Facebook Inplementing Cold Storage Media Archive In New Datacenter

Subject: General Tech | February 22, 2013 - 07:31 AM | Tim Verry
Tagged: servers, facebook, exabyte, data centers, cold storage, cloud computing

Facebook is planning to construct a new cold storage facility to house archived and less-frequently-used media files. The new data center will reside in a new 62,000 sq. ft. building on the company's existing 127-acre property in Prineview, Oregon.

As cold storage, the data center will house servers with up to 3 Exabytes of total data capacity. The machines will be in a sleep state the majority of the time, but will be automatically turned on to serve up media files when accessed on the social network. Because the servers are normally in a lower-power sleep state, there will be a slight delay when users request files. According to Oregon Live, Facebook has stated that the delay will be as much as a couple of seconds and as little as several milliseconds.
The new cold storage facility will enable Facebook to save a great deal on electrical usage and hardware wear and tear (though primarily power bill savings). The company claims that its users upload 350 million photos each day, but that 82% of the social networking site's traffic focuses on a mere 8% of available photos.

Err, not quite the cold storage Facebook has in mind...

Considering Facebook's existing Prineview data center used a whopping 71 million Kilowatts of power in the first 9 months, moving to a new cold storage system for infrequently accessed files is an excellent idea. The photos will still be available, but Facebook will save big on the power bill--a fair compromise for retaining all of those lolcat and meme photos, i think.

The new data center will be rolled out in three phases, each measuring 16,000 sq. ft. in the Prineview facility. The first phase of cold storage servers should be up and running by Q4 2013. There is no estimate on the power savings, but it will be interesting to see how beneficial it will be--and whether other cloud service providers will adopt similar policies.

Also read: Amazon Glacier offers cheap long-term storage.

Enter the 'Ultimate Overclockers Dream Xmas Giveaway' - GIGABYTE, KINGPIN Cooling and G.SKILL

Subject: General Tech | December 14, 2012 - 01:58 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: contest, overclocking, prizes, facebook, gigabyte, G.Skill, Kingpin

Running from December 13th to 27th 2012, the ‘Ultimate OverClockers Dream Xmas Giveaway’ is a prize draw open to all Facebook users. Participation couldn’t be easier; simply ‘Like’ the GIGABYTE, KINGPIN and G.SKILL Facebook fanpages, share the event with your friends, and you could win a range of prizes including a GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H motherboard.

The Ultimate Overclockers Dream Giveaway - Prizes:

Ultimate Prize:

• Intel® Core™ i7 3770K Processor
• GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H Motherboard
• G.SKILL Trident 2600MHz Cl10 8GB Memory Kit
• KINGPIN Memory Cooler
• GIGABYTE Key Chain and G.SKILL Lanyards

Runner-Up Prize

• GIGABYTE Z77-HD4 Motherboard
• G.SKILL RipjawsX 2133MHz CL9 8GB Memory Kit
• KINGPIN Memory Cooler
• GIGABYTE Key Chain and G.SKILL Lanyards

3rd, 4th and 5th Places

• KINGPIN Memory Cooler
• GIGABYTE Key Chain and G.SKILL Lanyards

How to Enter
To take part in the ‘Ultimate OverClockers Dream Xmas Giveaway’ follow these two simple steps:

1. Show that You ‘Like’ Us

Make sure that you ‘Like’ the GIGABYTE Motherboard, KINGPIN Cooling and G.SKILL Facebook fanpages. See the links below.

• http://www.facebook.com/GIGABYTEmotherboards
• http://www.facebook.com/kingpincooling
• http://www.facebook.com/gskillofficial

2. Invite your friends.
There are three simple ways to invite your friends to take part. Simply select invite, publish on your Facebook wall or send a recommendation message.

For more details, and full Terms and Conditions, please go to: https://www.facebook.com/kingpincooling?v=app_154581087931912

Z77X_UD4HGIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H Motherboard – World Class Memory Performance

The new Z77X-UD4H motherboard features a broad range of exclusive GIGABYTE features including GIGABYTE All Digital Power Engine, GIGABYTE 3D BIOS, UEFI DualBIOS™ and Ultra Durable™4 technology, which includes a range of exclusive technologies that guarantee DIY PC builders the absolute best protection for their PC.

The GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H is a world class performer when it comes to high speed memory, with a record submission pushing past the 4GHz barrier using a G.SKILL TridentX CL11 8GB kit.

NVIDIA Teases Another Graphics Card

Subject: Graphics Cards | April 18, 2012 - 09:22 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: nvidia, facebook, kepler

NVIDIA is using its Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/NVIDIAGeForce to tease another upcoming graphics cards with the following image and the subtitle of "It's Coming."

While there are zero details and the photo is about as ambiguous as it gets, we have several speculations about it.  It could be another Kepler-based graphics card like the GTX 670 or GTX 660 but more likely, we are seeing something higher end that NVIDIA wants us to get excited about.  Is NVIDIA already prepping the dual-GPU variant we are guessing as the GTX 690?

Like I said, it's basically impossible to tell based on the photo, but apparently we'll know "soon".