We all have seen some seriously odd looking PC mods while looking around the internet, but rarely does anything stand out from the plastic look we often see in colorful designer mods. This new mod from designer Benjamin “Benny” Franz is aptly called Venus. Although not all of us may agree that this could stand the test of time to be associated with the goddess of beauty, it still could just make the cut for its shear opulence in the use of materials.
The transparent cover shows a massive Shogun CPU Cooler fan from Scythe, the device lacks water cooling. The device looks like a complex machine used to alter or decrypt the human DNA or even split an atom on a mobile platform. The price and availability of this cabinet is provided on request only.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ NewLaunches
Venus - A Designer Mod That Looks Like A Mobile Atom Splitter
Lian Li Launches PC-V351 HTPC Chassis
Lian Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the PC-V351 desktop HTPC Chassis. The all aluminum design features dual front mounted 120mm@1000RPM fans, with an additional rear mounted 80mm extraction fan@1200RPM. The front fans have special anti-vibration grommets to prevent noise. The sleek brushed aluminum chassis comes in three colors, namely black, silver and red according to your needs. The dimensions stand at 279mm x 262mm x 373mm (W,H,D). The chassis is imbued with all the functional and user friendly design aspects users have come to expect in a Lian Li case.
HTPC Chassis Convenience
Lian Li engineers have optimized the airflow while maintaining relative silence throughout. The removable motherboard tray allows for easy setup of the system, while the elegant minimalist design gives the aura of class and sophistication. The hand crafted design such as folded aspects to reduce the risk of sharp edges as well as anti-vibration kits for the HDD mountings coupled with superior aluminum stand mountings, makes the PC-V351 a superior product in every respect.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ VrZone
HTC Touch HD Review
The smartphone world is really taking off at the moment and to be at the top of the tree a smartphone needs to have a large front screen, Wi-Fi, GPS, HSDPA and a few other bells and whistles.
HTC’s Touch HD offers all of these ‘must have’ features. It is a large format device whose 3.8-inch screen dominates the front fascia. At 480 x 800 pixels there is no denying its has a super resolution and the accelerometer helps a lot, as the screen reorients when you turn the Touch HD in your hand. The device really comes into its own for activities like Web browsing and looking at pictures.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ ITReviews
Nokia E63 Review
Of course a reduced price version of an earlier phone is bound to have some omissions, but Nokia has done a good job of lessening the blow with the E63, essentially a budget version of the E71.
Sensibly, they’ve kept the important stuff, and in some cases even improved it. The E63’s key selling point is its QWERTY keyboard, which is a slight improvement on its predecessor’s by dint of being a couple of millimetres wider, with slightly larger keys.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ TechRadar
Vizio Sets Records In Q4 2008 Tv Shipments
We have heard for a while now that sales in Q4 2008 were abysmal for many retailers. The final quarter of the year is typically huge for most retailers and companies as consumers buy for the holiday season. Q4 2008 was different though and thanks to the poor global economy, not much happened in the way of sales.
Vizio issued a statement today that provided numbers for its shipments over Q4 2008. Despite what most of the rest of the electronics industry reported, Vizio had a great quarter. The company says that over the quarter it was the second largest shipper of HDTVs in America.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ Slippery Brick
igmatek Releases Dragoon HDT N422 Memory Module Heatsink
Known by computer enthusiasts to be the company with some top quality PC coolers, Xigmatek, has a new product up its sleeve: the Dragoon N422 memory module heatsink cooler. The cooler serves as a replacement for the heatspreaders or stock-heatsinks memory modules come with. It can latch onto most standard-sized 240-pin DDR2 and DDR3 modules.
The cooler consists of two units that dissipate heat from either sides of the module. Each unit consists of a metal plate that makes contact with the module. The plate itself propagates into an arrangement of aluminum fins, but the interesting component is the copper heatpipe that runs through the length of the plate.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ TechPowerUP
Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283 H.D.T. CPU Cooler Review
Given they’re a relatively fresh company to the scene, Xigmatek has taken the overclocking community by storm with their H.D.T technology coolers. It seems every time I see a question on a forum about “best bang for the buck coolers”, Xigmatek’s name is soon to make the list. They have done really well for themselves and have kept introducing more products to the market as they go. Xigmatek is keeping me busy and sends over another addition to our lab for testing.
