The goal is again to present 4 systems that can serve as reference to build your own new system. Everything can and may be changed to fulfil your own needs and according to the possibility of laying your hands on the components we propose.

One of the most important parts in the computer is the power supply. Without a PSU you obviuosly can't power up the computer and a PSU of bad quality can turn the computer very unstable. Unfortunately many people buy the cheapest one available and choose to put their money on a faster processor or such. This is not always a good choice and hopefully you will understand why after you have read this article. The purpose of this article is to answer any potential questions that could arise in coherence with power supplies. The article brings up several different sections which has to do with the PSU, among other things, how they work and why they are needed at all.

Just got word from Bryan McDaniel over at Overclockers Club that their new AMD Athlon 64-Bit CPU's Explained Guide is out!

Ever since Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) launched the Athlon 64 processors late last year, there has been a bit of confusion about them all. With the two different chips being so similarly named, Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX, it?s easy to understand the confusion.

OSNews have thrown up a new guide called Are 64-bit Binaries Really Slower than 32-bit Binaries? Read on and find out!

When running tests, installing operating systems, and compiling software for my Ultra 5, I came to the stunning realization that hey, this system is 64-bit, and all of the operating systems I installed on this Ultra 5 (can) run in 64-bit mode.

3D Center has posted an article looking into Multisampling Anti-Aliasing, which evaluates the methods used by ATi and Nvidia! the article is nearly a year old ,as it was just recently translated to English from German!

Today, we'd like to pick apart a rather special topic: multisampling anti-aliasing. The basics were touched upon in an older article (that hasn't been translated yet). Today we'll get to the bottom of it.

In this article Xbitlabs are going to tell you about volt-modding techniques for today?s top graphics accelerators based on NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra and ATI RADEON 9800 XT. Among the benchmarks results you will find the performance numbers for the nominal frequencies, overdrive mode (for ATI RADEON 9800 XT), during regular overclocking and after extreme volt-modding of the voltage regulators according to their unique methodology.

Tom's Hardware guide have posted their latest article entitled Ups and Downs: Memory Timings Put to the Test! were they tested RAM with ideal, average and slow timings to see whether different memory settings would affect the performance of the latest AMD and Intel processors! Here's a snip.

It's a fact that modern systems need just scads of memory - 512 MB at least, although 1 GB isn't exactly rare anymore, either. Things get a bit more complicated once you stroll down to your local computer store, where they have a huge selection of DDR400 RAM modules from innumerable vendors in all imaginable variations. So what should you look out for? Should you really listen to what the friendly salesperson has to say?

Microsoft has released/updated two guides:

Exchange Server 2003 Message Security Guide (updated):
NtCompatible

Sybase/UNIX to SQL Server 2000 Guide:
NtCompatible

Just got word from Martin Sikora over at FrazPC, has thrown up his nForce2 timing guide! Here's a snip.

I'm going to test timings of TwinMos's PC3200 DDR RAM. After analyzing timings I would advise You to choose the best timings for nForce2 platform, Ultra 400. Bios of NF7-S (ID 2.1 and 2.2) offers several settings of memory.

3DMAXX has posted a new guide. This time we show you how to sucessfully flash your ATi Radeon 9600 based video card into a fully functional Radeon 9600XT 128MB graphics card. This can give upto a 25% boost in game performance.

Today TweakTown have began their investigation into the relatively new and future orientated Serial ATA interface for our personal computing storage needs and discuss the benefits, as well as disadvantages, compared to the aging Parallel ATA standard which we?ve been using for around 15 years now.

Holidays are long gone, back to business! The Table of Graphics Chips has been updated once again - unfortunately I lost my changelog, and I can't remember every tiny changes, so the following list is just the tip of the ice: added XGI Volari line (with official, pre-released specs as there are still no reviews of final, right off-the-shelf products), merged some tables (now you can scroll the contents which makes updates much easier for me, but I hope it's better for you too) and there are many small fixes and additions. The page now contains 115 desktop and 23 mobile solutions, 138 in total. And - as always - feel free to contact me if you have anything to add or correct!

Looking to upgrade a server? then head this way to Extreme Overclocking for their new guide called Server Power & Performance: A Buyers Guide To Upgrading Your System! Here's a byte.

Servers these days perform such a variety of tasks that it is impossible to give a "one size fits all" solution on how to make it run better. However, one thing that most servers have in common is the programs (or services, or daemons, whatever you prefer to call them) like to cache large amounts of data to maximize performance. For instance, a web page that gets requested often seems common sense to cache it in memory where it can be accessed quickly instead of reading the file from the hard drive each and every time it is requested. Obviously data stored in memory can be accessed many times faster than even the fastest hard drives today.

Microsoft Xbox console modding has been a part of a world for some time now. We suspect though that not everyone is aware of the quite legal benefits of modding your console can bring. Interested? Read on and find out what some soldering and circuitry boards can provide for your experience at TweakTown.

TweakTown's Koroush "PersianImmortal" Ghazi is back on the job with his latest guide simply called "The Simple Antialiasing and Anisotropic Guide". What is Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering? What does it do for me and my games? What type of hit does it generate on performance? All answers are within.

Just got word those mad guy's over at Madshrimps have dug up some Info on howto for flashing your nVidia FX 5900 none ultra to a fully fledged FX 5950 Ultra graphics card!

nVidia used to hardwire all graphic cards with the correct BIOS so flashing cards like ATi wasn't possible... However, newly released information suggests that the NV38 (5950u) is simply a software rebadged NV35 (5900).

2CPU have thrown up a new guide called Exploring Hyper-threading Performance , which is a technical overview of Hyper-threading for Intel's Pentium 4 Processor!

Alright kids, it's quiz time. By looking at the picture to the right, please tell me how many processors I recently purchased? In the past, this was a really simple question to answer, why two of course! Since Intel rolled out hyper-threading, a simple glimpse at Task Manager just isn't enough to tell you what someone has under the hood of their precious boxen.

Just got word that Think Computers have thrown up a flashing guide for turning you're ATI Radeon 9800 Non-Pro or SE card into a Radeon 9800 Pro! Here's a snip.

Many people have been reading about the new mod popping up on forums that discuss the ability to convert a Non-Pro or SE ATI 9800 into a Pro card with all the benefits thereof. The problem is there are a lot of conflicting reports and half truths floating around about just what is useful and effective and what is not. The simple truth is that this is easy to do with the right card, effective, and better yet you can keep an extra $150 in your pocket.

Thanks to the other bat cave WinxpCentral for sending over this guide!

NSA has developed and distributed configuration guidance for Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 2000 in the form of configuration guides. These guides are currently being used throughout the government and by numerous entities as a security baseline for their Windows systems. To assist our Windows XP user community, NSA has developed security configuration guidance for Windows XP, with the cooperation of other government agencies and industry partners who provided their expertise and extensive technical review.

When asking around about the fastest memory timings for an AMD nForce2 setup nobody could give me a clear answer, so Madshrimps have started to test the most common used timings... Here are the results you always wanted to know!