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August 2005
Wednesday Morning Reviews #2 (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 31-August-2005  10:38:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Audio / Visual:
JBL On Stage iPod Music Player on TheTechLounge.
Cooler Master Musketeer 3 sound controller on OCIA.
Hitachi DZ-GX20A DVD Camcorder on DesignTechnica.
Cooler Master Musketeer 3 sound controller on MadShrimps.
Plextor ConvertX PX-TV100U USB Personal Video Converter on BonaFideReviews.
Sony CyberShot DSC-M1 digicam on ByteSector.

Cooling:
Thermaltake Aquabay M1 watercooling reservoir on TechPowerUp.
Koolance Aquain ICM-505 Liquid Cooling System on ExtremeMHz.
Thermaltake Golden Orb II on Pro-Clockers.
Akasa EVO 120 CPU cooler on NVNews.
Zalman Reserator 1 Plus fanless watercooling on XYZComputing.
Swiftech H20-80-S/120-F Watercooling on Motherboards.org.
Titan L-Type Vanessa CPU cooler on SDMLan.

Case & Power Supplies:
RAIDMAX LP-6100E 500W PSU on PCStats.
Aerocool Masstige Case on ATrueReview.
OCZ 420W ModStream on MarnsCDA.
Thermaltake Tai Chi Watercooled Case on PCTuner.
AeroCool Masstige Case on Hi-TechReviews.
Silverstone LC14M HTPC Case on DreamWareComputers.

Systems, Mini & Portable:
Shuttle XPC SD31P Barebone Dual Core Ready SFF PC on FutureLooks.
Sony VAIO VGN-S4M laptop on TrustedReviews.
MSI S270 laptop on TCMagazine.
Alienware Area 51 5300 SFF on DriverHeaven.
Asus Z80K A64 laptop on AMDZone.
Dell Precision 380 Workstation and 2405FPW Monitor on CGSociety.
Alienware Area-51M 7700 Notebook on OCPrices.



OCAU Quicklinks (11 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 31-August-2005  03:48:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Remember that we have OCAU Quicklinks now, which are a handy way to quickly navigate around the site. They're especially useful if you're on a slow link for browsing, or a PC without your bookmarks, but I find myself using them all the time anyway.

The full listing is in this wiki page but here's some examples:

ocau.com - OCAU
ocau.com/forums - Forums
ocau.com/usercp - User Control Panel in Forums
ocau.com/pm - Private Messages
ocau.com/fs - For Sale forum
ocau.com/folding - Folding@Home team page
ocau.com/stfw - Search OCAU or the web

Feel free to suggest more. :)



Wednesday Morning (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 31-August-2005  03:16:53 (GMT +10) - by Agg

TweakGuides have an Amiga emulation guide.. ahh, takes me back. Argh! VIC-20! Not that far back, thanks.

Timbot spotted some sneak-peek info on PCIe 2 over on TheInq.

Even with Apple's very public plans to move to Intel CPUs in future, they're still going to be using PowerPC chips until at least 2008, it seems.

Motherboards.org walk us through their experience overclocking a P4 530J CPU.

THG cover the Turion 64, AMD's mobile 64-bit platform. They also looked at some high-end LCD monitors.

TheTechZone have some tips for locking down your wireless network.

PCStats compared a few 1GB CompactFlash cards.

HWZ have an interview with Steve Erickson from Creative, about their Sound Blaster X-Fi product.

ARP have an article about the history of instant messenger programs.

Tafe Dude says Microsoft have released WinFS in beta form, ahead of schedule. This is their next filesystem, which will be properly available sometime in 2007..

A1-Electronics have a guide to NVIDIA video cards, while Digitimes report on five new chipsets from ATI on the way, for AMD's M2 CPU socket.



Free Opera (1 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 31-August-2005  01:56:55 (GMT +10) - by Agg

If you're wanting to try out Opera, an alternative web browser, now might be a good time. A few people sent word that you can get an free registration code for the ad-free version of Opera, for one day only, as part of their 10 year online anniversary party. Their site is a bit slow at the moment, unsurprisingly. There's a thread here in our forums with more info. Remember, you can only get this free deal today, 30th Aug 2005 in their (American) timezone, so sometime today our time it'll stop working.


Wednesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 31-August-2005  01:31:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
ABIT AW8 i955X LGA775 P4 mobo on InsaneTek.
DFI nF4-DAGF S939 A64 mobo on XtremeResources.
Asus P5WD2 Premium i955 LGA775 P4 board on NeoSeeker.
ABIT AW8-MAX i955X LGA775 P4 board on HotHardware.
EPoX 5NVA SLI LGA775 P4 SLI board on Digit-Life.
AMD Sempron 3400+ CPU on XbitLabs.
SAPPHIRE PURE Innovation A9RX480 S939 A64 board on Hexus.
ABIT AN8-SLI NF4 S939 mobo on OCW.

Video Cards:
Leadtek 7800 GTX SLI on Bjorn3D.
ATI Theater 550 PRO on Beyond3D.
Radeon X800XL Ultimate on NeoSeeker.
HIS X800 GT IceQ II Turbo on MVKTech.
Gigabyte GF6600 256MB Turbo Force on MadShrimps.
Sapphire Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition AGP on TweakTown.

Storage & Memory:
AcomData E5 320GB external storage on Anandtech.
Maxtor ULTRA 16 - 300GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive on MadShrimps.
Samsung WriteMaster SE-W164 16x16x External DVD Writer on PCStats.
Kingmax Mars DDR2-667 on Phoronix.
Pioneer DVR-110D 8X-DL Burner on CDRInfo.
Sandisk 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo on DriverHeaven.
Evesham Technology SilverSTOR XS NAS storage network appliance on TrustedReviews.
ASUS DRW-1608P DL Burner on ViperLair.
ASUS SDRW-0804P-D DVD±R Burner on XbitLabs.
LG GSA-4167B Internal Super Multi DVD Writer on HWZ.



Tuesday Morning News (5 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 30-August-2005  03:15:10 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

Everything USB have had a sneak peak at some new toys from Microsoft. They are the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, the Notebook Optical (1000-dpi) Mouse 3000 and the Laser (2000-dpi) Mouse 6000. Rather spiffy looking but nothing ground breaking.

Legion Hardware compare the GeForce 7800 GT with the non-GT version of the same card. "Not only is the GeForce 7800 GT a much more affordable product, it is also far more suitable for most gaming systems". Read it here.

Many people feel that onboard audio just doesn't cut it when it comes to serious gaming. Personally, I've been using onboard audio for several years now and I see no reason to change. Either way, Creative have started to offer the Live! 24 chip as an onboard solution. Tech-Hounds check out two motherboards with the Live! 24 chip.

HardCOREware have their Portable Storage Guide Q3 2005 posted for you. The storage medium get smaller and smaller yet the capacity and speed keep increasing.

With the wrap-up of Intel’s developer forum last week, lots of promises of greater performance or vastly less power consumption were heard. Design Technica have a run down of what Intel are planning. More cores!

With VoIP technology starting to hit the main stream, beyond the business sector, Intel are working with Skype Technologies to "modify Skype's program to make it work better on new microprocessors that carry out multiple tasks simultaneously". Full article here.

Just how secure will Microsoft's Vista be? Hardware and software security will come together to isolate parts of a computer from malicious code such as viruses and worms. "The number one goal is to prevent attackers from using software tools to get at information that is at rest on the hard drive". More info here.

Who says floppy disks are of no use anymore! In this case the use of a floppy disk helped to bring a very nasty guy to justice.

Now this looks pretty funky! It's a car, sort of, or maybe its a bike. Either way its called a Moovie.



Thermalright XP-90C Review (9 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 29-August-2005  16:49:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Thermalright's XP-90 was the best of the smaller CPU coolers tested in our last roundup. Not bad for an aluminium cooler - but now there's a copper version, the XP-90C. How does it compared to the previous model and the big brother of them both, the XP-120?


Click for the review!



Hurricane Katrina (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 29-August-2005  16:37:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg

A potentially huge disaster is taking shape off the coast of Louisiana in the United States. Hurricane Katrina has been declared a Category 5 storm and is expected to hit New Orleans tonight our time, Monday morning their time, with catastropic effects. Our thoughts are with those who may be affected in a few hours time, and fingers crossed it won't be another disaster like the NYE Tsunami in Asia.

CNN have coverage here and there's a thread in our forums here.



Monday Morning Reviews (10 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 29-August-2005  01:16:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Video Cards:
ATI ALL-IN-WONDER X800 GT PCI Express on Hexus.
Evga E-geforce 7800 Gt on Pro-Clockers.
ATI All-In-Wonder X800 GT 128MB PCIe on DriverHeaven.
Nvidia Geforce 7800GT on 3DAvenue.
Sapphire Radeon X300 SE 128MB HyperMemory PCIe on HWZ.
Colorful ATI Radeon X550 PCIe on SolosReviews.
MSI NX7800GT-VT2D256E 7800GT on HWZ.
NVIDIA GeForce 7800GT on Rage3D.
Albatron GeForce 6800 128MB PCIe on Digit-Life.
ASUS Extreme N7800GTX TOP/2DHTV sneak peek on FiringSquad.

Input:
Microsoft Digital Media Pro keyboard on PCHardware.
Hiper Clavier Aluminium Keyboard on InsaneTek.
WACOM Graphire Bluetooth Tablet on 3DVelocity.
Logitech V200 Cordless Notebook Optical Mouse on TheTechZone.
fUnc F-10S mousepad on InsaneTek.
Razer Copperhead mouse on VR-Zone.
Saitek Illuminated Keyboard on SystemCooling.
Wolfclaw Gaming Keyboard on ExtremeTech.
Ergodex DX1 Input Device on BoxGods.

Audio / Visual:
VL System M-Play202 MediaCenter VFD mini-screen on ExtremeMHz.
V.L. System M-Play 202 Indicator &*Remote Controller (video review) on 3DGameMan.
TViX Multimedia Player and HDD Enclosure on XtremeComputing.
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro on BIOSMag.
MobiBLU DAH-1500i tiny MP3 player on ExtremeMHz.



Sunday Night Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 28-August-2005  22:57:59 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe WiFi-TV i945P LGA775 P4 board on HWZ.
Epox EP-9NPAJ SLi S939 A64 board on PCModdingMy.
ASrock 775Dual-Pro880 PT880Pro-based LGA775 P4 board on OCW.
ULi M1695 Reference Board (AGP and PCIe) for S939 A64 on HWZ.
ABIT AL8 i945P LGA775 P4 board on HotHardware.
Intel Pentium D 820 dual-core LGA775 CPU on BitTech.
Abit AW8 i955X LGA775 P4 board on Phoronix.
Intel Pentium D 840 dual-core LGA775 CPU on CDRInfo.
MSI 945P Neo Platinum LGA775 P4 board on Digit-Life.
Intel Pentium-M 780 CPU on GamePC.

Cooling:
SilverStone FM82 & FM121 Fans on ThinkComputers.
XSPC Passive Aluminium Reservoir for watercooling on ViperLair.
Copper Silent 3 socketA CPU cooler on Techneek.
Evercool Neon Crab memory cooler (no, really) on ThinkComputers.
Wintsch Labs Arctic Web 437W TEC Waterblock on PimpRig.

Case & Modding:
AeroCool Masstige tower on Hi-TechReviews.
Sunbeamtech Chameleon lighting controller on CaseModGod.
Antec TX1050B SOHO File Server Case on ThinkComputers.
Cooler Master Praetorian Tower on RojakPot.
Silverstone SST-TJ05 on OCOnline.
Chenbro Gaming Bomb II on SpodesAbode.
Antec Overture 2 desktop case on TheTechLounge.

Power Supply:
Antec Smart Power 2.0 500W on Phoronix.
OCZ 1100W PSU Prototype first looks on HWSecrets.
AOpen Prima Power 700W on PCStats.
OCZ ModStream 520W on Virtual-Hideout.
CaseBuy EZ PSU Tester 2 on BensCustomCases.



Press Releases (8 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 28-August-2005  00:40:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Been a bit quiet from me this week, I'm half-dead with the flu. But here's some snippets:

A.C.Ryan claim to have reinvented the LED fan with their new Blackfire4 DualPower range. It somehow seems logical that you shouldn't have to dim the lights when you slow down the fan; switch off the fan when you switch off the lights. More info here.

AMD have thrown down the gauntlet, challenging Intel to a dual-core duel. The challenge, issued today in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, San Jose Mercury News and The San Francisco Chronicle, features the world’s first x86 dual-core server microprocessor, the Dual-Core AMD Opteron processor, in a boxing ring waiting for the Intel challenger. More info here.

