This is not your grampy’s hard drive. SSD isn’t so great, guys, OK? When Steve was all like “SSD is the future! Blah de blah blah!” he definitely wasn’t thinking of those poor hard drive manufacturers who dumped a fortune into mechanical disk factories! Quoth Seagate’s Steve Luczo: I would say though that from what we know of the offering for example Apple, the… → Read More
The world of memory timings, latency, and voltage is a strange one, but usually you can count on the fact that more RAM is better. OCZ, purveyor of fine system components (and super cheap ones), wants you to know that you can have as much DDR3 as you like — no more stacking up DIMMs up in your measly four slots for a paltry total of 8GB. No, they have doubled the capacity to 4GB/DIMM… → Read More
Do you like PC hardware? Do you like graphs? Well, tell the secretary to hold all your calls, because you’ve just booked yourself an afternoon of CPU feature inspection. Okay, it doesn’t sound that exciting, but if you’re at all interested in processors or PC hardware, you probably owe it to yourself to check out the real-world consequences of multiple cores, hyperthreading, and other things that… → Read More
Here’s what appears to be an easy way to hook your VGA-only notebook or netbook up to your fancy HDTV’s HDMI port. The Atlona VGA to HDMI Scaler/Converter is powered via USB and features a built-in image scaler to ensure that the picture on your TV looks the way it should regardless of what resolution your computer monitor’s set at. → Read More
If you’re a control freak with your computers (like yours truly), you like to have lots of settings at your fingertips. For fan speed, I actually only tweak my MacBook Pro’s, using SMCFanControl, since the sucker gets hot at default settings. But if you’re concerned about the heat in your gaming rig or want to be sure the fans don’t start blasting in the middle of a quiet movie, something like… → Read More
Fans in our high-powered PCs keep getting bigger and louder, since our high-powered CPUs and high-powered video cards keep pumping out more and more heat. And no matter how “silent” they’re advertised as being, four of five of them in one case will always make some noise. So what can you do? Liquid cooling is a possibility, but installation can be complicated and failure can be catastrophic. So… → Read More
We’re seeing SSDs popping up more and more, in plain drive form or included with high-performance laptops.
There’s lots of news to sift through and it’s easy to get lost and wonder “Are any of these stupid things different from each other apart from capacity?” And the short answer is… yeah. But imagine I’m saying that while looking skeptical and making a “ehh” motion with my hand. → Read More
If what I’m getting out of the dubious Google translation of this page is correct, this freaky component is a heatsink for your CPU. But it’s so big, and the fan is… also so big! It looks like cool air is pulled in through the vents on the bottom of the four-barreled aluminum “T-Shooter” and blown out the top by a full-size fan constantly sucking air out of the pipes. Does this create some kind… → Read More
I’m no rocket therapist but isn’t using a potentially fally-offy penny as a heatsink a bit dangerous in the aggregate but this little test of weird heatsinks is actually pretty cool. They used a few permutations here: paperclip, bolted penny, glued penny, and four pennies in series. The results are startling. → Read More
NVIDIA’s “abnormal” number of GPU failures have been the subject of much discussion and speculation during the last couple months. The culprit seems to have been the high-lead solder, which everybody rightly assumed NVIDIA would abandon — after all, it’s cost the company hundreds of millions in direct costs and probably far more in lost sales, lost brand credibility… → Read More
I might have to pick one of these up. A good PSU is essential for a good system; people tend to buy cheap and then are surprised when they’re loud, inefficient, and breaky. Well, here’s a little comparison of two of the newest silent PSUs on the block and it looks like (spoiler warning) the Silverstone Nightjar 450 is the pick of the litter. At 450 watts, it’s not going to run… → Read More
In this exhaustive review, the StealthXStream is taken apart and examined minutely by what I can only describe as zealous enthusiasts in the hardware field. Normally I just read the comments at Newegg to see whether a PSU lives up to its power promises, but these reviewers break it to pieces and track the manufacturers. It’s an interesting read if you’ve never contemplated the bits and… → Read More
The gadget-smashers at iSuppli have cracked open and indexed the iPod Touch’s parts, and found that it’s more than a crippled iPhone (some would say the iPhone was crippled already, but that’s another story.) The parts used are 90 percent the same, they say, but the iPod Touch has a more unified design. It uses a single PCB for one thing, and the touchscreen and a different WLAN… → Read More
Though SACD isn’t the most popular format, it certainly has its fans. And that’s pretty much all you need to sell a product. The product and people who want to buy your product – it’s all quite simple. Kenwood’s X-Z7 and X-Z9 SACD players pack updated features and a lot of power. Both players feature WMA and MP3 compatibility, meaning you can just burn a CD full of… → Read More
iSuppli’s dissection of the device revealed the $237 manufacturing price which would create a per-sale profit of $64 before marketing costs. Unusual? Absolutely, considering that products like the Nano exceeded 50% in profits. Based on these numbers, analysts seem to think the Apple TV will make little to no impact on revenue. Apple’s surprising financial plan for the Apple TV leaves… → Read More
