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- Biostar SFF MiniPC
- Watercooling Case
- SATA Hard Drive Rack
- Guide: The Registry
- AOpen DL DVD Burner
- Corsair 650W PSU
- PCstats Weekly Tips
Newsletter Archives
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PCs The Size of Toasters and Watercooling Cases
Hello,
The floodgates of
unwanted email have opened up wide, but there are things you can do
to protect yourself that don't involve unplugging your computer or tossing it out a fourth story window. Though, that can be very therapeutic... Have a look at this PCSTATS Beginners Guide, whose title I
cannot mention, it will provide you with sound tips to dealing with
junk email and all the nasty things that come with it. It's also a good
time to double check your firewall, upgrade your PCs security
software to the latest definitions, and run a scan. We've got a
good guide on Firewalls and Internet Security right
here.
This issue of the PCSTATS
Newsletter starts off with the Biostar iDEQ
250N small form factor PC - a compact system based on the nVidia Geforce 6100 GPU.
Next up is a watercooling friendly aluminum case from Gigabyte, the 3D Aurora
570. The 3D Aurora has special pass through spaces for fluid lines,
and a bevy of low noise fans among its many other custom
features. A removable SATA hard
drive rack from IcyDock is next on the agenda, then we take another
look at the AOpen DSW1812P 18X Triple format DVD rewriter. Dual layer
DVD drives are super convenient for doing backups since they can handle
8.4GB of data at a time.
Rounding off the list of articles is a Beginners Guide to
backing up
the Registry (and tweaking it), and a review of the
Corsair HX620W modular power supply. You'll find
PCSTATS Weekly TechTip a little further down, and a column on AMD's
upcoming Fusion technology off to the right - the world of
hybrid CPU/GPUs is almost upon us!
I'd
like to hear your opinions on AMD Fusion, particularly from the financial analysts in
the crowd, so drop me a
line.
Thanks for reading!
Max Page
Editor-in-Chief - PCSTATS
 In this review PCSTATS will be
testing out the new Biostar iDEQ
250N Mini PC barebones system. The iDEQ 250N is a socket AM2 AMD
Athlon64 platform which is based on nVIDIA's extremely
popular GeForce 6100 and nForce 410 series chipsets. Even with
Biostar's position as a value-oriented manufacturer, it has done a pretty
decent job here. The system accommodates up to 4GB of
DDR2-800 memory, and a PCI Express x16 videocard. The Geforce
6100 chipset gives away one other hidden talent to this small form
factor barebones system... onboard Geforce 6-series graphics come
standard. If budgets are tight, there's no reason why a socket AM2
Sempron 3600+ wouldn't turn this barebones into a handy little office
or workstation PC for checking email, working on a report, or even kicking
back to watch a movie on the PC. Continue Here>>
You may have seen a few Gigabyte heatsinks and watercooling
kits, and now the company is coming out with a hybrid
watercooling friendly case of its own. The Gigabyte 3D
Aurora 570 is a full sized aluminum case has the kind of
watercooling integration other case manufacturers have oddly overlooked
for many years. It is designed for maximum
system cooling while maintaining quiet operating parameters, and
there are no less than three large 120mm cooling fans. Best of all, it has
two tubing pass through
vents for watercooling systems. The 3D Aurora 570
case has a nice grilled side panel that can be swapped out with
an included clear case window (how nice is that! It's even pre-drilled for
quick installation), contains plenty of tool free
expansion space for hard drives & DVD-ROMs, and accomodates a full
sized Intel or AMD motherboard with room to spare. Continue Here>>
Removable hard drive racks offer users an excellent option for moving
large amounts of data around. With Serial
ATA's ability to hot swap drives like SCSI; things really couldn't be
better. The IcyDock
M122SKGF removable hard drive rack is a hot swappable Serial ATA
device, with integrated LCD display and thermal alarm. The unit is beige
in colour, and supports Serial ATA I and Serial ATA II hard drives. The
HDD caddy is made of aluminum which should help keep high speed
drives a littler cooler than plastic would. There is also a small 40mm
ADDA fan at the back of the unit to draw air through the unit. On the
front of the HDD caddy
is blue
LED illuminated LCD that displays the ambient temperature and has a
few simple temperature related alarm controls. Continue Here>>
The Registry is crucial to Windows, but if you
know how to edit it, you can customize your system in places you never
thought possible. There are few computer topics that are approached
with more caution than the Windows
registry, and not without good reason. The
registry is a huge and complex structure which is absolutely
crucial to the correct operation of Windows
XP. As you can imagine, editing the registry
opens up a Pandora's box. On one hand, it gives you almost
infinite possibilities for changing the look, feel and operation of your
Windows XP system. In this article, PCSTATS will take a behind the
scenes look at the Windows XP registry. The composition of the
registry will be examined, as well as how to backup and protect and
restore it. Once we have that out of the way, we will examine some of the
things you can easily achieve by editing the
registry yourself.Continue Here>>
For the average person, backing up your computer is
easiest done by burning your
files to a recordable DVD. With a Dual Layer compatible recordable DVD
writer like the one we're testing today, that means
8.4GB of data, per disk. The AOpen 18x
Triple Format DVD Rewriter (DSW1812P) is one of the few recordable DVD
drives on that market that supports every single recordable DVD format
there is - we're talking DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD+R Dual
Layer and DVD-R Dual Layer. But wait, that's not all! With the AOpen
DSW1812P drive you also get the Chameleon
Bezel, AOpens' mysterious "Silent Technology" and fabled UDMA66
transfer speeds! And if you act now, AOpen will also include CD-R, CD-RW,
and regular CD-ROM compatibility!Continue Here>>
The Corsair
HX620W power supply is the companies first ever, and this unit
certainly has many good things going for it. First off the Corsair HX620W
power supply has received nVIDIA SLI
and ATi CrossFire certification, so you know it's not a piece of junk.