Intel unveiled their oddly-named platform brand for digital entertainment PC's. "Intel Viiv technology is our first platform designed from the ground up for the digital home, where consumers are passionate about the idea of accessing their content anytime, anywhere in their home on a number of devices," said Don MacDonald, vice president and general manager, Intel Digital Home Group. More info here.

Thermaltake released two watercooling products. First up is the Tide Water, a self-contained system for cooling a video card. Second is Silent Water, an all-in-one CPU watercooling kit.

Slightly offtopic:

Decker sent word of a VNV NATION tour in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. VNV NATION has emerged in the past few years to become a powerhouse performer in the electronic dance scene, and their first Australian tour - to promote their brand-new album, "Matter + Form" - will give Australian fans a taste of what Europe and America has kept secret for so long. Details here.

Gallery Serpentine sent a reminder that the Under The Blue Moon festival is on in mid September. A whole Day and Night of Gothic Entertainment. More info here.

And here's a quick timewaster: Gutterball.



Saturday Night (8 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 27-August-2005  17:34:54 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

Intel, who own more than 80 percent of the x86 desktop processor market, wants to stay on top. They plan to run over AMD with Performance per Watt, Intel’s latest catch phrase.

At the ECS Editor's Day held in San Jose, motherboard partner ATI was on hand to showcase their upcoming CrossFire technology. PC Perspective were able to get some information on ECS' upcoming CrossFire motherboards.

The TechZone show you how to speed up your computer without upgrading. Pretty basic stuff but it may be of use to some.

Bit-Tech have the scoop on the best Case Mod I've seen in ages. I mean its really cool. I like it because it has a cow! I like cows and anyone who can get one onto/into their PC deserves a round of applause.

Daviesh points out that another P2P site has been shut down, this time its The Realworld. Fans have called it the best online VCR ever. There really isn't much hope for these sites. The legal risks are too great and it can be a very expensive business.

Several people sent in links to pages showing tweaks for Googles new Gtalk. I found this page which has some of the better ones and also some links to other sites. Thanks guys.

The US military is going all Star Wars. They are well on the way to developing an aircraft mounted laser gun. "... it has managed to shrink all the hardware for such a weapon so that it can fit under the wing of a fighter jet or piggyback on a vehicle to zap anything from ground-to-air and air-to-air missiles to rocket-propelled grenades." This Article on New Scientist gives all the good info. Thanks Iroquois and QLH454.

Iroquois also notes that Microsoft look to be set to make a Halo Movie. I wonder who gets to play the Master Chief?

Satellite technology is wonderful stuff. It lets us do all sorts of things, like tracking crocodiles. I need to get one of those attached to my kids. Thanks to von Stalhein for the link.

Several items to finish off with. Jaytech found some rather unusual subtitles on Star Wars movies, Viljar found a new popup killer, Iroquois found a cool little timewaster called poom, and something which is actually useful, a Jet Powered Beer Cooler from Paul.



Weekend Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 27-August-2005  02:36:02 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

Mainboard:
Epox EP-9NPA+ SLI at PCstats
ABIT NI8 SLI Motherboard at TrustedReviews
Foxconn WinFast NF4K8AC Mainboard at OCC

Video:
ATI All In Wonder X800XT at Tech-Mods
MSI NX7800GTX at Guru3D
EVGA 7800 GTX KO at Firing Squad
Sapphire Radeon X550 at Bjorn3D
ASUS Extreme N7800GTX at HotHardware

Storage:
Thermaltake Max 4, 3.5" HDD USB External Enclosure at A1 Electronics

Networking:
NetGear TA612V VoIP Router at TrustedReviews

PSU:
HEC WinPower Win 550UB PSU at PCstats

Case:
Lian Li PC-V850 Silver at TecCentral.de (Machine Translation)
Thermaltake Tenor Designer HTPC Case at Tweaknews
Nextherm ICS 8200 Air-conditioned Case at MetkuMods

Cooling:
Asetek WaterChill Xtreme 12V Pump/Reservoir at Hexus
Thermaltake Bigwater SE Water Cooling Kit at TrustedReviews
Acousti Products Dust Proof Fans at Bigbruin

Audio:
Samsung YP-T7Z 1GB MP3 Player at MrPCPro
Etymotic ER-4 MicroPro Earphones at CoolTechZone
Speed Link Medusa 5.1 Surround Headset at TrustedReviews

Digital Camera:
Fujifilm FinePix F10 at TrustedReviews
Canon EOS 5D Preview at DPReview
Kodak EasyShare Z740 at Designtechnica
Fujifilm Z1 Digital Camera at TrustedReviews

Printer:
Epson EPL-6200 Laser Printer at TrustedReviews
Canon Pixma iP90 Inkjet Printer at TrustedReviews

Misc:
SE-VOIP USB Skype Phones at Bigbruin
Bluelounge Cable YoYo at PC Modding Malaysia
Creative WebCam Live at BIOS
Logitech Cordless Desktop MX3000 at The TechZone
Compex 802.11G 108Mbps Super-G XR USB Adapter at FutureLooks



Friday Morning News (8 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 26-August-2005  03:53:42 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

DVHardware note that AMD's dual-core mobile Turion 64 processors are set for launch in early 2006. The dual-core Turion 64 features the Socket S1 with 638 pins and will be AMD's first CPU with Pacifica Virtualization Technology. Sounds nasty!

With the launch of Google Talk this week, perhaps people should be reminded of other IM programs available. PC Mechanic check out the newest version of Trillian and tackle its pros and cons.

Ambush lets us know that the new SATA 2.5 specs have been released. "The new SATA 2.5 spec is an aggregation of seven others, all rolled into one, aimed more at people building the devices and systems rather than the end users."

Spec83 found a handy little utility called Centrino Hardware Control. "A really good program for managing an Intel based laptop (soon to be AMD compatible too). Features voltages controls, fan controls, hard drive spin up rates and ATI clock adjustments as well as temp monitoring and battery life calculations." Its still a beta but you can find it here.

What would life be like without the Internet? I can almost remember those days. The TechZone go a week without Net access. How did he survive?

Users of MSN should have a read of this. Some info about a new Messenger Worm, called Kelvir.HI, which operates in a variety of different languages.

About half of the people who sign up for a Telstra Broadband plan change to a more expensive plan at some later date. "Telstra said it was signing around 20,000 customers per week to BigPond broadband services." I guess they upgrade their plan when the excess charges arrive.

Web Masters and site owners should take note that a serious flaw in PHP has been uncovered. The site has links to an upgrade to fix the problem.

Hollywood studios lawyers are handing out lawsuits again, this time to people using the BitTorrent technology to swap files. "Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft". Read more here.

The humble power button will undergo a change when Microsoft’s Vista arrives on the scene. Apart from the standard On and Off options there will be something new!

If you like riddles, you'll love this site. I don't like riddles as it seems they don't like me. I've lost the post with the name of whoever sent the link in, but thanks.

Kim sent this one in just for fun. Have a look at The Dialectizer. Take a webpage and translate it to a dialect which can be chosen from a list of redneck, jive, cockney, elmer fudd, swedish chef and more. It makes my news posts almost readable!



Thursday News (10 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 25-August-2005  04:40:21 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

Google Talk! Tried it yet? I installed it last night and gave it a small workout. It seems to do the job rather well. Text, Voice (VoIP) or Email (Gmail) ... take your pick. You don't need a dedicated headset to use Google Talk, just a computer microphone and speakers will do the job for VoIP. The text side of GTalk will interface with other IM programs such as Miranda, Trillian Pro, iChat, GAIM and Psi. It's based on the Jabber/XMPP protocol with plans to support SIP in a future release so I'm guessing that any compatible client will be able to interact with Google Talk. Although there is no support for Mac or Linux at this stage, GTalk is a beta, with more features planned for the future. You can have multiple calls underway at once, but only one can be active at a time. The other calls will be on hold. For now, you need to have a Gmail account to signup for it but these days most people do. Its only a small (900K) download and it sits in the task bar as with any other IM program. Very simple to setup and install and best of all, its free. Go to www.google.com/talk and give it a try. I did. There is a forum thread going if you have something to say about it. Thanks to the many people who sent this to the news box. By the looks of things, there are going to be a lot of GTalk users. Search for Mred32 and add me to your list. If you annoy me too much I'll simply block you :)

In other news this morning ...
CoolTechZone have an interview with OCZ Technology, the well known memory manufacturer. They discuss things like their recently launched Gamer GX series and the future of the memory industry.

The TechZone have 10 Reasons why you should adopt Linux. I could probably provide you with about ten more yet, I still haven't taken the plunge.

How to quickly improve your computer's performance. That’s the title of an article posted at Bona Fide Reviews. In my case, "buy a new one" would do the job well.

PC Perspective have posted some of the slides from yesterdays IDF presentation where Intel debuted their new micro-architecture to the world. They cover the information presented in the slides as well as some additional data floating around.

If you haven't yet heard about CE-ATA then this article might be worth a read. CE-ATA is a new Hard Drive standard for targeted towards consumer electronics products. It might be coming to a beige box near you.

Another article about publishers rights and the rights of individuals. "With the pending arrival of Intel's East Fork and Microsoft's Vista, the end user will be further deprived of his fair use rights to line the pockets of the publishers." Full article here.

Setting up a dual display system is not always as simple as it could be. Bigbruin give you a rundown on how to go about it. I don't think I could go back to a single screen system. Multi-screen goodness for me.

TweakTown get all wet over the latest water cooling goodies from the likes of Corsair, Thermaltake and Gigabyte. They put them all inside the ring to find out which offers the best overall features and cooling performance. If you're in the market for a new CPU cooling solution which offers better performance than air coolers to aid in higher overclocking and quieter operation at the same time, read this and find out which one is the better deal.

This week seems to be a big week for Power Supplies. Lots of new models reviewed and released. Pureoverclock have a round-up of four PSUs including an Enermax Noisetaker 600, PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 510 SLI, Seasonic S12 600 and the Silverstone Zeus ST65ZF 650. Give it a read.



Wednesday Morning News (8 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 24-August-2005  04:10:29 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

Elpida today announced its next-generation DDR3 SDRAM memory chips for future notebooks, desktop PCs and servers. The new DDR3 architecture will feature a high-speed data transfer of up to 1333MHz, which is double the speed of the current DDR2 architecture in volume production. DvHardware have the scoop!

Zapper fish sent this in. What is Google planning to do with US$4 Billion? Is MSN about to get some competition? Have a read and find out. Do people still use MSN? Weird.

Intel are planning to do away with different CPUs for different platforms, and merge them into a common architecture.

In the mean time, PC Mechanic have posted a Mobile CPU Overview. Turions, Centrinos, and Mobile CPUs - Oh My!

Have you tried OCAU's Wiki? Lots of handy info and links. OneArmedMan points out that Wikipedia need donations to help keep them alive. So if you have a dollar spare, maybe throw it their way.

Bigbruin have posted a guide to Computer Memory Basics. Some good info for the uninformed.

See how memory frequency and timings affect the overall performance of a Pentium 4 platform in this article at XbitLabs. They overclock some of the best RAM around.

Phoronix offer some ideas on how to Silence the SOHO, part 2.

Iain noticed that AOpen have launched a new SFF PC, namely the AOpen 64-bit Cube PC. Very neat and tidy.



Wednesday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 24-August-2005  04:07:30 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

CPU:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 at HardwareZone

Mainboard:
AOpen i915GMm-HFS at Bit-Tech
Foxconn WinFast NF4SK8AA-8EKRS at Overclockers Online
ECS Kn1 Extreme at AVault
ECS RS 480-M ATI 200 Xpress at Tech-Mods

Networking:
Netgear FVS318v3 Prosafe VPN Router at Iceteks

Storage:
LinkStation Network Storage Center at The Tech Zone

Video/Monitor:
Sony SDM-HS95P X-Black LCD Monitor at BIOS
Gigabyte X700 Pro Graphics Card at CoolTechZone
MSI NX7800GTX SLI at HotHardware
ASUS Extreme N7800GTX TOP/2DHTV at Legion Hardware
Samsung SyncMaster 243T 24" LCD at Tech-Mods

PSU:
Akasa PowerPlus AK-P550FF 550 Watt at PCStats
MGE Magnum 500 PSU at LAN Addict
Hiper Type R 480 Watt PSU video review at 3dGameMan
Antec Phantom 500W PSU at XYZ Computing
CaseBuy EZ Power Supply Tester at Phronix

Cooling:
Asetek VapoChill Micro HSF at PC Perspective
Jetart NP6900 Folding Notebook Cooler at 3DVelocity
Vapochill Micro Ultra Low Noise at Driver Heaven
TITAN TWC-A05 Bianca Water Cooler at Tech-Mods

Audio:
Logitech Wireless Music System for iPod at DVHardware
Icemat Siberia Multi-Headset at Tech-Mods

Case/Mods:
Thermalrock Eclipse Silver Case with Window at Tech-Mods
Sunbeam Trio Case at Red&Blackness Mods

Digital Camera:
Fuji FinePix Z1 5MP at Design Technica

Misc:
Matrix Orbital MX6 Series PLED Kit at Bjorn3D
Ergodex DX1 Input System K'Board at Everything USB
OCZ 750W PSU at CoolTechZone
Guitammer ButtKicker Sonic Device at Future Looks



Tuesday Morning News (13 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 23-August-2005  04:14:35 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

After all the rumors, Canon has finally released the new Canon EOS 5D Digital Camera. Featuring a full frame 12.8 megapixel CMOS sensor, true spot metering and a magnesium alloy exterior, this camera has everything I want ... except for the US$3300 price tag. There is some discussion about it and the other new release goodies in our forums.

