Wed Reviews

Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB PC2-8500

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When you think of memory, Crucial is a brand that is recognized as stable and trustworthy. It was some time ago that Crucial (and Micron) never provided overclocking RAM and never warranted pushing their modules passed their recommended values. Even back then, people used Crucial modules to push their systems to the limits. Today, Crucial is one of the many memory makers that back overclocking memory as a standard. RAM has come a long way since those early years. Now there are lights and heat spreaders on most memory. The real meat is the speed and timings and that is what we are looking at for the Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB PC2-8500 Kit.

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OCZ is well known for their high performance memory and power supplies, now they are trying their hand at video cards. OCZ claims that each and every GeForce 8800 GTX card they put out has superior overclocking headroom thanks to premium GDDR3 memory and a special screening process in which only the best video cards make it to the market. Read on to see if OCZ says it true and to see if it can compete with other brands of cards!

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"Well, I was really hoping for much better cooling than I got from the Volcano. The performance isn't bad by any means, but given its massive size and $50 US price tag I would have liked to see improvement over the stock Thermaltake waterblock I was using previously. On the upside, installation was easy and three different sizes of hose connectors are included to integrate it with just about any watercooling setup."

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When building a computer most of the attention goes to the stars of the show including the CPU, video card, memory and motherboard. Parts that can be shown off and command a certain amount of enthusiasm. But behind all the sparkle and shine, amidst none of the fame of those items is the one piece that makes it all possible; the power supply. Without a rock solid PSU your computer would quickly turn into an unstable beast of burden that at best restarts the computer in the middle of your frag fest and at its worst, dies completely damaging your motherboard and CPU with it. A good power supply can provide your system with clean solid power helping you to achieve those massive overclocks or simply to keep your gear working for many months.

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"Digital picture frames are relatively new gadgets. I suppose that they've been around for a couple of years, but ones as large as 7" are still at or over 100 bucks. I don't work in an office anymore, but I suppose that having one on your desk at work is about the coolest use for one, along with giving one full of family pictures to parents or grandparents."

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Quote: Virtual Worlds.You've probably all seen them before in science fiction in comics. Worlds where jacking in via VR helmet or Neuro Implant send us to some fantastical internet life separate from our real one. It's quite a dream that's for sure, except it might not be as much of a dream as we once thought. Though we are decades away from "The Matrix" and gladly so, virtual worlds have existed for sometime now, and are evolving day by day.

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"With USB flash drives going almost anywhere, memory manufacturers have realized this and are designing products that can withstand a fair amount of abuse whether it be leaving it in the washing machine or smashing it against the table a few times. While this quality of construction is good enough for most, for those that demand the absolute best Corsair Memory has designed an ultra rugged USB 2.0 flash drive. We threw it into an eight-foot deep chlorinated pool, boiled it in water for several minutes, and even beat it with a hammer, but was the Corsair Flash Survivor GT able to cope with all of these torturous events?"

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If you are constantly changing components and playing with new hardware you sure have noticed that using a case is not the right way to do it. For years HighSpeedPC has been offering their easy to use Tech Stations that give you an open bench to work with. The new 'Top Deck' Tech Station removes one of the biggest problems of the original offering by placing the motherboard - just as the name suggests - on the top.

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This time around we will be focusing on the Tuniq 3, a steel mid-tower from the same people who make Sunbeam products. The Tuniq series generally has a more refined design than those from the parent company and is aimed more at consumers who prefer the looks of Lian Li to that of Thermaltake. The case is steel, not aluminum like its more expensive competition, but it has that sort of high-end flavor to it that more and more people are searching for.

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* "ZEROtherm have produced some very interesting coolers, including their Buterfly range, and GX series for your GPU. Today I have their CF800 and CF900 which look much more like a regular heatsink rather than animal-centric."

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Quote: "We set out to see if there was a significant difference between DDR2 and DDR3 memory on both of the Intel P35 Express based ASUS motherboards and found that there really isn't. Right now there is no clear call as to what would be better for gamers and enthusiasts as it depends on your tastes. As with all new technology it will only get better as time goes on and with memory companies hitting ~1,800MHz on the initial 512Mb DDR3 IC's it shows great promise for the new memory type."

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Today we have the opportunity and pleasure to review a new memory product from OCZ, a name that is most certainly synonymous with quality in the computer products industry. We will be examining a 2GB DDR2 8500 kit from OCZ's Reaper HPC series of memory. The Reaper HPC series of memory uses the aforementioned heat pipe technology to help dissipate heat this improving performance. Is it effective? Stick around and we'll soon see.

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"The case itself is very attractive to the eye, and designed to fit in with your existing A/V gear; something it manages with aplomb. Available in three colours, the silver model we chose fits in perfectly with its surroundings. Hardware installation needs to be thought out a little but there were no real 'gotchas' caused by the case itself. No sharp edges either, allowing for a pain free installation. The HT-1000 supports both ATX and mATX motherboards and has provision for a full ATX PSU, allowing you to build a high powered system, perhaps for some large screen gaming."

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Lian Li continues the expansion of their Classical Series cases, and today we take a look at one of the newest editions - The PC-A12. We'll take a look at the layout and features of this case to see if it's worth its 140 USD price.

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"It was exactly one month ago that NVIDIA had delivered the 100.14.03 display driver and today we are reporting on yet another new beta driver in the 100.14.xx series. This time around we have our hands on the NVIDIA 100.14.06 graphics driver, which offers improved notebook support and fixes a variety of minor bugs."

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Quote: While I could generate a list of complaints regarding missing features (such as no headphone jack, lack of MP4/DivX support, no component input), I am really impressed by the Go Video 7" All-In-One Music and Movie System. It has a bright, vibrant screen, and a small form factor which allows it to be used in settings where larger, more traditional systems might not fit or be appropriate.

