Monday News *3*

The Crucial Radeon 9700 PRO hosts 128Mb of Quad Channel DDR on a 256bit interface which provides 20Gb/s of raw bandwidth for the card to munch up while processing high res textures. Although the ram is very fast, it does not come with any heatsinks on it, and even after intense use you can still touch it without burning yourself. The ram is Samsung 244, I don’t know whether this ram is a good overclocker or not as I haven’t tried to overclock it yet, I'm waiting till I do the tests for that. This ram has around two times the amount of bandwidth that the nVidia GeForce4 Ti4600 has.

As processors get faster, overclocking becomes more apparent and new ventilation systems arise, heating is becoming a bigger issue than ever. To put it simple, KEEP WALKING FOLKS. While I had small doubts on this product in the beginning of the review, apparently my gut feeling was right on this decision. R.A.C.H.A.L. promised to reduce annoying loudness and heat but only caused more problems than it cured. Not only does this product make computer placement in a room inconvenient (can only be installed on inner walls with no insulation), but RAISED case temperatures and only dropped the actual room temperature by ONE degree Fahrenheit.

This kind of mod works best on case fans, as reducing the speed on them doesn't have as big an impact on temperatures as your Heatsink fan. That's not to say you can't do this on the fan to your HSF, just bear in mind that reducing the voltage reduces the fans speed, and therefore its CFM will be reduced

In the overclocker’s world, what was the cutting edge can quickly become mainstream. Heavily modded cases, rounded cables, water cooling and cold cathodes are more common now than ever before. Xoxide, a vendor that specializes in providing extreme cooling and case modding solutions, has developed their own line of waterblocks. Sold under the X-Aqua label, the line includes waterblocks for CPU's, motherboard chipsets, and video cards. Xoxide was kind enough to send us their new X-Aqua GF4 video card waterblock to try out.

While the 60mm to 80mm fan adapter concept isn't entirely new, neither is the same adapter with a 60mm LED fan. Is it just aesthetics, or can it actually work as a CPU cooler? Guess what? I'll take a look. Not at all on a screaming AMD system, but a reasonable system that is overclocked. Probably a system you might still have laying around, or going to be scrounging up for a family member. I'll be using my TV Box for testing this one out… Also, AutoDeletePro is offering a special bundle deal for the fans used in this review.