Bit-Tech have a round-up of some toys which have been sent their way. A backlit EL keyboard, a dual-tuner TV card and a new modular PSU from Tagan, as well as some PSP accessories. Have a look.

DRM and High-Def video are things which people will need to think about before installing the next Windows version, Vista. Ars Technica have a run down of what it all means.

On the topic of Windows Vista, CoolTechZone have posted an overview of this wonderful new Windows version. I can't wait! (insert sarcasm here)

Over on Bigbruin you can find a guide to some of the more common Windows Keyboard Shortcuts. There are dozens of common Windows shortcuts, and some related to specific software titles. Memorizing just a few of the more basic ones may be worth the time-savings they can offer.

Tech-Hounds have a round up and comparison of five socket 939 PCI Express motherboards. The motherboards using NForce 4 chipsets are ABIT's AN8 Ultra, ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe, Gigabyte's K8NF-9, MSI K8N SLI Platinum. ABIT's AX8 3rd Eye is the odd man out with VIA K8T890.

Can we really end illegal music downloading? Do we need to? WindowsAtoZ ask these questions and ponder the answers.

A.G.System notes that the new 77.77 WHQL drivers are now available from nVidia. New drivers are a good thing, most of the time.

If you are like me and try to avoid walking or generally using your legs, then this might be for you. "Internet users will soon be able to walk the streets of New York and other cities — without leaving their seat." Read it here. Thanks Ocelotx.

Adrian's Rojak Pot have posted the Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide. Its up to revision 9.2 now.

For those with huge power needs, how about a 1000W PSU for your system. I'm not sure what you might do with that much power but I guess you could just fill a box with extra hard drives and lots of flashy things. Thanks Sniper.

CoolTechZone note that the X800GT BIOS Update boosts performance by up to 7%. Not bad for a free upgrade.

OMAGAN sends word of some info and screenshots of UT2007. Fans of the series will be keen to have a look at the next installment.

USA Today mention that the Google Desktop search utility has been upgraded. "The latest Google offering includes several twists. Beyond providing search results, it monitors the user's behavior and presents relevant information in a resizable and moveable vertical window called the Sidebar."

For the Rev-Heads, another Dyno Day has been arranged in Sydney. Have a read of this forum thread to get all the details. Thanks Ben.

BFOlan is on again in Adelaide. Its set for the 17th of September and you can check out all the info at the BFOlan site.

The timewaster for the day is ... very silly. Damn me and my colour blindness. I can't get past the first level because I cant see the difference between the green and the yellow. Give it a go.



Check your Forums email! (4 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 23-August-2005  01:14:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg

If you suddenly find you can't post or reply in the forums, most likely you need to update your email address in UserCP and respond to the confirmation email the system sends you. You will then be able to post again and, if you're a full Member, you will be able to see the trading forums again within an hour.

Even if your forum permissions are ok, please take a moment to check your email address is up to date - thanks! We receive thousands of bounced emails every day now, from people not keeping their forum settings up to date.



Press Releases (2 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 22-August-2005  17:01:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg

AMD introduced two new models in their Turion 64 processor range. The technology is designed to be the most advanced family of 32- and 64-bit Windows®-compatible processors available for mobile PCs, enabling thinner and lighter notebooks plus compatibility with today’s most popular wireless and graphics solutions. More info here.

Gigabyte Australia launched some new SLI motherboards. The new SLI-ready motherboards are the GA-K8N-SLI and GA-8N-SLI Pro that feature compatibility with new dual core processors from Intel® or AMD, Serial ATA 3Gb/s, NV RAID, NV firewall and Gigabit LAN connectivity, all for a retail price that is expected to start at less than AU$190. More info in a 174KB DOC here.

Western Digital announced the availability of a new 400GB SATA hard drive with 16MB cache. With 7,200 RPM spindle speed, native SATA technology and 16 MB cache, the new desktop-class WD Caviar SE16 400 GB hard drives are ideal for graphic design, video editing, gaming, advanced business computing and other high-end desktop applications. More info here.

Zensonic have provided updated info on their much-anticipated Z500 Networked DVD Media Player. The Z500 has been designed from the ground up to meet the needs of home theatre enthusiasts, including multiple fully digital A/V outputs and a backlit remote control. More info on the Z500 website here and in a 40KB PDF here.



Monday Morning (4 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 22-August-2005  02:19:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg

DNS issues on the weekend have left our news box a little bare.. feel free to send anything of interest to news@overclockers.com.au. I'll see what I can dig up in the meantime:

Chocoholics in NSW will be happy to hear that Mars and Snickers bars are back on the market again, having been removed a few weeks ago due to an extortion threat.

OCNZ have a 3-way roundup of 7800GTX video cards. In this round up, we will also take pricing, warranty, bundle value and ease of use into consideration, due to the physical similarities between the 7800GTX cards.

A recent study suggests violent video games make children aggressive. Another study showed that playing video games using flame-throwers and automatic weapons made them more "mean and angry" afterwards. Sounds very scientific. Reading articles like that makes me aggressive..

Xbit looked at two memory kits from G.Skill. We would like to introduce to you memory solutions from the Taiwanese G.SKILL company targeted for extreme overclockers.

Markoff has an article about the supercomputer race, as the market for serious numbercrunching enlarges. Procter & Gamble used a supercomputer to study the airflow over its Pringles potato chips to help stop them from fluttering off the company's assembly lines.

ExtremeTech wonder if sound cards are on the way out. I haven't bought a new sound card since the SoundBlaster Live! days - in fact I've mostly been using onboard sound since then. I may be cloth-eared but it all sounds the same through headphones to me. If you feel differently, TomsHardware have a review of Creative's latest card, the X-Fi, that might interest you.

3DProfessor examined the NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 workstation card. How does it perform against its predecessor? Read on and be prepared to be completely blown away; these results even beat the SLI results posted only a few months back!

From Viljar: A couple of weeks ago ABC reported that ANSTO had decided to allow pictures of Lucas Heights to remain on Google Earth. But today on ABC news radio a representative from ANSTO repeated that they wish for the images to be blurred. Mixed signals, then. For Lucas Heights and countless other Australian Google Maps links, see our Wiki page full of them.



Saturday Evening News (17 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 20-August-2005  23:18:44 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Bern lets us know that Slashdot has information that Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is planning to create "virtual reality" High-Defintition 3-D TV which will allow you to smell and even touch objects in the 3-D space. Full article here.

Rojak Pot has a new article posted up on their site about the Secret Overclocking in Asus Motherboards.

Xbitlabs has continued their detailed round-up of 17" flat-panel monitors. They cover 16 displays from LG, Samsung, Sony, Viewsonic, Mitsubishi, NEC and a few others.

Apparently the first dual-core Pentium 4 was rush job, Intel even admitted recently at a conference today. Thanks for the info Nick!

For anyone running PowerChute Business Edition version 6.x, you must upgrade to 7.x due to Java Runtime Environment expiration. Customers running PowerChute Business Edition 6.x after July 27, 2005 will encounter service failures\hanging on their next reboot. More information here. Thanks for the heads-up Tom.

Darklord sends in news about computer characters being mugged in a virtual crime spree. A man has been arrested in Japan on suspicion carrying out a virtual mugging spree by using software "bots" to beat up and rob characters in the online computer game Lineage II. The stolen virtual possessions were then exchanged for real cash.

BigBruin shows us some good accessories and toys that you might like to treat your laptop with.

PCMech has an indepth look at nVidia's SLI Technology and how this invention has changed the videocard market.

Bona Fide Reviews informs us about the future of cell phone viruses. Antivirus experts say it is possible and are questioning whether personal data entered into cell phones and PDA’s can be stolen or infested now that minor security incidents are already being reported.

Outonanisland shares with us a screensaver which he says is an awesome screensaver (43MB) of a four cylinder engine being built. (Edit: Mirror here, because the original site seems to have bandwidth issues. An exe inside the zip installs it. Being an exe you might want to have your virus/spyware stuff in full paranoid mode, but no alerts here.)



Saturday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 20-August-2005  08:14:57 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Cooling:
Asetek WaterChill 3/8" ID Power Kit, CPU/GPU/NB Waterblocks w/ Triple 120mm Radiator on Pimprig
Titan Serina Cooling Pad on Overclockers Online
Kingwin AquaStar Water Cooler on OverclockerCafe
Cooler Master Blue Ice Northbridge Chipset Cooler on Madshrimps
asetek VapoChill Micro Ultra Low Noise CPU Cooler on A True Review
Noiseblocker NB-UltraSilentFan Series Blue on Xtreme Resources

RAM:
Crucial Ballistix DDR2-1000 on Hardware Zone
Corsair XMS2-5400UL on Bytesector
OCZ Platinum EL PC-4800 Elite Dual Channel DDR Kit on OCIA
GeIL ONE Series TCCD DDR Memory on 3DVelocity
OCZ EL DDR PC-4000 1024MB Gold Edition Dual Channel on 3DXtreme

Mouse Pad:
Ulti-mat Precison Mouse Pad on BigBruin
fUnc F-10S / F-30R Mouse Pads on InsaneTek
XTrac Mad Dotz and InstaGlide on Madshrimps

Keyboard/Mouse:
Wireless optical desktop and Bluetooth mouse roundup on Arstechnica
Microsoft Media Center Edition Keyboard on CoolTechZone
Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser on DVHardware
Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 3000 Laser on DVHardware
Logitech diNovo Media Desktop Laser on DVHardware
Logitech Cordless Desktop S 510 Media Remote on DVHardware

Audio:
Archos Gmini XS 100 MP3 Player on CoolTechZone
Bose SoundDock Digital Music System for iPod on The Tech Zone
Mashie Design MDVA Audio Spectrum Analyzer on GruntVillE
Steel Sound 5H USB Headset on PC Modding Malaysia

Case:
NZXT Nemesis Elite Edition ATX PC Case on Futurelooks
ThermalRock Mystic desktop computer case on A1 Electronics
Antec Sonata II on Overclockers Online
Antec P180 Advanced Super Mid-Tower on Legit Reviews
Antec P180 Advanced Super Mid Tower on Hardware Zone

Notebook:
Evesham Quest Roma MT 37 on TrustedReviews
Acer Ferrari 4005 WLMi Turion64 Notebook on PCStats
Winbook X530 on HotHardware

Digicam:
Pentax Optio S5z digital camera on Trusted Reviews

Misc:
Miglia Technology's MediaBank HS-Ri on Bios Magazine
Asus MyCinema on Driverheaven
DoubleSight PC Expanion on XYZ Computing
Thermaltake Muse 3.5" HDD Enclosure on Tech Powerup
Philips DVP 642 DVD Player on Hardware Secrets

Display/Videocard:
Samsung SyncMaster 930MP 19-inch LCD Monitor on PCStats
The GeForce FX5700VE on ThinkComputers
ASUS Extreme N7800 GTX TOP (GeForce 7800 GTX) on Hardware Zone

Motherboard:
Abit Fatal1ty AN8-SLI on PCPerspective
ECS PF21 Extreme 925XE on Viperlair
EPoX 5LDA+GLi on Legion Hardware



Friday Morning News (6 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 19-August-2005  02:17:59 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

This one nearly slipped past me. A pirated version of MacOS for x86 is available for install. I never seems to take a determined mind long to get around most of the security measures put in place. "Apple has announced that Mac OS X will run on Intel's x86 architecture chips starting in 2006." I didn't know that!

Something interesting sent in by apap100. "Pluto is the only all-in-one solution for your home that seamlessly combines media & entertainment, home automation, security, telecom and computing." Nice sales pitch.

Ars Technica take you through the basics of editing your digital images. "We'll cover a number of goals like adjusting contrast, warming images up and reducing noise from shadows in a more accurate and controlled way. Then we'll get into advanced stuff like masking but all explained in an almost-too friendly, "why are you touching my arm?" sort of way." Read it here.

