQuery Mobile teaches you how to quickly create great mobile web apps using jQuery Mobile. It's a fully-up-to-date comprehensive guide, with free lifetime updates.

To enter, simply reply to this thread telling us your idea for the most pointless, silly or funny app you can think of. We'll allow entries for 2 weeks, then I'll choose my favourites and we'll have a poll to pick the winners.



Tuesday Afternoon (5 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 30-August-2011  15:47:38 (GMT +10) - by Agg

This is a bit creepy, but a guy has replaced an eye with a camera. Rob lost his eye in a shooting accident (which, while certainly serious, is still getting off lucky CONSIDERING HE WAS IN A SHOOTING ACCIDENT INVOLVING HIS FACE), and the last time we saw him had a red LED eyeball. Now he has a video camera.

Timbot sent in this WSJ article about how to kill HP in a year. Never mind the years of effort H-P spent -- including a controversial merger with Compaq -- becoming the world's largest PC maker. Never mind that the PC business feeds H-P's more profitable businesses. Dumping it is a beautiful absurdity that one analyst, Jayson Noland of Robert W. Baird & Co., described as "like McDonald's getting out of the hamburger business."

Mike Nash is a Brisbane-based game character designer, and his latest work is freakin' amazing. Those are renders, not sculptures. I think. Finished up some new personal work, I created a initial concept in Z-brush then rebuilt in XSI and rendered in V-Ray. There's a fair few renders, be sure to check out the rest in the Gallery. Update: Apparently there are some NSFW images in the gallery, so be warned!

BlueRaven spotted this USB stick PC running Q3. Here’s something to liven up your weekend: a video of the Raspberry Pi running Quake 3. We’re still working on ironing a few kinks out (specifically, there seems to be a library issue which means our framerate, while good, isn’t quite as spectacular as we know it can be; we’re working on it as I post this) – but this is what test boards are for, and we’re making great progress getting the boards running smoothly. Discussion here.

Wikileaks released some cables last week, including one from Canberra saying that the NBN will increase online piracy. The comment came in a cable reporting the outcome of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft's (AFACT's) Federal Court case against iiNet. AFACT failed to convince the Federal Court in February 2010 that iiNet had authorised its users' copyright infringement by failing to pass on notices provided by AFACT. In the cable, it is noted that as a result of the loss, AFACT would increase pressure on the government to make law changes.

Issue 16 of The Overclocker magazine is now available.



Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 30-August-2011  15:12:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
Genius SP-HF2020 Hi-Fi Digital Wooden Speakers on ThinkComputers.
CM Storm Sirus 5.1 Headset on TechReaction.

Video Cards:
ASUS Matrix GTX 580 Platinum on Bjorn3d.
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 550 Ti AMP! Edition on LegitReviews.

Storage:
QNAP TS-559 Pro II Network Attached Storage on APHNetworks.
Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD on PureOC.
Battle of the SATA 3.0 Controllers on Techgage.

Cases:
Sentey Burton - GS-6500 on ComputingOnDemand.
SilverStone TJ08-E Micro-ATX Chassis on MissingRemote.
Spire Savit 6005B on XSReviews.

Input Etc:
Microsoft Touch Mouse on TechReviewSource.
Roccat Valo Gaming Keyboard on Pro-Clockers.
Wacom Intuos4 Medium Professional Pen Tablet on RWLabs.
Tt eSports Black Element Gaming Mouse on NeoSeeker.

Cooling:
NZXT Sentry Mix Fan Controller on OCClub.
Corsair Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.

Software:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Performance Test on TechSpot.
Hard Reset Game Preview on HWHeaven.

Misc:
AMD A8 3850 A-series ALU on Metku.
SilverStone Strider Plus 500W PSU on HWSecrets.
Motorola Atrix Smartphone on TBreak.



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 29-August-2011  20:43:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Remember, OCAU now has official twitter and facebook pages. The twitter feed is much like an RSS feed and is updated every time we post news. The Facebook page is updated when we have something other than the usual news and reviews posts. Anyway, here's a few interesting threads from the forums:

It's the little things that make my day worth it in Overclocking & Hardware.
Steelseries Sensei in Overclocking & Hardware.
STOP PRESS: Mitsi finds solution to nVidia Downclocking while folding in Team OCAU.
Stanza's trial with home Fibre Channel SAN in Storage & Backup.
Wolfdale & Yorkfield CPUs - My Observations in Intel Hardware.
Creative Sound Blaster Titanium HD - Underwhelmed in PC Audio.
Somebody hacked my iTunes account in Apple iOS (OS & Devices).
What PC Security setup are you running? in General Software.
Fedora 16 selects BtrFS as default in Other Operating Systems.
E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy in PC Games.
Firmware 3.70 in Sony Consoles.
yowayowa camera in Photography.
Sony NEX-7 in Photography.
Chili tolerance: How high can you build it? in Geek Food.
Organismasm - FREE album! in Entertainment.
Nick's Tech Tip of the Month: DYNAMICS & COMPRESSORS in Musicians.
Investorville profile highest scores in Career, Education & Finance.
News.com.au Supertrader - Share trading competition in Career, Education & Finance.
I work in HR. Here are some tips from the real world. in Career, Education & Finance.
The Butchered English Language and what it is becoming in Career, Education & Finance.
5 weeks in Germany; first time backpacking; little advice in Lifestyle.
Victoria to lower speed limit to 30kmh in Motoring.
Outback cripples Mercedes-Benz's toughest off-roaders in Motoring.
I have leukaemia (warning - epic post inside) in Sport, Fitness & Health.
Private health fund slug for high earners as Government moves to cut rebates in Politics & Policies.
Australia's Angry Mayors: How Population Growth Frustrates Local Councils in Politics & Policies.
BHP posts biggest profit in corporate history in Current Events.
Hurricane Irene heads for US East Coast in Current Events.
Aliens may invade if climate change is mishandled in The Pub.
Pecky the Pigeon ... PeckyCam is now on Youtube! in The Pub.



Monday Morning (15 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 29-August-2011  01:38:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg

It's been a week for corporate shuffling, with Steve Jobs stepping down, and a new President and CEO for AMD. More here. AMD announced today that Rory P. Read, formerly the president and chief operating officer of Lenovo, will be the company's new CEO, starting immediately. He will also serve on AMD's board of directors. Also, CmdrTaco is leaving Slashdot.

Razer are launching a switchblade laptop for gaming. Razer has hired some impressive talent, including the team behind OQO, and engineers from Apple, Dell, and others. They've been operating in stealth mode for three years, working on a number of projects that were ultimately canned for not meeting Razer's standard. The Razer Blade is going to be the team's grand coming-out party, and it's certainly a standout product in the gaming PC market.

TPG have bought IntraPower, making the move into cloud computing. TPG has offered to acquire IntraPower for $12.8m in an all-cash bid of 30c a share, more than double the target's closing price of 14c on Wednesday, the day before the deal was announced.

IBM are building the world's biggest data store. The 120 petabyte "drive" - that's 120 million gigabytes - is made up of 200,000 conventional hard disk drives working together. The giant data container is expected to store around one trillion files and should provide the space needed to allow more powerful simulations of complex systems, like those used to model weather and climate.

If you've got a Crucial M4 SSD, this firmware upgrade might interest you. In a nut shell, this is a great firmware update from Crucial as visible improvement is shown in any and all tests conducted. The only downfall is that Crucial hasn’t discovered a simpler Windows based solution for the update.

From HyRax1: I've been waiting to get this video posted - a very apolitical presentation from Peter Ferris of NBN Co, mythbusting the NBN. Engineering students will love this one - it gives some good proper technical info about the NBN - what it is, how it's built and how it will work. It also covers general info busting the common media-pushed FUD and how much it will cost, etc. Many political arguments against the NBN are totally obliterated by Peter's presentation. Despite being nearly an hour long, it's not tedious and quite eye-opening. Many questions are answered. Discussion here.



Sunday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 28-August-2011  23:19:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) PCI-Express 3.0 on TechPowerUp.
ASUS F1A75-M PRO on PureOC.
GIGABYTE G1.Sniper2 (Intel Z68) on Tweaktown.
MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) on OCIA.
Core i5-2500T, Core i5-2390T, Core i3-2100T and Pentium G620T CPUs on XbitLabs.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Lenovo IdeaCentre K330 Desktop PC on TechSpot.
Dell Vostro V131 notebook on TechReviewSource.
Velocity Micro Cruz T301 7-inch Android Tablet on ThinkComputers.

Cooling:
NZXT HAVIK 140 CPU Cooler on BenchmarkReviews.
Corsair Hydro series H80 CPU cooler on MadShrimps.
Cooler Master NotePal U-Stand Laptop Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Cooler Master GeminII S524 CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
Cooler Master Hyper 612S on XSReviews.
Corsair Hydro Series H100 Liquid-Cooling System on XbitLabs.

Input Etc:
Razer Imperator 2012 Expert Dual Sensor Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
SteelSeries Shift Keyboard: Medal Of Honour Gaming Edition on Tech-Reviews.
Arctic Cooling K481 Wireless Keyboard with Multi-Touch Pad on ViperLair.

Cases:
Enermax Hoplite on TechPowerUp.
Thermaltake's Element Q Mini-ITX on TechReport.
Thermaltake Element G, AeroCool XPredator and CoolerMaster HAF 922 on XbitLabs.

Storage:
Runcore T50 mSATA SATA 3 (SF-2281) 6Gbps SSD on TheSSDReview.
Plextor PX-LB950UE Blu-Ray burner on BusinessComputingWorld.
Synology DS110J NAS on XSReviews.
Plextor PX-LB950UE External 12x Blu-ray Writer on PCStats.
Thermaltake Max 5G USB 3.0 HDD Enclosure on Tweaknews.
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 240GB SSD on Tweaktown.
ineo 3.5" USB3.0 External Enclosure on TechWareLabs.
Apacer Handy Steno AH130 USB 2.0 Flash Drive on MadhShrimps.
Corsair Force Series 3 240GB SSD on HWHeaven.
HornetTek Slipper U3 External Dock on Bjorn3D.

Audio Visual:
SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime Digital Cable Tuner on MissingRemote.
Thermaltake Tt eSPORTS Shock Spin Gaming Headset on APHNetworks.
AverMedia Deluxe Hi-Gain DTV Antenna on RWLabs.
General Electric X500 digicam on TechReviewSource.
Elgato EyeTV DTT Deluxe TV Tuner Micro-Stick on RWLabs.
Turtle Beach DPX21 headset on TBreak.

