Enermax contunes to provide uninterrupted power

Subject: Systems | December 12, 2005 - 07:19 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Club OC powers through a review of Enermax's Liberty series.  As you might expect, Enermax has added all the newest goodies, without going overboard, and does it in style.

"With dozens of Power Supply companies to choose from these days, it's hard to make the right

decision. However, there is still a few companies out there that you can choose by brand name only

and be guaranteed that you made the right choice. One of those companies is Enermax.

Put some Christmas cheer into your Case Mod

Subject: Cases and Cooling | December 12, 2005 - 03:59 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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CaseModGod has a review of AC Ryan's UV Acryl Panel, a highly UV reactive see through panel of Acrylic to add to just about anything.  The bad news is that you should have an acrylic cutting tool, or else you just end up with an oversized side panel, but the good news is that with a tool, you can cut the sheet into any shape.  So get some red and green, and get your PC into the Christmas spirit.

"Straight from the box the first thing I could notice was that in a room with standard lighting

the edges really pick

Valve Delivers new Filmic Effects

Subject: Graphics Cards | December 12, 2005 - 02:50 PM | Jonathan Hung
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Ryan has posted tantalizing coverage on Valve's new Filmic Effects. This new technology attempts to tackle some of graphics most complex problems, notably motion blurring and depth of field. Valve has some interesting approaches to implementing these effects which ultimately means more dramatic games in the near future.

Sadly though, there's no such thing as a free lunch...

"...

Get some late night gaming done, quietly

Subject: General Tech | December 12, 2005 - 01:08 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Unless you live alone in an isolated area, you have probably had someone yell at you to put on your headphones during an artillery barrage in BF2 or a similar game.  Well, if you've bought a good sound system so that you can feel the bass, and hear the guy sneaking up on your 6, that can be kind of annoying.  The solution is to find a set of headphones that sound as good as your 5.1 speakers, and CoolTechZone may have found a pair that fit that description, the Shure E3g Gaming Earphones

Intel Chairman Urges U.S. To Address Healthcare For Aging Society Through Technology Innovation

Subject: General Tech | December 12, 2005 - 12:55 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 12, 2005 — Intel Corporation Chairman Craig Barrett today urged U.S.

ATI's Catalysts and how they've changed

Subject: Graphics Cards | December 12, 2005 - 12:10 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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It's been a year of monthly updates for ATI's catalysts, with current rumours of a 13th release close to christmas.  AnandTech examines just what has changed over 2005, and ventures into the performance irregularities we saw earlier in the year.

"We have seen on more than one occasion that our benchmarks have been turned upside down and

inside out, with cases such as ATI's Catalyst 5.11 drivers suddenly giving ATI a decisive win in

OpenGL games, when they were being soundly defeated just a driver version b

It's time to wax nostalgic again

Subject: General Tech | December 12, 2005 - 11:51 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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The Inquirer starts off the "Looking back at 2005" season with an article on Intel's fairly lackluster year.  While AMD has been pumping out dual cores and new pinouts, it feels like Intel didn't do too much in the retail market.  It may not last for long, next year the effects from the sale of Spansion by AMD, and the death of Intel's Itanium could indicate big changes for 2006.

CHIP FIRM Intel began this year as it meant to endian it, in a blizzard of confusing chip numbers

that no-one could make sense of while it trod water and hoped AMD didn't gain too much market

Great Charity Auction at HardOCP

Subject: General Tech | December 11, 2005 - 10:42 PM | Ryan Shrout
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HardOCP is setting up to have a hell of a charity auction.  How does a system full of an "unreleased" Athlon 64 FX processor, dual 7800 GTX video cards, 700 GB of storage, 2 GB of Corsair memory and Koolance water cooling system!  Holy heck!  And best of all, it all goes to a good cause -- the Penny Arcade Child's Play auction.

Just to make sure you are not getting "my old junk" when it ships, AMD, BFGTech, and Falcon Northwest have stepp

DFI delivers again

Subject: Motherboards | December 9, 2005 - 06:37 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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DFI has once again delivered a motherboard with more options and extras than most even knew existed.  If you can't stop playing with settings, head to PC Stats to get a look at all the features you can tweak on the LANParty UT NF4 SLI-DR.