TechSpot have an ATI Graphics round-up. They cover ten ATI solutions that go from its current flagship, the X850 XT PE, down to the value market with the X300 and X300SE.

Futurelooks check out some net-freebies for tuning up your machine online.

Question: What can you do with an Unisys ES7000 32 CPU/32 GB RAM Server with Microsoft Windows 2003 Datacenter Edition running on it? Answer. Thanks Morgan.

In what way does technology effect humans and their daily lives? Here is one persons take on it.

Hardware Secrets have posted a Power Supply Tutorial. Everything you need to know about power supplies, including types, how to calculate its true power, efficiency, power factor correction (PFC) and more.

Bit-Tech are looking at a pre-production sample of the new SLI small form factor system from Shuttle. Fancy two 6800GTs cooled by heatpipes in your SFF? Look here.

Some Interesting forum threads to finish off with this morning:

P4 670 at 7.1GHz!! in Intel Hardware.
2x BFG 7800GTX SLI Adventures in Video Cards.
MAC filtering in Networking & Internet.
Review: Crumple SLR Camera/Laptop Backpack in Photography.
Pics with self-made flash bounce in Photography.
Project Fishtank - HTPC in a Fishtank in Modding & Electronics: Worklogs.
Is this the end of rubbish dumps? in Current Events.
F1 2006 "silly season" in Motoring.
Hybrid supercar made by highschool kids in Motoring.
Making fried rice without the rice.. in Geek Food.
Kung Fu Hustle - Review in TV, Movies & Music.
A day in the life of.. in The Pub.



Friday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 19-August-2005  01:38:38 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

CPU:
AMD Athlon 64: 3000+ Venice at Bytesector

Mainboard:
ABIT AN8-SLI nForce4-SLI Motherboard at PCstats
ASUS P5WD2 Premium Motherboard at Legit Reviews
ECS KN1 Extreme nForce4 Ultra Motherboard at Bjorn3D
Albatron K8 SLI Motherboard at Guru3D

Memory:
OCZ PC2-5400 Gold / Dual Channel at Club Overclocker
Crucial Ballistix PC2-4200 DDR2 Memory at PCStats
OCZ PC4800 Platinum Limited Edition DDR at PimpRig

Storage:
Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74 Gb HDD at The TechZone
Seagate 3.5-inch 400Gb External USB/Firewire Drive at Hardware Zone
Maxtor OneTouch II FireWire 800 External HDD at TrustedReviews
Nexstar 3 2.5" USB External Hard Drive Enclosure at Club Overclocker
Seagate Barracuda 400GB SATA HDD at Sharky Extreme

Video/Monitor:
AOpen 6600GT Graphics Card at CoolTechZone
NEC MultiSync FE992-BK 19 Inch CRT Display at XYZ Computing
ATI X800XT All In Wonder at Viperlair
Sapphire Radeon X800 256mb AGP at Avault
BenQ FP91V 19-inch 4ms TFT LCD at HardwareZone

Cooling:
Spire SP503S0-1 Air Cooler Heatsink at A1 Electronics.net
Evercool WC-202 Watercooling Kit at ThinkComputers
Astek WaterChill 12volt Pump at Ninjalane
Thermaltake Aquabay M2 Radiator at Red&Blackness Mods
Asetek VapoChill Micro Ultra Low Noise Cooler video review at 3dGameMan
Scythe Katana Heatpipe CPU Cooler at InsaneTek
Evercool Nighthawk VGA Cooler at PC Modding Malaysia

Audio:
Creative Zen Touch MP3 Player at PC Mechanic
Samsung YEPP YH-925 MP3 Player at LAN Addict
Steelpad Steel Sound 5H Headset at OverClock Intelligence Agency
M-Audio StudioPro 4 Speakers at ASE Labs

Case/Mods:
XSPC 20x4 Blue Character LCD at Viperlair
Lian Li PC-777 Memorial Model Case at 3dGameMan
Ahanix D-Vine MCE601 HTPC Case at hardCOREware

Misc:
Sunbeamtech Acrylic Lite-Up Keyboard at BigBruin
Hiper Clavier Aluminum Keyboard at Phoronix
Archos Gmini 402 Pocket Multimedia Center at CoolTechZone



Thursday News (9 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 18-August-2005  05:41:53 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

A call for help from Dark_Greg. "I am currently writing/directing a star wars fan film. The film is going to be largely CGI, with only the barest of minimum sets built. We currently have plenty of acting talent but we are in need of artists, specifically people good at hand drawing concepts as well as 3D artists (conceptual or otherwise) to help move the creative process along. We have a few FX test stills, and one nearly complete CGI model up, but members of the art team are thin on the ground. Anyone who can offer help in this area would be greatly appreciated. We are also after musical composers, and sound effects people to help out, with some jobs coming up with a pitch video we are putting together to show off what we have done to prospective sponsors. Anyone who can help, or knows people who can help are encouraged to contact me. Due to the nature of fan films, and our lack of funding, all work done will need to be purely voluntary, with the most we can offer being small amounts of advertising on our website and credits in the film. Our website is here and I can be contacted there [the website]." There is a forum thread about it also. Good luck.

PC Perspective have posted a quick preview of the upcoming Asus 7800 GTX TOP (Top Overclocking Performance) video card. It is the first real change to the reference board design we have seen. It reverts back to a two slot cooling mechanism which is apparently more efficient and is also much quieter. Though the default clock speeds are about the highest seen from any retail card, they were able to overclock it to 511 MHz core and 1.42 GHz memory!!

Is ATI's X800GT competition for Nvidia’s 6600GT? Or is it just too late. Article at CoolTechZone.

Nvidia scientist have called for more research into parallelism. "If we look at the situation of general-purpose CPUs," Kirk said, "we see architects moving rapidly to multithreading and multicore designs. But we don't see a lot more threads to run."

Also at CoolTechZone, an article about the poor profit margins for memory makers. Can they make enough to stay afloat?

The TechZone explain how to really back up your data so its safe, as opposed to not really backing up your data.

Start saving your penny’s. Microsoft has unveiled the pricing for the XBox 360 console. Not as bad as I thought it might be.

Adrian's Rojak Pot have just posted the The ASUS PEG Link Mode Guide. "It's been just over a year since ASUS was forced to officially announce the PEG Link Mode. Unfortunately, very little is known about it till today. That's what we intend to correct today. After digging deeper into the mystery of PEG Link Mode, we are proud to present our report on what it actually does!"

Old laptops must be rare and in great demand in the USA. In the crush to secure one of 1000 four year old Mac laptops selling cheap, 17 people were injured and four needed hospital treatment. That’s just weird!

More on the weird front, a Singapore scientific institute said it has invented a urine-powered micro battery. Although they intend it to be used for medical purposes, I can see a few other uses also. Thanks Brett.

Iain sent in the flash timewaster for the day. It carries on with today’s "weird stuff" theme really well. Tetka! "you can tweak it with your mouse".



Wednesday Morning (8 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 17-August-2005  10:34:55 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

After some technical difficulties through the night which required Overclockers Australia to be taken down, we're back up! Mind you, we are running in "Limping Along" mode for the moment. All should be back to full speed soon'ish.

Dan has more letters posted. In this issue: Games on plasma, computing on TVs, hairy heat sinks, low cost SAN, and Amiga data transfer.

For those that haven't noticed, Apple has the Doom movie trailer up on their site for us to see. Thanks for the heads-up Belgregor.

On the same note, The Tech Lounge has some Doom Movie coverage from QuakeCon posted up on their site. Techreport also have a write-up from John Carmack's speech at QuakeCon.

Neevo shares with us what they can buy over in the UK: a Revenge CD that you can use to get back at your neighbours. Could definitely have some fun with that CD hooked up to the right sound system. =)

Bit-tech has two new Battlefield 2 - themed case mods listed on the site, pretty amazing detail.

Driverheaven have the new official Catalyst 5.8 CCC drivers available. The set weigh in at 33Mb. They also have a guide for those contemplating building a new media centre PC. Check it out here.

BonafideReviews has some information about VoIP Phones and how much bandwidth they use.

Remember those Floppy Disk Drives that we used to use last millennium? Well, if you ever have wondered how they work, Hardware Secrets have all the answers.

Techreport have an article posted comparing different dual-core-capable Pentium platforms.

Hexus have two new guides posted, the first one tells us all about Wireless networking, and the second one about Codecs. Hexus also have an interview with John Bruno, ATI ASIC Design Manager for their Chipset Division. Lots of insight into the world of chip design in this article.



Tuesday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 16-August-2005  02:57:20 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Mouse/Joysticks:
Razer Diamondback Plasma on TrustedReviews
Saitek X52 Flight Control System on Futurelooks

Cooling:
Thermaltake Golden Orb II on OCIA
Thermaltake BigWater Computer Water Cooling System on Tweaknews
Antec Vcool VGA Cooler on ThinkComputers
Sharkoon Silent Eagle Case Fan on Madshrimps

Accessories:
Amacrox NB Kit on PC Modding Malaysia
Bluetake BT510 Bluetooth Mouse and BT009Si Bluetooth Adapter on Lan Addict

Motherboard:
GigaByte GA-8N-SLI Royal on ClubOC
ECS KN1 Extreme nForce4 Ultra on PCPerspective
ASRock 775Dual-880Pro Motherboard on Phoronix

PSU:
Silverstone ST65ZF Zeus 650W Power Supply Unit on SGOverclockers

Misc:
Orange SPV C550 Mobile Handset on Hexus
Western Digital Essential NetCenter 320GB on TrustedReviews
Lian Li PC-V2100 Full Tower on Gideon Tech



Monday Afternoon (9 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 15-August-2005  13:36:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Once again HDAudioVisual have some goodies to give away in the forums - you can win one of three Arctic Cooling Freezer CPU coolers. See this thread for details!

Intel will apparently reveal the next generation of its multicore CPUs at the upcoming developer forum. As already expected, the general move will be away from NetBurst (P4, Xeon) and towards the Pentium-M architecture.

VR-Zone have a hefty DDR2 roundup, with products from Toki, Crucial, Kingston and Corsair.

Raven sent in this TV ad which will amuse fellow motorcyclists.

Here's a page exploring the wonders of Star Wars Episode 3, via the magic of dodgy subtitles.

MIT has developed a Jerk-O-Meter to let you know when you might be annoying on the phone.

If you use pretty much any version of Windows since Win98, you should probably install this patch to avoid being caught up in another Sasser-like worm storm.

Digit-Life have a detailed look at NUMA.. no, not the pudgy guy singing in headphones, but an alternate memory addressing system available on multi-CPU Opteron systems.

Xbit report on nForce SLI 16x being available soon, with more PCI Express lanes than previously.

Anandtech looked at the Catalyst 5.7 drivers for ATI cards. They also looked at the effect of faster memory on the new AMD Athlon64 X2 chips, thanks to new dividers.

Wanting to stuff your face? A recent Wiki page lists all-you-can-eat buffets around Australia. Or maybe you'd prefer to do the cooking at home instead.



Monday Morning (16 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 15-August-2005  01:10:34 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Thinkcomputers has a writeup on Video Game Violence posted up on their site.

New Scientist has an article posted about how erotic images can turn you blind. Thanks for sending in the link Neevo.

Driverheaven now has their own custom Photoshop script which test system performace, with their own online database.

Bit-tech.net has checked out Rock Direct's new custom old school bus, with a 12 person laptop lan. Check out the Lan Bus here.

Dansdata has information about LED technology improving, thanks to Nichia's new double-output 'CS' white LEDs.

A few people sent in news that the Quake 3 source code will be released very soon.

The Tech Zone play around with a Mac Mini, and see what clever things it can do, apart from being a paperweight.

Heaps of people sent in news about a new Pentium 4 world record overclock, at 7.1GHz!

More coverage on day 2 of Quakecon 2005 on Bjorn3D, The Tech Lounge, and Legit Reviews.

Rojakpot has a guide showing us how to modify your videocard so you can attach a SI-97 CPU cooler onto it.

Engadget has modified their PSP to run Linux and even Windows 95 on it. Check out the article here.

Freefrag points out that Dosgames has heaps of old dos games available for download, great way to kill some time.



