Monday News part 2

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of the PC Toys AeroMaxx cooler. I did not anticipate it being able to maintain temperatures as low as it did, and I definitely did not expect the noise level of a 70mm fan running at over 5000 RPM to be so low. The T.M.D. fan, coupled with the AeroMaxx's uniquely designed heatsink base, create a respectable combination for cooling your processor. Although not a silent cooling solution, the AeroMaxx produces a minimal amount of noise that could possibly be eliminated, without impacting the cooling performance, through the use of a speed control device

Visually the 550’s do not dither much from its predecessor - the 510’s. In fact one of the only major visual changes lies within the new logo, which now shows support for THX support in all its glory! Since the 510’s Cambridge have added some minor sound adjustments and tweaking to get the full backing from THX. With the addition of THX consumers will truly be able to enjoy the kind of audio playback that you would normally hear in today’s modern cinemas

There are several things that make the Ratpadz GS different. For starters it is a hard mouse pad made out of a high-tech polymer that is very difficult to break or warp. The UltraSlick ™ surface is just that, ultra slick and tough. There are also 9 polyurethane feet, that are countersunk into the base, that keep the Ratpadz GS from moving, even during the most furious of sessions in UT2003. To ensure the rigidity and stability of the pad, the base is ribbed, which makes for a solid construction, light weight, and low profile, only ¼”! Finally, there is the actual mousing area: 11.5” x 9.3”, which is huge! Great for when you are really getting into the game.

Overclocking with the SPD timings was very easy. The memory ran all the way up to 470MHz DDR. We had to use 2.65V to make the memory stable at this speed. By stable, we mean being able to run through endless loops of MemTest86. It is very clear from the Sandra scores, how much an improvement running at 470MHz makes. Going anywhere over this speed resulted in errors in MemTest86. We also tried increasing the voltage, which did not help either. The machine could even boot into Windows at 500 MHz and run Sandra but the memory was not 100% stable.