Week of December 26, 2004

Afternoon Edition: Thursday, December 30 2004 - 2:25

915P Lanparty
SystemCooling review which features the 915P chipset and supports DDR and DDR2.

Some people are laboring under the assumption that DFI is a relatively new company. In fact, that couldn't be further from the truth. They've been around quietly doing their business in an unspectacular style for over 20 years now. The reason for this assumption is that they were almost exclusively an OEM supplier for a very long time, and their products were not the kind that inspired the interest of the enthusiast market. That all changed a year or two ago when DFI introduced their LANParty series.

X800 Volt Modding
While I'm not up for volt modding a $700 CAD video card just for OCing, the guys at

As you all know, it is possible to voltage mod your graphics card to improve the overclockability of its GPU and memory chips. However, unlike overclocking, voltage modding requires you to physically mod the card.

Bytesized Bits

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Morning Edition: Thursday, December 30 2004 - 8:56

Posted by: Hubert

Cases & Cooling

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Evening Edition: Wednesday, December 29 2004 - 10:35

Posted by: Hubert

PSUs & Cooling

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Bytesized Bits

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Afternoon Edition: Wednesday, December 29 2004 - 2:24

Posted by: Scott

Watercooling
This is the first review that has passed my eyes of .

"Aquarius VGA Water Block kit includes the VGA waterblock, an universal Clip, a silicon tubes, thermal paste, user manual and the mouting screws."

X700Pro
Tweaktown have a review on the which proved to be a good overclocker.

"Today we take a close look at the HIS X700Pro IceQ Turbo including the impressive overclocking ability close to that of the Radeon X700XT which uses the new PCI Express interface and compare it against the older ATI Radeon X600XT VPU and see what is different and how it affects gaming performance in popular games such as HL2, Doom 3 and Far Cry."

ByteSized
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HTPC Case
I've been hearing a lot about this new and seen more than a few forum posts looking for info on the 10M. Well OCC have one under review.

"The Vacuum Fluorescent Display with the software installed does much more than just say Welcome iMon. It is designed to work best with a permanent Internet connection so news, weather, etc can be shown and continually updated on the screen. You can select any single or combinations of options to be displayed in marquee fashion across the display."

Morning Edition: Wednesday, December 29 2004 - 6:42

Posted by: Scott

6600GT
The is the subject of review at Bjorn3D.

"The GeForce 6 series of graphics accelerators from NVIDIA seems to have done a lot to help pull NVIDIA out of the quagmire of controversy and troublesome issues it fell into with the NV3x generation of GPUs. People who might have given up on NVIDIA are now paying attention again because the GeForce 6 family of GPUs performs well across the board. The comeback of SLI technology is another reason NVIDIA has more people leaning its way nowadays. Most of NVIDIA's current GeForce 6 series is available in AGP and PCI Express flavors. With the release of the 6600 line of cards, NVIDIA finally lauched its first native PCI Express GPUs, meaning they were designed for PCI Express. The 6600 GPUs represent the midrange of NVIDIA's line-up, and PCI Express is not widespread enough yet for any company to rely on sales of those products available in PCI Express form only. (One major reason is that AMD-compatible chipsets supporting PCI Express have been slow to come to market.) So, NVIDIA is making bridged AGP versions of the 6600 boards, too. NVIDIA wants to ship a high volume of these products to its partners, and that volume can be maximized only if AGP and PCI Express parts are available."

Music Downloads
Of the , that is the topic of this article at The TechZone.

"Throughout the past few years downloading music on the internet has increased in popularity. At the same time though, it has become illegal through many companies to download music as musicians and artists have been losing money on their CD sales. With many people being sued in the past couple years for downloading music, is it really possible to download music legally anymore? If so, at what price will it cost you to download music?"

ByteSized
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Evening Edition: Tuesday, December 28 2004 - 11:10

Posted by: Hubert

Free Mags
IT professional? Simply a cubicle drone? Eitherway, may be worthwhile.

All the magazines are free to those who qualify. No catches or hidden trials. if the above don't appeal to you.

Folding @ VL
If you got some spare CPU cycles, give us a hand in cracking the top 100. It's for a good cause anyways. :)

Crazy PC 5% off
Our buds at most purchases before shipping. No minimum purchase.

Applies to over 500 products. Expires 12/31/04. To apply the 5% discount customers must enter the coupone code 'CPCVL123104' during Check Out and select the 'Redeem Coupon' button. The basket will then refresh and display the discounted amount.

