Tech News
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Intel i845PE/GE Roundup @ Digital-Daily
Published: Friday, April 11, 2003 | By: DennisThis roundup list reads like a whos who of i845PE/GE motherboards including just about everyone under the sun. Check it out.
"As for the choice of a board for the value system, there are merely four such boards in our review: Jetway PX845 PEV, Albatron PX845 PEV, Soltek 85DR3-C and Elitegroup L4IPEA. They all are of approximately the same price (but Soltek is a bit more expensive), provide the same performance and offer the same feature-set.
For the overclocker on a tough budget, I would recommend the Albatron PX845 PEV board which is the only one of the listed that allows selecting the MEM:CPU multiplier arbitrarily. If you don't intend to overclock, any of the mentioned boards is a good choice." -
Asustek, MSI to Launch VIA Boards
Published: Thursday, April 10, 2003 | By: Dennis"With the resolution of the legal dispute between Intel and VIA Technologies, Asustek Computer and Micro-Star International (MSI) said that they will soon introduce motherboards based on VIA’s 800MHz FSB (front-side bus) PT400 chipsets.
According to the companies’ schedules, MSI is expected to be the first manufacturer to release the PT400 board, which will be available in May. Asustek said that its PT400 motherboards will hit the market in June."
Does this mean that VIA will be back in the Pentium 4 chipset game?, wonderful news!
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Soltek 1200Mhz FSB!
Published: Thursday, April 10, 2003 | By: DennisThe lab guys at Soltek were playing around again and got the soon to be released Springdale boards to overclock from 800Mhz to 1200Mhz FSB!! See the latest Soltek press release in the Ninjalane Message Forums
In the same press release Soltek announced info on 800Mhz processor support in their i845PE line of motherboards (SL-85DR3, etc..)
Not bad if you don't mind running your system overclocked.
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Antec TrueControl 550w Powersupply Review @ TweakTown
Published: Thursday, April 10, 2003 | By: DennisThis is actually a very special power supply and true to its name. Not only do you get supa extra long power cables but you also get a 5.25 control bay and an external molex connector. Check out the review for more info.
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CoolerMaster Aero Review @ Rojak Pot
Published: Thursday, April 10, 2003 | By: DennisOMG 12 pages to review a copper heatsink.
The Aero cooler uses the same copper heatsink from the XDreamSE the differance being the huge blower motor sitting on top.
"Because of the protruding clip, I wasn't able to mount the motherboard because the PSU was in the way of the clip! So what did I have to do to get the motherboard in?
I had to unscrewed two of the screws that were holding the PSU in place so that I could tilt it upwards. This was the only way I could get enough free space to accomodate the huge thumb-clip!"
Its pretty safe to say there will be quite a few of these reviews in the coming months. -
Soltek SL-75FRN-R Review @ VR-Zone
Published: Wednesday, April 9, 2003 | By: DennisThis is the RAID version of the same board we reviewed here. They did have some problems with overclocking and of course blamed it on how the bios doesn't "unlock" the processor.
I would have to agree with them, it is annoying but hardly a shortfall.
"The Soltek SL-75FRN-R is not able to unlock the CPU through its BIOS therefore we had to do a pure front side bus overclock, and were able to achieve a maximum clock frequency of 2470mhz using a front side bus of 190mhz."
Keep in mind they started from 166Mhz. -
Hitachi Deskstar 180GXP Review @ Hardware Zone
Published: Wednesday, April 9, 2003 | By: DennisAside from a name change and larger buffer the Hitachi Deskstar looks similar and performs slightly better than IBM version of the same name. I wonder if Hitachi fixed the failure problems that plagued the Deskstar in the past?
"All in all, we find the Hitachi Deskstar 180GXP an attractive choice, not so much of its features, but the fact that it employs a rather trusted and mature hard drive technology from IBM. Still, we can't really say that it's the best out there as we still have yet to explore Western Digital's offering." -
Killer GeForceFX Watercooling
Published: Tuesday, April 8, 2003 | By: DennisA watercooling mod you'll just have to see to believe.
" You may well have read the press release from Gainward this morning. But that was only the initial product announcement : the bottom line is, you guys will be able to go out and buy a Gainward graphics card with a BladeRunner designed Bit-Tech watercooler on it. We like to call it FXliquidFlow. "
Not Bad! -
40mm Sanyo Tornado Fan Review @ ExtensionTech
Published: Tuesday, April 8, 2003 | By: DennisIt isn't very often you see reviews of typical everyday fans but this one is kind of special. You may remember the 40mm fan I used in the Soltek SL-75MRN-L Review. Well this is pretty much the exact same thing. A little excessive for a HDD cooler but to each their own.
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ASUS P4PE Black Pearl Review @ Hardware Zone
Published: Tuesday, April 8, 2003 | By: DennisFor the money the i845PE chipset is where its at unless you are going dual channel. The Hardware Zone review doesn't have much on the overclocking features but they did post a very curious wcpuid screenshot of the board running at 200Mhz FSB.
"For overclockers, the Black Pearl is quite an attraction as its overclockability was extremely good. With system bus frequency setting available up to 200MHz, you can literally set any value and yet expect the board to handle it without problems. Of course, that's provided that the processor could overclock up to that speed. Here's a list of what you can do in the BIOS"
