Tuesday News

Aluminum cases have been very popular for some time now. The only problem was most were priced out of the range of the average computer geek. If I'm on a budget, why would I want to spend $200 on a nice case when I could spend that money on something more useful, like RAM or a new video card? If you don't really have that kind of money to blow on a case, why not spend half that on a off brand case and then spend the rest elsewhere? Thanks to case manufacturers like Skyhawk USA, you can now get a nice aluminum case for well under $100. What kind of sacrifices, if any, are you going to have to put up with for an aluminum case at that price.

This processor is made on a 0.13 micron process and has the worlds smallest x86 processor die of 52mm^2. It has 128kb of integrated Level 1 and 64kb of level 2 cache running at full speed. As on the EPIA, the CPU is in a EBGA (Enhances Ball Grid Array) package, which means it is directly attached to the motherboard. This means that the CPU cannot be upgraded in the future.

I was intrigued when I received an email from UniBrain that suggested that FireWire, running at 400 Mbps, could be used for gaming. Sure, a few of us at a Hole in the Wall LANParty in Irvine, California had chuckled about how fast it was and how it would be nice for gaming, but we hadn’t been serious. Apparently, UniBrain is serious. As one of the leading manufacturers of FireWire controllers and peripherals, it’s easy to see why. The more adoption of FireWire there is, the easier it is to sell their wide variety of FireWire products.

Without the bezel in place it was a significant difference, but the bezel, when on , caused a fair amount of blockage. So, back to the cutting disc with the Dremel, and I cut a couple 3"x1" slots in the sides of the bezel. This gave us enough intake volume to be useful

…this cooling is system is self contained and will work with any existing case that has a spare PCI/ISA/AGP slot. Sounds like a good idea, but can it really be that easy to install? Is it safe? How good could the performance be.

Inside the box contains the card, a driver disc, and an S-Video to RCA cable. To keep costs down, there is no bundled games or software DVD player. No extras with this card at all. But the absence of a setup guide/manual is uncommon and rather disappointing, even for a low budget card. There should never be an omission of a user guide.

Now that hard drives are achieving faster RPM speeds, the call for a hard drive cooling system is needed more than ever. One contender for the hard drive cooling market, is spire-coolers "The FlowCooler".