Tech News
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End of an Era - ATI is Outta Here!
Published: Sunday, August 29, 2010 | By: DennisWell not really, as some of you know AMD bought ATI several years ago and has been doing the merger thing slowly over time. Well it would seem it's time to finally ditch the ATI name and just use the brands they created
ie Radeon and FirePro
If you just bought an "ATI Radeon" and are proud of that fact, fear not. Existing products, including the Radeon HD 5000 series, will not be re-branded. Instead, AMD says the first products to carry the "AMD Radeon" brand will be introduced later this year.
Pretty cool stuff really, watch the news wire, there will be other similar stories coming out all week.
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Intel Core i5-670 Benchmark-Comparison with i5-661 @ TweakPC
Published: Friday, August 27, 2010 | By: DennisI never really paid much attention to reviews like this in the past but now that Team Ninjalane has become competitive on HWBot it pays to look at performance differences of processors and which one might get you the best points from a competitive standpoint.
You tend to spend less money that way.
Today we send another CPU throuh our benchmarc-parcours: the Intel Core i5-670. How does it perform?
The review is in "de" language so be sure to click the little American flag for a google translated English version
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GIGABYTE Announces GO OC 2010 Worldwide Final
Published: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 | By: DennisAnyone who has been around overclocking knows a little something about mfg sponsored overclocking competitions. Most of the time they are small regional events designed to highlight a select crowd and maybe sell some product. That is not the case with Gigaybe. In fact Gigabyte hosts one of the largest competitions in the industry with several regional finals held in 5 countries with contestants from 33 countries competing for a spot in the finals held in Taipei Taiwan.
Well the votes are in and the hard work has paid off for the regional winners, come September 25th one of them will be crowned the grand champion.Taipei, Taiwan, August 24, 2010 - GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co., Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards, graphics cards and computing hardware solutions today proudly announced the 3rd annual GO OC (GIGABYTE Open Overclocking Championship) is soon to get underway. Contestants from over 33 countries have competed in the local and then regional finals which were held in Indonesia, China, Mexico, Spain and USA from June to August. The victors of the regional events will meet on the battlefield in Taipei, Taiwan at the Hua-Shan Creative Park (East 3 Hall) on Saturday, September 25th, 2010.
Sadly we were not invited to cover the event, however much like a golf or football game the scores will be posted for all to see and we will be watching the reports closely.
You'll find the full press release in the forums
Maybe next year someone from Team Ninjalane will get invited to attend, only time and clock cycles will tell.
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MadMouse Glaciator Thermoelectric Chiller @ PureOverclock
Published: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 | By: DennisI have to admit I never believed in the power of "chilled" water in a watercooling loop until I had to build a chiller for a recent overclocking escapade. The chiller was extremely simple and consisted of a regular watercooling loop with an old Danger Den Maze 4 placed inline before the CPU waterblock. The waterblock was then attached directly to my phase cooler and within minutes the water was down to near freezing temperatures.
PureOverclock is looking at a TEC version of the same concept that uses a dual loop design. One loop cools the hot side of the TEC while the other cools the processor.the MadMouse Glaciator is a thermoelectric water chiller designed to effectively cool your processor and avoid some of the trappings we've seen in other manufacturer designs. As we'll see, the Glaciator is a compact and lightweight chiller that can be integrated into any water cooling systems to chill PC or server components, able to chill the coolant to sub-ambient temperatures. Is the Glaciator is a hit or miss? Let's find out.
It is really amazing how simple a chiller really is, just comes down to how much heat you can remove to obtain the coldest liquid possible. -
NL: Review Block: Video and Memory
Published: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 | By: DennisTime for another review block featuring products from around the web.
Video Cards
- Gigabyte Radeon HD 5770 Super Overclock Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 470 SOC (Super Overclock) review @ Guru3D
- OC3D: MSI N465GTX Twin Frozr II Review
- ECS Elitegroup GTX460 black edition @ Hardwareoverclock
- SPARKLE GeForce GTX 460 768MB @ PureOverclock
- Sparkle GTX460 768MB GDDR5 @ LanOC Reviews
- Asus EAH5830 HD 5830 DirectCU Voltage Tweak Videocard Review @ Tweaknews
Memory
- G.Skill Flare Series PC3-16000 (2000MHz) 4GB Kit @ TweakTown
- Mushkin Ridgeback 4GB DDR31-600 CL6 @ PureOverclock
- OCZ RevoDrive 120GB PCI Express SSD @ Techgage
- OCZ 60GB Agility 2 SATA II SSD Review at CCE ReviewsMore to come so stay tuned.