*Offer excludes Eluminx lighted keyboards, DACAL libraries, Enermax power supplies, Nventiv Prometeia kits, some computer cases.

Silent 6800
If you were to tell me that you can have a modern day GPU passively cooled, I would have asked what kind of crack you're on? Guess you better pass the pipe as Neoseeker checks out the

"On the temperature discussion note, we put the Gigabyte through a more rigorous test than usual - we mounted the Gigabyte in a closed case for the duration of testing with no case fans - only the OCZ Modstream and a Gigabyte 3DCooler. We're happy to report that we did not see stability problems.

Case Related & Cooling

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Bytesized Bits

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Afernoon Edition: Tuesday, December 28 2004 - 3:13

Posted by: Scott

Cooling
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ByteSized

Morning Edition: Tuesday, December 28 2004 - 6:11

Posted by: Scott

Flash Drive
; and it's USB2 as well.

"The 5GB bus-powered USB hard drive, measuring just 2.7" in diameter, fits easily in your pocket with the minimalist circular housing, while the 4-inch USB cable retracts snugly inside the case as to not get lost. It also comes loaded with software to easily create partitions and a boot disk."

680w PSU
Ordinarily I'd make a PSU review a quick link but I think a deserves a little more attention.

"We have been using Thermaltake power supplies for some years now and have found them to do precisely what they say they do, work and work well and reliably and so does this Thermaltake PurePower 680w. What more can we ask."

ByteSized
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Abit Workstation Board
If Abit are in the news, it's usually for a performance desktop motherboard, but Hardware Analysis had a look at the .

"There are plenty of desktop boards out there, but where do you look if you want something more? With features like 64-bit PCI, AGP Pro, socket-478 for Intel's Pentium 4 and six Serial ATA channels, we take a look at Abit's WI-1P."

Evening Edition: Monday, December 27 2004 - 11:18

Posted by: Hubert

Free Mags
IT professional? Simply a cubicle drone? Eitherway, may be worthwhile.

All the magazines are free to those who qualify. No catches or hidden trials. if the above don't appeal to you.

Folding @ VL
If you got some spare CPU cycles, give us a hand in cracking the top 100. It's for a good cause anyways. :)

Modding & Cooling

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Bytesized Bits

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Afternoon Edition: Monday, December 27 2004 - 3:23

Posted by: Hubert

Cooling Reviews

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Morning Edition: Monday, December 27 2004 - 9:47

Posted by: Hubert

6600 GT Review
Whether you're looking for a cheap, single graphics solution or getting ready to go for cheap SLI, the looks to fit the bill.

The fact that this card is right now capable of playing the latest DOOM III and Half-life 2 games on high settings (when combined with a reasonable CPU) shows the true power of this card which no benchmark really shows.

Video Roundup #1
Madshrimps looks at some mainstream video cards in their .

PCI-Express if firmly upon us, Intel has seen to this and AMD will be joining the fray shortly. A few select individuals have been able to obtain high end samples of PCI-Express cards, however for most people these cards are simply priced out of their reach.

Video Roundup #2
If the above link doesn't give you enough information, HWZ also has a with PCIe cards to checkout.

In this shootout we pit three performance midrange PCIe graphics cards in the US$199 segment. In the hot seat we have NVIDIA's GeForce 6600 GT against ATI's RADEON X700 XT and X700 PRO, of which only one can be the ultimate Winner.

Pro to XT
Adrian's Rojak Pot has updated their . This brings us up to revision 6 and is worth looking into if you're not ready to spring for a new card just yet.

Even with the introduction of a new class of GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA, your Radeon 9800 Pro card is still something to be reckoned with! In fact, many Radeon 9800 Pro cards can be given a further boost in performance by modding them into full Radeon 9800XT cards!

915P Review
While the 925X and 925XE may be a bit pricey for some of you, the isn't what I would call cheap, but it isn't as painful on the wallet and has some nice aesthetic features as well.

Today, I'm looking at the LANParty UT 915P-T12, which is a board based on the Intel 915P chipset. It offers support for both DDR and DDR2, but you can only use one type at a time of course. With four DIMM slots, this leads to a limitation of 2GB for the maximum amount of RAM, which should be more than plenty for 99.9% of users.

Cases & Cooling

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Bytesized Bits

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Articles & Giveaways

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