Sunday Afternoon Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 14-August-2005  13:52:23 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Case:
ThermalRock Eclipse ATX on Phoronix
Lian Li V1200 Plus Case on XYZ Computing

Audio:
Altec Lansing inMotion iM3 iPod Speaker System on The Tech Zone
iRiver H340 MP3 player on Driverheaven
MobiBLU DAH-1500i MP3 Player on CoolTechZone
Olympus m:robe MR-100 on PCReview
Steelpad Steel Sound 5H-USB Professional Gaming Headset on 3DGameMan

PSU:
Hiper Type R 580w power supply on RBMods

Video:
VisionTek Xtasy Theater 550 Pro on BonFideReviews
AOpen 6600-DV128LP on OVerclockers Online
Leadtek WinFast 7800 GT (without X!) on TweakPC (in German)

Software:
ZETA OS 1.0 on Arstechnica

Misc:
Book Review: Linux Desktop Garage on XYZ Computing
Ulti-Mat Mousepad on Bytesector
BenQ P50 PDA Phone on Hardware Zone
Sony Handycam DCR-DVD803E on Hardware Zone
Mushkin DDR2 PC6400 on Xtreme Systems

Notebook:
Dell Inspiron 700m on HotHardware

Motherboard:
ECS KN1 Extreme nForce 4 Ultra Motherboard on PCStats
ECS RS400-A Motherboard on Tech Powerup
Foxconn 955X7AA-8EKRS2 Intel 955X Motherboard on PCStats

Cooling:
Gigabyte 3D Galaxy Water Cooling Kit on Hi-Tech Reviews



Saturday Morning (6 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 13-August-2005  01:11:36 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Darklord sends us in a link, which possibly takes virtual reality to a whole different level. By remotely stimulating a person's vestibular system - the fluid-filled tubes in the inner ear that guide their sense of balance - with electrodes placed on the skin just below the ear, researchers at NTT's research laboratories in Kanagawa have found a way to turn humans into oversized radio controlled vehicles.

For those Stargate fans that were upset to hear about the SG-1 videogame being cancelled, you can now be happy again. The development of the game will still continue uninterrupted at Perception's Sydney studio. Thanks carney.

Engadget has a guide posted on playing movies on your iPod Photo. Thanks for the link Eroda!

Lots of people sent in news that Mac OS X for Intel leaked onto the web early Thursday. Although many believed it was only a matter of time before such a leak occurred, Apple had taken stringent measures to ensure the Intel version of its operating system stayed locked down...

Lots of sites have visited QuakeCon 2005, and have their reports up of the first day of the 6000 player LAN/expo. Reviews on The Tech Zone, Bjorn3d, and Legit Reviews.

PCStats have a guide posted that some of us will find handy, Understanding and Creating Batch Files.

Logitech have released their new G15 Keyboard, which is just simply amazing. It has a built in LCD display, programmable keys, adjustable tilt, and the LCD even has a backlight! More on the keyboard here, and here.

CoolTechZone has a writeup posted on OLED Technology, and why millions of dollars each year is being poured in OLED research.



Saturday Morning Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 13-August-2005  00:27:02 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboard & CPU:
ABIT AN8 Ultra S939 A64 motherboard on TrustedReviews.
AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ S939 CPU on TrustedReviews.

Video Cards:
SAPPHIRE X800 GT Hybrid 256MB PCIe on Hexus.
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT on Anandtech.
EVGA e-GeForce 7800 GTX KO on Anandtech.
eVGA GeForce 7800GT on GDHardware.
Palit GeForce 7800 GT 256MB on Digit-Life.
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT on FiringSquad.

Keyboard, Mouse Etc:
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard on CoolTechZone.
Logitech G7 Laser Cordless Mouse on CoolTechZone.
Sunbeamtech Pro Series Illuminated Keyboard on BigBruin.

Cooling:
TTIC NPH-K8-2 CPU cooler on OCrCafe.
Evercool PT03-9232CP CPU cooler on InsaneTek.
Evercool H.D.D. Lander Cooler and Spider Filter Fan on ThinkComputers.
Evercool SHDC-E HDD Cooler on Techgage.
EverCool Lander HDD cooler & Spider Filter fan on A1-Electronics.
Swiftech MCP655 12 VDC Pump for watercooling on SystemCooling.

Power Supply:
NorthQ 500W Ultra Silent on PCModdingMy.
Hiper Type-R 480w & 580w on OCIA.
Thermaltake TWV500W on InsaneTek.
Hiper Type R Modular 580W on 3DGameMan.
Antec TrueControl 550W on CircuitRemix.

Audio / Visual:
Samsung YP-T8 1GB Player on EverythingUSB.
Altec Lansing inMotion iM3 iPod Speakers on TheTechZone.
Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Channel Speakers on HardCoreWare.
CoolerMaster Musketeer 3 in-bay audio widget on ExtremeMHz.
Blue Tango Classic bluetooth audio transmitter on ViperLair.

Portable / Mini:
Shuttle PC50 Silent X 300w PSU for the Shuttle XPC on SFFTech.
Fujitsu Lifebook N3511 on DesignTechnica.

Memory & Storage:
Plextor PX-EH25L USB/LAN External Hard Drive on BIOSMag.
GSkill F1-3200BWU2-1GBGH memory on SGOverclockers.
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA HDD on BigBruin.
Corsair PC2-6400 on Motherboards.org.

Printers & Cameras:
Brother MFC-7225N scanner/printer etc on BIOSMag.
Brother MFC-620CN scanner/printer etc on TrustedReviews.
HP Color LaserJet 2550L on TheTechZone.
FujiFilm FinePix F10 Digicam on DesignTechnica.

Bling:
Logisys 15" Cold Cathode case lighting on ThinkComputers.
Sunbeamtech Chameleon laser LED case lighting on Phoronix.

Misc:
Orange SPV M500 Smartphone on TrustedReviews.
Sony PlayStation Portable game console on DriverHeaven.
The DiscHub CD protector on FutureLooks.
AcoustiProducts Vibration Dampeners on SilentPCReview.
JAHT 108Mbps Wireless Broadband Router on Techniz.



Mars Orbiter launch (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 12-August-2005  21:16:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Lots of space stuff going on lately! I just noticed that it's only about 10 minutes until NASA launches the Mars Orbiter, aboard an Atlas 5 rocket. NASA TV has footage. There's a thread here in our Current Events forum for this launch.


Friday Midday Reviews (3 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 12-August-2005  12:22:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Motherboards:
Gigabyte GA-8I955X Royal Intel 955X LGA775 P4 on PCStats.
ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 S939 A64 on Tbreak.
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium S939 A64 on PCStats.
Albatron K8SLI S949 A64 on OCrCafe.
Gigabyte GA-8I945P Pro Intel 945P LGA775 P4 on PCStats.

Video Cards:
NVIDIA GeForce 7800GT on Xbit.
BFG Tech GeForce 7800GT "Overclocked" on TweakTown.
XFX GeForce 7800GT on AVault.
Gainward 7800GTX on Bit-Tech.
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX on RojakPot.
MSI NX6800-TD128E (GeForce 6800) in SLI on Xbit.

Cooling:
CoolJag SFO-H Copper A64 Heatsinks on MadShrimps.
Thermaltake Volcano 4005 Heat Exchanger on SGOverclockers.
Asetek VapoChill Micro CPU cooler on MadShrimps.
Asetek VapoChill Micro CPU cooler on OCOnline.
Titan Vanessa L-Type HSF on ap0calypse.
Sythe Shogun Heatlane CPU Cooler on XtremeResources.

Case:
Thermaltake Armor on 3DXtreme.
Thermaltake Thermalrock Eclipse on TweakNews.
Cooler Master Praetorian 723 aluminium case on HWZ.



NVIDIA GeForce 7800GT (1 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 12-August-2005  03:08:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg

NVIDIA have unveiled the second member of their GeForce 7800 series of video cards, the GeForce 7800GT. Based on the award-winning GeForce 7800 GTX architecture, this new GPU brings support for next-generation gaming technologies - including Shader Model 3.0, high-dynamic range (HDR) lighting, and NVIDIA Scalable Link Interface (SLI) multi-GPU technology - to lower price points.

Coverage on Bit-Tech, Guru3D, HardOCP, HardwareAnalysis, Hexus, HotHardware, NeoSeeker, PC Perspective, Tech-Report, TheTechLounge, TrustedReviews, TweaksRus and VR-Zone.

There's a thread in our Video Cards forum here for discussion of this new card.



Press Releases (3 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 12-August-2005  02:57:42 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Australia's Attorney General released a discussion paper on combatting the unauthorised use of photographs on the internet. "Recent media reports of photographs secretly being taken of children at sporting events and then posted on the internet has highlighted the problem and the fact it is being facilitated by the common use of digital photography, internet distribution and mobile phone cameras," Mr Ruddock said. More info in this 57KB PDF.

Altech Computers sent word that they now carry the Thecus range of network-attached storage. The N4100 is a world-class terabyte-level network storage appliance with SATA technology and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. The device also provides RAID 0, 1, 5, JBOD support and energy-savings of more than 35%. There's product pics in black and silver, and more info in this 1.4MB DOC.

ASUS introduced some high-gain antennas for extension of WLAN signal coverage. While the WL-ANT150 omni-directional antenna extends coverage area to all direction for overall network enhancement, the WL-ANT168 directional antenna can focus signal range to certain directions to really drive wireless signal to hard-to-reach corners. More info here.

Cooler Master have a new CPU cooler, the Hyper 6+. This super silent CPU cooler, with heat-pipe technology, successfully takes heat away. And its 100mm fan provides mass airflow and high air pressure to maximum heat dissipation. The powerful and quiet operation of the Hyper 6+ supports the latest Prescott LGA775, Pentium® 4, AMD’s K8 and K7. More info here.



Thursday Morning (15 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 11-August-2005  06:46:34 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

Have you ever been pinged by a Speed Camera? The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority yesterday admitted that it could not prove the authenticity of the pictures taken by these cameras. Sydney magistrate Lawrence Lawson threw out a speeding case after the RTA said it had no evidence that an image from a camera had not been doctored. Full article here.

Still on the car theme, how about a TFT screen rearview mirror. I don't know how legal these would be but as Neevo notes, "I bet it isn’t long before someone is caught watching a porno". That adds new meaning to having dangly bits on the rear view mirror.

Desktop eye candy. Do we want it, or need it? With the beta release of Windows Vista, it looks as if Microsoft is starting to catch up to the current leader in Desktop Bling, Mac OSX. So where does this leave Linux? Driverheaven investigate whether Linux's leading desktops have the ability to follow suit.

A couple of news bites from avid newshound Eroda. Apple Computer have been unable to patent the menu-based software interface of its popular iPod digital music player. Someone else beat them to it. Perhaps they should try to patent it as a portable games machine instead.

Bigbruin take us on a basic tour of SCSI hard drives. SCSI may not be an economical solution for a desktop computer, but it doesn't pretend to be. The high price tag comes with equally high performance and reliability, and in critical server and workstation applications, the added expense may easily be justified and recovered in a short period of time.

Futurelooks checks out some technologies for the Kitchen of the Future. I struggle to survive in a kitchen of the past!

On August 11th, today, nVidia deliver "The Power of 3". But what does it mean? I don't know, but the folks at The Tech Lounge have been asking questions.

PCstats have posted a preview of the new VIA C7-M Processor. Its set to be primarily for mobile use but I'm sure the modding crowd will find other uses for it.

Thanks to the unnamed person who sent this in. An Anti-Microsoft group has plans to sue Microsoft for selling a defective product. "It is unacceptable corporate behavior. Over four years after Windows XP was released I still receive regular updates and bug fixes". This should be interesting, or at least entertaining.

TrustedReviews check out a new RPG for the PC called Fate. "The overarching plot could be summed up as ‘There’s a big evil bugger lurking on level 47, would you mind killing it?’ That’s it. It’s as easy and as simple as that." Sounds like my kind of RPG.

A couple of reviews on HardwareZone. A neat little foldaway keyboard and the Gigabyte GV-3D1-68GT Dual GeForce 6800 GT graphics card. This card is a monster.

The TechZone have had a play around with a Canon PowerShot SD300 Digital ELPH camera.



Wednesday Midday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 10-August-2005  11:49:27 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Accessories:
Logisys Deluxe CCFL Kit & Dual CCFL Ring Fan on Phoronix
Thermaltake Aquabay M1 on RBMods
Logisys Double CCFL Fan Kit on ThinkComputers

Audio:
SteelPad Steel sound 5H professional gaming headphones on A1-Electronics
SanDisk Sansa e140 MP3 Player on Trusted Reviews
Xitel SoundAround Virtual 5.1 System on Futurelooks

Motherboard:
Abit AW8 Motherboard on Bytesector

Case:
HEC Group 6C28 ATX PC Case on BigBruin
Thermaltake Tenor VB2000 HTPC Case on 3DVelocity
Silverstone LC14 Case on The Moditory
Cooler Master Centurion 531 on InsaneTek
Lian Li PC-767 on OCIA

Videocard:
PowerColor Radeon X800 GT 256MB (PCIe) on Hardware Zone
Sapphire X700 Pro Graphics Card on CoolTechZone

XPC/SFF:
Shuttle SD31P XPC on HotHardware

Misc:
Casio EX-P505 on Trusted Reviews
Nokia 8800 on Hexus
Samsung SpinPoint MP0804H Hard Drive on OVerclockers Online

RAM:
Centon Advanced GEMiNi PC3200 Dual-Channel Kit on PCStats
GeIL ONE TCCD PC3200 400MHz DDR Memory on 3DGameMan



Wednesday Morning News (7 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 10-August-2005  04:33:07 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

Want to keep a message confidential? Then have a read of Part 1 of this multi-part series on encryption and cryptography at ASE Labs.

