Looking to cool that small nuclear reactor Intel has sold you in the Prescott P4. The Madshrimps have for you today 6 samples of aftermarket LGA775 coolers that might just let you squeak a little more MHz out of your CPU, or at the very least allow the CPU to run just a bit cooler

HardwareOC have snagged the latest Roadmap for S3 Graphics with details of a coupled multi-board card aka SLI with DirectX 10.

2004 was a great year for PC hardware and technology ? we found ourselves drenched in performance goodness, the likes of which we haven?t seen in awhile because of the magnitude of performance gains are incredible. Additionally, we also have been blessed with games that can truly take advantage of the hardware and are breaking new ground in graphical detail. Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Far Cry are among a few of the most notable games that have an uncanny ability to push today?s PC hardware to its limits. Here?s a look at our ?Best of 2004? picks:

Researchers from the Next Generation Crypto team at Sun Microsystems Laboratories have created the world's smallest secure web server. Nicknamed Sizzle (from SSSL for Slim SSL), this server is the size of a U.S. twenty-five cent coin and is designed to be embedded in a wide array of tiny devices (home appliances, light fixtures, utility meters, sprinkler systems, personal medical devices, temperature and pressure sensors) for secure monitoring and control across the Internet.

For the third year running, OCWorkbench has been running the Readers Awards, and 2004 has been a very interesting year indeed. In year 2004, we have done up more reviews than before. With the inclusion of our mobile forums and reviews, we have attracted more readers worldwide. This year, we see a lot of new innovations and products which generated a lot of interest among readers. In the article, we share and analyse some of the results of the polls by our readers.

4? x 6? printer roundup, what are the Canon Selphy DS700, Epson pictureMate, