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January 2002 |
Thursday Morning
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Thursday, 31-January-2002 10:14:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I think Gatecrasher's lovely pink minitower was #2900 in the PCDB.
OCIA have an article about modding your HDD bays to run cooler.
SlCentral have a P4 chipset shootout.
More info on the GF4 specs on ReactorCritical, thanks Scott.
AnandTech say that Intel may design a CPU like AMD's Hammer series. Also, AMD have purchased Alchemy, who used to do news around here.. oh, no, this is a different Alchemy - they make the MIPS series of CPUs.
New goodies on display at a recent Platform Conference, VIAHW have lots of pics.
xbit have a roundup of Hard Drives in 2001.
Finally, if you're into RC Racing, check out a new Aus forum site dedicated to it.
Reviews:
VIA C3 933MHz socket370 CPU on HWExtreme.
AOpen AK77 Plus A KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on TTZ.
Digitalk Communicator handheld UHF CB radio on DansData.
Targa 3000 nonlinear video editing board on Digit-Life.
Apple Cooling
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Thursday, 31-January-2002 01:57:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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FreeFrag sent in a quick article with pictures and info on how two Apple machines deal with CPU heat. One interesting note is how similar to an AMD CPU the G3 looks..
Click for the full article!
Wednesday Night
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Wednesday, 30-January-2002 23:50:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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TomsHardware have compared the Athlon XP 2300+ vs. Pentium 4/3000.. these are overclocked chips, of course - they bedazzle with performances that will not be available on the market for another nine months, thanks Ktulu137.
Seems Asus were a little over-eager and released details of their GeForce4-based products already, despite the official GF4 launch not being until the 6th of Feb. ASUS V8460Ultra series is powered by the most advanced graphics processing unit on earth the GeForce4 Ti 4600. A core clock speed of 330MHz and memory clock speed of 660MHz, combined with 128MB DDR SDRAM.. whoops, thanks Simon.
Reviews:
Tin-Coated Copper Ramsinks on HWDaily.
Evercool ND-9 socket cooler on CoolHardWarez.
Asus V8200Ti500 Pure GF3 video card on PCStats.
Anbit Siluro GF3 Ti200 video card on PCHardware.
Thermal Integration TI-S86-15 socket cooler on FrostyTech.
TITI TI-V86 socket cooler on PC-Arena.
Antec HDD Caddy on Unique-Hardware.
StreetGlow Neon Connector kit on Icrontic.
Lian Li EX-10 port extender on EXHardware.
iFree RF Black PS2 wireless keyboard on OCClub.
Samsung SyncMaster 181B TFT monitor on IANAG.
New packaging for old P3's?
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Wednesday, 30-January-2002 22:22:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Maybe this is old news, but it's news to me so I thought some of you might find it interesting. :) Sabretooth picked up a couple of P3's for a work server. These are normal old coppermine-cored 1GHz P3's and the heatsink looks just like the ones in Thor, but the packaging of the core is unusual..
 
Looks more like a P4 or Tualatin heat spreader, doesn't it? Been a while since I've looked at the new Intel chips.. but that's not how I remember coppermine-cored P3's looking. :)
Woohoo! AUSSIE, AUSSIE, AUSSIE, OI, OI, OI..... Yes, we won the cricket :)
First up tonight, Gamin' in 3D have a budget dual display shootout pitting the Sis 315 against the ATI Radeon VE.
ZZZ's 114th issue is out, and ready for your weird-tech-sci-geek reading pleasure.
3DVelocity are giving away a Duron 1.3GHz CPU. The competition is open to all forum members active or not and is not location restricted. That's what we like to hear :)
This is not an ordinary PC case, but it's not a usual desk either. It's a computer in desk. Who would come up with such an idea to make a thing like this? It was me! No, it wasn't :(
(WARNING : Some rather bad language here, do not click if you are easily offended) Finally, for all those people that either can't or refuse to RTFM, comes this online help guide on exactly HOW to RTFM. Thanks Stefan.
If you hear a faint ticking coming from your boxen, it may not be that you left your watch inside while messing around in there. It may be, A BOMB! Cheers Alchemist.
(WARNING : Some bad language here. Do not click if you are easily offended.) You know your PC has developed and attitude problem when it returns this error : "The page cannot be f@#king displayed". :) Hehe, thanks Rob. And this one from C_Dawg.
Fraps is a tool that lets you monitor current framerates in a corner of the screen. It also allows you to easily take screenshots of games, and manually determine the average framerate between two points. Further details can be found here. Direct file link here. Taa Rod.
Sophos, a world leader in corporate anti-virus protection, is warning computer users against the new My Party email worm (aka W32/MyParty-A) which is spreading in the wild. The worm, which may appear to have come from a colleague or friend, arrives as an email with the subject line "new photos from my party!". Time to update those virus scanners again..
Bevan has raised a few interesting questions. If the new Apple dual G4 1Gz with Geforce 4 MX is such a powerhouse, why does it only show 115fps while this Athlon XP 1700+ with a stock Geforce 3 shows 181fps? Hmmm...
Viahardware has posted an article on Platform Conference 2002. It was held on January 23-24th, and had several companies showing off new technology and holding sessions to learn about upcoming technology.
If laptops are your thang, check out these exclusive photos of the ECS Notebook.
Genesis informs us there are some new KYRO drivers available for hercules cards. Taa muchly.
SONY just announced it's second price cut in six months for it's Memory Stick storage device. The biggest cut will be the 128MB stick, which comes down from $149.95 to $89.95. (USD though)
A report at digitimes.com reveals the SiS648 discrete chipset. SiS648 is the new chipset that supports the latest P4 processors with a FSB speed of 533MHz, 8X AGP and DDR400 spec.
Henry gave us info on a HDD temp monitoring program. Apparently an updated version of one widely used.
Looks like there may be some AMD and Intel CPU price cuts headed our way, sonner or later. Preferably sooner though, right? :) Thanks to ummmm.......errrr........oh yeah, BL/\DE :P
charliebrown_au dude tells us the epic cinematics from StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War have been collected onto one disc and digitally remastered for enhanced picture quality on your DVD player. Finally, you can witness the struggle for galactic domination in its full, uninterrupted glory!
And lastly, I thought I would link to Demoman's Macase KA130 Fulltower in our PCDB, because it looks rather neat. ( And he's a friend of mine....OH, and because it was my paint) :)
Reviews:
Philip's MMS305 4.1 Speaker review over on HardcoreWare.
LG GCC-4120B CD-RW/DVD combination drive review from Inside hardware.
Olympus C700 Ultra Zoom digital camera review from the peeps at Overclockers NZ.
Intel Pentium 4 "Northwood" review from TweakTown.
Kingwin Multifunction Transfer Panel review courtesy of OverclockerCafe.
Fortis A102 heatsink on SubZeroTech.
Clutterbuster review at Elite-Hardware. (Tool that helps keep your desk tidy)
SOYO P4S DRAGON Ultra motherboard review from VR-Zone.
KR7A-RAID motherboard review over at Tech Report.
Everglide gaming mat review on IAmNotAGeek.
Samsung YEPP YP-20S MP3 Player from the dewds at FutureLooks.
Thermaltake Volcano 7 HSF review from Tweakers Australia.
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 29-January-2002 11:42:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Yes, we know the AthlonXP 3000+ linked last night is fake, derr. :) Shame, woulda been nice to squeeze 8 of them into the 8-way Athlon SMP motherboard.. would crank out the 3DMarks with a 3DFX Voodoo5-9000 in it..
Dual 1GHz CPU's and a GeForce4 video card. Sounds like a grunty PC but it is, of course, the new PowerMac, thanks Scott. More info on the video here, thanks Barto. This is the first offical thing we've seen about the GeForce4 of course, but be warned, it's mostly Apple marketing-speak. :)
There's a new virus doing the rounds, thanks Michael. I got 3 of them last night actually, but an email from someone I've never heard of saying "new photos from my party!" with an executable attachment.. got deleted. Might pay to update your virus checkers, tho.
Icrontic have compared Crucial's PC2100 DDR memory with the TwinMOS PC2700 stuff we reviewed here a little while ago.
iced sent word of a new game Sidral, based on the Q3 engine.
Volnhar notes that there are Detonator 27.20 drivers on 3DChipset. These are modified beta drivers, so don't be surprised if they make do Horrible Things to your PC.
Reviews:
Juno P6 Full Tower on ViperLair.
Enermax EG365P-VE(FMA) PSU on Tweakers.
New Everglide Mousepad on Unique-Hardware.
Arctic Alumina thermal paste on OCPrices.
Thermaltake Volcano 7 on TemplinTech.
Leadtek Winfast GeForce3 Ti200 video card on Hardware-Test.
FeelingPC Ice Hole on SoundCardCentral.
AusGamers and Microsoft have teamed up for a new competition - enter the draw for a chance to one of five double passes for you and a mate to party with Chris Taylor, lead designer of Dungeon Siege, on February 4th at 6:30pm in Sydney.
Wireplay have a new CS Ladder and apparently over 400 people in over 70 teams have signed up already.
Icrontic has a preview of Valve's upcoming Counter-Strike 1.4. The preview is complete with a changelog and a bunch of screenshots. Looks smoooooth :)
Have a look at the Prototype AMD XP 3000+ then sit back, and draw your own conclusions. (Or an XP 6000+, whatever comes to mind first) :)
Overclockers Club have completed a new "how to" guide on making a PC case entirely out of plexi. Looks like there might be a sudden surge of full-plexi cases around here soon.
Wanna be a ninja? Here is a link to the Official Ninja Page. Thanks DuKe. /me gets out the silver polish and goes off to find his throwing stars and black PJ's.
bacco007 sent this in. It's a picture file to ASCII convertor. Excellent, I can see some fun coming out of this :)
leperMessiah tells us about a vinyl case sticker thread in our forums. Just like the one I linked to in news earlier. Wanna buy one? Head into our forums.
KyocEr@~* mentions details on Palm's to-be-released i705 are available here including a $499 US pricetag, so it ain't cheap obviously. It comes with in-built wireless capability though.
D K saw this in the majorgeeks.com forum. Talks about overclocking a Ti video card by increasing the voltage to it. Interesting.
Digit-Life have a roundup of 3 x 128meg graphics cards being the Joytech Apollo RADEON 7500 and 3D Thrill 315 and the Leadtek WinFast GeForce3 Ti200 TDH.
Amdmb.com have posted an editorial called Maxtor's ATA133: Good Marketing or Bad Timing? Do we really need ATA133 and is it really an improvement worth your money, compared to ATA100 ? What happened to Serial ATA ???
AtlantaOC have an article on spiral wrapping your cables. Mine are spiral wrapped, looks very nice :)
Designtechnica takes a look at SimpleDevices new "SimpleFi". Designed so you can play MP3's on your home stereo.
Sniper from IRC sent a little note to let you all know of an Unreal2 benchmark that benched a number of cards using the Unreal2 engine.
HardwareMania have a preview of the AMD Sledgehammer processor.
Microsoft chief software engineer Bill Gates has finally woken up to the fact that security counts when it comes to software and has ordered that all development work on Microsoft software be suspended in the first two weeks of February while development staff attend a two week training course on security. Thanks again Sniper.
Interesting stuff from the PCDB: Gigatron has a waterblock made from a Swiftech MCX462, a great idea nicely executed. LardArse has some hardcore cooling going on, while Raiden_Water interestingly has the radiator inside the reservoir. Fridge unsurprisingly has the reservoir in a fridge, logik-acorn squeezed his whole PC into an old Acorn computer while Daemon-DivX squeezed a DivX PC into an old Rotel amp.
And lastly, Wokket is back after a 3 week holiday, so here they come......... Some guy in the US has had his uni degree removed for doing a run round the city in his boxers, the british trying to
organise an Internet Free Day yesterday and make sure and visit the "Centre For Shopping Trolley Abuse Prevention" here. Welcome back Wokket :)
Reviews:
Enermax EG356P-VE review over on BlueSmoke.
Elsa Gladiac GeForce Ti200 and Ti500 brethren cards review at Hardware-One.
Epson Stylus C70 plus review at BlargOC.
VideoLogic Crossfire 4.1 gaming speakers are reviewed at Hardware Avenue.
Elsa Gladiac 721TV-Out GeForce3 Ti200 over at 3D Velocity.
CaseAce GearGrip Pro review on Overclockers Club.
Olympus E-10 Digital Camera review from Ars Technica.
Handspring's Visor Edge review at Tech Report.
Thermalright AX-7 HSF review on IPKonfig.
Thermal Integration TI-V86-15 Copper Core Heatsink review over at FrostyTech.
Arkua 6258 HSF review by the peeps at AtlantaOC.
Gainward GeForce3 PowerPack 3 Ti450 review from GotApex?
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV review at The Tech Zone.
Dynatron DC1206BM-R 1U heatsink review on Extreme Overclocking.
Samsung Syncmaster 151B 15 inch LCD monitor reviewed over on FutureLooks.
Titan TTC-CU4TB Low-Profile Copper heatsink review at MikhailTech.
Jason sent us this new site that is meant to expose the refresh rate limitations in Windows XP. The goal of the site is to get users to contact Microsoft about them so they will eventually get fixed. So, get to e-mailing..
New Australian Gaming site Game Victims has just opened its doors to the public with 5 reviews and a preview as well as a "best games of 2001" articles, the website includes a detailed article of the newly released Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault from EA. Head over and have a read. The website is based in Brisbane and is run by a bunch of UNI IT students. And today is it's first day :)
BlargOC have a new article for you. Northward Graphics have supplied them with a Vinyl Case Tattoo for testing. Looks pretty cool actually, and you can send them your own designs. /me scribbles "LOVE" and "HATE" onto a scrap of paper...
TweakTown have posted an article entitled Telstra Broadband - The Facts Revealed. I read it today, and am seriously thinking of cancelling my ADSL account, and I don't even have it installed yet :( . Check it out here.
If you missed the pics of the upcoming GeForce 4 on Hexus, well, they're gone. Nvidia jumped in citing a NDA with Hexus, so they removed them. However you can see them on X-Bit Labs :) (EDIT : I removed the OverclockerCafe link, because the pics were removed from there as well.)
For all you 3DFX zealots here is how to get the Voodoo 3 and above video card working in xp with 3d support. Better late than never I spose :)
\\Roscoe\ sends word that Leadtek have released a new version of Winfox that works under Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It can be found here.
Hehe. Sabretooth sent in this link of an EXTREME cooling option, if your system is running a little on the toasty side. I fully expect to arrive at QGL and see this mod in Rex's case (Sure to have a dead motherboard lying around somewhere) :P
If you ever have to opportunity to have a Buck's Night, and the best man hires a stripper, you might want to question his motives. :)
An article about Ultra Wide Band communications, and how some businesses might feel threatened about technological advancements such as UWB. *insert conspiracy theories here* Cheers Kazashi.
If you are an AOL user and an ICQ user, you may want to read this. Thanks Infiltrator.
Reviews:
Shuttle AK35GTR motherboard review over on Icrontic.
Silver Pro Gamer case review on PsychoHardware.
Digit-Life have posted their Bluetooth Technology & Products review and also a Sony PEG-T415 PDA review.
AVC 117140 Socket 478 Heatsink Review up on FrostyTech.
Everglides new gaming mat reviewed at UniqueHardware.
Fortis A102Pro heatsink reviewed over at TheCoolerHut.
PaxMate Acoustic Absorption Mat as reviewed by the team at IPKonfig.
As you're hopefully aware, we have several distributed computing teams involved in various projects. These projects, via a client program you run on your PC, use your spare CPU cycles and those of thousands of other PC's to work collectively on tasks requiring massive amounts of CPU time. SETI@HOME was our first team and aims to find evidence of intelligent life outside our solar system. RC5 seeks to break an encryption scheme and win money prizes. Two newish teams are involved with ECCp-109 which is trying to solve a mathematical puzzle and United Devices which works on a few projects.
Our two most successful teams are involved in Genome@Home (ranked 20th in the world) and Folding@Home v2 (ranked number one in the world!). There's info on setting up G@H and F@H here and here respectively in our Team OCAU Forum.
Anyway, the main purpose of this message is to highlight a couple of new things on the distributed computing front - firstly, a Boxen Database where you can show off how many PC's you have working for the project of your choice. Also, our resident Master of Folding, Bollocks, has made an excellent site for our world-leading F@H team and I've hosted it on OCAU's server here:
Our team is in danger of being relegated back to the #2 position soon, so if you've got a PC not being used to its full potential, get folding! But of course, make sure you have permission to use that PC.
Remember the site, www.tweakfiles.com? Remember how it went offline? Well, it's back!!! Jim McMahon just sent me an e-mail (which I normally GGGGRRR at, but in this case I will make an exception :) )
The new site is Major Geeks and I for one, am stoked. Missed this site immensly when it went away.
For future reference though, please send all news links/posts to the news e-mail address, news@overclockers.com.au NOT to me. I am not the only one that does news, and as such, anything you send to me will most likely NOT make it to the news page.
Cheers, and welcome back, Jim and Crew :)
If you are an avid user of the Xteq X-Setup tweak utility, you might like to have a look here. Beachside Tech take a look at some of the more useful items in this little gem.
Apparently, the story we posted about KaZaa being australian owned, is a hoax! A sham! A ruse! *ahem* Details here. Thanks aussiepaul.
Jonathan, (the guy on the quest for the fanless PC) has finally attained his goal! Here's the scoop on that. /me kicks his twin delta heatsink
Did you know telstra has a modem LED diagnostics/troubleshooting page? As it was pointed out though, it appears to be rather pointless. Thanks Marzi.
PC-Extreme.co.uk have an article on using a Junction box for some fan voltage modding. This is part 1 of their soon to be expanded, Home Electronics mods page.
Geek.com has an article up about possible x86-64 clone technology coming out of Intel. Wouldn't that be interesting? Cheers foxmuldr.
News in for all you LCD lovers. Version 5 of "LCD Smartie" is out. Grab it here. (I don't know if it was meant to be a joke or not, but the sender spelt it "Smatie"...Hehe, reminded me of Homer Simpson) "I am so smart, I am so smart...S M R T...I mean, S M A R T"
Elvis (yes, Elvis) sends us this video that every Counter-Strike player should watch. Well worth the download :)
Dates have been finalised for the Tassie OCAU BBQ. Check out this thread in our forums for the full details.
Shane sent us this link to a rather manic web server....As Shane said in his e-mail, "if you've read Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, it's very Marvin the Depressed Robit-ish." (EDIT : Narcolepsy from IRC gave me this link for all you Edgar Allen Poe fans.)
...And finally, MrEs send us this forum link for the "T-Break Forums" where you can find a picture of the MSI KT3 (333) motherboard.
Reviews:
Hmm, a robotic CD changer doo-hicky. CD Freaks have the review.
Dan's Data have a cordless mouse & keyboard review here.
SubZeroTech has posted their review of the Fortis A92 heatsink. Take a look at it here.
Technetium have a webcam review up for a look-see.
Vantec CCK 6027D & CCK 6035D Reviewed at 8Balls Hardware
Eclipse Silver and Grey Case in Video Review over at 3D Gameman.
The Depot Listens to some Logitech Z-540 speakers. Quite nice.
Noticias3D have reviewed the ATi Radeon 7500 card video card.
Review of Legend QDI NEW PlatiniX 2D P4 mainboard over on Hardware-Test.dk. (It's in English, don't fret :) )
Inside Hardware have reviews of the Digipower DPS-8000, MAHA Powerbank MH-DPB140LI,Unity Digital ProPower Pack V, and a Lightning pack 4000 + 8 1600 mAH Sanyo batteries.
The Depot also check out a Saitek X45 flight controller.
Evercool CUD-725/Kingwin KUD-725 HSF review on The Overclocker Cafe.
Saturday Afternoon
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Saturday, 26-January-2002 13:33:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Thanks to all who wished me a happy birthday for a couple of days ago. I'm feeling so happy that, what the heck, you can all have Monday off. :)
hoe4damoney pointed out this cool story of someone recovering their stolen iMac by remotely logging into it when the theives logged onto the net.
In an odd move, AMD are trying to get control of a domain owned by a reseller in the UK, thanks Scott.
HardwareZone posted their 2001 Awards for products they think don't suck.
Steve found a case-mod cartoon. Scott found another PC in a Mac project. VyW have a guide to making a fan grille from a speaker cover. Meanwhile, I think my next PC will be pink and fluffy for sure.
Freaek notes that the DOCSIS 2.0 standard has been completed, allowing for faster cable modems. Seems to mention faster uplink speeds only.
Reaper got word that Telstra is giving partial refunds for people blowing their 3GB cap in the first month of the new pricing structure, Dec 2001. Also, they've taken a leaf from Microsoft's book and are apparently manipulating surveys to make their customers seem happier.. more info here.
Narkov found an article about how the internet archive works.
Hexus have some pics of what they claim is a GeForce4 video card. We should apparently be seeing the official launch in Feb. Update Apparently Hexus had to yank it, but Chaos Cult mirrored it first. We call this "Lawyer Tag". :)
VIAArena visited the Atomic LAN held in Melbourne recently while Futurelooks visited CES 2002, a big electronics convention in Las Vegas.
GU have an article suggesting that Steve Jobs is holding back Apple.
Minion sent in more info about spyware in Audiogalaxy and other programs.. sounds pretty nasty.
Someone calling themselves "Lord Funky Biscuit" sent in more info about the Athlon/AGP/Linux "bug" we linked a few days ago.
Finally, Scott found a Pub-seeking GPS wristwatch (about time those scientists did something useful with all that grant money) and Manaz found the perfect holiday destination for nuclear disaster buffs. Good wholesome glow-in-the-dark fun.
Antonov II Storm Edition
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Saturday, 26-January-2002 12:36:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Saraiva from Brasil just sent in some pics of his system so I made a PCDB entry for it. Not a whole lot of info but.. I think the pics pretty much speak for themselves. :)
Click for the full entry!
Early Saturday Morning
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Saturday, 26-January-2002 00:56:36 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Happy Australia Day! :)
CaseModders Oz have an article about a baybus project.
A roundup of roundups: 2x i845 DDR P4 motherboards on HotHardware, 15x Graphics Processors on AnandTech, 2x P4 coolers on TweakTown.
Guides: Building your own PC on TechAngel, building an overclocked PC on OCdCafe, 3DMark2001 tweaking on PCStats.
Reviews:
Abit Siluro GF3 Ti500 video card on HardOCP.
ECS K7VTA3 KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on TechWatch.
Soldam Pandora S mini-box system.
Gigabyte 7VTXH+ SocketA DDR motherboard on OCWB.
WOW Thing audio doohickey on TheTechZone.
LiteOn FS-020 fulltower case on NeoSeeker.
Alpha PAL8045 socket cooler on Hardware-Test.
Coolermaster 210 midtower case on Hexus.
AMD AthlonXP 1800+ socketA CPU on ViperLair.
AMD AthlonXP 1900+ socketA CPU on PCStats.
TDK Velocd 24x10x40x CDRW drive on SourceMag.
Logitech Wingman Force-Feedback joystick on OverclockersClub.
Creative GF3 Ti500 video card on Guru3D.
Samsung SyncMaster 1200NF 22 inch CRT monitor on NeoSeeker.
Azuma Fan Adapter on ExtremeOC.
Shuttle AK35GTR KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on AwareMag.
Abit KR7A-RAID KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on 3DVelocity.
Neon Light Case on Heatseekerz.
MSI GF3 Ti200 video card on PCRivals.
Swiftech MCX462 socket cooler on 3DVelocity.
Shuttle AV40R P4X266-based P4 DDR motherboard on TweakTown.
Samsung Spinpoint 40GB HDD on GideonTech.
DFI NB70-SC P4 DDR motherboard on VIAHW.
Antec SX635 minitower on ClubOC.
Neon Light midtower case on IPKonfig.
Arctic Silver 3 thermal paste on AtlantaOC.
TRENDware wireless networking gear on Digit-Life.
First of all, Agg had a birthday today. So, Happy Birthday Unkie Agg :) I hope everyone remembered to send him an e-mail *sniggers*
Okay, now on with the news......
Chris sends us a sad poem about someone killing their Gainward GeForce3 card.
I think we linked to this page a while ago, but there are some REALLY cool ideas there :) Thanks Geoffrey.
Dan from Dan's Data has a HS/F comparo, that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. 8 more fans added to it at this stage.
Hadamona noticed this nice small app that can be configured to show a variety of things in your Taskbar, things such as temperatures, cpu load, uptime, and a lot more... Grab that here. (Only for Win2k/XP however)
"Think Techie's" Lian Li PC60 case contest is nearly over! You have until the 26th to complete the tasks listed over at their contest page. Better hurry :)
(EDIT : Forget hurrying, you have to be a resident of the US to enter, sorry)
Seems Abit have had a rethink on their motherboard packaging. Check out the scoop on Hexus.
It appears that NetScape are once again suing our pals at Micro$oft. Details here. Thanks Scott.
Over at Spode's Abode, Surlyjoe and Spode climb out of their hibernation and shed some light on their new direct die system using an o-ring clamp. A breif, but interesting read involving tales of darkness and EVIL.
The Federales finally came to their senses concerning David McOwen, who was being sued for $800000 (400k damage, 400k fines)USD plus facing up to 15 years in the big house for installing RC5 on approx 500 PCs. Have a look at the full article here.
Haha, poor bloke. overlOad send us this eBay link. Read the description of the item for sale :)
HoruS tells us that the new 27.10 Detonators have support for the GF4's in them, and reveal their names. First pic here and second pic here.
Scott informs us that NVMAX 4.00.21 is out. Click here if you want some of that action.
Overclockers New Zealand has posted an article on making a peltier cooled heatsink for your water cooling system.
And lastly, again from eBay, comes this V12 Ferrari Testarosa belonging to John Romero, from ID Software, up for sale. Daikatana must have sent him broke. *reaches into wallet, and dodges the bats that come flying out* Oh well, maybe next year.. :)
Reviews:
Icrontic review a SMK SX1000 PC Case.
CoolerHut have a write up on the PowerCooler PCH147 HS/F.
Acorp 7KT266A Motherboard reviewed at Hot Hardware.
An aluminium version of the Millenium Glaciator II over on Templin Tech.
Templin Tech have another review, one of 2 KT266a motherboards from Soyo and DFI.
Club Overclocker have a VIA C3 933MHz Processor Review.
PC Stats have done a Samsung Syncmaster 171MP LCD - HDTV Review.
Video Review of the Santa Cruz 6 speaker PCI soundcard.
SubZeroTech give us a SubZeroTech Fortis A91 heatsink Review.
Overclockers Club review the new Arctic Silver III, Arctic Silver II, Old Nanotherm, and the New Nanotherm thermal paste's.
A Special Shout
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Thursday, 24-January-2002 17:02:02 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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A big HAPPY BIRTHDAY
to Agg today!
He is of course the one who oversees things at OCAU
go and make him happy by:
Putting your computer specs in the PCDB
Joining Seti@Home
or Joining Folding@Home
and of course Posting in the Forums
Righto, time for some news....
First up tonight, Tom's Hardware have information on a 3GHz Pentium 4. Hmm, and here's me still running an 800 Duron.. Thanks Tim (for the link, not the Duron :) )
stormbringer send us word about a new HS/F entering the market, the Verax P14. Vendor info here, and the product itself, here. And you'll need to strap on the fish, as it's all in German.
Guru3D have a nice little program for download. It's an nVidia BIOS editor. As usual, if you choose to edit the BIOS on your video card, we are not responsible for the sudden explosion or damage of household pets, hardware, etc ..... :)
Visionary tells us that VR-Zone have a Northwood OC Database with some early overclocking results for P4 Northwood 1.6A @ 3.2Ghz and 1.8A @ 3.4Ghz.
We have a thread in our forums which has info on the leaked 27.00 and 27.10 detonators. Check it out here. Cheers Andrew.
Cerberos tells us a group of scientists and major technology corporations asked people around the world on Tuesday to use their personal computers to help develop a treatment for anthrax. Read the full story right here.
Live in Sydney and interested in becoming part of a wireless net project? Then you need to look no further than here.
3D Spotlight have a Windows XP Modem Tweak Guide that will take you through optimizing the performance, reliability & security of your Dial-up connection in Windows XP as well as several other misc tips. That's here. If only it could change dial-up into cable. :(
A couple of links from Future Looks. Firstly, The Ladies of CES 2002 (DEFINITELY worth a look), and for all you Rice fanatics, Crazy cars and car audio.
A fair few people sent us links, to download the new detonator drivers from. You can get the 27.10's and the 27.00's here. Thanks to all. As usual, if you choose to use these driver's, we are not responsible for the spontanious combustion of hamster's, hair-do's or computer hardware ..... :)
Well, it would seem that Telstra's rumoured price increases are in fact, a reality. Info on ADSL here and CABLE here. Onya Ziggy. Way to alienate existing and potential customers. Taa Chris.
EXHardware has posted a press release of the new VIA ProSavage DDR PN266T Chipset. Interesting read....
Reviews:
Bench House have a cooler review using 8 different coolers.
MikhailTech have a Lativa Black Case Review.
Tech Report have a Shuttle AK35GTR motherboard review.
ThinkTechie come to us with a Nostromo n50 Speedpad review.
SLCentral have an AVerMedia AVerTV Box External TVTuner review.
IamNotAGeek review a Bluetake USB Dongle.
EXHardware do a review on some Belkin Networking Equipment.
Wed Night - Hungry, So Very Hungry...
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Wednesday, 23-January-2002 19:14:19 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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It's been a long time coming... Amazon.com posts a profit - proving, amongst many things, you can make money without spamming to death your customers
I'm sure a large factor was the use of Linux, saving it millions of dollars. I know I make my team use Linux where ever we can.
Think your pet has an eating problem,? Well think again my furry friend.
More legal problems for Microsoft as they get sued by the giant AOL Time Warner.
It seems that Indy 4 is finally on its way, with Spielberg keeing the title secret. Let's just hope that it's not Indiana Jones and the Attack of the Clones
Can't go on.. too hungry
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 23-January-2002 13:00:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hey, nobody told us that Sisoft Sandra 2002 has been released, over a week ago. Bad community! :) Kurt pointed it out.
Wired have an article on the recent software piracy crackdown which has seen warez groups getting busted bigtime both overseas and in Australia. Microsoft anti-piracy manager Diana Piquette said at a recent press conference that piracy profits are being siphoned to terrorist organizations ... But Angonasta, after checking with contacts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said he wasn't able to find more than one report about profits from pirating going to fund terrorists.
Dan has more coolers on review.
Apparently AusGamers are also giving away tickets to the Dungeon Seige launch and their entry process is simpler than the link we provided earlier, thanks.. err.. someone who's name I've forgotten and I've already deleted the email.. whoops. :)
Seahawk noticed this water-cooled hard drive project.
Apparently Telstra has posted their new ADSL pricing and cable pricing, too.. thanks MWP and Peter. I'm afraid to look.. but as it says on the page relax, you're in good hands with Telstra BigPond Internet. Well, that's a relief.
Chris noticed that some P4 laptops may not be what they appear to be.
Here's another issue of ZZZ Online.
Reviews:
Lian-Li PC35 mini case on Hexus.
ZXmods Cold Cathodes on GideonTech.
AMD Duron 1.3GHz socketA CPU on Hexus.
Thermaltake Volcano 7 socket cooler on OCIA.
APCM Window Kit on OCMelbourne.
DFI NB70-SC P4 DDR motherboard on PCStats.
Iwill XP333R SocketA DDR motherboard on Hardware-Test.
Vantec GSN-7025 P4 cooler on FrostyTech.
Global Win YCC-61F1 case on HWExtreme.
This is the "I am so bloody tired, but can't get to sleep" news post. :) Enjoy.
I have recieved word that a new version of TFC Launcher, Version 7.0 is out. This version works with Windows XP/2000/ME/NT/98. You can get it from here.
PCStats has a look at how Network Cards (NIC's) handle overclocking, and if they might be the thing that's holding you back from getting higher speeds.
Saarp's got a competition going. You could win 2 tickets to the Dungeon Siege launch in Sydney on February 4. Just sign up at saarp.com and enter. Thanks rawhide.
Hardware Avenue have posted a "how-to" article concerning how to change your Dialup account's DNS settings.
Apparently, Telstra have denied that a price hike is coming. Seems weird, as the Telstra story I saw on the news confimed this. *shrugs* Cheers Chris.
Xtreme Tek have posted a guide on how to make your own professional looking patch cables. For some cable makin' lovin', click here.
This page provides links to the Linux Kernel Mailing list and actual linux kernel hackers oppinions of the "bug". Make your own conclusions, but to me it sounds like the bug does not occur in well written code, and there may or may not be a problem with the pre-compiled Nvidia module. Thanks Jani.
It would appear that Kazaa is now australian owned. Check out the full story here, more info here to find out all the details.
Reviews:
CDRInfo test four different CD-RW drives, the ASUS CRW-1610A, Samsung SW-224B, AOpen RW5120A DVD+RW and the Freecom Traveller II combo
SubZeroTech has posted their review of the GlobalWin Cak-II 38 heatsink.
Overclocker Café have reviewed the Cooler Guys modified Swiftech MCX-370.
BlueSmoke have a DFI AK76-SN AMD760 motherboard Review.
An ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 Review over on The Tech Zone.
HardOCP have a MSI K7D Dually AMD Board review.
Tuesday Morning
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Tuesday, 22-January-2002 10:46:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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I noticed some new watercooled PC's in the PCDB that haven't been added to the Extreme Cooling Club yet.. SeaHawk's dual machine with an interesting clamp for the dual waterblocks, Greedy_Guido's bong-cooled system, Cerberos's custom case, also bong-cooled and Dedge's radiator-less setup. If you think your machine has what it takes to be in the Extreme Cooling club, read this thread for info.
xbit-labs have a 10-way socket cooler roundup posted.
Gary_J spotted yet another V8 racing game on the way.
ExtremeCooling have a guide to enabling SBA on GF2MX.. Side-Band Addressing, doncha know.
Another amazing case on an Alien theme, thanks sw1tch.. I dunno, looks a bit overdone to me.
Telstra's rumoured price rises copped a beating from the Slashdotters, thanks Soc. Tristan noticed that it's perhaps not just a rumour anymore.
HardwareMania have compared the ATI8500LE and NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 video chipsets.
Photoshoppers or choppers, win yourself some thermal paste by ridiculing a major corporation.
Dan has checked out the SocketA and P4 performance of Swiftech's latest monster heatsink.
logic spotted this Athlon bug that affects Linux 2.4.x kernels. The unfortunate thing about this situation is that AMD and others have known of this bug since September 2000. Interesting read.
Forum record smashed again last night, 339 simultaneous users.. :)
Reviews:
Lian Li PC65 Window Panel on OCIA.
AVC Tundra socket cooler on CoolerHut.
MCX462 socket cooler on TemplinTech.
Accton Cheetah NIC on extremecooling.
Gainward Geforce3 Ti500 video card on Hexus.
Antec SX635 Mini Tower case on HWDaily.
ATI All-In-Wonder 7500 on GamersDepot.
Dynatron Model S P4 cooler on FrostyTech.
Chaintech CT-7VJDA KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on Processor-Emporium.
A couple of birthday shout-outs tonight. Firstly to Sabretooth who turns 20 today, and to Flecktone who turns 19. Many Happy returns guys ...... *mutters something about whippersnappers, and hobbles off with his walking frame*
First off tonight, three different chipset roadmaps from PCScoop. An ALi, an SiS and a VIA one.
Torana tells us of an Australian V8 Supercar game in the making from CodeMasters. More details here. Dick Johnson V8 Racing was another good one (except if was full of evil Fords) :)
skull9 Rv tells us of another "fonts" site, Acidfonts, which apparently has a whole load more than this site I linked the other day. And here's one, just for you Q3A zealots. (Courtesy of Ambush)
Another ALi Chipset Roadmap, this time on VR-Zone. Thanks Visionary.
LindowsOS is an affordable and easy-to-use operating system with the unique ability ro run both Linux and Windows programs....Wanna read more? Sure you do :) Thanks Morjo.
Own a Palm, and found it hard to find other palm lovin' geeks? (There's a joke there, but I won't do it :) ) There is a Palm User's Group starting soon. Cheers Adam.
Chris sends news here that Hercules have started churning out Radeon 8500 based video cards.
And yet another roadmap, this time an AMD one. Thanks Scott.
Yet again from Scott, comes news that Mad Onion are soon to be releasing 3d Mark 2001 Second Edition software. Check out the whole story here.
Article here pitting the Swiftech MC462 against the Alpha PAL 8045. Interesting read.
Never one to stay in the shadow of Intel for very long, AMD today launches its 1.3GHz Duron designed to run toe to toe with Intel's 1.3GHz Celeron. Hehe, AMD and Intel toe to toe? That hasn't happened for a long time :)
Ok so you thought you were a geek? Check out the PC Geiger. Brought to you by VICS Technology and IOSS (the makers of the invaluable BIOS Savior), the PC Geiger enables the real-time monitoring of the PCI bus, port 80h debugging information plus a host of connectors and switches brought to your front panel. Swoit!
SLCentral.com has posted an update to their CPU/Memory Watch.
Looking to buy a new or your first digital camera? Might pay to give this guide of buying digital camera a bit of a look-see.
ExtremeCooling.org have a guide on how to enable SBA on the Geforce2mx. Check that out, here.
Reviews:
EPoX 4B2A P4 i845 motherboard review over on BlargOC.
Cooler Master ACT-110 Value Server Case review on IPKonfig
NetGear Ethernet Switch FS108 review and a Vantec WC6040 P4 Cooler review on Unique-Hardware.
Riovolt sp100 mp3player review and also a Volcano 7 review on BurnoutPC.
MikhailTech have a Laser LED light review.
Mr PC Pro have a review on Acorp's Pentium 4 motherboard using a VIA chipset.
TweakTown have just posted a review of the Asus P4B266 Motherboard.
iMP-250 and iMP-350 MP3 Player Review on The Tech Zone.
Shuttle AK35GT-R KT266A motherboard review on 3dSpotlight.
Zalman CNPS6000-Cu Fan Heatsink Review on FrostyTech.
NeoSeeker have a couple of reviews. Firstly an Ego Sys Wami Box and secondly a Kenwood DPC-MP922 Portable MP3 CD Player.
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum review on ClubOverclocker.
Early Monday Morning
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Monday, 21-January-2002 01:13:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Bit of a bike weekend.. a few laps of the national park (very burnt), ripped the fairings off and installed some frame protectors.. nice to get away from the PC sometimes.
Dean spotted the top story of tonight, AOL may buy RedHat, makers of a popular Linux distribution. Hmm, not sure how I feel about that, could be good or bad.
OCNZ have an AMD DDR motherboard shootout.
There's a BBQ in Tassie for OCAU folks. There's also a LAN coming up in Darwin.
It's normally Japan that gets the scoop on new PC bits, but Chris has spotted some goings-on in France.. or at least in French. Abit's KX7-333 mentioned in a store's catalog there (ok, they could just be over-eager) and the GeForce4 MX440 cards from Leadtek and Abit mentioned on the french version of TomsHardware.
Sabrtooth found this guide to calibrating your thermal diode on ArcticSilver's site.
Hexus have some info on a home-made watercooling project. Meanwhile, Bit-Tech have a clear-case project.
There's a contest to win a sound card here, no forum spammage required, doesn't say anything about international entrants.
Found this article in my wanderings.. scientists have discovered organisms that don't need sunlight or oxygen to live, suggesting that planets we consider hostile to life may in fact be habitable by creatures very different to ourselves.
Digit-Life have a roundup of five 24x IDE CDRW drives.
Ungrateful Ninja spotted this very cool site with ultra-high-magnification pictures of images hidden inside integrated circuit designs. Cars, comic characters, mythical animals.. even a picture of Thor, the Norse god of thunder, after which our new server is named.
Reviews:
GearGrip Pro carrying handle on NVNews.
MSI K7N420 Pro nForce-based motherboard on ViperLair, our review here.
iCute 8310SL case on CoolHardWarez.
Hyundai Cutie external HDD (yes, that's its name) on xbitlabs.
A7V266E KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on MBReview.
ClutterBuster desktop organiser on BurnOutPC.
Mini-Baybus fan controller on BurnOutPC.
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40GB IDE HDD on BSoD.
Lian-Li PC60 Midtower case on OCIA.
AMD AthlonXP 2000+ socketA CPU on Hardware-Test.
EverGlide Gaming Mat on XtremeTek.
CoolerMaster ATC-210 case on Icrontic.
GlobalWin SAK-38 socket cooler on VyW.
Logitech Optical Mouse on PlanetSavage.
Asus V8200T5 GF3 Ti500-based video card on SerialAddiction.
Zeus Modded Case on MikhailTech.
Samsung SW216 16X10X32 CDRW drive on GideonTech.
Saturday Night
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Saturday, 19-January-2002 23:56:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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This has to be one of the most amazing paintjobs I've ever seen on a case. Looks like a Macase KA-130 Fulltower or similar, done in an evil Giger-esque scheme.. and check out the van! Freaky stuff.
Reviews:
Mouse Skatez on OCIA.
Waitec MEGALUS 24/10/40 CD-RW drive on CDFreaks.
Iwill XP333 SocketA DDR motherboard on PCStats.
Active Memory Cooling Kit on ThinkTechie.
WindTunnel IV case on SourceMagazine.
L&C 350W PSU on MikhailTech.
Shuttle AK35GTR KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on ClubOC.
Philips Acoustic Edge sound card on Hardavenue.
Evercool CUD-725CA socket cooler on TweakTown.
GlobalWin SAK-38 socket cooler on TemplinTech.
MSI K7N420 Pro nForce 420D-based SocketA DDR motherboard on AMDMB, our review here.
Logitech Cordless Desktop Optical mouse+kb on PC-Arena.
News of an upcoming LAN in Perth, to be held on the 26th of January. It's only a 50 person LAN, so get in quick. Cost is $15.00 which includes 2 drinks and lunch. Take a look here for more info.
AnandTech have an article explaining the Digital Visual Interface (DVI) and improving GeForce2/3 image quality.
Hmmmmm. *pats his Duron lovingly* This picture is a rather abrupt reminder to use a decent heatsink/fan combo. Bar-B-Que, anyone? :)
If you are running XP, and have "Cleartype" enabled, or would like to enable it, then ClearTweak Version 1 could be for you. ClearTweak allows you to change the contrast of the ClearType setting for Windows XP. Thanks Michael.
Silicon Graphics Inc has transferred much of its 3D graphics patents portfolio to Microsoft. TheRegister have the full scoop. Thanks Duke.
Website Guru3D.com is back online! This is GREAT news as the GeForce Tweak Utility, RivaTuner and other programs such as these, will now have updated releases. Go hard boys :)
Do you live in Brisbane, love playing StarCraft and would be interested in winning $1500.00 for playing Brood Wars? If you answered yes, click here for the info. (Of course, my cut gets mailed to me for supplying you with the link) :)
If you like little flash time wasting thingo's, and don't we all :) , the site with the "Handwriting Calendar we linked to earlier in the week, has a few to keep you occupied.
Extreme Overclocking has posted up a quick and simple fan mod that you can do to your Thermaltake Volcano 7 heat sink to help cool off your processor better. All you need is a screwdriver and a couple minutes of downtime. It's so simple you will be hitting yourself in the head for not thinking about it first.
Creative, (A.K.A Andrew) from our forums, has started an "OCAU 3dMark team". This thread is for people to post their 3DMark scores, and this one is for people to post their various hardware and Windows tweaks. Rather good idea.
If you have seen a cool font used in a movie title or have been looking for some different fonts to use, look no further than here. And this is timely for me, as I was looking for some fonts today and couldn't find any suitable ones. Cheers to Ungrateful Ninja :)
Reviews:
Part 4 of mikhailtech's heatsink roundup.
X-Bit Labs have reviewed three SiS645 based mainboards: ASUS P4S333, ECS P4S5A and MSI 645 Ultra.
Tom's Hardware have A comparison Of 13 LCD Monitors.
Friday Night #2
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Friday, 18-January-2002 20:00:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Apparently the AOpen comp linked earlier is for Europe and UK only. That sucks. Sometimes we check competition details before posting to the news page, but sometimes due to time issues we don't. Remember that we do get a lot of international visitors to the news page here too. There were a couple of "post in our forums!" competitions in the newsbox today but I just delete those..
There's a streaming radio station being run by a few OCAU'ers and MOS people.. info in that thread.
A few people spotted this insane overclock on Muropaketti - a Northwood 2.2GHz P4 at 3675MHz.. with liquid nitrogen at -200C for cooling, naturally. Scott spotted another one at 3.5GHz.. a heap of crazy stuff going on on that page, actually. VR-Zone have started a database to record these massive overclocks, if you're looking for the current record-holder.
Meanwhile, AMDMB are wondering if we should even bother overclocking anymore.
Freak notes that, apparently, AMD's XP2500+ CPU will be built on .13 Micron technology.
Slo-tech have pics of some interesting waterjackets, spirally goodness. As they say, Za vse modelarje !
New website DigitalDomination have a review of a HSI GeForce2 MX400 video card. Fairly lightweight review unfortunately, with almost no benchmarks and fuzzy photos - hope to see something more substantial from them soon.
At the other end of the scale, Dan has added four more coolers to his immense comparison.. it's almost as big as his cat, now.
Epoch spotted pics of Alpha's EV7 CPU on OpenVMS.org.
There's a fairly detailed rumour about telstra price rises over on Whirlpool, thanks gumbi.
Reviews:
AMD AthlonXP 2000+ SocketA CPU on GotApex.
Elite K7VTA3 v2.0 KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on TTZ.
CoolerMaster CB5 socket cooler on OCIA.
2CoolPC Turbo and Plus system coolers on BlueSmoke, our reviews here and here.
Gainward GF3 PowerPack video card, our review here.
Gigabyte 7VTXH KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on Bench-House.
Shuttle AK35GT-R KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on Hardware-Test.
Abit Siluro GF3 Ti500 video card on Digit-Life.
Corsair XMS2400 DDR SDRAM on PCStats.
Asus V7700Ti GF2 Ti video card on HWExtreme.
Arkua heatsinks on JSIHardware.
Akasa Sound-dampening Mat on OCrCafe.
ASUS P4S333 SiS645-based P4 DDR motherboard on TweakTown.
GlobalWin CAKII-38 socket cooler on TemplinTech.
Mercedes-Benz S600 err.. car.. on TheTechZone.
Kinyo R-655U USB speakers on SLCentral.
Palit Daytona GeForce3 Ti200 video card on Icrontic.
Friday Night - Waiting ....
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Friday, 18-January-2002 19:32:00 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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Why can't females get ready quickly?
Ever wonder how you rank in the Geek Hierarchy? Hopefully you do well, and don't get married in Klingon Garb...er, not that there's anythign wrong with that...
Bill Gates says he wants to make " trustworthy computing" the company's highest priority. You, me and the rest of the freaking universe, dude..
Some people get so excited to go to school, they steal cars to get there on time.
Australia is about to get 3G. But don't take your knickers off in excitment yet, it's only a trial. In SA no less.
I love lego, and I love it when people do stuff like this. Lord of the Rings - Lego version. Almost as good as Peter Jackson's effort
Ebay's fees are going up at the end of the month, so better sell/buy as quickly as you can.
Kazaa may die the agonisingly slow death as Napster is going through, as it pauses its services.
Finally, the top 10 least played D&D classes. Go forth roll 10 or higher and annoy your Dungeon Master for 125,000 XP
You know the good part about doing news? (Well, apart from the cash donations rocking up on my doorstep) I get to check out all this cool gear before anyone else. :)
First up tonight, AOpen are having a case modding competition. Entries in picture form MUST be received by February 1st, so you better hurry. Some pretty cool prizes too. Thanks Matt.
JimX sends us a Calendar with a difference. This one is hand drawn, and ........ well, check it out for yourself :)
Now you can point your wristwatch at a woman's cleavage and NOT look like a complete moron :) Thanks Scott
WHQL Detonators, Version 23.12 are apparently available from Asus' FTP site. I say apparently, coz I haven't had a look myself yet. Thanks Volnar.
(EDIT : This thread here pointed out by Avadin, contains some various concerns and observations about these drivers. Might want to check it out first, before installing them)
If you are a 3DFX zealot from ages back, you might be interested in this article over at Maximum PC. VooDoo5 6000 for $2150? Not this little black duck...
Check out a write-up on Via's new Vlink 512 MB/s technology over on TheInq. Sounds rather sweet. Cheers again, Scott.
SLCentral.com has posted an article entitled "Intel Pentium 4 Northwood Vs. AMD Athlon XP 2000+ Pure Numbers". Last week they posted benchmarks of the P4 Northwood and promised to compare it against the recently announced Athlon XP 2000+. True to their word, here is the scoop.
Haha, it's about time there was one of these. Announcing Xtreme Tek's Dumbass Database! Instead of containing technical benchmarks, it contains a collection of dumbasses :) Love it already..
Ever wondered if you could integrate your computer into your home theater system? Well it might be easier than you think. Design Technica have all the info.
Hadamona send us word on the new KM266 chipset from VIA. Check out the full story over at VIA.
I don't know what's more disturbing. The fact that they are bringing out a 3rd service pack for Windows 2000, or that the last 2 were roughly 100meg a piece, or that the latest one (Service Pack 3) will incorparate over 800 fixes! 3D Spotlight have the goss.
Our own Dennis_B has a repost of his CPU bridge cutting efforts using a power supply here in our forums. If you haven't joined our forums yet, what the hell is wrong with you? :)
Wanna check out some info on the new AMD Hammer processor? Scott sent us the link, and here it is.
Next time you open the drawer and see a few RAM modules laying there, and dunno what the breed and specs are, it might pay you to check out this page. Thanks Chris.
More later ...........
NewMotion USB Drive Enclosure
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Friday, 18-January-2002 00:58:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Sciby has checked out an interesting little gadget. It's an adapter that turns a normal 2.5" IDE HDD, like a laptop drive, into a hot-swappable USB storage device. Just the thing for when you need to move a heap of data around..
Click for the full review!
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 17-January-2002 16:18:32 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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People using lots of PC's in our Folding@Home team should read this important message in the forums from one of the senior people in the project.
Have some reviews..
Reviews:
ColorCases 502 midtower case on CrazyOC.
OCZ Goliath socket cooler on OCrCafe.
Swiftech MCXC370 socket cooler on ViperLair.
PowerCooler socketA coolers on TechnoYard.
Crucial 64MB CompactFlash card on IANAG.
Enermax 430W PSU on EXHardware.
Cold Cathode case-modding wotsit on TTZ.
Magic Fleece sound-dampening material on OCPrices.
Klipsch Promedia 4.1 speakers on SourceMag.
Lian-Li PC-7x fulltower cases on DansData.
Rounded Cables on 8Balls, similar product here, cheapy option here.
AMD AthlonXP 2000+ workstation? or CPU or something.. on PCStats.
Arctic Silver 3 thermal paste on BurnOutPC.
MSI 860D Pro and Iwill DX400-SN i860-based P4 boards on Accelenation.
Belkin KVM switch for using several PC's with one keyboard/monitor/mouse on Unique-Hardware.
Enermax PSU on SoundCardCentral, of course.
EPoX 4SDA+ SiS645-based P4 DDR motherboard on TweakTown.
Noblesse Electric Blue case on AMDMB.
nVidia nForce motherboard chipset on HotHardware, our review here.
OCAU Forum Monitor
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Wednesday, 16-January-2002 17:42:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Forum-goer DJ-Studd has whipped up a neato little toolbar that Windows users can use to keep an eye on new forum threads. It sits in your system taskbar and scrolls a list of threads, looking like this:
Click to enlarge!
His instructions for installing it follow:
Firstly, visit the help page to see what you can configure in it before installing.
Then to install follow the following:
Right-Click your taskbar and go Toolbars -> Add Toolbar.
Then, in the text box enter the url that you have from the help page.
The 4 buttons on the bar do the following:
Top-Left: Link to OCAU front news page
Top-Right: Show New Threads
Bottom-Left: Link to OCAU forums frontpage
Bottom-Right: Brings up the help window
Anyway, give it a go if you're interested. Discussion and feedback in this thread, please.
Wednesday Midday
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Wednesday, 16-January-2002 11:48:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Jeez, ya give LoneWolf a NewsPro account and he goes and writes an encyclopaedia.. :)
Wired have info on a new online court being trialled in the USA. That sounds like a great idea and just what society needs at the moment. To hell with education and healthcare, let's make it easier for people to sue each other.
Nice modded PC project with a homemade waterblock in it, thanks Mike.
Scott spotted this TheInq article saying ATI WILL TAKE Nvidia on big time by introducing an R300 that will have DirectX 9 support. This somewhat overstated article has been met with some.. ahh.. healthy skepticism from a certain famously-outspoken webmaster and a response from TheInq's editor.
I'd forgotten to copy the latest Article & Review Archive index over from the old server so quite a few recent articles weren't listed.. it's updated with the latest goodies now.
The GTRPC, which stars in our own PCDB, is also featured in this article on Pheaton. It's an interview with the creator, BlueSmurf, a regular in our Case Modding forum.
Speaking of the PCDB, it's only been re-opened for about 36 hours and there have been HEAPS of new entries.. I'm not going to try to list all the cool ones, if you go for a wander through the latest gallery entries you'll see 4 or 5 pages of new entries with pictures. However, one that really caught my eye is this ashtray PC.. or ashcan, or smoker's bin or cancer canister or whatever it is they're called. Neat idea though and turned out looking great.
SM@SH found a cool 404 page with a physics haiku.. I'm sure Sciby would approve. :)
Reviews:
Soltek 75DRV2 KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on Bench-House.
A7V133 KT133A-based SocketA SDR motherboard on BurnOutPC.
Western Digital WD400EB hard drive on xbitlabs.
Innovatek Watercooling Kit on BurnOutPC.
Dr Thermal socket cooler on OCOnline.
Waitec Shining 17 TFT monitor on Hardware-Test.
AOpen AK77 Plus KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on PCStats.
Enermax UC-001TM2 dual temperature monitor on 3DVelocity.
Thrustmaster Ferrari force-feedback wheel on TweakTown.
Case-Cutting on the Cheap!
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Wednesday, 16-January-2002 02:41:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Wolfy has been hacking away again.. this time he shows you how to modify your case without resorting to specialised tools like a Dremel.
Click for the full article!
National Nightly Network News :)
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Wednesday, 16-January-2002 00:42:09 (GMT +10) - by LoneWolf
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Here's hoping that Newspro doesn't wimp out on me again :)
First up, Dave let's us know that there is a petition available to ask Creative to supply better support for thie SBLive! and Audigy cards. Go here if you want some of that action.
X-bit labs has posted an article called "ATI RADEON8500 Extreme Overclocking Experience". Here it is if you wanna have a squizz.
The year is 1958. Physicist Willy Higinbotham invents the first "video game" at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. His game, a table tennis-like game, was played on an oscilloscope. This page tells you all about different games and milestones in the industry. Gimme CS or RTCW anyday :) Thanks Anthrox.
Another petition here to save the widescreen format on DVD's, and a site here has some funny parodies of movies like The Matrix, Star Wars, Hackers and Blade. Good time waster indeed, thanks again Anthrox.
AnandTech have an article up about Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology.
Take a look at this. Intel's gallery of "designer PCs." Some rather dubious entrants, some are rather funky though. Thanks everyone who sent this in.
Ever wondered what each wire does on your ATX power supply does? Well, go there and wonder no more, cheers Scott.
Woooooooo. The Inquirer have details on the upcoming GeForce 4. Thanks again Scott.
3D Spotlight have a Soundcard & Speakers tweak guide. cards covered are the SB Live! series, Videologic SonicFury, Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Philips PSC 70x range, Hercules Game Theater XP & Hercules Fortissimo 2, and the SB Audigy line.
Between now and Sunday January 27th you can put your name in the hat to win a case mod prize pack including a 10 inch Neon Black Light with Server Window and your choice of window Appliqué off the Arena Computers website. OverclockerCafe have all the details.
Head over to TheTechReport and check out Tyan's Trinity 510 motherboard. Looks sweet ... *hunts for wallet* :)
The Tech Zone's coverage of the 2002 CES continues with a look at all the hot demo cars that were at the show. If your car didn't have 20" wheels, mega sound system and at least 5 monitors, you were nobody it seems. And since we can't live by cars alone, they've toss in "a few" booth babe pics as well!
[]WILDFIRE[] tells us that Hercules are planning to drop NVidia in favour of ATI chips. More on that here.
News of Plextor's upcoming 40x/12x/40x CD-RW drive here. Now we need a link to 40x media *sigh*
And finally, if you missed the group purchase of dome case stickers in the for sale forum, you can go here and get in on some of the action.
Reviews:
Extrememods.com have a review on Tweakmonster ram sinks.
AnandTech have a story aboutIntel's Hyper-Threading Technology
PC Stats do a review on the ACorp 7KT266A Motherboard.
Overclockers Club have just completed a review on the Evercool CUD-725 solid copper heatsink.
Mikhailtech have a Globalwin YCC-8870 Aluminum Case Review.
TweakTown review an Abit Siluro Ti200/DVI Video Card.
SerialAddiction have reviewed an Intel Pentium 4 and an Abit TH7-II.
GamersDepot shoot out a review of ATI's Radeon 8500DV.
VoidYourWarranty have a review of the CaseEtc Maelstrom fan controller.
ExHardWare have a review of some really nice studio microphones from Oktava.
M:6 give us a TS Heatronics CPU Radiator Zen Review.
Tuesday Noon - Feel Weird...
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Tuesday, 15-January-2002 12:22:31 (GMT +10) - by YYK
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Been a long time since i did this..
Interview with the guy who designed the iMac. Love it or Hate it, you can now go read about it.
If you live in England, can you please hide your stash away from your pets.
People in WA may have another vendor to get their "broadband" access from. Western Power (the electric company) and Marconi (the data company that posted record loss) are testing it now
Ever wonder why your mum always told you to never wear pork chops on your feet while you are drunk?
If you're like me and spend between US$500,000-$1,000,000 on IBM products, you can now buy now and pay later.
Intel news: You can now get RedHat on Itaniums but can't use it for Solaris 9
Finally, can the Oscar winning movie star of "Leaving Las Vegas" please move his car, as it is about to be towed. Thank you.
PCDB back online!
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Tuesday, 15-January-2002 02:59:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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With many, many thanks to MWP for sorting out a few niggling problems with the move to the new server, it's my pleasure to announce that the PCDB is back online! After being offline for nearly a month, it's got some bugfixes (the annoying hard-disk-info bug is gone!), a lot more speed thanks to the grunty new server and a new address:Note that your old http://www.overclockers.com.au/pcdb URL's will still work fine for the indefinite future - but if the PCDB ever needs to be moved to a server of its own, those old addresses may not work. So best to move over to the new address now.
Anyway, now that it's back I could finally put in an entry for Thor, our new server. If you're interested in what it looks like or what's tucked away inside it, here's the info:
Click for the full entry!
I think NewsPro was confused by the huge size of this post.. so I've split it into two bits, here's the 2nd part:
GideonTech.com just did an update to their "Visitor Projects" section, where users can submit any modifications they've accomplished. Our own PCDB is down at the moment, but don't despair, it will return :)
SLCentral.com has posted an update to their CPU/Memory Watch. This week OEM Athlon XP's come down in price and a couple popular types of SDRAM start to rise. Here's the goods.
INTEL'S 850 CHIPSET is about as popular with the PC enthusiast crowd as NSync's latest CD is with heavy metal fans. Enthusiasts demand great performance at low prices, and while the 850/Pentium 4 platform has posted some impressive scores in some tests, it's not exactly been the price/performance leader. Fortunately, the introduction of DDR chipsets from VIA, SiS, and Intel has enabled the Pentium 4 to achieve reasonable performance without resorting to RDRAM. Want more? <--Click there :)
Icrontic has a story on domed case badges, and possibly how to make your own.
TacoNuts have updated their case gallery again, so head on over and check it out.
News and pictures from the 2002 Consumer Electronics Show over at The Tech Zone.
By now we have all heard about the NVIDIA Titanium 500 series video cards and many of us are now looking for solutions beyond 3D gaming. HardOCP has a look at two top performing cards and what they have to offer when it comes to Video In / Video Out enhancements.
Our own BlueSmurf has a forum thread about his recent testdrive of the Holden Monaro CV8 here.
Reviews:
Plextor W241040A review on tecentral. (Pre translated link, aren't I nice :) )
Adrian's Rojak Pot have a Thermalright CB-6L CPU cooler review.
Elite_Hardware have a Multifunction Transfer Panel review (5.25" bay thingy with temp sensor)
AMD Heatsink roundup over on voidyourwarranty.
Maxxdata.com has produced a review on the Athlon XP Unlocking Kit.
Overclockers New Zealand have a review on 9 new released coolers from GlobalWin.
Viper Lair have a review of the Akasa Pax Mate Acoustic Absorbent Mat.
Evercool 3-Way Heatsink Shootout on TweakTown.
Hardware Avenue have reviewed the Hercules 3D Prophet II Titanium video card. See it here.
IAmNotAGeekhave reviewed some 512MB Crucial DDR PC2100 modules.
Designtechnica takes a looks at Sonic blue's new Rio Riot.
NeoSeeker have a review of the OCZ Dominator 2.
Swiftech MCX370 Review on thinktechie.com.
Right. With winamp going in the background, here comes another news post. Rather large post tonight too, so grab a beverage, a comfy chair, and lets get underway.
All you Intel users out there hanging out for an Itanium processor with some REAL grunt better take a look at this. Then reach for your wallet :)
Another virus in our midst- this time one that can format your hard-drive apon restarting your sytem. Info here.
Bluescreenofdeth have reviewed two new coolers from AVC, the "Sunflower" Cooler designed for the Pentium 4, and the "Skived Copper Cooler" designed for Socket A Processors. Catch the review over at bluescreenofdeth.
X-Bit labs have posted an article called "NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti500 and Ti200 Based Graphics Cards Extreme Overclocking" in which they overclock a Ti200 by 50%! Have a look here.
Ever had someone ask you the time, and you wish you could've shot them in the forehead with a ball-bearing? Sure you have, we all have. :) Dan from Dansdata has a watch you might like to buy. Thanks to Dan and all the others that sent this in.
Last time I enquired about it, "Anodising" wasn't cheap. StratosFeaR sends us this link, which explains how to anodise things at home. (/me grabs the cat) :)
An interesting article on a promising memory standard here, supposedly going to be featured on the DreamForce 1 from nvidia. We have a forum post on the nvidia chip specifications here.
Wanna win an X-Box, the DVD ROM kit to go with it and a game of your choice? Head over to IPConfig and enter.
3DVelocity have posted their guide on unlocking your AthlonXP. It may not be the first such guide you've seen, but it's got it all covered with clear diagrams and pictures and of course a look at what you're likely to need.
Daniel Fisher tells us that the new 32x Lite-on burners are out. He didn't provide a link, so keep an eye on your favourite retailer, and you'll no doubt come across them.
Scott Fiske sent this in, and says: This is a really cool web page. You just enter the name of the software title you want to update and it tells you the latest version and a link to download it. Works with most applications I have typed in. Not only does it look for updates for Windows it also does Mac OS Classic and Mac OS X as well as Palm. Cool, cheers Scott.
Again from Scott comes this page, showing a Macintosh cluster churning out 1/5 TeraFlop per second! (1 TeraFlop = 1000 GF = one trillion floating-point calculations per second, in case you were wondering) :)
And yet again, from Scott, comes this page telling you everything you have ever wanted to know about your computers Power Supply.
Whirlpool have an article about some insider information on the release of Optus ADSL, which is supposedly going to be a lot faster than Telstra ADSL, and not capped! Thanks SPHINX (His caps, not mine) :)
ZZZ's 112th issue is up, and ready for your (odd technology-related) reading pleasure.
Forums problems?
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Monday, 14-January-2002 22:06:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Still having no luck getting to the forums? I think O@H is taking a little while to update their DNS.. but anyway, if you changed your HOSTS file the LAST time the server moved, you will have an incorrect entry in there which will be preventing your connecting to the forums. If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's fine, you won't have changed it last time. But if you did, might be time to remove that line! Thanks to Pseudo for reminding me.
Having said that, there's 291 people in there as I write this, so most people are obviously fine. :)
Well, thankfully the sun has gone down here, was a bloody scorcher today. So, while I go grab a beer or 10, here's some news for you to wind down with.
First up, Moldy sends word that he has located the free to use operating system that Apple provides, Mac OS 7.5.3. It's an FTP link, but I am sure you know how they work :)
Heatseeker.net have been running a competition in which you can win a remote control for your PC, and there are only 2 more days to enter! Info here.
Of course you remember the movie Armageddon, and you will remember also that it was about a giant asteroid on a collision course with earth. (Of course, it also had Liv Tyler in it, but that's a different story). Bet you didn't know that it almost happened to us. Scary!
A little more than a week ago, LittleWhiteDog.com gave the world a glimpse into the world of USB 2.0 with the posting of a driver / patch that would enable USB 2.0 on Windows XP. Today they've taken things one step further by posting an updated USB 2.0 driver that adds USB 2.0 support to Windows 2000. Remember, they're still to be considered BETA drivers at this point, even though they wear the Release Candidate 2 stamp, so please install with caution.
Also on Windows XP, Anthrox tells us that a re-released version of PowerToys for XP is out, incorporating ISO Burner and Shell Player. Here's the link for that, and also that something called "FreeStyle" for XP is available here.
Se7en over at IPConfig.com. sent us an article on replacing a standard LED on a DVD-ROM drive, with a nice bright blue one. Check it out here.
Digit-Life have a guide to overclocking an ATI RAdeon 8500 and an NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500, (Radeon @ 380/680 and GeForce 3 @ 310/630) and then benching them in RTCW. You can have a gander at that, here, while I try and comfort my poor old GeForce 1 DDR.
Mandrake Gamer's Edition. Stop laughing! It's true! :) have a look over on Hardcoreware.net. Thanks XiZor :)
Also from XiZor, comes this story about China's soon-to-happen launch of their Shenzhou-3 spacecraft.
Beachside Tech have an article on the Panasonic SL-GC10, a combination of Nintendo's GameCube and a DVD/DVD-R. Pity it's only in Japan at the moment :(
All the details regarding the "Adelaide BBQ" have been hammered out, according to Hydra, so go here and put your name down to attend. Judging by all the previous OCAU gatherings, this one is sure to be a raging success also.
If you want to break into the world of computer graphics, and you're after Maya Personal Learning Edition, but don't wanna pay for it, you can get it FREE here. (Written in the US though). Thanks Cino.
Well, that's it from me for another night. Have fun :)
Congrats to us.. again. :)
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Sunday, 13-January-2002 02:36:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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It is with pleasure the team at Hitwise announce www.overclockers.com.au recently ranked No. 2 in the Computers and Internet - Hardware category. We consider this a very strong achievement.
Your site's ranking is based on the number of user visits it has received, which is measured in that category for the quarterly period 1 July - 30 September 2001.
Strange, took them a little while to get this result out. Anyway, in the previous two quarters we were #1 so we have dropped a position - bear in mind that our forums were down for much of that quarter, though. We have been ranked consistently in the top 10 for a full year now.
Apparently www.canon.com.au were #1 so congrats to them. I don't really see them as a competitor and they have a more substantial marketing budget than we do.. :) So I still think this is a great result and secures our position as Australia's #1 PC Hardware Community. Well done and thanks, guys!
Update: A few people pointed out that Canon think they were #2 too.. weeeird. :) I emailed HitWise for clarification.
Early Sunday Morning
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Sunday, 13-January-2002 02:02:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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We now have a Price Check forum, to keep that kind of message out of the normal For Sale forum.
Gamespot have a couple of newish articles up.. firstly a KT266A vs nForce DDR SocketA motherboard shootout and a comparison between the new AthlonXP and the new P4.
A judge has said Microsoft's offer to give software to schools as a settlement in its long-running antitrust case is not appropriate. The settlement ``raises legitimate questions since it appears to provide a means for flooding a part of the kindergarten through high school market, in which Microsoft has not traditionally been the strongest player (particularly in relation to Apple), with Microsoft software and refurbished software,'' the judge said in written opinion.
Some ADSL news on Whirlpool, thanks Krim - firstly that XIS.com.au's planned unlimited ADSL has been canned in favour of a limited service.. but the good news is that Optus are planning an ADSL product soon - some competition in that market will be good.
Dan has compared 4 multi-channel speaker systems.
Xisor spotted an interesting tidbit on NewScientist: Philips says copy-protected CDs have no future ... "It's not going to work, because any hacker can still make copies. It's only going to effect legitimate consumers and we know there have already been considerable complaints."
Kremlin noticed that the website for the SoloTrek personal flying vehicle has been updated with more info, pics and a video.
A few people sent in this make your own ricemobile flash thingo.
BurnOutPC have emerged from the primordial swamp clutching their latest review, of Asus's A7V motherboard.. which was the hottest SocketA board around.. a year or more ago. Weird.
Scott noticed AllUSB.com, a news and info site full of USB gadgetry.
xbit-labs compared three ATA-133 controllers, the latest high-speed IDE standard.
Mr Bit says there are new version 1.4 Kyro drivers now available for download.
Reviews:
iCute Aluminium PSU on PCStats.
Zalman 5100 socket cooler on SubZeroTech.
Thrustmaster NASCAR Pro FF racing wheel on GamersDepot.
Dual Temp Monitor Rack thermal monitor on PsychoHardware.
Channel Well Tech 420W PSU on MikhailTech.
PalitDaytona GF2 Ti Akasa Icicle socket cooler on OCrCafe.
Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers on OCAddiction.
Thought I might give it another go, just so I can get used to this a little quicker, so here we go again.
TheTron sends word of an ADSL price comparison guide. Handy for me, as I get ADSL this month sometime. (I hope)
Truly bizarre, is the only way to describe this story. About a motorbike, a guy, a $1000 exhaust pipe, another guy, the cops, guns, and running. Lots and lots of running. Thanks jimx.
Pc-Critic.com have just brought out a new tutorial for you to try out on your machines. This time its painting your drives. Check it out right here.
Here's a review on Asus A7V266E DDR Motherboard as well as some information on the Iwill MPX2 Dual Athlon Motherboard on OCNZ.
Now it's naptime :)
Reviews:
Microsoft Intellimouse 3.0 on MGON (Media and Games ONline).
Hercules XPS510 5.1 Speaker System 3.0 on Tweaktown.
2Ghz P4 over at Hexus.
DDR shootout from TemplinTech.
MONA digital studio interface from ExHardware.
DELL INSPIRON 8100 Laptop over at GotApex?
Apple iPod on Anandtech.
A Thermaltake Crystal Orb Review on Hardware Extreme.
MSI 845 Ultra ARU Motherboard on PC Hardware.
A CaseAce GearGrip PRO Review over at 8Balls Hardware.
Psycho Hardware have a Dual Mount Temp Monitor that they take a look at.
SLCentral.com have a review on the ATI Radeon 7500.
FrostyTech give us a review on a BitsPower NP60D Skive Heatsink.
Overclocked Cafe send us a review of a Compaq iPAQ 3765 Color Pocket PC.
Hitachi CML153XW 15-inch TFT Display on PC Stats.
120gxp IBM hard-drives on TargetPC.
One BIG news post (Gotta make a good impression)
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Saturday, 12-January-2002 03:58:07 (GMT +10) - by LoneWolf
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Ok. First up, I am new at this, so be gentle with me. Otherwise I'll skitch Sciby onto you, and you don't want that, believe me! I'll try and get it right, I promise.
Zed sends word that Telstra have their new 2-way satellite pricing up and waiting for people to look at. Bit expensive, but.......
Darksword from Icrontic tells us they have a thread in their forums about the possible "infinite loop crash" involved with Windows XP and nVidia graphics cards. If you have had that particular drama, and would like a fix for it (and let's face it, fixes are good) then head on over to their forums and read all about it.
Ben over at ocprices.com has a competition running in which you can win lots of cool gear, including a Soyo Dragon motherboard plus Athlon XP 1600. It's a "register and post in our forums" type deal, but the prizes should surely make it worth it. Oooh, a link? Here it is... (and there goes my head start) :(
...But no matter, I get a headstart on THIS competition being run by the guys at OC-Melbourne. Feeling lucky? You could win a Dynatron DC1206BM-O625 all copper heatsink. Go on, you know you want to. :)
Ever pat your back pocket and think "I wish I had a PC in there". No? Neither have I. But if you think "pocket patting, PC looking" (try and say that 5 times) might be somewhere in your future, this might be just what you need. Thanks Murray.
Nifty (Jebus, I AM getting old) looking case over at my-rig.com. Cheers Sam.
Got stacks of DVD's that you want to back-up, so that you don't wear them out, or mistakenly leave them out of their cases and rest your beer on them? PcPowerZone have a pretty extensive guide. Head on over and check it out.
Apparently, a 1992 law allows music listeners to make some personal digital copies of their music. In return, recording companies collect royalties on the blank media used for this purpose. For every digital audio tape (DAT), blank audio CD, or minidisc sold, a few cents go to record labels. Full story here.
Once again at OC-Melbourne, is a "How To" guide to changing the MAC address of your network card. Should be easy, after reading that.
Want to win a window kit, a case light AND an window applique of your choice? Of course you do, we ALL do :)The Overclockers Cafe, is having just such a contest. And it's being drawn tomorrow! Ooops, today even!
One of our forum members, Scott Fiske, let's us know about Basilisk II. Mean anything to you? As much as I would like to keep you all in suspense, I can't, coz Agg will neuter me or something equally as nasty. :) Basilisk II is an Open Source 68k Macintosh emulator. That is, it enables you to run 68k MacOS software on your computer, even if you are using a different operating system. However, you still need a copy of MacOS and a Macintosh ROM image to use Basilisk II. There. Now you can check it out for yourself.
RobsGT4 also informs us our seti@home team, have not only hit 200 years of cpu time, they have cracked 150 000 WU's ............ Woohoo! Awesome effort Guys! :)
Wolfmoon from #overclockers IRC sends us this neat little flash animation. Maybe the rice loving members of Overclockers best not click eh? :)
Chris and a couple of others (I know, I know ... I accidentally junked a couple of e-mails) sent in word that the whole "Bill Gates is dead" thingy, is actually an upcoming movie. The original site is here. This latest info mentions the "movie" is possibly about about some african american guys getting blamed for the murder and shot by the police. It then turns out that it might not've been those guys, but in fact the police who where behind it. Or something like that. If it does turn out to become a movie, and Bill Gates is assassinated from a grassy knoll, I am gonna vomit. :)
Our very own Bravo, has an active thread in the forums, about a RIO200 - 800 series mod. All you extreme cooling guys should probably check it out.
Okay. Thats about it for this news post. I think I did rather well, first timer and all :)
New Newsposter!
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Saturday, 12-January-2002 02:03:11 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Welcome to our newest newsmonkey, LoneWolf. He's been involved with OCAU for a long long time and is helping out at the moment.. lots of news going on out there, Alchemy moving house and me fiddling with servers. Be gentle with him. :)
The database transition went seamlessly and the Forums are back up - get into it! :)
Update: I notice some people are still hitting the old server for some reason. If you are having a problem getting into the forums, for the moment, try using thor.overclockers.com.au/forums instead.
Forums Database Move
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Friday, 11-January-2002 17:26:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Taking the forums down for up to an hour to move the database from the AusGamers server to Thor, our own server. Shouldn't take too long..
Friday Afternoon
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Friday, 11-January-2002 13:25:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Wolfy notes By the time you read this our SETI@Home team should have completed 200 years of CPU time.
Sabretooth noticed this site run by someone who (and it links to other sites that seem to feel the same way) .. feels that bill gates is dead. They even have info on how he was assassinated etc. But, errm.. he isn't.
TheInquirer have info on a new Dual Athlon board with RAID from Epox.. including a little bag. Weird, thanks DaN.
HardOCP have their Hardest of 2001 awards posted. Another year gone by and certainly tons of crap was dumped on unsuspecting buyers...but what about the good guys?
Morjo noticed that a 12,000 kilometre fibre optic cable between Australia and Japan has commenced commercial operations with the first transmissions of customer data. The link is capable of transmitting at 640 gigabit/sec (80 gigabytes per second), with the potential of going even faster as fibre technology is improved. In comparison, the Southern Cross Cable is currently operating at 120 gigabit/sec (but given hardware upgrades, could go as high as 480 gigabit/sec). More info here on Whirlpool.
Digit-Life posted Part II of their December 2001 Hardware Digest.
Tweaktown compared P4X266 motherboards, P4 DDR boards from Shuttle and ACorp.
A1-Electronics reviewed the Senfu II watercooling kit. We reviewed the original Senfu gear over a year ago here.
Tony noticed that Paramount are releasing Star Trek: TNG on DVD.. all 7 years of it. Hmm, expect to see my VHS tapes on eBay soon, then. :)
Mnemonix has some folloup info related to the huge subwoofer at MIT linked a couple of days ago: Clarion make a retail version that is larger than the subwoofer in your news. The clarion 32inch subwoofer is around the $3500.au mark and can be purchased online from www.ryda.com.au. The world record of worlds largest subwoofer also belongs to australia. www.totalrecoil.com.au rebuild subwoofer components and design custom subwoofers, mainly for automotive SPL competitors. Their custom subwoofer has an aluminium reinforced kevlar cone, and draws 20,000 watts rms of power to be driven. Sizes are not listed on their site (although i have the information and pics at home), size is around 1.3 metres across the cone. Then of course, there's this one which claims to be the biggest in the world, on a totally different design, from Cameron.
Scott notes that ATI and Hercules may be a winning combination.. and that ATI have big plans for China.
Tech-Report compare the Duron vs Celeron.. value chips at 1.2GHz.
SLCentral have an article about Computer Vision.. helping computers see.
Apparently the Atlantis LAN on the 19th-20th of Jan in Melbourne has been cancelled, but Overkill are stepping up to the plate and offering a $5 discount to people who were registered at Atlantis, to come to their lan on the same weekend.
Pax discovered that for two weeks there are free movies in Homebush at Olympic Park in Sydney.
Moldy managed to dig up even more overclocked Macs.
Reviews:
RheoBus fan controller on PC-Critic, our review here.
Aquacool Watercooling Kit on G3D.
SkyHawk ATX-4378C-IV Case on TweakTown.
Lian-Li PC65 USB Case on TweakTown.
Forums down..
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Thursday, 10-January-2002 23:33:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Seems AusGamers are having some trouble with the database server. Hopefully it'll be back soon.
Thursday Afternoon
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Thursday, 10-January-2002 13:37:40 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Interesting thing on HardOCP, they reviewed a Gaming Box from Corsair. That's right, Corsair, who I thought only made memory.. apparently not. :) This is a new venture for the respected memory producer - there's some discussion here in our forums. I'm a little dissapointed to see them using a SkyHawks case - I didn't think much of the one I reviewed a few months ago and I've seen that feeling reflected in other reviews of them. Hopefully the other components are better quality - we can be pretty sure the RAM is.
Digit-Life have posted a Digital Photography Digest for 2001.
Falkor notes that Microsoft seem to have been sprung being naughty again.
Iroquois says that virii can now exist in .swf files.
Sabretooth spotted this bizarre PC on an ISA card upgrade from PowerLeap.
Raven found a message to aliens that is being tested for ease-of-decoding by humans.
Reviews:
Tin Coated Copper Ramsinks on MikhailTech.
Logitech Z-560 4.1 speakers on ThinkTechie.
Thermalright SK6 socket cooler on HWExtreme.
AGP Airlift video card cooler on BurnOutPC.
nVidia nForce system chipset (and part 2) on xbitlabs, our nForce board review here.
Sound Blaster Audigy sound card on Bit-Tech.
Plextor 24x10x40x CDRW drive on CSM.
Altec Lansing ACS54 4.1 speakers on HardAvenue.
Elsa Gladiac 921DVI GeForce3 Ti500 video card on 3DVelocity.
PowerLeap Tualatin Adapter for older mobos on AwareMag.
TightVNC remote-control software on RatedPC.
Interesting New Sound Card.. or, err, Box.
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Thursday, 10-January-2002 11:50:48 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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SYDNEY - January 8, 2002 - Creative Technology Ltd. (NASDAQ: CREAF), the worldwide leader in digital entertainment products for users of the personal computer and the Internet, today unveiled the Sound Blaster® ExtigyT, the first external Sound Blaster in Creative's history. The Sound Blaster Extigy delivers stunning 24-bit 96kHz multi-channel audio playback and 100dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It enhances audio for digital music, DVD movies and games from an easy-to-use, compact external device that connects to the notebook or desktop via the Universal Serial Bus (USB) port. The Sound Blaster Extigy will be available in Australia and New Zealand in mid February 2002 at an estimated retail price of AU$399 inc GST.
Click to enlarge (58k)
The Sound Blaster Extigy also functions apart from the PC as a stand-alone Dolby Digital® decoder for a set-top DVD player. It also serves in a stand-alone capacity when used with a video gaming console or with audio devices such as a digital audio player, CD player, mini-disc player or cassette player to enhance both audio fidelity and support 5.1 multi-channel audio playback. These devices can all easily connect to the front panel of the Sound Blaster Extigy, which also has connections for a microphone or headphones. A wireless remote control is included for additional ease of use.
Full press-release here, product info here.
Wednesday Afternoon
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Wednesday, 9-January-2002 12:42:07 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Interesting announcement from nVidia today, their nForce 415D chipset, spotted by Reaper. This is much the same as the 420D chipset used in the MSI K7N420 Pro I reviewed here a little while ago, with the same TwinBank memory architecture etc, but it doesn't have the integrated GF2 graphics. An overclocking-friendly motherboard using this new chipset and a RAID controller would be something to keep an eye out for.. more info here on AMDMB.
PCStats checked out some Titanium video cards from MSI.
With all the Mac excitement yesterday, Scott thought this page might be of interest, detailing how to overclock just about every Mac ever made, apparently. Also, wired reckon the image editing tools with the new iMac are a good thing.
There's a new version of Motherboard Monitor, just the thing for keeping an eye on temperatures, voltages and fan speeds.. thanks Peter.
VyW have a cool little article about reading the internal thermal diode present in palomino-cored AthlonXP and Duron CPU's. They construct a little gadget that plugs into the SMBUS port and reports the temperature to programs like MBM linked above.
Steven says there's a new program called PowerTools, which is a full set of tools to keep your computer and your LAN up and running.. cool.
There's a group buy of sorts happening in the forums, people are requesting expressions of interest in Shuttle's SV24 mini-PC. If you want one, let it be known in that thread.
Tony spotted this fast boot/resume tweak for WindowsXP.
Funny thing from Spectral.. make your own Oreilly Book cover.
Digit-Life have a comparison of the Intel Celeron 1.3/1.2 GHz and AMD Duron 1.2/1.1 GHz CPU's.
Hawk found some GeForce4 logos out there..
Reviews:
Intel (Northwood) P4 CPU on TargetPC.
AMD AthlonXP 2000+ CPU on 3DVelocity.
2CoolPC Plus and Turbo system coolers on OCdCafe, our reviews here and here.
Rotokiller mouse on SLCentral.
Rotokiller mouse on 3DSpotlight.
Sony CRX-175E/A1 24x10x40x CDRW drive on CoolHardWarez.
CCRadio Plus err.. little radio thing on InsideHardware.
Chauh-Choung DTA-12 copper heatsink on FrostyTech.
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 9-January-2002 11:23:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Well, from the logs it looks like the vast majority of people are seeing the site and the forums on the new server now. I think that's the smoothest DNS transfer I've ever seen. :) Still working on getting the PCDB back up. In the meantime, some guy in Nigeria keeps sending me email saying he wants to give me a billion gazillion dollars - how cool is that.
There's another issue of ZZZ Online posted.. aerogel, avalanche jackets and the CSIRO looking for landmines, among other things.
JATHardware have collected (or so they claim) all the overclocking and cooling reviews from 2001 into one big links page. That should keep you busy for a while..
Spectral spotted some Star Wars fans taking the whole queueing-for-tickets thing a little far.. maybe they didn't see Episode One. :)
TomsHardware had a watercooling comparison a few days ago that we seem to have missed.
SLCentral have an editorial about video game consoles.
Mike spotted this gargantuan subwoofer at MIT. It's called Mjolnir which, although it doesn't mention it on the site, is actually the Norse name for Thor's hammer.
A site called WhiningDog has some benchmark numbers for the new Prestonia P4 Xeons with hyperthreading.. that's the thing that makes them look like an SMP system even though there's only one CPU - or in this case, a quad system with only 2 CPU's.
Tony notes that surround-sound standard THX is now in cars.. just the thing for masking the distracting sounds of other car horns and screaming pedestrians.
There's a lan on the 2nd of February called Sutherlan, which I have to assume is in Sutherland, south of Sydney.
Reviews:
ATC 201 aluminium midtower case on CaseJunkiez.
Arctic Silver III thermal paste on MikhailTech.
MSI K7T266Pro2-RU KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on ThinkTechie.
Volcano 7 socket cooler on AtlantaOC.
Wireless Intellimouse Explorer mouse on OCAddiction, our review here.
Soyo K7V-Dragon Plus KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on Tech-Report.
VideoLogic SonicFury soundcard on RatedPC.
AVC 112AM1 Copper Skive heatsink on FrostyTech.
Tuesday Midday
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Tuesday, 8-January-2002 12:43:20 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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A few big news items today. First up is the simultaneous launch of Intel's new Northwood-cored Pentium4 (at 2.0A and 2.2GHz) and AMD's AthlonXP 2000+ (1.67GHz). The 2GHz Northwood chip is called 2.0A because the older Willamette core was also available at 2.0GHz. Anyway, these are of course the flagship high-performance processors from the two giants of the industry. Most sites seem to be reviewing them side by side so it's hard to call one a P4 review and another an AthlonXP review.. so, reviews and comparisons on xbit-labs, GamePC, Tech-Report, VR-Zone, HotHardware, GamersDepot, AnandTech, PC-Stats, HardOCP, Hexus, SLCentral, AMDMB, TomsHardware and.. I think that's it. For now. :)
In case that's not enough reviews of those CPU's for you, JC's News is maintainin an index of reviews of the New P4 2.0A and 2.2 and New AthlonXP 2000+.
Also big news is the announcement of Apple's new iMacs. There was a story on Time Canada that was apparently a little premature and got yanked, might be back by now. More info on Wired. Thanks to a heap of people for sending those in.
Reviews:
Leadtek 7350KDA SiS735-based SocketA DDR motherboard on TechWatch.
Abit KR7A-RAID KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on Hexus, our review here.
ProLink GeForce2 Ti video card on Hexus.
Abit BD7-RAID DDR P4 motherboard on TweakTown.
Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers on CSM.
1604 Fulltower case on IPKonfig.
Soltek 75DRV2 KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on OCNZ.
Domain moving to new server
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Tuesday, 8-January-2002 01:01:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Ok, we're finally ready to move over to the new server. This should be fairly transparent from your perspective. DNS changes are never quite as smooth as you hope, though. :) I will keep updating the news etc on both servers for the next few days while the DNS change makes its way around the planet..
Thor, the new server, is a dual P3-1GHz machine with 1.5GB of RAM and a 10k-rpm U160 SCSI HDD. It's a very quick box and should last us for a long time. It's very kindly being hosted for us by AusGamers who have a blisteringly fast connection to the Net courtesy of COMindico. More details about the box after the change-over completes.
See you on the new server!
Monday Morning
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Monday, 7-January-2002 11:13:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Hurling down rain here in Sydney at the moment. Hope that's helping the fire-fighters..
Xoverclocker discovered that life on the edge can bite you sometimes.
Digit-Life have compared Willamette and Northwood P4's at 2.0 and 2.2GHz. They also have their Monthly Hardware Digest posted.
Icrontic compared some chipset coolers from Zalman and Titan.
leperMessiah found what seems to be an engineering sample of one of the first P3's. Czechmate managed to dig up some info on it in the forums.
From Gnuthad: After speaking to Jaycar today, I found out that they will shortly have a new option for UV lighting of case internals. UV neons are available, as are UV CFL (Compact Flouro Lamp), but the CFL are the standard form factor and require 240V inside the case to operate. In approx 4-6 weeks Jaycar stores will have brand new straight UV CFL with optional inverters (extra) in two sizes, 100mm and 300mm. The sales guys said the tubes should only be very thin, about the thickness of a standard CFL tube only straight. pricing will be about $14.95 for the 100mm tube and $19.95 for the 300mm tube with suitable inverters around $12.95 ea. Definitely something to look out for in the coming weeks, especially with Jaycar already selling glow-tube neon UV sensitive tubing.
A linux virus seems to have a new variant, thanks Andrew.
Eddie discovered an interesting thread on Whirlpool where a local council is asking the broadband community if they should be requiring building developers to lay cable conduit, to allow easier access for cabling companies (for broadband, cable tv etc).
Reviews:
Gigabyte GA-7VTXE KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on TweakTown.
Zalman CNPS6000 socket cooler on OCPrices.
Lian-Li PC35 aluminium case on GideonTech.
NSW Classification Bill
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Monday, 7-January-2002 11:00:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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John noticed that the NSW Parliament is conducting an inquiry into the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Enforcement Amendment Bill 2001. They are seeking to find out: Whether the provisions of the Bill meet its stated policy objectives, Whether the provisions contained in Schedule 2 of the Bill provide an effective and enforceable regime for the regulation of on-line material, The social and legal impact of the on-line regulation of offensive material, and its implications for fair reporting of news and current affairs and legitimate internet use, and Any related matter.
The really interesting thing is that they are accepting submissions from the public. So, if you have something to say about the effectiveness and usefulness of this Act, you can send them a letter. Please don't send them mail saying "j00 sux0r!!" or similar, but if you can present your argument respectfully, now's the time to be heard.
Info and submission guidelines here.