Video Cards:
Zotac AMP! GeForce GTX 550 Ti, AMP! GeForce GTX 560, GeForce GTX 590 on iXBTLabs.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6670 Ultimate 1GB on eTeknix.
ASUS GeForce GTX 560 DirectCU II TOP on LegitReviews.
ASUS ROG Matrix GTX 580 Platinum 1.5GB on PCPerspective.
ASUS MARS II Review: GeForce GTX 580 SLI On One PCB on HotHardware.
ASUS MARS II Dual GTX 580 3GB on PCPerspective.
ASUS GTX580 MATRIX on OCClub.

Power Supply:
OCZ ZS 650W Power Supply on Pro-Clockers.
Super Flower Golden Silent 500W on TechPowerUp.

Misc:
TTesports Battle Dragon Gamer Bag on XSReviews.
Cadence 4-Bit Binary Leather Watch on LegitReviews.
Just one more mission: impressions of the new Deus Ex on Tech Report.
Tp-link TL-WR1043ND Wireless N Gigabit Router on RBMods.
BitFenix Alchemy Cables on TechReaction.
A Look Through Fedora 16 Alpha on Phoronix.
Corsair Vengeance 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 Memory Kit on OCOnline.



Misc Pics (23 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 26-August-2011  14:43:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Thanks to NanoDuke, simon and Timbot this week!






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



GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 Motherboard (1 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 26-August-2011  02:07:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg

DiGiTaL MoNkEY has checked out the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 motherboard. This packs a lot of features into the standard ATX form-factor, including support for four-way CrossFireX and AMD's upcoming Bulldozer CPUs:


Click for the review!



Forum Projects (1 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 25-August-2011  11:43:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some more reviews and projects from people in the forums:


windwithme checked out
Sandy Bridge ITX with G620/G850

He also reviewed the
GIGABYTE A75M-D2H board

Zyther reviewed the
Ozito Rotary Tool Kit


AptivaGaming reviewed the
Tt Isurus In-Ear Headset

Stygian is building
modular analogue synthesisers

EpicPCCases has an
airbrushed BF3 case


archibaw is making
a huge mousepad

sonicthemouse is making
a DIY tiny server

DonutKing has
a detailed 286 build



Steve Jobs Steps Down (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 25-August-2011  11:30:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A zillion people sent word that Steve Jobs has resigned as Apple's CEO, but will stay on with the company. "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know," Jobs wrote in a letter to the Apple board. "Unfortunately, that day has come."

Discussion here.



Thursday Morning (3 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 25-August-2011  02:06:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg

HotHardware have an AMD 990FX motherboard round-up. We want to give you prospective AMD buyers a glimpse at some ‘boards designed with the FX-Series in mind. The ASUS CrossHair V Formula, ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional, and Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 we'll be looking at here all offer official support for upcoming 8-Core AMD FX-Series processors and a whole lot more.

Phoronix look at battery life in Linux. While the Linux power consumption may be up on recent kernels depending upon your hardware configuration, there's a few known but not too commonly used tweaks for reducing your system power consumption and extending your battery life when using Intel integrated graphics on your favorite Linux distribution.

Tweaktown checked out surround vision with the 3GB MARS II. This setup results in a final resolution of 3600 x 1920. To be honest, in portrait the gaming experience is a lot stronger thanks to the fact that the added height helps give you better immersion. People will continue to complain about the bezels, but to be honest with you, as someone who's been using Eyefinity for 20 months now, when you're in game the bezels don't become an issue and the side screens just help with your peripheral vision.

TheSSDReview have some 8-way SSD RAID action. It's been a while in the making but The SSD Review has finally got its hands on eight (8) new generation SATA 3 SSDs in the name of Patriot Wildfire 120GB SATA 3 SSDs for RAID testing.With a host of companies offering the latest SandForce controllers on their SSDs, Patriot is setting out to leap above the pack with the Wildfire series.

Speaking of SSDs, BenchmarkReviews looked at the OCZ RevoDrive3 X2 SuperScale PCI-E SSD, while HWSecrets compared two Corsair SSDs. We put the the Force 3 and Force GT up against each other in a battle of the latest Corsair SATA-600 solid state drives.

VR-Zone compared USB 3.0 controllers. Believe us when we say that this is one of the most epic reviews we've ever put together. Not because it was the hardest roundup we've ever done, but it's by far the most time consuming one and it doesn't even have anything to do with the benchmarks we ran. We thought it'd be a good idea to do a comparative review of the various USB 3.0 host controllers out there, as by now we've finally reached a stage where there's some competition in the market with at least three major players and a couple of smaller ones.

Speaking of which, Windows 8 will have native USB 3.0 support. As Windows chief Steven Sinofsky points out in the post, starting over with a clean slate and re-architecting Windows' USB support from the ground up wasn't an option. "Countless devices and their drivers rely on the behavior of our existing software," he says. Rather, Windows 8 will have a special software stack for USB 3.0 controllers, and previous-gen USB controllers will continue to rely on the legacy stack.

LegitReviews took seven AMD A8-3850 APUs for an overclocking test. When you get a new platform setup for the very first time you really don't know what to expect and it does take some time to learn all the quirks and nuances of a new processor and motherboard. We recently ordered in six more processors and then overclocked all seven of them to see what the best one would be for our test system!

Phi has good news if you're looking to use a PS3 controller in Windows, with a wireless guide and one for wired via USB. This guide shows you how to Use PS3 Controller in Windows 7, Vista and XP (Wireless Bluetooth). Following up to the guide on using PS3 Controller in Windows, here’s another one to use it via Bluetooth.

Samsung are apparently using science fiction films as prior art in their defence against Apple's lawsuit. In a new filing, picked up by intellectual-property tracking blog Foss Patents, Samsung has opposed the preliminary injunction Apple filed for in early July. While the document is sealed at the moment, Foss points to one of the non-sealed exhibits Samsung is using to go up against Apple, which cites Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" as clear evidence that tablets were an idea long before Apple's 2004 patent design filing:

Paul sent word of a PORTAL shirt by Ben Heck, on eBay to raise money for people with disabilities. This is the one of a kind "Portal Shirt" designed and built by the famous Ben Heckendorn. Ben built it on episode 4 of the "Ben Heck" show on Element14. Ben Heck donated the shirt to the AbleGamers Foundation. The shirt comes with the shirt you see. The screen that fits in the shirt, and the camera in the back. This is a one of a kind item. In Addition Ben Heck will sign the shirt for you.

And because I'm sure eleventy billion people will send this video in, it's a Touchpad running Android!



Thursday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 25-August-2011  01:26:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Portable & Prebuilt:
MSI X-Slim X460 Ultraportable notebook on TechSpot.
Cooler Master NotePal U Stand on ThinkComputers.
Dell Inspiron 620 MT desktop on TechReviewSource.

Storage:
Mach Xtreme DS Turbo 120GB SSD on Guru3D.
QNAP TS-659 Pro II NAS on LegionHW.

Audio Visual:
IOGEAR Theater Xperience USB DTS Sound Adapter on EverythingUSB.
Samsung UN55D7000 55 Inch Smart LED 3D TV on Tweaknews.

Cooling:
Evercool HPL-815 low-profile cooler on TechReaction.
Corsair H80 Self-Contained Liquid CPU Cooler on Techgage.

Input Etc:
Cyborg Peripherals Bundle on HWHeaven.
Razer Imperator 4G mouse on TBreak.

Power Supply:
Rasurbo Real & Power 350W on FunkyKit.
OCZ ZX850W on TechWareLabs.
Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 1200W on Bjorn3D.

Misc:
Epson Stylus Photo R2000 printer on TechReviewSource.
GIGABYTE Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard on LegitReviews.
Cooler Master Silencio 550 mid-tower case on PureOC.



Wednesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 24-August-2011  14:07:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Storage:
Zalman ZM-VE200 External HDD Case + Virtual Drive on RWLabs.
SilverStone DC01: An Entry Into The Linux NAS Market on Phoronix.

Motherboard & CPU:
Asus Sabertooth AMD 990FX Motherboard on OCIA.
ASUS Crosshair V Formula Motherboard on Overclockers.com.
Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H Review and Llano Overclocking on XbitLabs.

Cooling:
Cooler Master Notepal U Stand on TheSSDReview.
Thermaltake Jing Heatsink on Frostytech.
NZXT Sentry Mix Fan Controller on NeoSeeker.
ZEROtherm CoolMaxx 4000 VGA Cooler on XbitLabs.
Cooler Master Notepal U Stand Laptop Cooler on BigBruin.
Xigmatek Aegir CPU Cooler on HWSecrets.
NZXT Sentry Mix Fan Controller on NeoSeeker.

Cases:
Bitfenix Colossus Venom Edition on eTeknix.
Lian Li PC-C60 HTPC Case on Pro-Clockers.
Raidmax Blackstorm on Tweaktown.
Fractal Design's Define R3 mid-tower on TechReport.
Thermaltake Chaser MK-I on VR-Zone.

Video Cards:
Inno3D iChill GTX 560 Ti, Leadtek WinFast GTX 560 OC and XFX Radeon HD 6970/HD 6950 Standard Edition on XbitLabs.

Power Supply:
Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 800W on TechPowerUp.
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 750W on Vortez.

Misc:
Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Sequel We Always Wanted on HotHardware.
Logisys iStand S3 Tablet Stand on TechWareLabs.
Ducky DK9008G2 Cherry MX Brown Keyboard on TechARP.
Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 PC3-15000 2x4GB DDR3 RAM on APHNetworks.
Soyntec Netsound 500 headset on XSReviews.



Forum Reviews (7 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 23-August-2011  16:01:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's a few reviews by people in the forums:


MSI P67A-C45
by Yamunsa

G1 Sniper 2
by Sin0822

990FXA-UD7
by Sin0822


Lian Li PC-A05FN
by huxn8r

Nextbook Premium7
by break

Intel 320/510 Series SSD
by windwithme


LIFEPROOF iPhone4 case
by ozdavo

Tt Challenger Gaming Keyboard
by AptivaGaming

ALDI Cheap Headphones
by mAJORD



Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 23-August-2011  15:02:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
Sennheiser Adidas PMX 680i Sport Headphones on Tech-Reviews.
Sennheiser PX 200-II headphones on TechPowerUp.
Sennheiser CXC 700 Noise Cancelling Earbuds on TBreak.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Cooler Master Notepal U Stand on OCClub.
Acer Revo Mini PC on HWHeaven.
HP Elitebook 2560p notebook on TechReviewSource.
BlackBerry Torch 9860 on TBreak.
HP TouchSmart 610 on TBreak.

Cooling:
Cooler Master NotePal LapAir Notebook Cooling Pad on MegaTechNews.
Alpenföhn Triglav CPU Cooler on Vortez.
Thermaltake Frio OCK CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Cooler Master Notepal U Stand on NeoSeeker.

Video Cards:
HIS 6790 IceQ X Turbo on PureOC.
Zotac GTX 560 Multiview on TechWareLabs.
ASUS MARS II 3GB Dual GTX 580 on Tweaktown.

Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS P8H67-I (Intel H67) Mini ITX Motherboard on Tweaktown.
AMD A6-3650, A8-3850 APUs on iXBTLabs.
Sapphire Pure Platinum H67 Socket 1155 Motherboard on Pro-Clockers.
GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD5 on Bjorn3D.
AMD A8-3800 Llano processor on Guru3D.
Gigabyte G1-Killer Sniper 2 Motherboard on NinjaLane.
GIGABYTE X58A-OC on Vortez.

Power Supply:
Coolmax V-500 Power Supply on HWSecrets.
Innergie mCube Slim 65W/95W Universal Adapters on RWLabs.

Storage:
Drobo FS on ComputingOnDemand.
OCZ Agility 3 120GB Solid State Drive on Technoyard.
Patriot Memory Supersonic 64GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive on RWLabs.
Future Storage 240GB SATA 3 SSD on TheSSDReview.

Cases:
Corsair Carbide Series 400R on LegitReviews.
Thermaltake Chasar MK I on TechReaction.
Caselabs M8 on OC3D.
Cooler Master Storm Enforcer Gaming Case on Tweaknews.
Cooler Master Silencio 550 Mid-Tower on Techgage.
NZXT Tempest 410 Elite Mid-Tower on PC Perspective.
Thermaltake Level 10 GT System Enclosure on Metku.

Misc:
G.Skill RipjawsX PC3-14900 Cas 9 on OCClub.
Asus Black Diamond RT-N56U Router and USB-N13 Adapter on OCIA.
Wisper 805FE Folding Electric Bike on RamblingThoughts.
Nexus SM-9000C Silent Mouse on RBMods.



Tuesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 23-August-2011  01:36:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg

OCAU Sponsor DIY Home Automation are giving away a starter pack in a contest for people who join their mailing list and website. Details in the thread.

Speaking of which, congrats to the winners of our recent MSI RC Chopper contest!

Australia's biggest software company MYOB has sold for $1.2B to a company based in Boston. MYOB was owned by a consortium including Australian investment firm Archer Capital and US HarbourVest Partners. They paid about $450 million in 2009. "MYOB is a first class company with an attractive valuation. It has been the leader in the financial software space for SME's in Australasia for a very long time with a strong proposition focused on customers' needs," Bain Capital managing director Walid Sarkis said.

Vortez have a silent watercooling shootout. As the heat can be transferred away from the source (in the coolant), you can massively increase the surface area with which you transfer the heat to the air. Instead of being limited to a cooler that can only hold one or two 120mm fans, you can use a radiator that holds pretty much as many as you desire, and even then you can use more than one radiator. This massive increase in heat transferring surface area allows you to dramatically reduce the speed of the fans used, or even remove them entirely – reducing the noise of the system enormously.

The frenzy over HP's TouchPad tablets continues, with the price slashing reaching Australia. If you bought one full-price, HP will refund you the difference. Rumours of an Android port underway have fuelled further interest. Harvey Norman sold out of its 6000 units of the newly discontinued TouchPad tablet within an hour of HP announcing a fire sale that saw its price slashed to $99. Considering the device first went on sale last Monday from $499 it has become one of the most short-lived and heavily discounted technology products in history.



Tutorial: 2D Design with Solid Edge (3 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 22-August-2011  14:34:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

I've linked this before, but now it's complete and definitely deserves a second look. OCAU Forums member Bastard Child has put together a massive guide to 2D design with the free drafting program Solid Edge. If you've ever wanted to try your hand at CAD or mocking up modding parts etc, this will definitely get you up and running:


Click for the thread!



Monday Morning (18 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 22-August-2011  00:59:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Some Brisbane geeks have launched a social media rival called Kondoot. Users can "friend" others, just like Facebook, but the main point of difference is the wide range of streaming video options. Kondoot will allow users to broadcast streaming video from home or work live to the world.

Meanwhile Germany has declared the Facebook "Like" button illegal. Saying this contravened both German and EU privacy laws, Weichert demanded websites in Schleswig-Holstein remove the ‘like’ button from their offerings by the end of September or face a fine of up to €50,000.

Apple's Australian boss has tackled "rip-off" claims regarding Australian pricing compared to overseas, thanks Adam. Ed Husic, the member for Chifley, called out Apple in parliament this week and demanded a broader inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission into rampant price discrimination by technology companies in Australia. Discussion here.

There's something of a geek feeding frenzy underway, with HP exiting the consumer market as reported earlier, and their TouchPads being massively discounted. If you bought one at full price in Australia I don't imagine you'll be too happy to hear they lasted 4 days before being abandoned. HP will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. The devices have not met internal milestones and financial targets.

Meanwhile ArsTechnica have an article about where things are going in the world of tablets. For the first time in fifteen or more years, Redmond faces a genuine challenge to its Windows desktop monopoly. The threat isn't coming from Linux or from Mac OS X or from any other operating system. It's coming from a whole new computing concept: the "post-PC." The worry is that upstart tablets threaten to drive the computer out of the home, taking the Windows operating system with it.

Here's an interesting restaurant with interactive tables. In addition to ordering food from the interactive table, guests are able to choose from a range of virtual tablecloths, view the inamo chefs working in real time using the 'Chef Cam' function and explore a wide range of practical services such as taxi booking facilities.

Today's timewaster is Gravinator, from biatch.



Saturday Night Reviews (2 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 20-August-2011  22:26:41 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
GIGABYTE X58A-OC LGA1366 ATX Extreme Overclocking Motherboard on Futurelooks.
Asrock Fata1ty Z68 Professional Gen3 1155 Motherboard on Pro-Clockers.
ECS A990FXM-A motherboard on Guru3D.
ASUS Rampage III Black Edition on NeoSeeker.
ECS HDC-I Motherboard on HWSecrets.

Cooling:
Arctic Cooling F12 Case Fans on RBMods.
Cooler Master GeminII S524 HSF on TechReaction.

Cases:
Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 Full Tower on OCIA.
Corsair Carbide 400R on MadShrimps.
NZXT Source 210 Elite on BenchmarkReviews.

Storage:
Plextor Portable 500GB Hard Disk Drive on Tech-Reviews.
Kingston HyperX 240GB SATA III SSD on Bjorn3D.
Crucial M4 128GB SSD on OC3D.
Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB SATA 3 HDD on RWLabs.
Icy Dock MB982SPR-2S Dual 2.5" to 3.5" SATA HDD / SSD Converter on eTeknix.

Video Cards:
ASUS Mars II 3 GB Dual GTX 580 on TechPowerUp.
ASUS ROG MARS II 3GB on LegitReviews.
ASUS ENGTX580 DirectCU II on OCClub.
ASUS MARS II 3GB Dual GTX 580 on Tweaktown.
ASUS ROG Mars II 3GB on VR-Zone.

Audio Visual:
RedGiant A03 Ossicle In-ears on TechPowerUp.
Hauppauge WinTV-DCR-2650 Dual Digital CableCARD on MissingRemote.
Speedlink Metis Wireless headset on XSReviews.
Bowers & Wilkins C5 In-Ear Monitor Headphones on TechWareLabs.

Input Etc:
Genius Slimstar 8000 Wireless Keyboard/Mouse Combo on Tweaknews.
Mionix Zibal 60 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
Enermax Aurora Lite Ultra-Thin Keyboard on Techgage.
SteelSeries WoW Legendary Edition Mouse on HWHeaven.
Thermaltake eSports Challenger Gaming Keyboard on LegitReviews.
Sharkoon Fireglider Black gaming mouse on XSReviews.

Misc:
TRENDnet 450Mbps Concurrent Dual Band Wireless N Router on MadShrimps.
In Win Commander II 1200W on PureOC.



Extreme Cold in Adelaide (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 19-August-2011  21:52:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Team.AU and ASUS are getting together in Adelaide this weekend for a little extreme cooling action. There's a thread where you can keep an eye on how things are going:


Click here for the thread!



Misc Pics (15 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 19-August-2011  14:36:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Friday again!






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



MSI RC Chopper Contest Voting (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 19-August-2011  13:04:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg

There's only a couple of days left to vote for your favourite entry in the short list from our recent RC Chopper contest. The top 5 entries will win an RC Chopper, thanks to MSI!


Friday Midday (10 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 19-August-2011  12:54:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg

If your power bill suddenly spikes and your fans are all roaring, you may be generating Bitcoin for someone else, thanks to a new trojan. The trojan targets users’ GPUs and CPUs, using them in a botnet scheme. But rather than simply sending spam, like your average botnet, the attacker uses the infected machines as brute-force tools to mine for Bitcoins.

Intel have a firmware update to fix some flaky SSDs. For users unfamiliar with the issue, an Intel SSD 320 Series drive may exhibit a drive capacity of 8MB and an electronic serial # field containing a message of “BAD_CTX 0000013x” caused by an unexpected power loss under specific conditions. Once this error occurs, no data on the SSD can be accessed and the user cannot write to or read from the SSD.

HP are shutting their mobile device business, which is pretty much the death knell for Palm, while they shift their focus to business software products. Meanwhile their TouchPads are piling up in warehouses and apparently even being sent back by retailers. According to the same source, Best Buy took 270,000 TouchPads into inventory, and so far has managed to move less than ten percent of them—and that figure may not even take returned units into account. Best Buy reportedly no longer wants unsold TouchPads taking up space in its stores and warehouses, and is requesting that HP take the stock back.

Samsung have a new 32GB DRAM module, for servers. Touted as the industry's first such high-capacity RDIMM DRAM module to be built with 3D-TSV technology, Samsung claims that the new 32GB memory stick, which is fabricated via a 30nm process, consumes a mere 4.5w of energy per hour, or almost 30% lower than what LRDIMMs of the same capacity typically draw. Samsung has also added that its new RDIMMS are able to achieve transfer speeds of up to 1,333Mbits/s, as opposed to the 800Mbits/s speed found on older RDIMM memory.

An Australian geek is collecting and sharing laptop servicing manuals, which sounds handy. They generally detail the exact list of parts in each model of laptop – often down to individual screws, if you happen to have lost some and need to know the exact size for a replacement – and describe the procedure for disassembling and reassembling the entire machine, including panels, RAM, wireless cards, keyboards and touchpads and LCD screens, all the way down to the motherboard itself.

Gizmodo pose an interesting question: would you let power companies switch off your gadgets in exchange for a discounted bill? The scheme would use special smart meters that only kick in during peak periods, and only then for 30 minutes before rotating to your neighbours. The Council’s review is being conducted by the Australian Energy Market Commission, and the switch off idea is just one of many options being explored. The final report is due to go to the government in September 2012.

IBM have some new chips, modelled on the human brain. Big Blue is announcing today that it, along with four universities and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), have created the basic design of an experimental computer chip that emulates the way the brain processes information.

If you're going to hack and cripple your former employer's network, then doing it from McDonalds free WiFi is probably not a bad idea. But doing it 5 minutes after using your credit card to buy a burger there isn't too smart. Cornish had further made it easy for investigators by using his home IP address to install the vSphere software on Shionogi’s network as well as to access the Shionogi network about 20 times prior to February. He also used the same network login credentials during these visits from his home that he later used during his attack from McDonald’s.

Here's a cool sculpture of the Windows solitaire ending!



Thursday Night Reviews (2 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 18-August-2011  21:44:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
Palo Alto Audio Design Cubik speakers on BusinessComputingWorld.
Tt eSPORTS Shock One Gaming Headset on RWLabs.
Thermaltake Spin Headset on Bjorn3D.
Kodak EasyShare Max Z990 digicam on TechReviewSource.

Storage:
Ineo I-NA215U Plus USB 3.0 Hard Drive Enclosure on BigBruin.
Silverstone RVS02 USB 3.0 2.5” HDD Enclosure on Pro-Clockers.
Plextor PX-128 M2S 128 GB SSD on XSReviews.
WD Scorpio Blue 1TB Notebook Hard Drive on LegitReviews.
Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD on Vortez.
Buffalo Technology CloudStor 2TB NAS Server on BigBruin.
Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive on Guru3D.
Kingston HyperX 120GB SATA 3 SSD on TBreak.
Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB Mobile Hard Drive on Techgage.
Samsung 470 Series 256GB SSD on Vortez.
Samsung 470 128GB SSD on XSReviews.

Motherboard & CPU:
G1 Sniper 2 motherboard on SinHardware.
Sapphire Pure Platinum Z68 on PureOC.
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4-B3 Intel P67 on PCStats.
Sapphire Pure Platinum H67 on TechReaction.
MSI Intel 1155 Z68 PCI Express 3.0 Motherboard Z68A-GD65G3 on TechWareLabs.
ASRock Z68 Professional Fatal1ty Gen.3 on PureOC.
AMD’s Llano A8-3850 and A6-3650 APUs on Futurelooks.
ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional on Vortez.
Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4 Intel P67 on PCStats.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Lenovo IdeaPad Tablet K1 on HotHardware.
Alienware M18x notebook on TechReviewSource.
Logitech N600 Touch Lapdesk on EverythingUSB.
Sapphire Edge HD2 Mini PC on ThinkComputers.
Dell Venue Pro phone on BusinessComputingWorld.

Cooling:
Cooler Master Gemini II S524 CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Thermal Compound Roundup - August 2011 on HWSecrets.
Cooler Master Gemin II S524 Heatsink on EverythingUSB.
Corsair H100 CPU cooler on NeoSeeker.
Cooler Master GeminII S524 on PureOC.
Antec KÜHLER H2O 620 CPU cooler on Vortez.

Misc:
Patriot Viper Xtreme & Gamer 2 DDR3 Memory on LegionHW.
Section 8 Prejudice game on HWHeaven.
Tt eSPORTS Meka Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on eTeknix.
Silverstone GD06 Grandia Series HTPC Computer Case on Tweaknews.
Huntkey Jumper 300G Planet3dnow.de Edition Power Supply on HWSecrets.
ASUS Mars II 3 GB Dual GTX 580 video card on TechPowerUp.



Wednesday Afternoon (10 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 17-August-2011  13:20:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The big news of the last couple of days is that Google is acquiring Motorola for $12.5 billion. Specifically, Motorola Mobile, the mobile phone division. This is clearly to strengthen their Android platform and tackle Apple in the smartphone arena. The purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., by far the largest in Google's history, thrusts the Internet company into the cutthroat business of making smartphones, tablet computers and cable set-top boxes. It will nearly double Google's work force and test the company's young alliance with other cellphone makers. More here, here and discussion here. Thanks to everyone who sent that in!

Ken Block has a new gymkhana video, which doesn't take itself too seriously and is better than the last couple. DC and Ken Block present Gymkhana FOUR: The Hollywood Megamercial.

XbitLabs checked out USB 2.0 and 3.0 for flash drives. The today’s most popular way of moving data around and transferring it from one computer system to another is definitely USB flash drives. However, now that we have gigabytes of data the USB 2.0 speed may become a bottleneck. Will the transition to faster USB 3.0 interface help flash drives resolve this issue and is it justified at this time?

JD spotted a browser malware test which claims IE9 is the safest. Windows Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), Google Chrome 12, Mozilla Firefox 4, Apple Safari 5 and Opera 11 were tested with 1,188 malicious URLs - links that lead to a download that delivers a malicious payload or to a website hosting malware links.

DumbparameciuM spotted some sneak peek stuff about Battlefield 3, including co-op mode and a new gameplay video. The headline says it all, really. The single-player game of Battlefield 3, which hasn’t had much attention so far, will be playable with a chum. BF3 discussion here.

Tech Report have an article on tessellation in Crysis 2. We won't duplicate all of his hard work, but we do want to take a look at one aspect of it: a breakdown of Crysis 2's use of tessellation using a developer tool from AMD called GPU PerfStudio.

Meanwhile HotHardware looked behind the curtain at id's upcoming Rage. id Software's long-awaited FPS Rage is set to ship in October. When it launches, it'll be the first game to feature id's newest graphics engine, dubbed id Tech 5. With expectations running high in the wake of the latest game trailer shown at QuakeCon last week, we've put together an article to examine the merits of both the game and the technology behind it.

From Mambonee, a TED video about wireless data via light bulbs. Not sure if this has been on before as the actual seminar is from July but I found it pretty interesting in a Star Trek kinda way. All about replacing current wireless with light bulbs emitting data streams in the visible light spectrum with simple LED’s.

On the SSD side of things, TheSSDReview cover a new SandForce controller. Our report today will be a quick look at the recently updated OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 240GB SSD with the new SandForce SF-2282 processor. OWC is the first company consumer manufacturer to step up to the SF-2282 and bettered their 6G line even further yet with their memory switch to Toshiba 32nm NAND flash in both 120 and 240GB versions of the 6G. BenchmarkReviews meanwhile cover OCZ's virtualised controller architecture 2.0. When SandForce launched their second-generation chip, featured in the OCZ RevoDrive3 X2, the four integrated SandForce SF-2200 SSD controllers used an undocumented OCZ SuperScale Storage Controller.

Today's timewaster is typeracer, which at least looks like you're working.



Wednesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 17-August-2011  01:03:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
Cooler Master CM Storm Sirus 5.1 Channel Gaming Headset on Futurelooks.
Sonos Play:3 portable speakers on ReviewTheTech.

Storage:
Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD on Vortez.
SilverStone Ultra Slim EC02 USB 3.0 ExpressCard Adapter on Pro-Clockers.
Corsair Force GT SATA III 120GB SSD on LegitReviews.
Silicon Power Stream S10 750B USB 3.0 external HDD on TechPowerUp.
Strontium Matrix Series 120GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.

Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 Intel Z68 Motherboard on PCStats.
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme on Bjorn3D.

Cooling:
GELID Solutions Rev2 Tranquillo CPU Cooler on LegitReviews.
Cooler Master Hyper 612 PWM and GeminII S524 CPU coolers on OCClub.
ARCTIC’s Unlucky Number: Freezer 13 PRO CPU cooler on XbitLabs.
Auras Shagon ARC-118 and AHC-118 CPU Coolers with Direct-Contact Technology on XbitLabs.
Cooler Master GeminII S524 & Hyper 612 PWM CPU coolers on NeoSeeker.
Lamptron FC9 Fan Controller on TechReaction.

Memory:
EXCELERAM EP3001A PC3-10666 on TechWareLabs.
G.Skill Ripjaws X 16GB Kit on OC3D.
Kingston HyperX PnP KHX1600C9S3P1K2/8G 2x4GB DDR3 SODIMM on APHNetworks.

Cases:
BitFenix Shinobi Window on APHNetworks.
Sharkoon Vaya on XSReviews.
BitFenix Shinobi Window on Guru3D.
Silverstone Fortress FT03 on TechSpot.
SilverStone Raven RV03 on PureOC.
NZXT H2 Silent Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
Cubitek XL Tank on OCClub.

Prebuilt & Portable:
HP Pavilion Elite h8xt desktop on TechReviewSource.
Acer AC700-1099 Chromebook on PC Perspective.
Alienware Aurora R3 System Autopsy on HotHardware.
Asus U31SD-A1 notebook on TechReviewSource.
Dell XPS 8300 desktop on HWHeaven.
ASUS U46S Notebook on TBreak.

Power Supply:
OCZ ZS Series 650W on HWSecrets.
Kingwin Stryker Fanless 500W on TechPowerUp.
Add 2 PSU - PSU Expansion Module on Ninjalane.

Misc:
RageGage Desktop Computer Gaming Toy on TechWareLabs.
Antikeylogger01-USB from Eksitdata on RBMods.
Apacer Blue Engine Mouse M721 on RWLabs.
AMD Radeon 6950 Triple CrossFireX on eTeknix.



Monday Night (39 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 15-August-2011  22:22:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg

SMH are reporting that the free educational laptops are now considered slow, two years on. Not too surprising, I think most budget laptops would feel a little sluggish after a couple of years. The Lenovo netbooks handed out to NSW students in 2009 and 2010 sport a 1.66MHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive and 10-inch screen. The N450 CPU offers middling performance and is below the minimum specifications set by Adobe, which recommends that CS4 apps like Photoshop have at least a 1.8GHz CPU.

Google is still the most popular search engine, but a Hitwise report has Yahoo and Bing as more accurate, thanks JD. Yahoo! Search and Bing achieved the highest success rates in July 2011. This means that for Yahoo! Search, more than 81.36 percent of searches executed resulted in a visit to a Website. Google achieved a success rate of 68 percent, an increase of 1 percent in July 2011.

From Rich: A world record attempt is being launched this coming weekend on the 21st August in Perth at 11am. The record is to become the first person to circumnavigate Australia in an electric car, in this case a modified battery driven 1950's MG. Guinness has been contacted and the attempt is officially titled "Longest Journey in an electric car (non solar)". More details here.

Clinton noticed this video interview with Euclideon, the "unlimited detail" people, on HardOCP. Euclideon, a small company consisting of 9 people in Brisbane Australia, was in the news again in early August 2011 after having released a demo video of it Unlimited Detail Technology to give its fans a one year update. This video received almost 2 million views in the first 4 days and generated a lot of questions. Euclideon is a very secretive company that normally declines interviews. Recently though, public outcry for it to respond to its critics has been so great that Euclideon kindly agreed to an exclusive interview with [H]ardOCP.

The iiNet vs AFACT case keeps on churning, with a High Court appeal approved. iiNet won the case and a subsequent appeal; however, experts have said that the appeal judgment laid out a framework for AFACT to compel ISPs to act on infringement notices. In a packed court room in Sydney today, after hearing both sides plead their case, the High Court granted special leave to allow AFACT to present its argument at a High Court hearing in Canberra later this year, in the hopes of having the previous judges' ruling overturned. More here.



MSI RC Chopper VOTING Thread (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 15-August-2011  14:23:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Now's the time to vote for your favourite entry in the short list from our recent RC Chopper contest. The top 5 entries will win an RC Chopper, thanks to MSI!


Monday Lunchtime (7 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 15-August-2011  12:53:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Apple have a new headquarters planned, as befitting their new status as the most valuable company in the world. This past June we caught a glimpse of what Steve Jobs and the Apple crew had planned for the City of Cupertino, that being a gigantic “spaceship” campus in the shape of a ring, one so magnificent it would make ancient Rome cry little column-shaped tears. What we’ve got now is extended details including floor plans and renderings.

Firefox 6 has appeared for download. In typical Mozilla fashion, a complete build of Firefox 6 is now unofficially available for your downloading pleasure, three days ahead of schedule. If you're looking for a major facelift to the desktop edition, you won't find one here -- most of the new features aren't cosmetic. 6? I'm still on 3.6.

Tweaktown ponder Z68 vs X58 for gaming. I've been tossing up if I should make the move to Z68 for our VGA reviews, or stick with the tried and trusted X58 platform. Most people will feel that it's a no brainer with the X58 being the better option due to the fact it natively supports x16 / x16 in dual card setups. For us, that's indeed the biggest draw for the platform; the Z68 one on the other hand has a lot of standout features that make it a better option as well.

Britain's PM has responded to the role of social media during the recent rioting by holding them partly responsible. Saying the "free flow of information" can sometimes be a problem, Cameron's government has summoned those two social-networking sites, as well as Research In Motion, makers of the BlackBerry, for a meeting to discuss their roles during the violent outbreaks. The EFF are not impressed, and it's worth noting that social media is also being used to clean up the mess and even identify looters.

The SETI project has come back to life after a few months off, thanks to some more funding. Among the contributors are Jodie Foster, the actress who played a SETI researcher in the movie "Contact"; science-fiction writer Larry Niven, creator of the "Ringworld" series of novels; and Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who flew around the moon in 1968. "It is absolutely irresponsible of the human race not to be searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence," Anders wrote in a note accompanying his contribution. You can donate via this page if you like.

PC Perspective have an interview with John Carmack. We got about 30 minutes of John's time over the weekend and pestered him with questions about the GPU hardware race, how Intel's intergrated graphics (and AMD Fusion) fit in the future of PCs, the continuing debate about ray tracing, rasterization, voxels and infinite detail engines, key technologies for PC gamers like multi-display engines and a lot more!

Wired take a look at the IBM 5150 PC, now 30 years old. Facing me is an original edition of the first IBM PC, a computer that made its debut the summer I was born. We ought to have some affinity for each other, I think. I want this relationship to work. But I’m not sure what to do. There is no mouse to shake and wake up the screen, no icon to click or touch.

Adelaide doesn't have a Mana Bar, but it seems to now have a Pimp Pad. Wait, what the? Pimp.tv? Yeah, you know. That cheaply-produced web show with huge-breasted women who can barely speak English reading to you about games from a particularly slow teleprompter.



Sunday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 14-August-2011  21:52:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 AMD 990FX on Vortez.
AMD Fusion A8-3850 APU "Llano" On Linux on Phoronix.

Video Cards:
Sapphire HD6950 2GB DiRT3 Toxic Edition on OCClub.
ASUS GTX 580 Matrix Platinum on PureOC.
ZOTAC GTX580 3GB AMP2! SLI on Vortez.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Sapphire EDGE HD2 Mini PC on Overclockers.com.
Acer Aspire 5750 Laptop on HWSecrets.

Cases:
Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced Full-Tower on Techgage.
Thermaltake Level 10 GT on VR-Zone.
Antec Twelve Hundred V3 on eTeknix.
SilverStone Precision PS06 on LegitReviews.
NZXT Source 210 Elite on APHNetworks.

Cooling:
Corsair H100 CPU cooler on OC3D.
Enermax TBSilence 120mm Fans on Bjorn3D.
Nexus LOW-7000 Rev 2 HSF on TechReaction.

Storage:
Patriot WildFire 120GB SSD on Guru3D.
Thecus N2200XXX on PCReview.
WD My Book Essential USB3.0 3TB on TBreak.
Hitachi UltraStar 7K3000 3TB SATA 3 HDD on RWLabs.
Kingston HyperX 240GB SATA 3 SSD on TheSSDReview.
LSI MegaRAID CacheCade Pro 2.0 on TheSSDReview.
QNAP Turbo NAS Firmware 3.5 on ComputingOnDemand.

Misc:
The New Razer Mamba (4G, Dual Sensor) mouse on HWHeaven.
Head-Direct HiFiMAN RE-242 Earphones on TechPowerUp.



d1ng0d4n and t8y Get Cold (8 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 13-August-2011  12:26:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg

OCAU members d1ng0d4n and t8y are streaming their LN2 adventures today. We've got about 20L of LN2 and 20KG of DICE. Sounds like a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon. :)


Misc Pics (33 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 12-August-2011  14:28:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Thanks to Null Object and Andrew this week!






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



Friday Afternoon (7 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 12-August-2011  13:40:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg

If you're a mechanical keyboard fan you probably think wistfully of the IBM Model M and of course the more recent ones like our reviews here and here. But there's takkatakka back in Apple history too, and here's a cool project to convert an old Apple M0110 for modern use.

Just got an interesting press-release for Thecus N2200PLUS NAS owners: Thecus is now providing an upgrade from single- to dual-core for all Thecus N2200PLUS NAS in the form of a FREE firmware upgrade. The N2200PLUS previously performed reading and writing tasks at a respectable 41MB/s and 23MB/s. These numbers are getting boosted to an incredible 67MB/s and 43MB/s! Opening up this additional core uses absolutely no more energy than before, so there is no downside to this whatsoever.

Speaking of storage, there's an interesting new SATA Express on the way, with more info here. On Tuesday, the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) made two announcements: the development of a new SATA Express specification that combines SATA software infrastructure with a PCI Express (PCIe) interface, and the SATA µSSD specification for producing a single-chip SATA implementation for embedded storage solutions.

Meanwhile you can save your data forever by carving it in stone, or at least, stone-like DVDs. They're called M-Discs and they're being brought to market a start-up company called Millenniata, Computerworld reports. M-Discs ditch the traditional reflective layer found in standard physical media discs and instead etch the information directly into the body of the multi-layered disc itself, which is made of an undisclosed stone-like substance.

This made me chuckle, but is fairly serious really: some right-wing extremists were recently tricked with a magic tshirt. Attendees at a nationalist, right-wing concert in Germany were duped into wearing souvenir T-shirts that at first bared a pro-nationalist stance and symbology but later revealed an anti-far right message offering assistance after they had been washed.

BC sent word that Boeing has finally unveiled the first 787. Boeing has unveiled its first 787 Dreamliner aircraft at its factory near Seattle, three years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Japan's All Nippon Airways has bought the first plane, which Boeing will deliver to Tokyo in September. Qantas have 50 on order, apparently.

Phi on the other hand noticed a hypersonic plane being tested soon. The unmanned, arrowhead-shaped aircraft, dubbed Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, will test new technology that would provide the US Pentagon a lightning-fast vehicle capable of delivering a military strike anywhere in the world in under an hour. At its top speed it could travel the 17,000 kilometres between London and Sydney in about 49 minutes. Update: Was tested, was lost, thanks Shizznack.

Two timewasters today, firstly Doodle God which is simple but kinda addictive from Tony, and Dibbles: For the Greater Good, a Lemmings clone, from Joanna.



Friday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 12-August-2011  13:08:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
GIGABYTE G1 Sniper 2 Intel Z68 on Vortez.
Asrock Z68M-ITX/HT on LegionHW.

Audio Visual:
SteelSeries Spectrum 7XB Wireless Headset on RWLabs.
Panasonic HDC-TM900 camcorder on BusinessComputingWorld.

Cooling:
Gelid Icy Vision Rev. 2 VGA Cooler on eTeknix.
NZXT Havik 140 Cooler on Xbitlabs.

Networking:
TP-LINK AV200 Powerline Adapter Starter Kit on ThinkComputers.
Asus RT-N56U Black Diamond Router on Xbitlabs.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Foxconn Netbox nT-A3500 Barebone on MadShrimps.
Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 notebook on TechReviewSource.

Storage:
Synology DiskStation DS2411+ NAS on TechSpot.
Kingston HyperX 240GB 6Gbps SSD on LegitReviews.

Cases:
Cubitek Magic Cube 3HDD on Guru3D.
Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 on APHNetworks.

Misc:
Kingston KVR1333D3E9S 4GB ECC Server RAM on TechWareLabs.
Sparkle Gold Class (GW-EPS1250DA) 1250W on Tweaktown.
SteelSeries Xai Medal of Honor Edition Mouse on TBreak.
Contemporary Graphics Cards in Crysis 2 DirectX 11: Crysis 2 Revisited on Xbitlabs.



Thursday Afternoon (5 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 11-August-2011  17:28:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg

NSW have agreed to an R18+ classification for computer games, meaning ministers from all Australian juristiction are now in agreement. Minister for Justice Brendan O’Connor today welcomed the decision by NSW to join all jurisdictions in agreeing to create - for the first time - an adult category for computer games in Australia. Law Ministers from all jurisdictions except NSW agreed last month to support in-principle the Commonwealth’s proposal to introduce an R18+ classification for computer games in Australia.

Apple is now the most valuable US company, with its market value passing Exxon. Its lineup of sleek phones, computers and iPods, irresistible to customers even in tough economic times, propelled it to the No. 1 position by market value Wednesday, surpassing Exxon Mobil. Apple's stock on the open market is now worth more than any other company's.

Meanwhile Apple's block on Samsung selling their Galaxy Tab, already in place in Australia, now covers (almost) the entire EU. Apple's been granted a preliminary injunction to stop sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 across the entire European Union on the basis of patent infringement. The ban excludes the Netherlands, where Apple has a separate lawsuit pending due to differences in patent law.

But don't despair, you can always try an older model, thanks Khalil. The first mobile phones in Australia were car phone systems weighing 14kgs with a 45cm handset costing nearly $5000 (or $17,000 in 2011 terms). This 191 phone could store just 16 numbers, was installed in the car and alerted owners of an incoming call with a honking horn or flashing headlights.

Both Australian THQ studios are closing down, report GamePron. According to a statement from the publisher, moves are being made to “better align resources” according to the company’s new interactive entertainment portfolio. Part of this process sees THQ moving away from movie-based properties and licensed titles aimed at kids, both of which made up a major part of the company’s catalogue in recent times. The MX vs. ATV franchise has also been given the axe, with the company choosing “not to actively pursue further development”. Discussion here.

Tech Report checked out some Zacate motherboards from ASUS. We've taken both of Asus' finest Zacate motherboards and put them under the microscope. How do they stack up against each other, and just as important, are they worthy competitors amid the market at large?

Check out this LEGO Eye of Sauron Castle Thingy. The Dark Tower now comes in LEGO form. Holy crap this is amazing. Made by Kevin Walter for Brickworld 2011, this supremely detailed piece of LEGO art is something that any Nazgul would hang around on.

iXBTLabs have their latest i3DSpeed update posted. The i3DSpeed informs you about performance of popular graphics cards and the best price/performance deals in the market. This time we added test results of the extremely overclocked GeForce GTX 570.

Apparently 670,000 households logged into the recent census but didn't submit the online form correctly. Paul Lowe, head of the Population Census Program, said while many people completed all the questions on the online census forms it was likely that some didn't complete the process by pushing ``send'' at the end of the questionnaire. ``We have got over 670,000 households that have logged on but haven't hit that submit button. I encourage people to log back on and hit that submit button,'' he said.

Today's timewaster is Zombotron, a quite impressive zombie platform shooter, from biatch.



Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 11-August-2011  14:59:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Portable & Prebuilt:
Zotac ZBOX HD-AD02 Plus All-in-One PC on ThinkComputers.
Acer Aspire TimelineX AS5830TG-6402 notebook on TechReviewSource.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 on PCPerspective.

Audio Visual:
IOGEAR GUWAVKIT2 Wireless HD Computer to TV Kit on MissingRemote.
LG BD670 3D Wi-Fi Blu-ray Player on TBreak.
ZAVIO F3106 Wireless IP Camera on RWLabs.

Video Cards:
ASUS Matrix GTX 580 Platinum on NeoSeeker.
HIS HD6770 IceQ X Turbo Crossfire on OC3D.
ASUS Mars II Sneak Preview & Quick Benchmarks on VR-Zone.
Patriot Javelin S4 Network Attached Storage on TechWareLabs.
Diamond Radeon HD 6770 XOC on LegitReviews.

Input Etc:
CM Storm Inferno Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
Razer Mamba 4G Wireless Gaming Mouse on EverythingUSB.
XEBEC tech M-Touch Wireless Optical mouse on XSReviews.

Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme on HWSecrets.
Sapphire Pureblack P67 Hydra on XSReviews.
Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD Intel Z68 Motherboard & 20GB SSD on PCStats.
Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H on TechPowerUp.

Cooling:
Zalman VF3000F GTX 570/580 GPU Cooler on Techgage.
Antec KUHLER H2O 920 CPU Cooler on Vortez.
Cooler Master NotePal X-Slim laptop pad on TechReaction.
Rosewill ZAIO RCX-ZAIO-92 CPU Cooler on Tweaknews.

Cases:
Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 on DragonSteelMods.
Corsair Special Edition White Graphite Series 600T on OCClub.
Thermaltake Chaser MK-I on HWSecrets.
Rosewill Thor 2 Full-Tower on BenchmarkReviews.

Storage:
Patriot Javelin S4 Media Storage Server on LegitReviews.
ADATA Classic Series CH11 1 TB USB 3.0 on TechPowerUp.
Kingston Wi-Drive Review: Add Storage To iOS Devices on HotHardware.
Patriot Pyro SATA III 120GB SSD on Modders-Inc.
Strontium Gamma Series 115GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Thecus N2200XXX Dual-Bay NAS on Bjorn3D.
Patriot Javelin S4 Network Attached Storage on TechWareLabs.
Crucial M4 SATA 6GB/s Solid State Drive on Pro-Clockers.

Misc:
G.Skill DDR3 RipjawsX 1866MHz Memory on Pro-Clockers.



MSI HWBOT Contest #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 10-August-2011  13:10:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg

OCAU's HWBOT Team have another competition underway, with MSI offering a video card as a prize. This time it's an "old-school" contest using 3DMark05, with hardware limited to older and low-end components. So, get benching!


Wednesday Morning (17 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 10-August-2011  02:07:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A new class of vulnerability has apparently been discovered in iOS and Android games, by a 10 year old girl. Most of the games she discovered the exploit in have time-dependent factors. For example, planting corn might take 10 real-time hours to mature in the game. Manually advancing the phone or tablet's clock forced the game further ahead than it really was, opening up the exploit. Hrm, is that really new though? Sounds familiar to me, and not too different to setting your clock back in time to stay within shareware trial periods etc.

Causing another blow to the credibility of "The Cloud", lightning has knocked some datacentres offline recently in Dublin. The incident has caused downtime for many sites using Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing platform, as well as users of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite). Presumably this TechCrunch story is related too.

HardOCP cover Synchronous vs. Asynchronous NAND Flash, thanks Timbot. There is a lot of misinformation floating around the inner web tubes about the latest batch of solid state drives hitting the market. We wanted to help our readers get to the bottom of synchronous and asynchronous NAND in SandForce Solid States Drives and what it means to you.

Timbot also spotted AMD Radeon branded RAM surfacing in Japan. AMD Radeon™ DDR3 System Modules are ideally suited to our CPU and APU products. Components are tested to the highest industry standards on AMD platforms to guarantee reliability and performance.

An Adelaide iPad owner has recovered his when it was stolen using one of those free find-my-stolen-iPad apps. He told Victor Harbor police he "had a way of finding the persons responsible for the break-in", a police spokesman said. "The technology-savvy owner had previously downloaded a free app available to iPad and iPod owners, that can track the (device's) exact location," he said. "The owner and Victor Harbor police were then able to track the iPad and could see it was moving from the southern suburbs, back towards Adelaide, finally stopping and Grange." Nice to see the Police being willing to follow up on that info and swoop into action.

BC spotted this gigapixel view of a Boeing 737, which unfortunately seems to require Silverlight. "What we're hoping to be able to achieve is basically life-sized details, said Greg Rattenborg of digital marketing firm [wire]stone. "So when you see a rivet ... on the aircraft, that's about the size of the rivet that will be on your computer screen." I installed Silverlight on my IE install and checked it out, and it is pretty impressive, having mega zoom available from all angles.



Tuesday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 9-August-2011  22:38:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Input Etc:
Steelseries Shift MMO Keyboard on XSReviews.
Razer Hydra motion controller in TBreak.

Cooling:
GeForce GTX 590 Water Block Roundup on PureOC.
beQuiet! Dark Rock Advanced C1 and Dark Rock PRO C1 CPU Coolers on XbitLabs.
Zalman CNPS11X Extreme CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
Intel Pentium G850 Sandy Bridge 2.9GHz CPU on LegitReviews.
Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2.0 on TBreak.
NZXT HAVIK 140 CPU Cooler on Techgage.

Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS Crosshair V Formula on Guru3D.
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z (Intel Z68) on Tweaktown.
Asus Maximus IV Extreme on NinjaLane.
ASUS E35M1-M Pro on NeoSeeker.
ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 on Vortez.
Gigabyte G1.Sniper and GA-X58A-OC: LGA1366 Mainboards on XbitLabs.
GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 2: A Preview on Bjorn3D.
GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 on SinHardware.

Video Cards:
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC on TechSpot.
MSI GTX560 Ti Twin Frozer OC on MadShrimps.
Zotac AMP! Geforce GTX 560 (1Gb GDDR5) om FunkyKit.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2GB Dirt 3 Edition on eTeknix.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Magellan RoadMate 5175T-LM GPS on TechReviewSource.
iBuyPower BTS11 Gaming PC on TechReaction.
HP Envy 14 (Summer 2011) notebook on TechReviewSource.
HTC Flyer Tablet on TBreak.
ASUS Transformer Tablet on HWHeaven.

Storage:
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD on BenchmarkReviews.
Icy Box IB-NAS5220 NAS on RBMods.
Akasa Noir Max 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure on eTeknix.
Patriot Torqx 2 256GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.

Cases:
NZXT Phantom Full Tower on eTeknix.
Cooler Master Silencio 550 on APHNetworks.
Xigmatek Pantheon on Tweaknews.
Fractal Design Define Mini on Metku.
BitFenix Shinobi Window on RWLabs.
Diablotek Legend Mid Tower on DragonSteelMods.

Power Supply:
FSP Aurum Power Supply Unit Series: in Chase of Gold on XbitLabs.
FSP Aurum CM Gold 750W on TechPowerUp.
Enermax MaxRevo 1350W on Pro-Clockers.
Cougar G1050 - GX 1050W on OC3D.
In Win Commander II 1200W on ThinkComputers.

Misc:
Pirates of Black Cove PC game on eTeknix.



Forum Projects (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 9-August-2011  02:20:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Fairly quiet out there, but don't forget today is Census day! In the meantime, here's some interesting things from people in the forums:


windwithme checked out
BIOSTAR's TZ68A+

m0p0 reviewed the
Silverstone TJ08-E case

demowhc has some
Tri-SLI scaling benchmarks


Humpty went very ghetto
with some fridge bits

BlueRaven made a
homebrew rackmount PC

ideas_man69 has a
G5 conversion


l3p has a detailed
HTPC modding worklog

aphasia tore down and
rebuilt a TT Mozart

Phatboy69 showed off
his quad GTX 580 box



Monday Morning (7 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 8-August-2011  01:58:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg

McAfee have released a report on Operation Shady RAT, apparently the biggest organised hacking campaign ever. The governments of the United States, Canada, and South Korea, as well as the UN, the International Olympic Committee, and 12 US defense contractors were among those hacked in a five-year hacking campaign dubbed "Operation Shady RAT" by security firm McAfee, which revealed the attacks. Many of the penetrations were long-term, with 19 intrusions lasting more than a year, and five lasting more than two. Targets were found in 14 different countries, across North America, Europe, India, and East Asia. More here, but others say it's overblown.