This time we are taking a look at the Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283, a variation on an already good cooling solution that is based on the S1283 series coolers. The Dark Knight stands the same as the other S1283’s, but this time it is dressed in all black. Xigmatek has plated the entire cooler in a black nickel coating. And I mean everything, except for the fan of course. Speaking of the fan, with the Dark Knight Xigmatek ships the highest CFM fan on their coolers to date.
Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Finally Shows Up At Dell’s Website
In one of the most bizarre sequences of events we can recall, Dell’s Inspiron Mini 10 has finally arrived on its maker’s website. And this is after being briefly (and we stress “briefly”) unveiled in a 3- x 3-foot cubical at CES, being impersonated at Tecso by the smaller Mini 9 and showing up early on QVC. Yeah, weird. At any rate, we knew that the Round Rock powerhouse was looking to offer this pup up for sale starting on the 26th, so we figure now is a perfect time to host up a holding place in order to get people informed.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ Engadget
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 Video Card Review
In today’s market, both ATI and NVIDIA are pulling out all the stops when it comes to high-end performance graphics. Video cards like the Radeon 4870 X2 and GeForce GTX 295 are perfect examples of this, with a price tag to match. Given the current state of the economy, many people are looking for high performance without the big hit to the wallet. It is to this end that we have the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2, a dual GPU solution on a single PCB, similar to the 4870 X2. I think it is worth noting that Sapphire is the only manufacturer to build and sell the 4850 X2, which gives them a leg up on other ATI add-in card vendors looking to compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 200 series.
In the $300 price segment, the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850×2 can’t be accused of bringing a knife to a gunfight; with 1600 Stream processors, 2GB of GDDR3 memory running at 993MHz, and two GPU’s clocked at 625MHz all packed on the massive 11 1/4″ single PCI-Express circuit board, the HD 4850 X2 is ready to go against NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX280, as well as today’s most popular games. Let’s take a look and see what Sapphire brings to the table in their HD 4850 X2…
AMD Demos 6-core Opteron “Istanbul”
AMD provided a live demonstration of their 6-core Opteron processor code-named “Istanbul.” It is basically a 6-core version of 45nm “Shanghai” Opteron and is pin compatible with the current Socket F boards. AMD seems to be right on track for launch in H2 2009.
As Tech Report has reported, AMD has provided a few demonstrations on Istanbul silicon in action. The first demo was a simple showing of Task Manager on the Windows Server 2008 desktop showing 24 cores in a 4P system. The second demo was on a 2P system with 12 cores running virtualization. The third demo was a Stream benchmark test comparing Shanghai vs Istanbul. The 16-core Shanghai system produced throughput numbers in the range of 25,000 MB/s while the 24-core Istanbul box attained about 42,000 MB/s.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ VrZone
Update: Nvidia Will Drop Atom For Via Nano In Ion2
Personally we just want Intel and nVidia to make love chipsets not war but the impending legal battle between the two has seen an interesting side effect today…
Speaking with Digitimes nVidia president Jen-Hsun Huang has revealed the GPU giant will break ties with Intel when it comes to designing the company’s next generation ION platform (pictured), unsurprisingly christened ION 2.
Instead nVidia has confirmed it will be switching allegancies to, no not AMD, but VIA and its hugely promising if low profile Nano CPU. According to Huang ION 2 is already in development and will appear before the end of 2009. Of course the exciting aspect to all this is ION provides decent graphical oomph to netbook/budget desktop chipsets adding support for things like Full HD 1080p playback - a key factor in establishing these units in a media-centric environment.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ Trusted Reviews
X58 Sales To Slump This Year Slowing I7 Sales
The Core i7 platform came at a very bad time. Although the enthusiast market wants the best that is out, and the Core i7 is undeniably the best CPU that Intel has ever made, the price of the platform change is putting many off.
The problem is the lack of affordable boards that support the i7, as it stands right now there are very few that are under $200, add to this the cost of the CPU $300-1000+ the cost of tri-channel DDR3 memory and you have a serious investment at a time when many are watching their budgets.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ Tweak Town