"Like the previous model, the DFI LANPartyUT NF4 SLI-DR Expert motherboard is based on the nvidia nForce4 SLI chipset. It supports all Socket 939 AMD Athlon64/FX/X2 processors on the market, and is geared for gaming performance.

TIVOs are for wimps

Subject: Systems | December 9, 2005 - 02:54 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Real geeks build HTPC's on their own.  So if you do feel like making a personal video recorder, you will probably want a SFF case and board to start with.  Consider the Silverstone SUGO SG01, a comparitively spacious SFF system, with enough room you won't be shopping for add on cards that were made for laptops.  See what Think Computers thinks of it here.

'Small form factor (SFF) cases are becoming more and more popular these days, especially as LANS

and home theater PC's are becomi

Antec gives you a way to test your power

Subject: Systems | December 9, 2005 - 02:38 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Antec provides you with good quality PSUs, and now they also give you a way to verify that.  Think Computers has posted a review of Antec's ATX 12V Power Supply Tester.  This is probably the best way to find out if the flucuations on your 12V line that your BIOS reports are actually happening.

'Ah yes, another product from one of the top makers of PC cases and Power Supplies. Antec would be who I am referring to.

If you liked Silent Storm ...

Subject: General Tech | December 9, 2005 - 01:37 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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you will love Nival's newest game, done in concert with CDV.  Hammer and Sickle isn't really a sequel to SS or Sentinels, but the style of play, the character progression and the fact that you can blow a hole through just about anything will be very familiar.  Read the full review at Think Computers to get an idea what to expect.

'Lately, the theme of a lot of games has been World War II. Most of them have been first person

shooters.

XFX puts together a sweet bundle

Subject: Graphics Cards | December 9, 2005 - 12:10 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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The XFX bundle that the Guru of 3D reviews is just great.  Not only do you get a reasonably videocard, it will perform better than most cards in it's class.  Plus good games!  You won't be stuck with aged titles to try out on your new card, and replaying FarCry with all the options turned up to 11 will be much fun.

"XFX did something really extraordinary with this "XXX Edition" product in two fold. First of all

the higher core and memory clocks are just brilliant.

FireFlaw discovered

Subject: General Tech | December 9, 2005 - 11:52 AM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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According to the CNet article here, FireFox 1.5 just had it's first flaw discovered.  The good news is that simply deleting the history.dat will get you back up and running, if you do happen to fall victim.  By the way, you usually find it under Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[profile name].default.

"The latest Firefox flaw exists in the history.dat file, which stores information from Web s

Cooling on a tight budget

Subject: Cases and Cooling | December 8, 2005 - 06:59 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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If you are having some problems with overheating, but don't want to spend $50 on a new 2 pound block of copper that might or might not fit in yiour case, consider Spire Cooling Solutions' KestrelKingV.  As Techware Labs discovers, it won't unseat any of the current kings of cooling, but it certainly beats the stock heatsink your processor came with.

"In the next few days we will look at a few coolers for the socket 939 platform of motherboards.

Intel Fourth-Quarter Business Consistent With Expectations

Subject: General Tech | December 8, 2005 - 06:31 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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Give your mouse a new pad

Subject: General Tech | December 8, 2005 - 06:15 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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QPAD is a new company that provides high quality mousepads with gamers needs in mind.  Head to HardwareXL and see if the Lowsense series of pads can provide the perfect surface for your beloved high DPI mouse.

'…QPAD is based in Sweden and probably better know among gamers. My first impression of QPAD is

that its a young and creative company that knows how to cater to every hardcore gamers needs.

Creating a great Linux workstation

Subject: Systems | December 8, 2005 - 02:58 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
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The aptly named LinuxHardware has been running a series on creating a great Linux machine, and the pictures are finally in.  This is a great series to introduce you to building a Linux box with no hardware problems.

Or, for a second opinion, check out the newly updated PCPer Hardware Leaderboard.

"So, where's the value and justification for buying a system similar to this one, that costs about

fives times more than a budget system but has similar