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OCAU News |
Hmmm.. sorry no news yesterday night.. I was über tired, wrote up two articles and nearly faceplanted the keyboard - fun! Anyway, now with the support of every uni students good friend, caffiene, I bring you the news. And its long. Really long.
Top of the 'box this morning is TweakTown, who have been busy and whipped up two reviews.. first review is of a Netcomm Smart I-Share.. basically an integrated 56k modem, 4 port 10mbit hub, NAT and firewall.. sounds alright, apart from the modem bit. Second review is of a Vantec Socket-A hs/f which pretty much looks like a fop38.. same huge fan, same huge heatsink style. So performs about the same, but this one costs a little less.
Guru3D have an eeeextremley long review of the Hercules Prophet III, 64Mb GeForce3 card. 20 pages long in fact.. and guess what?!? half of it is graphs. We all know how much I luuuurrrrve graphs. *cough* They're a good card tho, VooDoo and myself have been playing around with one.
RipnetUK have just finished a massive heatsink roundup.. 14 different heatsinks went under the microscope to see which one performed best.. and of course it was one of the turbine-fan based models.
ClubOverclocker have just reviewed the OCZ Gladiator hs/f.. a fully copper jobbie that according to them works really well.. looks absolutley tiny too.. makes the 60mm delta (geblah! I've had enough of turbine fans) look like it's 80mm.
Stuart sent us in a link to a new Half-Life mod called SvenCo-op.. their page seems to be under a bit of load at the moment, so I can't really say that much about it. He assures me it's pretty cool tho.. pretty amazing how much life has been extracted from the eons-old q2/hl engine.
PC Stats have reviewed a *thing* of questionable usefullness, but still quite neat nonetheless.. its an CD-ROM, Floppy Disk Drive and Hard Drive all integrated into a single 5 1/4" bay. It uses laptop components to get down to such a small size.. so don't expect it to be fast or cheap. Still, could be *very* usefull for a tiny PC.. MP3 player maybe?
3D Spotlight has reviewed what they call two 'budget gaming laptops'. I think their title is a bit wrong tho.. the words budget, gaming and laptop where never meant to be used together. Gaming on a 500MHz celeron with 4mb of really slow laptop video ram? I don't think so.. Might be usefull for the review of budget laptops tho.
TechExtreme has reviewed the Sony MZR 9000, continuing their rampage of MiniDisc madness. I'd expect it to be F'n Expensive© by the time it's even available in Australia, so this is only a toy for those with well-lined pockets. Mini-Disc is really the format that could, if only the heavy handed big companies could free up the format and allow companies to make lower end (cheaper!) products.
X-Bit Labs has an in-depth guide to the GeForce3 chipset and range of graphics cards. I think they missed out on a card. Ahahahaah! We didn't ;)
VyW has a guide to making your own fan adpators ghetto style.. ie. out of cardboard. Definatley a good idea if you want to get rid of that f'n annoying turbine fan noise tho.
NeoSeeker have reviewed the Samsung Yepp! YP-NDU portable MP3 player. See what I mean about Mini-Disc.. even the younger and computer-based format of MP3 has overtaken it. Sheesh. The Samsung player looks a bit like the X-Box with that Green Thing on the front of it tho..
HardOCP are quashing the rumors about the piracy system of the upcomming WindowsXP which was thought to be F'n Crap©. Basically, the only downside is that you won't be able to pass your CD-Key around to all your mates, because MS will figure it out and 'null' your key. (ie. stop it from working) It is aknowledged in the article that within a week (hah! I reckon thats a bit generous, I'd say 3 days) there will be a "workaround" for it.. they've also reviewed the MSI KT133A board and found out that they really like it. Really, realllly like it in fact.
Dave from SystemLogic has reviewed the D-Link Wireless DSL/Cable router. I'm guessing this is going to mean Wireless LAN cards for all your computers as well.. pretty pricey, and slow. How much do you hate wires, that is the $64k question..
FutureLooks have got themselves confused with DansData I think.. they think that the Kodak DC5000 they reviewed is a sherman tank. But then, we all know that Dan is the only one that reviews tanks.
ViaHardware has just finished reviewing a really interesting little device.. it's basically a thing (technical term) that you put between your Socket-A and your processor, and it will allow you to change the multiplier of the CPU, even on a board that dosn't support mult adjustment. Two questions popped into my head looking at this.. first - would it be possible to make something similar, but alot higher so you could fit absoltutley *monster* heatsinks on your processor. Second, is extending the length between pin and socket bad?
EverythingUSB has reviewed those Keyring USB storage stick things I linked to maybe a week ago. They're definitely leet. (look! I splet it write!)
MikhailTech has reviewed a case we've never seen before. And may possible never see again, because I have no idea where you could get one in Oz. Funny name tho.. Sungmin's Minion 4000B. Wonder who thought of that.
It seems the Ctrl-Alt-Del has lost their host, so until they can find a new one, their site will be down.. taking their place, however, is Overclockers Melbourne, which has officially launched with a new URL - www.ocmelbourne.com. Go over and check em out.
The Guru of 3D has released RC4 of their RivaTuner 2.0 software. No, RC4 isn't like RC5. RC stands for Release Candiate.. and a RC of a 2.0 version software? I'm confused.
A reminder that the GameServe ANZAC lan is happening on the 12th and 13th of May at the Gold Coast.. in the 5-star Gold Coast international Hotel! fwoar, shmick-o.. no volleyball courts for me, no sir. I'm going, and so are a few other OCAU people I think.. so come over and say g'day if you go too.
JeffK has a guide to OvarCloaking.
Finally, JSI Hardware has a review of some OCZ MicroBGA PC166 SDRAM. Interesting thing about this is that at 166MHz, it'd be possible to have the PCI and AGP buses running at their default.. if we had some higher dividers that is. Hmmm.. there's an idea Via, give us some custom multipliers and make an 'overclockers' chipset. That'd be leet.
Anyway, VooDoo reckons the chicks on big brother are in the shower, so I'm going to go do that now ;)
Reviews:
Thermosonic Thermoengine on Inside-Hardware here.
Updated Logitech Cordless Ballless mouse on HardcoreWare here.
Pentium4 1.7GHz on Digit-Life here.
650W Enermax PSU on Icrontic here.
CrazyPC rounded IDE cables on IPKonfig here.
ABIT KT7A on TheTechZone here.
DigiDoc5 on lost universe here.
MemoryMan PC166 on ClubOverclocker here.
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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