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A tribute to my under-appreciated home file servers @ The Tech Report
Published: Monday, August 23, 2010 | By: DennisGeoff Gasior over at the Tech Report has posted a little something about is "under-appreciated home file servers". I think this post started as a question on their weekly podcast about home servers and if anyone used them. As a person who knows a little something about fileservers I can honestly say they are a must for anyone who deals with mission critical information and needs to have access to it from wherever they happen to be.
I spend an almost embarrassing amount of time in front of my desktop PC. It's my workhorse, and the system that I endeavor to keep the most up to date. My home-theater PC gets used daily, as well. This system has coveted spot in the living room and even a glamorous role in the entertainment business. My sleek ultraportable notebook? She can often be found sitting on my lap, back arched, letting me push all her buttons.
My particular situation is a little different then Geoff's. I have 2 servers running 24/7. The first is a A64 running Linux, the linux box (as I call it) acts as my network firewall, Subversion repository, and backup fileserver. The second server is used for development and consists of a P4 dual core running Windows Server 2003.I need a system like this so I can test and tune my asp.net applications, however its use doesn't stop there. This server also hosts a 1TB RAID 5 that I use to store everything I need to have access to. Movies, music, software..etc..
The server also stores the files I need for running Ninjalane.com including benchmark software, review images, and website content. Of course If I didn't have a business need for an application server I could easily get by with a NAS unit and hardware router, but in my case that is not an option.
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BitFenix Colossus Case Announcement
Published: Thursday, August 19, 2010 | By: DennisWe didn't really follow any of BitFenix hype during Computex but several people got to see a prototype of the Colossus computer case featured here. Based on the coverage the product seemed very unique.
Well after a few months of waiting the BitFenix flagship product is ready for public consumption.
Here are some of the key features
- Choice of Monolith Black or Glacier White
- Two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports
- PWM Fan Controller for fine tuning fan speeds with greater precision
- Multimode Light Controls (on, pulse, off)
- Advanced LED Lighting System with user-selectable red and blue
- BitFenix S3(TM) Storage and Security
- Complete cable management
- Seven hard disk bays and eight PCI slots
- Install up to two 230mm fans, three 140mm fans, or three 120mm fans
- Easy Installation and setupQuite the laundry list, but when it comes to computer cases it's not all about if it can hold your gear, it also needs to look good.
For more information on this flagship chassis check out the Youtube trailer or follow the link below.
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GO OC 2010 North American Final @ Techgage
Published: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 | By: DennisThere has been some good coverage of the GO OC qualifier in North America and it would seem that everyone focused on a different aspect of the event. Our friends from Techgage have posted a photo write up of the event that most everyone can appreciate
This past weekend, Gigabyte held its third GO OC NA final in Industry, California, and put fourteen of the best overclockers together in the same room and let them loose on Intel's Core i7-980X processor and Kingston's HyperX memory. We were there and have all the info, and more pictures than you can shake a memory stick at.
On a much more personal note we will be pushing hard to not only cover GO OC in 2011 but to also get someone from the Ninjalane HWBot team into the competition and hopefully win. -
Gigabyte GA-X58-UD9 @ PureOverclock
Published: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 | By: DennisThe mother of all motherboards is clearly the Gigabyte GA-X58-UD9. It might not be as extreme as the EVGA SR-2 or as colorful as some of the ASUS offering but in terms of pure technology the UD9 is the reigning king of the overclocking world.
While I personally feel that some of the features are overkill and unnecessary you cannot deny that to get ahead in the overclocking arms race you have to push the limits.We've seen many X58 motherboards since their initial launch, and lately some refreshes with SATA 6G and USB 3.0 coming to the market. But we've never seen a board with a price tag like the Gigabyte GA-X58-UD9. We are well aware of Gigabyte's reputation among overclockers, and truth be told, we're big fans as well, since we've seen them display some of the best stability and recovery from extreme overclocking we've ever encountered. But the UD9 is crazy expensive, so how do things shake out when we put the board on sub-zero cooling?
In terms of overclocking the board does great and while the GA-X58A-UD3R will do many of the things found on the UD9 it does have its limitations.
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NL: Review Block - Processors
Published: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 | By: DennisHere is a first, can you tell what it is?
Processors
- Intel Core i7 875 K Performance and Overclocking @ ocaholic
- OC3D: Intel i7 970 Review
- AMD Phenom 2 X6 1090T CPU @ Rbmods
With the first ever posting of Processor reviews we also have cooling (btw we're still waiting for our Corsair H/A70 *hint*)
- Corsair H70 Hydro Series CPU Cooler Review @ Technic3D
- Corsair A70 Dual 120mm Fan CPU Cooler Review @ Legit Reviews
- Corsair Hydro H70 CPU Cooler Review @ Hardware Canucks
- XSPC Rasa Waterblock Review - XSReviewsSupercooling seems to be where my head is at lately, gonna start with SS Phase Change and attempt to graduate to something colder.
