Thursday News bits 2

It has been almost a month since we first saw the Intel 875P (canterwood) chipsets on the hardware scene. Now, a few weeks later, we are reviewing our first 865PE (springdale) board, the ABIT IS7. There are a few differences between the 875P and the 865PE chipsets such as the lack of PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology) on the 865PE. The 865 chipsets will be aimed at the mainstream market since it is considerably cheaper than the 875P.

Since a power supply with adjustable voltage rails is aimed at the enthusiast market, this review will focus on the needs and wants of the enthusiast. The current market has 350W PSU's aimed to the public, whereas 400W+ are becoming the standard of power users. Following the trend of Americans, bigger must be better, right. If this is true we should see more and more people picking up 550W+ power supplies to keep that top of the line paper weight running

On the front mounting plate you have the power input socket and a toggle switch to allow you to turn the pump on or off independently of the PSU. This enables you to fire your pump up with the system turned off. Vital when it comes to bleeding your system and checking for leeks

Crucial's PC3200 DDR Memory definitely offers great performance and bang for the buck, with a price tag of $44.99 (US) you can have high performing ram without a high price, not to mention the limited life time warranty

One of the dominant trends in personal computing at this time is the mini pc. Whether for use as an everyday computer, as a component in a home entertainment system, or as an in-car computer... small is definitely in. The Maxtop CSX-001 Mini PC Chassis is a Micro-ATX format case, complete with three case fans and a 200 Watt power supply, that may be of interest to people looking to follow the trend and lose their behemoth tower cases

Da der CS601 Case recht schön und groß ist man aber durch ein normales Seitenfenster zu wenig sieht haben wir uns entschlossen dort ein großes Topwindow einzubauen. Da wir dies ohne Window-Kit und dennoch mit einem recht coolen Kantenschutz gemoddet haben ist dieses How to sicherlich eine Anregung für jeden Modder.

With Apple’s 650,000 sales of the iPod MP3 player for both the Mac and Windows market, there was bound to be spattering of accessories for it at some point. In fact, there are hundreds of accessories ranging from car dash-mounts to FM transmitters. Today, we look at a padded leather case from Vaja Cases, a firm that is synonymous with equally remarkable products such as Zero Halliburton cases, Natuzzi sofas, and TVR Tuscan cars… Here’s a snip:

“The I-VOLUTION is a semi-rigid leather case for the 5, 10, and 20GB Apple iPods and is fashioned from four layers of material including leather, tafetta, foam rubber, and ABS plastic. The materials and craftmanship are impeccable; there are no loose strings, nor are there scratches or imperfections in the material. The case, quite simply, is remarkably well-built.”

We're not only reviewing the brand new ABIT IS7 Springdale motherboard, we're comparing it to it's Canterwood big brother the IC7-G and a FIC Springdale offering, but we've thrown in an i845PE chipset board as well to show people what they could be upgrading to. We had a lot of fun with this review and were pretty impressed by both i865PE AND i875 offerings by ABIT. Check out a blurb of what we had to say...

"The only real difference between this 865 and it's bigger brother, the Canterwood i875, is the fact that the 875 features Intel PAT (Performance Acceleration Technology). While this is certainly a nice feature, it's anticipated performance gains appear initially to have been overstated a bit. When you look at this board and compare it to the ABIT IC7 you come to realize that the PAT is the only real difference between the boards and their $20+ price difference and it makes you have to wonder if it's worth it. But hey, we'll let you decide that for yourself in the benchmarks section of this review."