While sizes and speeds of hard drives always seem to be going up, it’s a little more rare to see a company doing something about the sound given off by the fast-spinning platters. Samsung’s SpinPoint S166 hard disk drive series, however, does address noise by using its proprietary SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies “to accelerate operational speed while reducing noise.”… → Read More
It’s been a long friggin’ week, but I’m in the home stretch now. Just four meetings left: Cyberlink, Toshiba, Linksys and Microsoft’s SPOT group. If you’ve bought a new Windows computer in the past few years or installed a new optical drive or graphics card in your PC, there’s a very good chance you have some bit of Cyberlink’s software on your computer. → Read More
OK, raise your hand if you’d like more storage in your mobile devices e.g. your MP3 player, PMP, PDA (you’re still using a PDA?), UMPC (if you’re one of the five people that bought one) or your ultra-mobile laptop. Well thank goodness there are companies like Toshiba out there increasing the storage capacity of 1.8-inch hard disk drives to 100GB. Based on perpendicular magnetic… → Read More
Well, AMD officially launched its 4×4 platform and three new FX-series processors: 2.6GHz FX-70, 2.8GHz FX-72 and 3GHz FX-74. Or is that six processors? Each one is a set of two, dual-core CPUs. And according to Tom’s Hardware Guide, the platform and processors add up to a whole lotta “meh.” Which, by the way, took them 13 pages to get to. It’s not that the setup… → Read More
Alright, so wasn’t Adrianne Curry already kind of a virtual celebrity? If so, then maybe Nvidia wasted its time using its new G80 processors to create another one that’s possibly just as vacuous, but with better posture. Well, at least this one doesn’t talk, which was the biggest shortcoming of the original model. Nvidia’s made a little movie to show off its creation. → Read More
Can you judge someone by the size of their GPU’s heatsink-and-fan assembly? Because, wow, this thing is huge. Shiny, black and pretty, but huge. Regardless, I guess it’s so big on the upcoming top-shelf 768MB Nvidia 8800GTX because the card is just that powerful. DailyTech got its grubby, benchmarking hands on the card and roughed it up a bit using Half Life 2: Lost Coast, Quake 4… → Read More
So the verdict’s officially in on Intel’s new quad-core processors: Four cores is better than two. On the surface that might not seem like a big shocker, but as I’m sure you all know not all new technologies live up to their promises. There’s more than a smattering of coverage coursing through the Internets’ pipes today, but ComputerShopper.com popped out a full… → Read More
Memory manufacturer Corsair is having a very good year with its high-end performance RAM modules. Year-to-date the company’s total premium module shipments have surpassed one million units. To celebrate the acheivement and its general market dominance, Corsair is giving away five, custom 2GB DDR2-8888 gold-plated DOMINATOR memory kits. The DOMINATOR sticks are pretty awesome with an advanced… → Read More
If you’re rocking a particularly small, small-form-factor PC or are looking to get a little extra performance out of your laptop, you’ll want to pay attention to this. Kingston Technology, memory-vendor extraordinaire, has made available 2GB 533MHz and 667MHz ValueRAM SO-DIMMs. Although, by “Value” it simply means that the modules don’t fall under the company’s… → Read More
With standard consumer hard drive disk sizes quickly approaching 1TB for a single drive, this 16GB Flash-based drive (with a street price of about $500) from memory manufacturer Super Talent is puny. However, the company’s IDE Flash drives (available in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities) are perfect for UMPCs and laptops because they are lightweight, have low power needs and are highly reliable. → Read More
Due to too many returns on GeForce 7900 GT, Nvidia is forbidding its partners from overclocking the upcoming G80 cards, according to The Inquirer. The site backs up the report by bringing up how Nvidia locked down overclocking on the dual-GPU 7950 GX2 cards. However, I4U is calling bullshit on it, since its in possession of an overclocked XFX 7950 GX2 XXX. I have to agree with I4U on this one. → Read More
The Radeon X1950 Pro from ATI that launched today is the company’s $199 competition against Nvidia’s GeForce 7900 GS. Based on a new graphics chip — the R570 — it’s the first of ATI’s cards to not need an external dongle to connect two cards in a dual-GPU CrossFire configuration. The old, thick-cabled dongle was not only a pain to connect, but was far from… → Read More
While Intel and AMD might be doing more to lower the operating temperatures of their processors, overclocking them still causes some high temps, especially if the case is chockfull of other performance components. This generally causes builders and buyers to switch to effiecient-yet-costly liquid-cooling systems. Vigor Gaming, a small gaming PC vendor, has been investing in another solution… → Read More
I get a considerable amount of pleasure from throwing the countless AOL discs I receive in the mail through the Fellowes shredder I have in my office. Unfortunately, this creates a huge pile of plastic shards and allows the organic dye coating the discs to escape and possibly cause environmental damage. Plextor aims to solve the problem with its standalone PlexEraser PX-OE100E drive. Designed for… → Read More
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