Quakecon 2011 was on this weekend, and there's an interesting, but lengthy, keynote speech from John Carmack. Among other things, he talks about their upcoming game Rage, 6 years in the making. PCPerspective have day 1 coverage too. Quakecon is the largest LAN party in North America and typically draws thousands of gamers from all over the world.

Meanwhile in a move guaranteed to enrage gamers everywhere, Bethesda are lawyering up on Minecraft creator Notch, claiming his new game infringes on their upcoming release. That is referring to Scrolls, the new game in the works from Notch’s company Mojang Specifications – it’s a strategy, fantasy title reminiscent of collectible card games, and it was announced back in March 2011, after being in the planning stages for at least five years.

Megaupload are also being sued, for copyright infringement. The most interesting part of this is the guy allegedly behind it all, the "Kim Dotcom" person who used to have the (now defunct) kimble.org, which I remember as being full of photos of his fast cars etc. More here. Embedded below is the unfortunate ruling from Judge Irma Gonzalez, who mostly ruled against MegaUpload in its motion to dismiss the lawsuit. You can read the whole thing, but the truly scary part for me is where the court says MegaUpload may be guilty of direct infringement.

On the other hand, the British Government seems to be suggesting that copyright has gone too far. The British government today pledged (PDF) to enact significant changes to copyright law, including orphan works reforms and the introduction of new copyright exceptions. And the tone of the comments was surprising: the government agrees that "copyright currently over-regulates to the detriment of the UK." CD (and perhaps DVD) ripping for personal use should become legal at last—and the government is even keen to see that the consumer rights granted by law can't simply be taken away by contract (such as a "EULA" sticker on a CD demanding that a disk not be ripped).

Mars may have liquid salt water on its surface, NASA have announced. At a few spots, the meager warmth of martian summer seems able to coax enough liquid water out of the ground to darken the soil in streaks. The marks, which sometimes number in the hundreds, grow downhill hundreds of meters only to fade with the winter cold. And where there is liquid water, as they say, there could be life.

Bjorn3D have a guide to building a quiet ultimate gaming PC. Building computer systems can be a slightly confusing to those that have never seen or worked with computer hardware. Bjorn3D has teamed up with AcousticPC to bring you a half-hour complete overview of what you will need to build your next quiet high-performance gaming system.

TechWareLabs toured Zotac's factory in China. We were taken through several buildings at the Zotac facilities where we were shown everything from the shipping and receiving department to assembly and finally testing. In addition to these areas we were taken into the more sensitive areas like Q&A and stress testing. What you see below is our photo coverage from several areas.



Saturday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 6-August-2011  22:13:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Input Etc:
Ttesports Black Gaming Mouse on RBMods.
Zowie G-TF Speed mousepad on OCClub.

Cooling:
Cooler Master NotePal LapAir Laptop Cooler on APHNetworks.
Xigmatek LOKI SD963 CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Corsair Hydro Series H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler on Tweaktown.
NZXT Havik 140 CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Samsung Galaxy S II Smartphone on HotHardware.
iBuyPower BTS 11 Gaming PC on TechReaction.
Asus Updates Eee Pad Transformer with Android 3.2 on HotHardware.

Storage:
Patriot Pyro 120GB SandForce SF-2281 SSD on LegitReviews.
Patriot Pyro 120GB SATA 3 SSD on TheSSDReview.
Sandisk Ultra SATA II 240GB SSD on TheSSDReview.
Western Digital WD Elements SE 1 TB USB 2.0 HDD on ReviewStash.
OCZ Agility 3 240GB SSD on PureOC.
Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G2 32GB on Techgage.
OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 - 480GB PCIe SSD on HWHeaven.
Thermaltake BlacX 5G USB3 HDD Dock on FunkyKit.

Cases:
Cooler Master HAF 932 Advanced Full Tower on eTeknix.
Enermax SpineRex Full Tower on RWLabs.
NZXT Source 210 Elite mid-tower on Vortez.
Xigmatek Elysium on VR-Zone.

Audio Visual:
Nikon Coolpix P300 on TechReviewSource.
Fujifilm Finepix T190/T200 Camera on HWSecrets.
Snowball Professional Microphone video review on Tech-Reviews.

Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS P8P67 Sandy Bridge LGA1155 on Futurelooks.
ASUS F1A75-V PRO vs ECS A75F-A vs Gigabyte A75-D3H on TBreak.
AMD A6-3650 APU/Processor on TechWareLabs.
Biostar TA75A+ on HotHardware.
ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe on NeoSeeker.
MSI Z68A GD80 G3 PCIe Gen 3.0 on Guru3D.
Intel Sandybridge 2500k CPU on XSReviews.
ASRock A75 Pro4 on LegitReviews.
ASUS P8P67 PRO on HWSecrets.

Power Supply:
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W on TechPowerUp.
Antec High Current Gamer HCG-750 on PC Perspective.
Kingwin Lazer Gold LZG-1000 1000W on Tweaktown.
Sentey Golden Steel Power 1000W on OCOnline.

Misc:
Lexmark Platinum Pro 905 printer/scanner on BusinessComputingWorld.
MSI Radeon HD 6670 1GB Overclocked video card on Tweaktown.



Misc Pics (27 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 5-August-2011  14:31:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Thanks to Koopz, Lee, Ryan, Anthrox and Simon today!






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



F@H Update (1 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 5-August-2011  14:31:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A Folding update from Paul: The Folding team is on a high after last month's MSi beat the box Challenge. MSi have sponsored Team 24 with another motherboard for August, an MSi H67MA-E45. Data Retriever & the Folding Fund have put up a MSi N560GTX. The registration thread is here.

We have 2 big producers on the team at the moment, Systems & Crixon (who i believe has around 200 cores of folding porn in his army), while OLDsniper & GrumpyOldMen are battling it out to be the first OCAU folders to 100 million.

Meanwhile, Graham.Abbott pointed out that we passed a major milestone this morning:


Click to view full size!

Fold on!



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 4-August-2011  17:19:52 (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.

Linkin's H60/Gentle Typhoon testing and stuff in Overclocking & Hardware.
Sandia Cooler (Air Bearing Heat Exchanger) in Overclocking & Hardware.
What ever happened to virtual reality? in Overclocking & Hardware.
Gigabyte's stand on Overheating with 6XXX Crossfire in Video Cards.
How can I remove a burred screw from my GFX card? on Modding.
Chinese CNC Machines in Modding.
Armour Jr clean up and upgrade in Modding.
Fan exhaust baffle box / isobox / sound damping in Modding.
My Obutto Sim Racing Cockpit in Modding.
Best Malware/Spyware Removal Tool (License/Free) in Windows Operating Systems.
Did someone say awesome new SQL server on Business & Enterprise Computing.
Question - Disposal of Old Hardware in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Most Incompetent IT Staff you Know in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Intel Aims for 10nm Processors by 2018 in Intel Hardware.
AMD's 2012 lines: Komodo, Trinity, and, Krishna/Wichita in AMD Hardware.
This is why you don't buy a shiny TV in Audio Visual.
MS DOS turns 30 in Retro & Arcade.
Amahi Home Digital Assistant (read: server) Review in Other Operating Systems.
Dice project. Update and picks 8/7 in Extreme & Water Cooling.
What meal to cook in bulk and freeze? in Geek Food.
Building Guitarworx Les Paul Gibson kit advice anyone? in Musicians.
Worst movie in the last twenty years in Entertainment.
Alex Cherney's prizewinning Ocean Sky (filmed in Aus') video in The Pub.



Thursday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 4-August-2011  16:51:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Cases:
BitFenix Shinobi on BenchmarkReviews.
Wesena ITX2 Mini-ITX SFF Chassis on MissingRemote.

Storage:
Patriot Pyro 120GB SandForce SF-2281 Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Patriot Pyro SATA III Solid State Drive on HotHardware.
RaidSonic Icy Box IB-272StU-OT 2.5'' HDD Enclosure on RWLabs.
Patriot Pyro SSD on OCClub.
Kingston Data Traveler Ultimate 3.0 32GB USB Flash Drive on eTeknix.
Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD on NeoSeeker.

Misc:
TP-LINK TL-WR1043ND Wireless N Gigabit Router on ThinkComputers.
Silverstone EC03 USB 3.0 PCIe Card on XSReviews.
G.Skill Ripjaws X 8GB DDR3-1866 memory on PureOC.
Zalman CNPS5X SZ CPU Heatsink on APHNetworks.
Acer Aspire TimelineX AS3830T-6417 Laptop on HWSecrets.
MSI 870A Fuzion Power Edition Motherboard on Vortez.
MANHATTAN 2800 Acoustic Series BT Bookshelf Speaker on MissingRemote.



Thursday Afternoon (5 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 4-August-2011  14:34:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Internode MD Simon Hackett has posted an interesting message about their recent price change, and a change to what was announced. The first batch of price rise notices are about to be rescinded and a different approach undertaken before they are resumed.

Decromin noticed that the dumb IE users story was a hoax. There's an admission here, thanks IntelInside. So, frustrated with IE (and the fact that you can not have all the 4 versions on one computer to test your website), I went on to create a meme that would result in some awareness and hopefully convince a few IE users to stop using it. As Christopher Budd sums it all up in this post, I wanted my "report" to have an authority. So I used some scientific language and style.

Mpot sent in this story about eBay adding 100TB of SSD storage to their virtual server farm. After replacing 100TB of storage in a year, eBay saw a 50% reduction in standard storage rack space, a 78% drop in power consumption and a five-fold boost in I/O performance. That speed boost now allows eBay to bring a new VM online in five minutes, compared to 45 minutes previously.

XbitLabs compared eight Mini-ITX LGA1155 motherboards. We decided to check out all Intel H67 Express based Mini-ITX mainboards available in the today’s market for hit Sandy Bridge processors. So, today we are proud to offer you a roundup covering the following products: ASRock H67M-ITX/HT, ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe, ASUS P8H67-I, ECS H67H2-I, Foxconn H67S, Gigabyte H67N-USB3-B3, Intel DH67CF and Zotac H67ITX.

VR-Zone have info on Intel's upcoming socket 2011, while ThinkComputers ponder Intel's upcoming mobile offerings. Last week we had the chance to sit down with Intel and see what all they have in store for the mobile space. Read on to learn about their new technologies and check out some of the products they brought with them to demo.