Hardware Analysis check out the new X-fi soundcard from Creative Labs to see why it comes with such a hefty price tag. Is it truly a leap in audio performance, or just a leap in soundcard pricing?

PC World have a brief roundup of Ten DVD Drives including both internal and external units.

Dan has been playing around with silly ideas again, this time he ponders the possibility of building a computer which knows everything about everything !

Hexus have a short post about Data Recovery Services. Having a hard drive crash or a CD/DVD which can't be read is often more than just a pain in the proverbial. I think that since we all do our regular backups then these services won't be needed at all. Hmm, when did I last run a backup?

ExtremeTech discuss Chipsets. Current chipsets, future chipsets and the pro's and cons of each. Past present and future.

Telstra are about to launch a new wireless broadband service aimed at small businesses and consumers. "By November 2005, Telstra Mobile Broadband will reach 6.3 million people nationally, translating into more than 33 per cent of the population." There is a thread about it on our Forums.

Here's an interesting one. It seems that Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn't like people "checking him out". Online news site CNet have been banned by Google after they published some information about him.

Scott Richter, one of the three biggest spammers in the world, has been slugged with a US$7 Million bill, but unfortunately, the money is going to Bill. "I am committed to sending e-mail only to those who have requested it...". Yea right.

Gabe Newell, head honcho at Valve Software, airs his concerns about the problems with writing game code for multicore processors. "If writing in-order code [in terms of difficulty] is a one and writing out-of-order code is a four, then writing multicore code is a 10." Read the full article here.

For those eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Xbox360, The Inquirer have a bit of information about what you might be able to connect it to.

Posting photos of children on websites could become a crime, even if they appear to be wholesome family snaps. Another case of over zealous Government silliness in my opinion.



Tuesday Evening (7 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 9-August-2005  23:01:51 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

First up tonight, news that we have broken our record for the most people online on our forums. Most users ever online was 829, Today at 10:20 PM. Also, the landing of Discovery was successful, with the flight crew just exiting the shuttle now.

Cisco is perhaps going to buy Nokia Mobiles soon, in a bid to gain their wireless infrastructure technology. Thanks for the heads-up browca04.

Found this pretty cool 'gadget'. A mirror with a built-in monitor and TV. You can view your favourite TV programmes or your computer display while studying your own reflection. Brilliant!

William sends in news about Terrorist-Proof Lighting Illuminates Without Power.

CoolTechZone has an interesting read on Noise Cancelling, and how it all works.

PCStats thought it would be interesting to see how overclocking is affected on the WindowsXP x64 Edition platform by illustrating both 32-bit and 64-bit benchmarks for an AMD Athlon64 4000+ based system. Check out the full article here.

Antonio sends in news about the possibility of Open source getting taxed in the future, to prevent tax evaders.

A few people sent in news that although Microsoft had fixed up the security for Windows Genuine Advantage, about 3 or 4 days later it has been bypassed again.

CoolTechZone have a writeup on Blu-Ray and how it relates to our current storage solutions.

Bit-Tech have a look at the new singleplayer demo of F.E.A.R that was released last week. They also test out the game on a variety of different graphics hardware.



Discovery Update (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 9-August-2005  20:48:04 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Ok, NASA has just issued a "go for de-orbit burn", so in about 10 minutes the orbiting space shuttle Discovery will fire its maneuvering thrusters and begin the descent back to earth, landing in about an hour or so. Keep on top of the latest news in this thread, NASA's mission page and NASA TV.

Edit: successful landing!



Tuesday Morning (3 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 9-August-2005  03:57:55 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

How safe is the Internet from people who might want to see it die? Does a credible plan to take down the Internet exist? Maybe.

Fans of the Stargate-SG1 series might be disappointed to hear that work on the game title has been cancelled. “The title in its current form, initially scheduled for an October 2005 release, does satisfy neither our quality requirements nor the fans expectations. We will not release anything that does not do justice to this well known license”. Thanks for the heads up Charliebrownau.

The future of fashion is under discussion at DesighnTechnica. "...as well as a skirt, from Gemma Shusterman, with motors that turned the skirt’s accents into cat toys to illustrate the predator/prey relationship." Read it and weep!

BonaFideReviews have just posted an article about dust in your computer and how big of an effect it has on performance. Personally, I find that a nice layer of dust is essential for a well running system. Remove the dust and the computer crashes!

Bytesector interview the Canadian Halo 2 Champion. They also had a few games of Halo2 with him and got their tail whipped. I had a few games with my son today, and lost 19 to 1. The XBox really needs a mouse!

Eroda found this interesting piece of info about a new HD Video system using an Ultra High Definition Video signal. 18 minutes of UHDV video consumes 3.5 terabytes of data. Time to upgrade those hard drives again.

Will VoIP (Voice over IP) eventually take over from conventional voice telecommunications?. That’s the question asked in this article over at Bigbruin in the USA.

CoolTechZone want to tell you all about Cell Microprocessor Architecture. "Nothing has created more media hype and anticipation than the next generation of gaming consoles from Microsoft (Xbox 360) and Sony (PlayStation 3). At the recently concluded E3 tradeshow, both of these devices were showcased to the audience and amazing promises were made to potential buyers." While you're there they also have a go at explaining Digital Television (DTV) and how it works.

I'm not sure what Jason was doing on the US based Police Families website, but he did notice this interesting post. Perhaps they are looking for alternate ways of raising revenue? Thanks Jason.

Adrian's Rojak Pot have added a few more options to the BIOS Optimization Guide. These are HDD Self Diagnostic, IOAPIC Enable and MAC Media Interface.

Need a web host? The TechZone show you how to choose a good web hosting company.



Tuesday Morning Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 9-August-2005  01:07:46 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

RAM:
OCZ DDR Booster on Xtreme Systems
OCZ EL DDR PC4000 Gold VX Memory on Madshrimps
OCZ Gold GX PC 3500 Dual Channel RAM on Futurelooks
OCZ EL DDR PC3500 Gold GX on Legion Hardware

Cooling:
Thermaltake Bigwater SE Liquid Cooling Kit on SGOverclockers
Zalman Reserator 1 Plus Fanless Water Cooler on Pimprig
nPowertek NPH 775-1 on InsaneTek
OCW Review : Gigabyte 3D Galaxy Liquid Cooling System on OC Workbench
Koolance Exos 2 Water Cooling Kit on GruntvillE
Cooler Master Blue Ice NB Cooler on Viper Lair
Evercool F117 Nighthawk VGA Cooler on Big Bruin

Mouse:
Sony VGP-UMS50 USB Optical Mouse on CoolTechZone
Saitek PC Gaming Mouse on Trusted Reviews

Video:
Sapphire X800XL Hybrid Edition on Got Apex
PowerColor X800 GT on Bjorn3D
ATI AIW X800XT AGP on Driver Heaven

SFF/Systems:
SilverStone SG-01 Sugo SFF on Phoronix
Quiet PC/Zalman TNN 300 System on Hexus
Armari DC945G Server on Trusted Reviews
Acer Ferrari 4000 Notebook on Trusted Reviews

Audio:
Logitech Z-5300e 5.1 THX Certified Computer Speaker System on Tweaknews
Creative GigaWorks S750 7.1 Speaker System on The Tech Zone

Motherboard:
Foxconn Intel i945/i955 Dual Core Motherboards on Legit Reviews

Misc:
Cooler Master Praetorian 731 on Trusted Reviews
MGE Extreme Gamer (XG) Vortec 600W PSU on Techniz
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ on Hardware Zone
Seagate 120GB Momentus 5400.2 PATA Notebook Hard Disk on Rojak Pot



Folding@Home News (2 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 8-August-2005  21:48:44 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Just over a week has gone by in our latest Folding Giveaway, the State of Origin Shoot Out. Represent your state, help OCAU stay #1 and help research cures for some really nasty diseases.. all by running a simple background program on your PC.

For more info, see this thread, and our Folding@Home Page. You can nominate yourself for the giveaway in this thread and see how the various state teams are performing here. To start Folding for OCAU, see this page. If you have more questions, browse or ask in our Team OCAU forum.



Discovery Returns (1 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 8-August-2005  16:52:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg

The Space Shuttle Discovery will begin the sequence to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in about 45 minutes from now, with landing scheduled in a little over 90 minutes. This is the first re-entry by a Shuttle since Columbia was destroyed during re-entry in 2003, with the loss of all seven crew.

As always you can keep track of things here in our Forums and NASA's "Return to Flight" mission page. If you have broadband, tune into NASA TV for live streaming footage. One interesting view that we will hopefully share via NASA TV will be footage from the International Space Station as Discovery streaks into the atmosphere below it.

Edit: weather delay, so still a couple of hours off. stay tuned to this thread for info.
Edit: waved off for 24h due to weather, bah.



Engin Voice Box (6 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 8-August-2005  11:43:57 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Voice over IP, or VoIP, is one of the latest buzzwords, but not that many people know what it's all about. Enthalpy has checked out a new kit from Engin that aims to make it easy for anyone to use, and enjoy cheap phone calls over the internet:


Click here for the review!



Five Years Ago on OCAU (6 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 8-August-2005  02:54:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Here's some more historical catchup. If you're interested in the previous Five Years Ago on OCAU newsposts, they're here, here and here.

We're only up to October 1999 so far, so actually it's nearly Six Years Ago! On the 12th of October 1999 much of Sydney's CBD lost power due to a fire in a distribution centre, which made for an exciting day at work, especially with only a few months left of the "Y2K is approaching!" panic. Meanwhile, I was still playing around with various mendocino Celerons, but P3-450's @ 600MHz were another popular overclock. The first-generation (Slot A) Athlons were rare, with some hardcore guys getting their 600/650 units to over 800MHz. Overclocking Athlons was tricky, because the "Golden Finger Devices" hadn't appeared yet. We still had to deal with a poor selection of PCI/AGP divisors, with high FSB overclocks throwing the PCI and AGP speeds out of whack, corrupting HDD data and in some cases frying video cards. As I recall, most of my spare time was sucked up by the game Driver. :)

We had our first motherboard review, of the AOpen AX6BC Pro, a Slot1 board that we commended for stability and reliability. Amazingly, it was only about a year ago that I replaced that board in my (then) girlfriend's PC. Not because the board died, but because she wanted a faster CPU!

Some other tidbits:I know a lot of this stuff looks really ghetto nowadays, but it was cutting-edge at the time. In fact, many of the commercial products we see nowadays are extensions on ideas dreamed up by hobbyists in the past. Anyway, on the 20th of October 1999 I noted a petition (all links dead now) about Intel's supposed anti-competitive practises involving the supply of BX chipsets to Athlon motherboard manufacturers. Interesting stuff with AMD's recent lawsuit against Intel. Nick Arrowsmith sent in his nutty P2 @ 140MHz FSB.. he actually emailed me a couple of months ago, having upgraded to an Athlon64 4000+. Nice to hear. :)

One other cool thing from October 1999 was the opening of our Forums, in their very first incarnation, on the 26th. Who would have known they'd turn into the monster they are today. :)



Monday Morning (4 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 8-August-2005  00:57:21 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Adrian's Rojak Pot has their latest Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide posted up on their site, now covering over 230 Graphics Cards.

Paul sent in a link to Hardware Zone, where they have an article about Vista posted, called ATI to Deliver Superior Support for Microsoft's Next OS.

James lets us know of this Waterblock, called the Cerberus WB1. Definately an interesting design.

Hardware Secrets has a handy guide showing you how to Unclog your Epson print heads.

Tweakguides has already posted up a tweak guide for the new F.E.A.R demo that was released on the weekend.

Guru3d has a preview of the upcoming ATI Radeon x800 GT posted up on their site.

OCWorkbench compare a pair of 6600LEs on SLI mode, with a 6600GT. Check out the full article, here.

Apple has announced that they will be releasing Mobile Phones soon. The latest word on the grapevine has the device launching at the V Festival on 21 August, with Virgin Mobile acting as the UK carrier for the download service.

Austrian Video game publisher, JoWood has scrapped the Stargate SG-1 Video game, and terminated the company's relationship with developer 'Perception'.



