Tuesday News

The purpose of this guide is to illustrate how-to convert a high quality, but rather noisy power supply (PSU) into a silent performer. There are many good power supplies available to the computer enthusiast. Unfortunately, a lot of them are noisy. The noise produced comes from the internal fan used to move air through the PSU and cool its internal components. Some new power supplies contain variable speed fans that increase in speed (and noise) as the current load and internal temperatures go up.

Instead of a traditional flat fan back against the rear face of the case, Skyhawk has installed a plastic chamber with another 80mm fan (at 90 degrees to the case rear, they call it a "VentiDuct") that picks up the warm air from the internal fan and CPU fan and vents it through a small rear grill.

Now and everyday, whenever you go to computer shops and asked for a video card recommendation, surely GeForce 4 Titanium series are the most commonly recommended. Why? Because of it's performance wise as well as its affordability..

So, along came a Pen Drive 2.0 GB model in the mail. To say the least, I was a bit floored by it, since the highest capacity to date in our labs was 512MB from DiskOnKey, and this one quadrupled it. We were also astonished to find out that PenDriveUSA was working on a 3GB model, and to top it off, USB 2.0 versions of both. Packing a decent performance punch, the Pen Drive 2GB is no slouch.

As modding becomes more and more popular in the PC enthusiast market, mainstream modding accessories have become more and more innovative. Albeit slow at times for new things to emerge, we all welcome new things to help mod our cases to make them are own don't we? Today, I'll be looking at a yellow two CCFL fan grill from Lamps Electronics. Is this da bomb? It really could be..

All heatsinks have "rough" bottoms. You say, "But my heatsink doesn't look rough! It's as shiny as a mirror!" well, it may look shiny to the naked eye, but in reality it has many rough edges with microscopic rises and pits. If you were to apply a heatsink directly to a processor, chances are good that you would burn it up. What a thermal interface material does, is as you can see from the second image, a TIM goes in-between the microscopic rises and pits on the bottom of your heatsink, giving it a "smoother" bottom. Now, it is very important that the TIM be a good thermal conductor, because it could otherwise act as an insulator, which we certainly do not want. We will be looking at which thermal compound has the highest thermal conductance, or ability to move heat.

While Lazer LED's have been around for quite a while now, perhaps people don't even think about them as a valid source of case lighting. So how about long life, no heat, and not really having to worry about where you are going to mount your lights. If that sounds good to you, join me as I take a short peep at a green Lazer LED from Sunbeam Tech.