Thursday Morning Reviews (2 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 4-August-2011  02:03:51 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio Visual:
Cooler Master Sirus Gaming Headset on XSReviews.
Tt eSPORTS Shock One Gaming Headset on eTeknix.
Hercules XPS Diamond 2.0 USB Speakers on TBreak.
Compro IP70 Network camera on Bjorn3D.
Genius SP-i400 mini magnetic speaker on TechReaction.

Motherboard & CPU:
AMD A6-3650 Llano APU Performance Review on HotHardware.
Gigabyte GA-A75M-UD2H on PureOC.
ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 GEN 3 Intel Motherboard on TechWareLabs.
SteelSeries Spectrum 7xb Wireless Gaming Headset on LegitReviews.

Portable & Prebuilt:
Acer Iconia Tab A500 on TechSpot.
HP TouchPad (Wi-Fi) on TechReviewSource.

Power Supply:
Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800W on Pro-Clockers.
Enermax MAXREVO 1350W on HWHeaven.

Cooling:
Arctic Freezer 13 Limited Edition CPU Cooler on RWLabs.
Lamptron Fan Controller FC8 on MadShrimps.
Thermaltake Frio CPU cooler on VR-Zone.
Zalman VF3000F Dual Turbine VGA Cooler on Tweaktown.

Video Cards:
AMD Radeon HD 6670, Radeon HD 6570 and Radeon HD 6450 on XbitLabs.
Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2GB TOXIC on Tweaktown.
PowerColor Radeon HD 6870X2 on XbitLabs.
GIGABYTE GTX570 1280MB 'Super Overclock' Edition on Vortez.
MSI N580GTX Lightning Xtreme Edition on PCPerspective.

Storage:
Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 Gen 2 32GB Flash Drive on LegitReviews.
Kingston HyperX 240GB SandForce SF-2281 Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Strontium Gamma 115GB & Matrix 120GB SSD on VR-Zone.
Kingston Hyper X 240GB SSD on OC3D.

Cases:
Corsair Carbide Series 400R on HWSecrets.
Fractal Design Define R3 Mid-Tower on Techgage.
Corsair Carbide 400R mid-tower on Guru3D.
Silverstone Fortress FT03 mATX Tower on Pro-Clockers.

Misc:
Kingston ValueRAM KVR800D2 memory on ReviewStash.
Ozone TRACE mousepad on OCClub.



Wednesday Afternoon (4 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 3-August-2011  16:28:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A couple of people sent word that IE users are dumb, officially. In an online IQ test of 100,000 people, AptiQuant Psychometric Consulting found that users of alternate browsers were likely to have a higher IQ than Internet Explorer users. "It comes out pretty clear that Internet Explorer users scored lower than average on the IQ tests," said AptiQuant.

Lots of people also sent in this unlimited detail video which is a follow-on from one a year or so ago, by an Australian company. This demo only shows what was ready at the time, we have a lot of really good stuff here but we are keeping it secret for now. Discussion here, but Notch of Minecraft fame is not convinced.

The NBN may be coming to you soon, if you live in one of the nine new sites in QLD, NSW and ACT announced recently. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said Springfield Lakes and Aspley in the Brisbane region, Toowoomba in Queensland, Riverstone in Western Sydney, Coffs Harbour, NSW, and Gungahlin, ACT, are next in line for the NBN.

Foxconn is looking at replacing workers with robots. The founder and chairman of Foxconn Company Terry Gou says he wants to reduce the rising labour costs and improve efficiency at the same time by replacing workers with robots that can perform tasks such as spraying, welding and assembling. He says Foxconn will boost its robotic workforce from 10,000 to 300,000 next year before reaching 1 million by 2014.

Apple has won a court injunction to stop the Samsung Galaxy entering Australia until a patent dispute is resolved. Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, agreed to stop advertising the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia and not to sell the device until it wins court approval or the lawsuit is resolved, according to an accord reached by lawyers during a break in the hearing. Discussion here.

HardCoreWare compared mid-range SSDs. We take a look at four 128GB SSDs that are similar in price but vastly different in hardware. Which one is fastest? OCZ Agility 3 vs Kingston SSDNow V100 vs Crucial M4 vs Patriot Torqx II.

Meanwhile NeoSeeker looked at three budget cases. Hit our latest roundup to see if the Cooler Master Centurion 5 II, BitFenix Shinobi, and NZXT Source 210 Elite end up being more impressive than they appear to be for the value market.

Carlos sent word of a risk of sitting still too long, with one Xbox-playing man dying from a blood clot. Deep vein thrombosis normally affects passengers on long-haul flights, but medical experts fear youngsters who spend hours glued to their consoles might also be at risk and have urged them to take regular breaks. Surely watching TV, using a PC, or any sitting activity has the same risk, though?



Wednesday Morning Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 3-August-2011  01:57:58 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
AMD A8-3850 & Gigabyte A75M-UD2H on OC3D.
Intel Pentium G620 Sandy Bridge 2.6GHz CPU on LegitReviews.
ASUS Rampage III Black Edition on Bjorn3D.

Cases:
Fractal Design CORE 3000 on TechPowerUp.
BitFenix Shinobi Window Mid-Tower on Bjorn3D.
Xigmatek Elysium on TechReaction.
Bitfenix Shinobi Window on OCIA.
BitFenix Shinobi Window on TheSSDReview.
Rosewill Thor V2 ATX Full-Tower Gaming Case on Tweaknews.
SilverStone Raven RV03 on APHNetworks.
Sentey GS-6000 Optimus Mid-Tower on Futurelooks.

Networking:
Netgear N600 DGDN3700 Wireless N ADSL2+ Modem Router on LegitReviews.
HP E-MSM460 Dual Radio 802.11n Access Point on BusinessComputingWorld.

Power Supply:
Enermax MaxRevo 1350W on TechPowerUp.
Kingwin Lazer Platinum LZP-550 550W on Tweaktown.

Storage:
INEO Tech I-NA320U Plus USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station on RWLabs.
OWC Electra 240GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Pro Ultra-Portable Drive USB 3.0 on eTeknix.
OCZ Vertex MAX IOPS SSD on TechReaction.
Archgon MH-2624 Mobile Hard Drive Enclosure on Pro-Clockers.
Corsair Force III Solid State Drive on Pro-Clockers.
RunCore Pro V SATA II Plus 120GB Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Super Talent Express RC8 USB 3.0 Flash Drive on EverythingUSB.

Cooling:
Corsair Hydro H80 on OCClub.
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme Plus II VGA Cooler on Tweaktown.
Cooler Master Hyper 612 PWM CPU cooler on PureOC.
Thermaltake FrioOCK CPU Cooler on Pro-Clockers.

Portable & Prebuilt:
BlackBerry Bold 9900 Smartphone on TBreak.
HTC Trophy Cell Phone on HWSecrets.
iBUYPOWER Gamer Power BTS11 prebuilt PC on PureOC.
Asus A53E-XA1 notebook on TechReviewSource.

Audio Visual:
ASUS Vulcan ANC (Active-Noise-Cancelling) Pro Gaming Headset on HWHeaven.
AC Ryan Playon!HD Mini 2 on Techgage.
Panasonic Viera TC-L42D30 on TechReviewSource.
Hornettek Fantasy Media Player on ReviewTheTech.
Asus ROG Vulcan ANC Pro Gaming Headset on RBMods.

Misc:
Mushkin Redline Enhanced 2133MHz DDR3 memory on BenchmarkReviews.
Steelseries XAI Pro Gaming Mouse on XtremeComputing.
KFA2 GeForce GTX 560 Ti MDT x5 (multi-monitor) video card on Guru3D.



Forum Projects (6 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 2-August-2011  12:49:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some interesting things from people in the forums:


Spotswood is building a
custom storage & gaming case

Stewey is building a
Tele style guitar

mnpctech is making a
Star Trek themed case


Team.au and PCPP had an
overclocking workshop

SYF_Karma made a
poster into a PC!

and some guy named Agg
restored an aquarium



Tuesday Morning (5 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 2-August-2011  01:52:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg

OCAU sponsor DIY Home Automation have announced the winner of their recent iPad 2 giveaway - and it's davros123. Congrats!

If you got a cheap USB combo hard drive thingy from Aldi recently, that might not be all you've picked up. ALDI external hard drives available for sale as part of its "special buys" purchases have been found to contain a computer virus. The Fission External 4-in-1 hard drive, DVD, USB and card reader device was withdrawn from sale this morning.

Meanwhile there's some increased fees for eBay on the way for Australian users. eBay Australia has revealed plans to more than double its fees on some auction listings, effectively penalising non-professional sellers. The days of eBay as largely an online garage sale are finished as the company pushes sellers away from second-hand auctions towards listing new items in the fixed price format and on eBay Stores. And I hate it. I miss the days of it being a big garage sale, instead of being filled with a zillion cheap plastic things from HK.

SpaceX are aiming to be the first private corporation to dock with the International Space Station. SpaceX intends to combine its second and third test flights with a single mission, scheduled to launch November 30 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Garrett Reisman, a former astronaut now working with SpaceX, said at the NewSpace 2011 conference that was held at NASA's Ames Research Center in California and broadcast on the Internet. "The next flight of the Dragon we're going to go all the way and berth it to the space station, drop cargo off and bring stuff back," Reisman said.

Microsoft have a sneak peek of Windows Server 8, thanks Skymaster. Today we are excited to give you a sneak peek at the next step in private cloud computing by showing you just two of hundreds of new capabilities coming in the next version of Windows Server, internally code-named “Windows Server 8.”

TechSpot have a laptop buying guide, while Guru3D have a PC buyer's guide. Keep in mind that what we write here are recommendations, they can be controversial and subjective for you to read. Be sure to read other buyer guides from other media as well to get a complete overview on what's best suited for your specific situation.

There was recently a Computer Games talk on Radio National, thanks Jimmy. Australia's games industry expects a boost from new tax credits for research and development. New technologies are opening up opportunities for new online and mobile games, although the industry is producing fewer boxed games. So what does this mean for our games industry? And why are computer games so popular?

TechARP have a Q&A with Western Digital, with part 2 here. Meanwhile TechWareLabs have a video interview with an Intel Mobility Brand Manager. We interview Intel's Brand Manager for mobility products as we check out their latest in products for Oak Trail tablets and Atom powered portable laptops. Find out what will be the hot products from Intel hitting store shelves near you.



Geek Food (2 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 1-August-2011  21:12:33 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some yummy threads from our Geek Recipes forum:


Thomas Keller Fried Chicken
by Amfibius

Caramel Tarts
by bevros

Pizza with a chicken base
by Bambi_1319


Chilli Tuna and Pesto Pasta Bake
by Deftone2k

Mexican beef & tomato soup
by bevros

WHedonistic Hot Chocolate
by Hawkz




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