Sunday Morning Reviews (1 Comments) (link)
 Sunday, 7-August-2005  01:41:29 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Motherboard:
AOpen i915GMm-HFS on Sudhian
Epox EP-9NPA+ Ultra Socket 939 Motherboard on PCstats

Networking:
3Com Wireless LAN Access Point 7250 on BIOS

Accessories:
Razer Copperhead Gaming Mouse on Hardware Zone
Saitek Laser Mouse on TweakPC
Logitech Harmony 880 Advanced Universal Remote on CoolTechZone
Microsoft Optical Desktop with Fingerprint Reader on Bytesector

Videocard:
Albatron GeForce 7800GTX Videocard on PCStats
ABIT Fatal1ty X800 XL 512MB on Hexus

Case:
Antec TX1050B Black SOHO Tower Case on Extreme Overclocking

Misc:
HP/Compaq TC4200 Tablet PC on HotHardware
Nikon Coolpix 7900 7.1MP Digital Camera on Bytesector
OCZ PC2-6400 Gold Series on Bytesector
Samsung 193P+ LCD Display on XYZ Computing

Cooling:
Silverstone Nitrogon NT02 on Metku



Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 6-August-2005  16:46:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Bits and bobs from here and there..

So my CPU is stuck to my HSF.. in Newbie Lounge.
Do you turn off your monitor? in Newbie Lounge.
An excellent review of the A64 X2 3800+ in Overclocking & Hardware.
Lian Li Computer Desk in Overclocking & Hardware.
Noise of Seagate's 7200.x range in Storage, Backup & Memory.
Project H-1 Concept PC in Modding & Electronics: Worklogs.
Cabling & you - the rules in Networking & Internet.
Water Chiller Project in Extreme Cooling.
AMD A64 X2 Overclocking Results in AMD Hardware.
Shirt Making & Stenciling Thread in Graphics & Programming.
QLD: Stolen gtir from garage in Motoring.
Triumph Spitfire Death! (pics) in Motoring.
Monty Python To Return in TV, Movies & Music.
Plane Crazy (pics) in Photography.
My New Zealand trip - instalment #2 (large pics) in Photography.
I lost a customer tonight! in The Pub.



Early Saturday Morning (3 Comments) (link)
 Saturday, 6-August-2005  00:34:35 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Sierra has annouced that F.E.A.R single player demo is going to be released within the next few days. There is a discussion about this in our Games forum, here. Edit: Brent has pointed out that it has been released over at Gamearena, and Ausgamers.

Bit-Tech have a play with Windows Vista. We cover some of the technology behind the Beta, as well as more mundane things like the new Installer and the new security features included. There's a look at the new interface, using Aero, as well as our opinions on the new IE7. Check out the full article, here.

Mushkin have apparently beefed up their heatsink design for their top memory modules. Adrian's Rojak Pot has more information on their site.

OCIA has their second part of their overclocking guide posted.

A dilemma we must have all faced at least once, trying to get that new hard drive working in your friend's old computer. Well, Hardware Secrets has a guide posted up that will help you overcome that problem.

On the same topic as Hard Drives, Hardware secrets also strip down a Hard Drive and show us how the main components work.

I found this pretty neat guide showing you how to make your own MP3 Player. Pretty damn cool!

Just a few Hardware Round-Ups to finish off this Friday Night:

Crucial DDR2-6400 and 5300 Roundup on Indygamers
G.Skill DDR Memory Roundup: 7 Extreme Kits Tested on Madshrimps
Crucial Memory Roundup on Avault
GeForce 7800 GTX Roundup on Hexus



Friday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 5-August-2005  20:09:31 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Cooling:
Zerex Super Coolant Water Additive on OCIA
Evercool Neon Crab Memory Cooler on BigBruin
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler on PC Modding Malaysia

Motherboard:
Abit AN8 SLI NFORCE4 SLI Motherboard on HardcoreWare
Albatron K8SLI Motherboard on PCStats
Asus P5WD2 Premium 955X Motherboard on PcPer
Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith VE motherboard on Xtreme Resources

Videocard:
Gigabyte GV-NX78X256V-B Geforce 7800GTX Videocard on PCstats
NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX + 1.0-7675 Preview on Phoronix
ABIT R9550-256Guru (Radeon 9550 256MB AGP) on Hardware Zone

RAM:
OCZ Platinum PC4800 Elite Edition 1GB Dual Channel Kit on InsaneTek

Audio:
Logitech MM22 Portable iPod Speakers on Bonafide Reviews
Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox on Cool Tech Zone

Case:
Gigabyte Aurora chassis and watercooling kit on Bit-Tech

Misc:
ZBoard Battlefield 2 Keyset on 3DXtreme
Samsung Spinpoint SP2004C SATA II 200 Gigabyte NCQ Hard Drive on Future Looks
Ultra Fan Commander w/Thermal Sensors on Overclockers Online



Press Releases (47 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 5-August-2005  16:43:17 (GMT +10) - by Agg

Firstly, a special greeting to Astron Telecommunications, whose Indian telemarketing centre has rung me six times in the last two days, despite me asking to be removed from their database every time they rang. One of the calls came while I was on the phone to the Australian Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, lodging a complaint about them. It's been suggested that registering your details on the Do Not Contact opt-out page on the Australian Direct Marketing Association is a way to reduce these annoying calls, so I've now done that and time will tell. The main thing that gets me about these calls is that they're coming from India via (I assume) super-high-compression VoIP internet telephony. So the extremely poor quality of the line, coupled with the accent of the person making the call, makes the sales pitch almost indecipherable. And what are they selling? Telecommunications! Marketing at its best.

Anyway, on with the press releases:

AMD launched the AMD Opteron 100 Series with ECC unbuffered memory support. Based on overwhelming customer demand in an increasing number of critical markets for one-way servers and workstations, AMD is expanding the types of memory supported by the AMD Opteron 100 Series processors. More info here. They also expanded the AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor line to include a 3800+ model that we've seen several reviews of in the last few days.

Cooler Master released a new heatpipe-based chipset cooler. CM Blue Ice is designed to cool down the temperature of Northbridge chipset and surrounding components. More info here.

Cooltech, an Italian watercooling component manufacturer, announced some new products. We are proud to introduce our new products for PC watercooling. More info here.

OCZ announced PC-4000 EL 1GB Gold Edition memory. Witnessing a growing trend in memory-hungry PC games, OCZ developed the PC-4000 1GB Gold Series with gamers’ distinctive needs in mind. More info here.

Western Digital have increased the warranty on some of their hard drive products. WD desktop and notebook hard drives, including WD Scorpio, WD Caviar, WD Caviar SE and WD Caviar SE16 drive families, manufactured or purchased on June 1, 2005, or later are now covered by WD’s 3-year warranty. The company’s enterprise drives, including WD Raptor and WD Caviar RE, are now supported with its 5-year warranty beginning the same date. More info here.

Finally, Mitch01 send in Teagames.com which has a few flash timewasters, to kill those few precious minutes before Friday-afternoon-pub time.

Edit: ANOTHER CALL. FOUR TIMES TODAY! *&#*^%#$*&^%#$*%(*&%^*&#$^!!
Edit: five.



Friday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Friday, 5-August-2005  05:43:52 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

CPU:
AMD Sempron 3400+ CPU at Trusted Reviews
AMD Sempron 3400+ CPU at Sharky Extreme
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ at X-bit

Mainboard:
Abit Fatal1ty AN8 SLI Motherboard at TechZone
ECS PF88 Extreme Hybrid Intel/AMD Motherboard at PCstats
ECS RS400-A ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Intel at HardwareZone
DFI Infinity nForce 4 Motherboard at Futurelooks

Memory:
OCZ DDR2 PC2-4200 Value Pro at Tech Powerup
OCZ PC2-5400 DDR667 DDR2 at Guru3D
OCZ PC3500 Gold GX at Neoseeker
Corsair ValueSelect 1GB DDR333 SODIMM at Legion Hardware
Mushkin DDR Redline XP4000 at TechPowerUp
Crucial Ballistix PC2-5300 at Viperlair

Storage:
Freecom Classic SL Network Drive at Trusted Reviews
Western Digital Passport 80GB External HDD at 3DVelocity
Vantec NexStar3 External 3.5 Hard Drive Enclosure at Pro-Clockers

Video/Monitor:
MSI NX6800TD-128E Geforce 6800 SLI at PCstats
GeCube X800XL 512MB at TweakTown
BFGTech 6600GT Graphics Card at CoolTechZone
XFX 6600GT Graphics Card at CoolTechZone
Compro VideoMate TV Gold Tuner Card at T-Break
MSI Theatre 550 Pro TV Tuner at PCstats
NEC MultiSync LCD4610 46in Public Display at Trusted Reviews
AOpen Aeolus 7800 GTX at Trusted Reviews
ATI Radeon X850XT PCI-e 256MB at Hi-Techreviews
PowerColor X850XT Platinum Edition at X-bit

Case/Mods:
AOpen Nouveau Tower Case at Trusted Reviews
Antec Sonata II at Neo Seeker
Akasa Eclipse-62 Case at PC Modding Malaysia
Foxconn TV-544 & TP-544 ATX Towers at Phoronix
Sunbeamtech Chromatic Windmill Control Panel at Bigbruin

Networking:
Canary Wireless Digital Hotspotter at TechTastic

Cooling:
Asetek WaterChill 12V Pump/Reservoir at Pimprig
Spire SP792S12-U AMD HSF at A1 Electronics.net
Aerocool Chameleon Colour/Temp-Change Fan at Ase Labs
AcoustiFan No Dust Quiet Fans at A True Review
Titan Vanessa L-Type HSF at Overclockers Online
Spire DiamondCool LGA775 HEatpipe HSF at InsaneTek

Misc:
Lexmark Z735 Printer at Trusted Reviews
Samsung SGH-Z500 Mobile Phone at OC Workbench
DViCO TViX-M3000U Digital Video Jukebox at BIOS
Cooler Master Real Power 450W PSU at Phoronix
Pentax Optio S45 Digital Camera at Trusted Reviews
Brando G-Clip Camstand at PC-Base
Mio 269 Mobile GPS Navigation System at DVHardware
Logitech io2 Digital Pen at CoolTechZone
Microsoft Optical Mouse at CoolTechZone
Apple Mighty Mouse at Ars Technica



Thursday Evening (9 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 4-August-2005  18:54:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg

There was a successful spacewalk to remove some gap-filling padding from between the heat-shielding tiles on the underside of the orbiting Shuttle Discovery last night. I actually watched much of the spacewalk on NASA TV. How cool is it that we can see, live across the internet, what an Astronaut sees as he conducts a repair mission on the shuttle, in orbit, suspended on the end of a huge crane from the International Space Station? Amazing stuff.

We've seen this before but it's worth another look.. can you tell your slashdotters from slashers? There's a thread comparing scores here.

Ezee spotted more concerns about monitors on Vista. According to a US tech consultant Stephen Speicher, Vista will make protected digital content all fuzzy unless it is viewed on high bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) compatible monitor.

ArsTechnica reviewed the new MightyMouse from Apple, and then dissected it.

AusGamers have the new Dungeon Siege 2 Demo available for download.

OMAGAN spotted this amusing Guide to BF2 on SomethingAwful. Do not risk other teammates to the perils of being shot down in a fiery explosion; get in transport choppers and leave your base without anybody on board! The weight of additional passengers will simply slow you down and make you an easier target for anti-aircraft stations and enemy jets, so do your team a favor and fly everywhere solo. As expected, there's some strong language, so possibly not work safe.

Some oddities from Mitch01: A flash timewaster, It's SuperMario with a pump action shotgun! And, Prescription for change - The Drugs I Need - A rather concerning cartoon featuring dancing pills to show why you shouldnt take prescription drugs.

From B0mBjAcK: An interesting article about the Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia. A little old but still interesting however.

Aftahours sent word of free vector drawing programs.. for, err.. all your vector-drawing needs, I guess.

TechReport checked out NCQ's effect on multitasking performance. However, though command queuing has long proven to be a valuable asset to SCSI drives faced with multi-user and enterprise-class workloads, the performance benefits of Native Command Queuing (NCQ) in desktop Serial ATA drives have been harder to illustrate.

Assembly '05 was a huge LAN party recently held in Europe - Metku were there. Every year there are thousands of gamers battling each others on the 3000 computer LAN and this year the national World Cyber Games (WCG) qualifications were held in this arena as well.

From Neevo: UnitedKeys is another keyboard with mini-displays on the keys for assigning icons. according to engadget this one may be available this year.

Gregor pondered along with this page, how many punch cards would be needed to store a 3-minute mp3 track. The 21 boxes of cards needed would be 5 feet 9 inches tall.