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"Back in March we shared with you a preview of the Tyan Toledo i965R motherboard. As we mentioned in the preview, the Toledo i965R features Intel's Q965 Chipset with the ICH8 Southbridge while fitting everything on a FlexATX footprint. We are back today with our compatibility report on the Tyan Toledo i965R as we share how it runs on Fedora 7, Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn, KateOS 3.6, Solaris Express Nevada, and BeleniX."

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Since its inception, the flash drive or "thumb" drive has given mainstream users an unique way to transport and organize their personal and professional information. These pint-size devices are holding larger and larger capacities these days, which in turn makes their value and usefulness that much more significant. My first thumb drive could only hold 128MBs of data, but now OCZ Technology has introduced an 8GB version of the Rally2 Dual Channel flash drive. These drives have been a fan favorite since the beginning, but we are going to run it through our gauntlet of performance benchmarks to see how it performs against the competition.

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"For $20, the Scout webcam is worth the purchase. It takes good still shots, decent video, and has a built in microphone. Its small size makes it ultra portable and I would have liked to see Cyber Snipa include a carrying case. It stays put when clipped onto an LCD monitor but can also stand on its own. For basic webcam functions it works great."

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"A while ago Razer released the Tarantula gaming keyboard. It received great reviews and everyone I talked to said they really liked it. Razer has a new line called Razer Pro|Solutions. All of the Pro|Solutions products are more focused towards the consumer crowd. Today we are taking a look at the Razer Pro|Type Keyboard, which is based on the Tarantula gaming keyboard. What's most noticeably different is there is an iPod dock right in the center of the keyboard. Actually it's the world's first keyboard with an integrated iPod dock. So let's take a look."

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"How much storage does one person need? 20GB, 40GB, 200Gb? Where does it end, or does it even end? Lucky for us, we never really have to answer that question. Each passing day brings us greater capacities for less money. Just last year, the 500GB hard drive was all the rage, now, in front of me is a brand new 750 GB drive. Yep, 3/4 of a terabyte! Honestly, how many wholesome family films can someone store on their computer?"

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"We don't normally publish reviews on networking hardware and other peripherals unless we have thoroughly tested the product internally for some time and find it to be truly great or a product that is simply a disaster. Today we have the SMC SMC2870W 802.11g Wireless Ethernet Bridge. This wireless bridge is capable of turning any wired networking device into a wireless node and can also act as an Internet Access Point along with a built-in 802.11b/g repeater. What category of righteousness does this product fall into? Well, for Linux users, the SMC bridge is falling down."

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In this in-depth guide we show you how the extract the highest performance from your Geforce 8800 video card, push that GTS past GTX speeds and turn that GTX into an Ultra-beater by following the steps outlined. We evaluate the performance increases along the way by using real world benchmarks; Can a $250 8800 GTS compete with a $500 8800 GTX? Read on to find out.

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The performance of these Reaper HPCs at 5-5-5 certainly was bright enough to blind me without glasses. I still can't get over how well they scale above DDR1200 with such small amounts of voltage. Obviously the ability for these crazy high clocks to continue rising just isn't there. I saw with my P5B-Dlx that it simply couldn't handle dual-channel memory past DDR1280 although the memory seemed more than willing. It appears as though the tortoise has caught up to the hare and is going to pass him...until the new round of chipsets come out which has already begun.

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Quote: "Both the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 series and ATI Radeon HD 2900 series were found to have an exhaust air temperature of 49C-56C, which is enough to heat up a small office, bedroom or dorm room very quickly. It's interesting to see just how hot these cards are getting and with both ATI and NVIDIA promoting multiple GPU solutions just imagine running a pair of any of these cards is a small room for an extended period of time. It's obvious that the GPU is now the leading cause of heat in a computer system, but what can be done about it?"

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Back in November 2006 everything changed with the release of a new style of video card. I say new style because it left behind everything we have come to expect from video cards at the time. Pixel and texture shaders were replaced with stream processors, no longer would you have to choose between Anti-aliasing and HDR, and picture quality would never be the same from the green team. The 8800 series had arrived and it brought with it a great many advancements in video card technology of which the most heralded was DirectX 10. It also brought with it a hefty price tag many people could not justify spending on a single component for their computer. So for some time these advancements were out of reach for many of us as we gazed upon amazing scores of 3DMark and watched as frame rates climbed ever higher. Well, now it's time for the rest of us to have some fun! Enter the 8600 series GPU from Nvidia.

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"GNOME 2.19.2 is the second of nine development releases leading up to GNOME 2.20.0, which is due out this September. GNOME 2.19.2 is being released today and for those of you interested in the latest changes to GNOME, we have included some screenshots taken from GNOME 2.19.2 built this afternoon with GARNOME. In the process of trying out this latest desktop environment we had run into several crashes and bugs -- GNOME 2.19.2 is not for those new to Linux."

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The HIS HD 2900XT 512MB Video Card performs exceptionally well, supports DirectX10 and is highly overclockable. This Video Card has many technologies, a few include; a massive 512bit memory interface, Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing, Unified Superscalar Shader Architecture, Tessellation and High-Definition Multimedia Interface output support. The core speed on this product is 740MHz and the 512MBs of GDDR3 memory is 1650MHz. It comes with 320 stream processing units for vertex, pixel and geometry data, the pixel fill rate is 47.5GPixels/s and the memory bandwidth is 106GB/s. Watch the video to find out more and check out the bloopers at the end.

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Quote: A 4U rackmount chassis such as the ICX-4830B-20BX is easy to get into and perform maintenance, making it a great choice for those on a frequent upgrade schedule. While many similar cases are designed strictly for business, this Maxtop offering provides a mix of features that would make it convenient to use at home, too.