Wired have a thing on cheap webhosting, if you're looking for somewhere to put your site. Most of those "unlimited bandwidth" deals you see are fine until you mention 50GB/week, then they run away screaming, so I've discovered. Speaking of which, there's some rumblings in the hardware website scene today - Ezyduzit noticed this thread on Storagereview which, among other things, reveals that StorageReview will be closing its doors soon. That is a real shame, many little sites have come and gone but StorageReview focussed on one aspect of PC hardware and did it really well. I recommended countless people to go there when thinking about buying hard drives and used it as a reference myself. Another one bites the dust. Anyway, Joe from ProCooling has put up a rant about the state of the hardware website scene at the moment.
Digit-Life have a hefty roundup of KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboards.. 9 boards in total.
John sent word that consumer complaints about e-commerce will be closely monitored this holiday season by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The ACCC is targeting non-disclosure of terms and conditions, failure to provide refunds, and non-delivery of goods.
AcesHardware have a roundup of OpenGL accelerators.. high-end graphics cards.
Sniper noticed another GeForce4 rumour.. apparently Feb 5 will be the announcement date.
Another price-comparison site has popped up.. this one is PriceWatch.com.au and was spotted by thetron. Don't forget of course the original TechWatch.com.au which has been comparing prices for years now, and the (relative) newcomer Razor Prices. There was an Overclockers.OzPriceCheck.com site but that doesn't seem to have been updated in months now, not sure what the story is there.
There's a LAN on in Sydney this weekend.. this is a combined OCAU/ZGeek/CLGA LAN so you should be able to put a few faces to names there.
292 people in the forums tonight, not too shabby. :)
Reviews:
AMD AthlonXP 1900+ socketA CPU on 3DVelocity.
IceHole fan adapter on JSIHW.
Black IceMat mousing surface on MikhailTech.
Hercules XPS510 5.1 speakers on TweakTown.
Romtech Trios hard drive selector on DSLWebserver.
The Overclockers Australia Folding@Home team has strongly maintained it's place at the top of the table for at least the past month or so, and I congratulate every team member on their fine efforts. However, our place is far from guaranteed with teams like [H]ard|OCP dwarfing our daily production levels meaning that soon we'll be pushed back unless we take the fight to them.
If you flick over to the StatsMan Folding@Home 2.0 Stats page you'll notice that their Estimated Future Total's graph shows the [H]ard|OCP team passing us before the end of February! We can't have that!
To all the people that are not already Folding for the OCAU team, I urge you to head over to the Team OCAU forum, read the HOW TO guide and start folding immediately! Don't limit yourself to just your computer either, I'm sure your parents wont mind, and nor your will your friends or neighbours :) Just make sure you have permission first.
If you need a bit more convincing than that, you can head over and read their FAQ or the Project Goals and Scientific Background to find out what protein folding really is. Be warned though, lots of scientific jargon to be found. Put simply, Folding is a good scientific cause that through it's results may directly lead to advances in the treatment of genetic diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's disease or even Mad Cow disease and it is a worthy recipient of your spare CPU cycles. It runs purely in the background of your computer and you won't notice any performance degradation at all (Hell, we even run it on Loki, the backup OCAU server). Data wise, if you run it day-in day-out on your beastie 1.2Ghz Athlon you can expect to do around 1Mb per day of Folding traffic. I run it as a service and I don't even notice it, it is no hassle at all. You should at least give it a try, even if you don't keep it up full time afterwards.
And to all those people already running Folding@Home, keep on slogging away! Add a few more computers to your cluster and see if you can pass the person in front of you. I'm position 62 and the only system that runs Folding for my name is a Duron 750! You can do better than that. Especially to all those people down the bottom of the table who haven’t submitted more than 5 point-scores worth of data get your act together and keep it moving! (yes, all 107 of you, including Agg's Mum!)
We need you Australia ;)
Saturday Night
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Saturday, 5-January-2002 23:16:14 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Interesting article on Wired about how Robert Elz, who has voluntarily maintained the .au domain for over 15 years, may have his responsibilities taken from him by force soon. Also, a US judge says keylogging is ok and an article on nano-fans.
This site has a video of remote control car on-board footage.. looks like it might be pretty cool, but at over 7MB and being on dialup I'll just look at the screenshots.. in a similar vein, Dan has reviewed some RC cars.
John pointed out TechnologyReview, a really interesting site packed with info about emerging technologies like nanotechnology and cloning etc. Some articles are for (paid) subscribers only, but there's plenty of free stuff too.
AOL Australia are running a competition where you can win a home theatre by giving them your personal details.. might be a quick way to increase your coaster collection, anyway, thanks Michael.
Compu-Geeks are giving away some arctic alumina thermal paste, too.
TheRegister have their take on the recent WinXP security problem and say, among other things, that the GRC.com utility we linked to yesterday disables the wrong thing, thanks Sabrtooth.
ProCooling have a pretty serious watercooling block roundup posted.
TomsHardware have a P4 vs AthlonXP comparison, thanks Stuey.. they also have an article on making your PC 5 times faster.. hmm, like to see them try that on this PC. :)
Boky sent in a page about Amiga Overclocking that I think we linked to a coupla years ago.. interesting tho.
Bit-Tech have a nice casemod project posted.
Mark says that FuelWatch.com.au is another petrol-price site that will even send an email each morning listing the top 10 prices in your area.
Pappasmurf noticed this lie-detecting camera article.
ComputerSource have a GF3 Ti200-based videocard shootout, while Hardware-Test reviewed the reference board.
Icrontic have an article about a government-run internet.
Digit-Life have posted their Technology Awards 2001..
EXHardware have a guide to setting up a home studio.
Grant noticed that Abit have announced their nForce motherboard.. wonder when the reviews of it will start coming out.
Reviews:
Glow Wire on My-Rig.
DFI NB70-SC I845D-based P4 DDR motherboard on PCHardware.
Lian-Li PC70 aluminium fulltower case on HWExtreme.
Iwill XP333 ALi-based SocketA DDR board on AMDMB.
GlobalWin SAK38 socket cooler on ThinkTechie.
Crystal Orb chipset cooler on MikhailTech.
GlobalWin SAK38 and CAK38 socket coolers on 8Balls.
PowerMagic Radeon VE and KyroII video cards on Bench-House.
NASA has some pictures of the NSW fires here and here, thanks to the several people who sent those in.
AnandTech have a P4X266 Roundup.. 5 DDR P4 motherboards based on this chipset from VIA.
Only a day after (I think) the first review of Asus's new nForce board.. and there's already a voltage hack for it.. translated from German by google, thanks Spikey.
From Seahawk: A handy little utility to take care of the WinXP security problem can be found at Steve Gibson's security site. It is called UnPlug n' Pray and is easy to use. One thing that concerned me was that this utility still identified that a problem existed on my computer after I had applied the patch from Microsoft.
TweakTown have posted part 2 of their WinXP Tweaking Guide.
Reviews:
Abit KR7A-RAID KT266A-based SocketA DDR motherboard on TheTechZone, our review here.
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card on SLCentral.
Gainward Golden Sample Titanium video cards on HotHardware.. our review of the original GF3 GS card here.
Teac CD-W524E CDRW on TweakMax.
Volcano 7 socket cooler on M:6.
Asus Tusl2-C socket370 motherboard on BurnoutPC.
Enermax EG365P-VE(FMA) 350W PSU on CoolerHut.
Friday Evening
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Friday, 4-January-2002 18:54:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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The FBI have decided that, with the correct patch applied, the recent WindowsXP security problem is not so bad after all, thanks Wolfy. Apparently there's another hole in AOL Instant Messenger, though.. thanks thetron.
A few people sent in this link to benchmarks of a 2.2GHz (Northwood) P4 chip at 3GHZ.
MnM is organising a BIOS Saviour group buy in the Forums.
Fellow Aussie hardware site AcidHardware have closed their doors for good, while Adrian's Rojak Pot has moved to a temporary location - so if you're looking for their recent RAID optimization guide, it's here.
Apparently US companies can now export faster computers to nations they were previously not allowed to, thanks thetron.
Alchemy spotted a fun little buggy.. with a WRX Turbo motor in it.
Frosty found this coffee-powered battery.
Funny case-modding cartoon on Angst-Tech, thanks Lou.
Reviews:
Bluetake USB Dongle bluetooth wireless adapter on OCrCafe.
Crystal Orb socket cooler on PC-Extreme.
80mm Smart Fan on OCClub.
Thermaltake Volcano 7 socket cooler on VyW.
Neon String on Unique-Hardware.
Thursday Night
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Thursday, 3-January-2002 23:24:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Best wishes to Stewart "VooDoo" Paternoster, who's been involved behind the scenes with OCAU for a fair while now. He's in hospital at the moment, get well soon!
Well, now that the silly season has passed, we can get back into the regular swing of things with news again. I've spent pretty much all day wading through emails, but here's a few reviews to get you going..
Reviews:
Asus A7N266-E nForce-based SocketA DDR motherboard on HardOCP.
Inno3d Tornado GF3 Ti200 video card on OcOnline.
Gainward GF3 Ti500 video card (review is a christmas carol.. riiight) on Bit-Tech.
Abit BD7-RAID i845D-based P4 DDR motherboard on Tech-Report.
Noblesse Blue Mirror case on MikhailTech.
Swiftech MCX462 socket cooler on OCPlus.
Hercules Fortissimo II sound card on GideonTech.
CoolerMaster HHC-001 socket cooler on Icrontic.
Zoltrix Atom mouse on ChicksHardware.
Tin-plated ramsinks and fan bracket on ExtremeOC.
Remote Serial Display on TheTechZone. Similar (but parallel) idea project here.
Axis Bluetooth wireless networking on DesignTechnica.
Shuttle AV40/R P4X266-based P4 DDR motherboard on OCdCafe.
Titan TTC-CUV1AB copper chipset cooler on OCrCafe.
PixelView GF3 Ti500 video card on OCNZ.
MSI K7T266Pro2-RU KT266A-based socketA DDR motherboard on HardwareMania.
Logitech Z-560 4.1 speakers on HardCoreWare.
This from exearch: Just a picture I thought I'd send in that could help people decide whether to go for the mobo holes or the socket lugs when fitting a heatsink/waterblock. I (about a year ago now) got a water cooling kit with a socket block and screw down hold down device (bad mistake).
Anyway while screwing it down it just started to apply pressure nicely to the block and snap (right hand side):
Click to enlarge..
Obviously, I've moved to using the motherboard holes now.. :)
Tuesday Night
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Tuesday, 1-January-2002 21:50:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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Happy New Year! :)
Interesting article over at StorageReview - they wonder if using a larger 10k-rpm drive partitioned so you only use the outer tracks (which pass under the heads faster than the inner tracks) can give you similar, or better, data transfer than a 15k-rpm drive - and experiment to find out. An interesting side note is that the 15k drive was only 3C warmer than the 10k drive - I imagine both would require active cooling, though, all the 10k drives I've seen certainly do.
Don't forget we now have an NVIDIA Hardware Forum, for discussion of that company's motherboard and video chipsets. A few interesting threads in there already.
A couple of people pointed out that the 4-way Xeon thing on Akiba a few days isn't actually a 4-way system at all. As mr bill puts it: that is not a 4x xeon box, it is a 2x foster box.... foster has 2 procs on one die. Simon said: there's actually only 2 P4s, but it seems to be running some sort of hyperthreading which makes Windows 2000 recognise 4 processors. Need to brush up on my Japanese, obviously. :)
ReaX found this page listing fuel prices from 600 locations around Australia.. could be handy.
We actually linked to this article when it first came out, but that was a year ago and it's a good read, Brett sent it in again - ElectronicsCooling magazine's 10 things engineers do to mess their cooling.
BeachSideTech have an article about case airflow.
Digit-Life have their monthly 3D Digest posted.
Australian broadband internet is attracting international derision again, with Slashdot posting an article about O@H apparently blocking Napster ports on their cable service.
Dan's built himself a new box and managed to find a few million words to write about why he chose what he did.. funny article, but you'll need the comfy chair.
Wolfy noticed that generic Australian domain names (like motel.com.au), previously unavailable, are now up for auction.
This week's ZZZ Online has been posted with the usual dose of the bizarre.
Fair bit of stuff being given away at the moment.. win an XBox on IPKonfig, one of several XBoxes on Hypothermia and a few prizes on OCrCafe.
Two new sites on the hardware scene today.. CrazyOC and BearsCave.
Reviews:
CPU Radiator Zen socket cooler on OCPrices, our review here.
HiCool JACUL048 socket cooler on CoolerHut.
Power Magic Radeon 8500 video card on PlanetSavage.
Logitech Cordless keyboard and mouse (video review) on 3DGameMan.
Shuttle SV24 mini PC on HotHardware.
AthlonXP Unlocking Kit on AtlantaOC.
Vantec CCK-6035D on GameHard.
Epox 8KHA+ DDR SocketA motherboard on Bit-Tech.
Swiftech MCXC-370 socket cooler on OCrCafe.
Radeon 8500 technical chipset review on Tech-Report.
ThermalTake Active Memory Cooling Kit on MikhailTech.
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