The 620W
wattage rating is a sustained value, not peak. Lastly, it comes in a very pretty modular cable design.
Accordingly, the HX620W's +3.3V line can deliver a maximum current of 24
Amps and the +5V rail 30
Amps. There are three +12V lines each of which can handle up to 18
Amps. It's
important to note that Corsair lists sustained amperage values here, not peak! The
Corsair HX620W power supply is Active Power
Factor Correction (Active PFC). Now that we've covered all of that, let's
take a closer look at the HX620W powersupply from a couple different
angles, and take a quick peek inside...Continue Here>>
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PCstats Weekly Tech Tips: Undoing Anti-Automatic Updating |
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This tip is brought to you by the Sony VAIO TX notebook. Born to travel at just 2.8 pounds. www.sony.com/vaio-tx
Microsoft WindowsXP offers a neat
feature where it allows you to ignore certain software updates
if you don't want to install them (like if the update
conflicts with other software). But, what are you to do though if
you decide in the future that these patches are necessary, yet
Automatic Updates no longer offers them? Setting access to these hidden updates
is easy, first right click on the "My Computer" icon and
select "Properties". Click the "Automatic Updates" tab and
from there look at the bottom of the window and click the
"Offer updates again that I've previously hidden" link. A new
"Restore Updates" window will pop up asking if you want to
restore the hidden updates, click the "Yes" button and then
click "OK" to close the "System Properties" window. Once
that's done the software updates you once hid will be
available for you to install again. Just make sure the reason
why you hid the updates has been solved before hand.
This
is an easy tip, but if you manage
a lot of PCs it comes in handy to prevent problems from updates that conflict with
certain programs. Once those issues are resolved it's generally best practice to
patch up the system.
Let PCSTATS know what you think about this Tech Tip, and be sure to stop by PCSTATS Forums and post your comments or questions. |
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Join the PCSTATS Forums Today @ forum.PCstats.com! | |
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PCstats Issue
No.229
Circulation: 176,194
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| AMD Fusion: CPU+GPUs |
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Much has been said about the AMD/ATi merger,
and now that the dust is settled future projects like AMD's "Fusion" are starting to emerge. AMD believes the evolution of the CPU will include integrating a video processing core directly into the computer processor. Thanks to the modular design of the K8 Hammer architecture, it does not take a lot of effort to increase the number of processing cores, be they CPU or video.
Roadmaps show that AMD Fusion will be released in late 2008 or early 2009, as 45nm parts with a varying number of CPU and GPU cores integrated onto one silicon die. There are many different options available, from a general purpose chip that contains a single CPU and GPU, to multi-CPU/single GPU chips for data centric systems, and multi-GPU/single CPU for a graphic intensive systems.
Fusion will first target the mobile market
according to AMD. By integrating the GPU into the processor, it will
lower the total power requirements of a system. Fusion will also be aimed at consumer electronics, such as entry level desktop/workstations, and even servers. These markets do not require a super high level of 3D performance (since Fusion will allow the CPU/GPU combinations to share the system memory) and decrease overall cost and increases value for consumers and system integrators.
AMD Fusion will not replace videocards altogether however. Gamers who demand top of the line performance will still need a discrete videocard that runs through the PCI Express bus. Accordingly, AMDs' ATi branch will continue to release standalone high performance 3D videocards, says the company.
AMD is first out of the gate with its
intentions for Fusion, so now it's up to Intel and nVIDIA to step up with similar products. With ATi’s GPU experience, and AMD’s processing cores, Fusion has the potential to revolutionize the computer and electronic industry. We'll just have to wait another year to know for sure.
"Get the 'Stats and Stay Informed!" |
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