Friday News (November the 6th)

With temperature reading and fan control taking high priority on any enthusiasts machine, often times users will be subjected to combine several devices or products to achieve the desired level of functionality. The Do-It-Yourself combination of products allows for a greater amount of freedom and personal design. Some users often find their end result lacking a professional look and feel. In the past, 5.25" drive bays were mainly used for a series of optical drives and several of these bays remained unused. With the ever-growing amount of innovative products released to consumers, the excess bays suddenly become greatly valued, from fan control to Intelligent LCD displays to Live Drives. Personal needs and the level of functionality or aesthetics each unit will bring often influence the choice made. Today in MTB Labs, we will be evaluating Vantec’s latest offering in 5.25" devices, the Vantec Nexus NXP 101 Multi-functional Panel.

Are you tired of your old, cramped, beige-coloured case? Does it have trouble keeping your system's components from becoming baked silicon? Do you dream about having a big, flashy server case that performs as well as it looks? Is your next idea of case improvement a roomy suit of armor that is heavier than it sounds? I can't guarantee the armor, but Antec's PLUS1080AMG SOHO File Server Tower should satisfy both your medieval dreams and computer temperature and real-estate requirements!

To this day, Antec has had the most rock solid case frames that we have ever seen. This steel case is 1.0mm thick. With the doors off, we tested the integrity of the case by applying weight to the top of the case and tried twisting it. There was virtually no twisting noted. You might want to think twice about using this case for your LAN Rig unless you are able to lug around this bad boy weighing in at 27lbs. The case is riveted, and all of the edges have been rounded or machined to rid of sharp edges. No cut fingers on this case

The Ultimate Hard Drive Cooler looks very cool and also keeps your hard drive very cool. Unlike many other hard drive coolers on the market, this one has a heat sink which helps to further cool the hard drive. It is very easy to install and adds extra insurance to your expensive system

The Pentium 4 is very overclocking friendly, but still emits a fair amount of heat. When the going gets tough, you'll want to consider a name overclockers trust.

"Since copper can absorb heat fairly quickly, it was no surprise that the MCX4000 allowed us to POST at the highest levels we were able to acheive with our CPU/Motherboard combo. The previous high was 161FSB, but with the MCX4000, we managed a 165FSB POST. The system eventually hung at the POST screen, but we were able to boot into Windows and run benchmarks at 158FSB. Temperatures after 20 minutes of testing was about 59C."