PCI-E Modding (23 Comments) (link)
 Thursday, 4-August-2005  11:54:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg

OCAU reader "myne" has detailed his experiment in trying to get a PCI-E 16x card to work in a 1x slot and a 16x slot. It didn't quite go to plan, but it's an interesting read:


Click for the article!



Wednesday Afternoon (11 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 3-August-2005  12:49:29 (GMT +10) - by Agg

For a quicker way of navigating around OCAU, try the new OCAU Quicklinks. There's a thread for discussing them here.

Here's a nicely-finished project to convert a DVD player into an MP3 PC complete with case window in the PCDB.

HardOCP have a preview glimpse of the FalanX Mali200, an integrated graphics core that may bring top-flight performance in 2006.

If you're a bored photographer, check out the list of interesting places to photograph around Australia, recently added to our Wiki. Remember we have a busy Photography Forum, too.

One interesting repercussion of the recent "10th planet" discovery is that people are reconsidering if we should call Pluto a planet after all. I think we should keep calling it a planet, even if we wouldn't classify it as one if it were discovered today.

Thetron spotted a little trick you might want to try next time you're in a hurry, and in an elevator.

Here's a lengthy but interesting report on Defcon, a recent security conference in Las Vegas. Anyone naive enough to access the Internet through the hotel's unsecured wireless system could see their name and part of their passwords scrolling across a huge public screen. It was dubbed the "The Wall of Sheep".

Unfortunately, one guy who exposed a Cisco security problem is being investigated by the FBI and sued.

David345 spotted this Gallery of GUIs, with desktops from right back to the Xerox Alto and beyond.

"2005 Motorcycle Awareness Week" is on in NSW during October. If you're a rider, or want to become one, check out our dedicated OCAU Motorcycle Club forums.



Wednesday Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 3-August-2005  02:43:54 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

Systems/Laptops/PDA:
KickButtComputers Signature Series Flame System at Extrememhz

CPU:
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor at Sharky Extreme

Mainboard:
ASrock 939Dual-SATA2 (ULi M1695) Mainboard at OC Workbench

Networking:
SMC 7904WBRA Wireless ADSL Modem at 3DVelocity

Memory:
OCZ EL DDR PC-3500 Gold GX Dual Channel at Phoronix
OCZ EL PC3500 Gold GX 2-2-2-5 DDR at OCIA
OCZ PC2-6400 Gold Series at Bytesector

Video:
Dual XFX GeForce 7800 GTX at PC Perspective
ATI Radeon X300 SE HyperMemory 128MiB at Hexus
Sapphire X850 XT Platinum Edition AGP Video Card at The TechZone
Chaintech AE6800 Apogee GeForce 6800 PCIe 256MB at Hardware Zone

Cooling:
Zalman VF700-Cu VGA Cooler at Xtreme Resources
Thermaltake Rocket Fanless Water Cooler at A1 Electronics
Cooler Master Blue Ice Chipset Cooler at BigBruin
Thermaltake Volcano 4005 Heat Exchanger at Techniz
Spire WisperRock V at ThinkComputers
Thermaltake Golden Orb II at TechPowerUp

Audio:
Etymotic ER-4 MicroPro Earphones at CoolTechZone
Steel Sound 5H-USB Professional Gaming Headset Pictorial at Rojakpot

Digital Camera:
Nikon Coolpix S1 Digital Camera at Hardware Secrets
Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W7 Digital Camera at Designtechnica
iSmart Digital Picture Frame at Hardware Zone

Misc:
High-End Wireless Notebook Mouse at CoolTechZone
Logitech V200 Notebook Mouse at CoolTechZone
Ultra Products USB Hubs at ViperLair



Wednesday Morning (2 Comments) (link)
 Wednesday, 3-August-2005  02:39:21 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

Mice, or mouses haven't changed that much over the years, but the new Apple Mighty Mouse is a bit different. "You’ll Really Click". From eroda.

Antivirus Security is something we all use on a daily basis. However, it is becoming clear that the Antivirus software could be the weak point in securing a system. Experts are warning that the popularity of antivirus software could turn the defensive measure into a security risk. More here.

FPS! Its all about Frame Rate. Want to have a kick-arse machine for games, then you need hooge FPS. CNET have found the Five Fastest off the shelf machines for gaming. Shame about the price of them though. I think with those prices I could put together two machines, each one just as quick... but they might not look quite so flashy.

It looks like our Solar System just got bigger with the discovery of a 10th Planet, although the claim of it being "A Planet" is under dispute. Either way, we have a hacker to thank for the release of the information.

I mentioned yesterday that the Beta 1 version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer v7 has seen improvement over previous versions. Over on Ars-Technica they ponder over whether the CSS support is good enough. Keep in mind that this is a Beta1 release.

ATI is all set to support the new OpenGL ES 2.0 specification. In this press release ATI talk about aiming it towards handheld devices.

In another press release, AMD have launched their Opteron 100 Series Processors with ECC unbuffered memory support. "Based on overwhelming customer demand in an increasing number of critical markets for one-way servers and workstations, AMD is expanding the types of memory supported by the AMD Opteron 100 Series processors. This new type of memory support is now the standard for the 100 Series".

For those people looking to get into Digital Photography but who want something more than a point & shoot camera, ZDNet have a Digital SLR Buyers Guide. They go over some of the Pros and Cons of an SLR camera and other considerations when deciding if a DSLR is for you.

Just a reminder to finish off with this morning. If you come across any news, reviews, or even just something amusing, send a link to news@overclockers.com.au and we'll post it if its news worthy.



Tuesday Evening (3 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 2-August-2005  21:00:29 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

There has been more sites covering the new release of AMD's new X2 3800+ 64bit processor. More to read on XbitLabs, and Tech Report, and Anandtech. Thanks Chris!

The guys over at bit-tech did some pretty cool Star Wars engravings to their cases, all done with a dremel.

Mozilla has announced that their Firefox browser has been downloaded over 75,000,000 times!

Tweaktown shares with us their System Builders Guide, covering all budgets.

PodgeSSS shares these sites showing us that they have setup RAID using USB floppy drives, and iPods...

After a bit of discussion, some members on our forum have organised an OCAU Iron Cook Off competition, similar lines along our Iron Photography events, except it's to do with food, not photos. Check out our Geek Food forum for all the information!

DVHardware have a very interesting read on Solid State Disks overtaking Hard Disk Drive storage in the near future.

Tankii sends in a timewaster that might keep you amused for a while, where you can target a website and destroy it...NetDisaster.

Some interesting forum threads I'd like to share aswell:
Your claim to fame in The Pub
Windows New OS - Vista in Windows Operating Systems
Times you wish you weren't a geek in The Pub
Australia vs. South Africa Rugby Union in Sport, Fitness and Health
DIY RAM Cooler, Pics inside in Overclocking and Hardware
Sony PSP Owners Club and Discussion in Other Toys
South park best episode ever in TV, Movies and Music
HSC Subject Choices in The Pub
Official World Of Warcraft Discussion (GOLD) in Games



Tuesday Early AM (1 Comments) (link)
 Tuesday, 2-August-2005  02:16:46 (GMT +10) - by Mred32

It's that time again. The OCAU Iron Photographer challenge is on again. With 57 entries for the July challenge its not going to be easy picking a favourite. Have a browse though the contenders and nominate your choice of the Top Ten. Once a Top Ten has been decided we will all have the chance to vote the winning entry. The August Challenge has begun so if you think you can go out and snap a shot to suit the theme, then feel free to enter the challenge.

For those new to digital photography, or thinking of taking the plunge then this article might be worth a read. "For anyone who considers their photography skills better than amateur, items such as automatic screen calibrators, portable image viewers and the like can go a long way towards achieving superior images".

Microsoft recently introduced a new system for acquiring updates to Windows XP. The idea was that unless you could prove that you legally owned your copy of XP then the Windows Update site would give you little more than the regular security improvements. It seems that it took a whole 24hrs for someone to find a way around it. I'm told that the full info on how to go about it can be found on the net. There seems to be at least a couple of ways to defeat it. Thanks eroda and Tony.

In other news, Overclocker Cafe' have posted up a roundup of the Intel Dual Core mainboard offerings from Foxconn. The roundup includes the i945 based Foxconn 945G7MA and 945P7AA, one of which is Micro ATX form factor. The third board in the round up is Foxconn's flagship product, the Foxconn 955X7AA which offers all that you would expect with a flagship product... at least that is what they tell me.

AMD has just released another processor to their dual-core 64-bit lineup: the 3800+ X2. This chip will be the lowest cost CPU on the dual-core product line, and as such will act as an "entry-level" chip to the dual-core market, and is aimed to compete against the Intel 820 and 830. Read for more specs and benchmarks. Read the Whole Article for all the info.

AMDboard have reached a milestone with 100 AMD socket 939 motherboard designs listed with many new links to photos and specifications. Here is a complete list of the motherboards they have in their list.

When talking about efficiency between single and dual core CPUs, who does it better ... Intel or AMD? T-Break try to find the answer.

CoolTechZone investigate ECS Hybrid Motherboards and look to the future of this series. "I am certain ECS won’t completely degrade the quality or limit the extreme BIOS options of its "Extreme" line of motherboards with the PF88, so expecting a 100 percent disappointing enthusiast board wouldn’t be true, or vice versa."

The E core revision of the AMD Athlon 64 processor features an enhanced integrated memory controller. XbitLabs discuss what has been improved compared with the previous controller version, namely, how the new Athlon 64 CPUs work with four memory modules and what benefits the DDR500 SDRAM support has brought these processors.

Printing web pages in Internet Explorer can be a real pain. Fortunately the Internet Explorer developers realized this. In IE7 Beta 1 you can already see some of the improved features and DVHardware give them a run-down.

Mark at A1 Electronics has put together a list of the current range of Intel Pentium 4, D dual-core, EE & M and Celeron D & M processors with all the details necessary from number, speed and cache etc to enable you to make an easy choice from the many different processor types, speeds and versions that are available.

The TechZone have a quick how-to on cleaning your laser printers. Full article here.

"Five Ways To Block SPAM" is the title of an article on BigBruin. I love reading anything which might help reduce the amount of rubbish I get in my email box each day. Full article Here.

Thetron sent in this interesting, yet amusing article titled How to Make a Solar Power Generator for Less Than $300. The graphics are awesome. Thanks Tron.

OC-Service recently put some speakers to the test. The AV2006 and the other, richer TH2006 series from Modecom. Read the article to see how they stack up.

Beyond3D had a chance to sit down and chat with nVidia's CEO and visionary Jen-Hsun Huang. They had a few questions for him.



Monday Evening Reviews (0 Comments) (link)
 Monday, 1-August-2005  20:15:32 (GMT +10) - by aftahours

Accessories:
Depot 21-in-1 Card Reader on Phoronix
Innovation Lab Blue Tango Classic on Hardware Pacers
Logisys Dual CCFL Fan & 15" CCFL Tube on ExtremeMHz

CPU:
Sempron 3400+ on Hot Hardware
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ on Hot Hardware
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ on Legit Reviews
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+r on Tech Report

Cooling:
Antec Vcool Expansion Slot VGA Cooler on Legit Reviews
Gigabyte 3D Galaxy Liquid Cooling System on Bjorn3D
Gigabyte G-Power Cooler Pro (GH-PDU21-MF) on ExtensionTech
Thermaltake BigWater SE 12cm Liquid Cooling System on Techniz
Thermaltake Silent 775 Intel LGA775 CPU Cooler on Futurelooks
Zalman CNPS7700-Cu Cooler on Pro-Clockers

Video:
ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon X800 XT on Sharky Extreme
BFG Tech GeForce 7800 GTX “Overclocked” on TweakTown
Gigabyte Radeon X800 XL 256MB PCI-E GV-RX80L256V on InsaneTek
Sapphire X800XL Ultimate Edition on GotApex

Motherboard:
GigaByte GA-K8N Ultra-9 Motherboard on BonaFideReviews
Tyan K8WE NFORCE4 Professional Dual CPU SLI Motherboard on HardcoreWare

Storage:
LITE-ON SOHW-1693S Dual Layer DVD±R Writer on RojakPot
4KUS DRW-3S167 Internal DVD Writer on Hardware Zone

Audio:
Shure E5c Sound Isolating Earphones on CoolTechZone
Steelpad Steel Sound 5H USB Gaming Headphones on TechTastic.ca
Toshiba Gigabeat F20 on Trusted Reviews

Misc:
Samsung SyncMaster 730BF 17-inch 4ms TFT LCD on Hardware Zone
Hiper Hpu-4m480 power supply on RBMods
SilverStone LC04S HTPC Case on OCIA
OCZ EL DDR PC-3500 Gold GX Dual Channel Memory Kit on A True Review
Aspire X-Cruiser on Overclockers Online




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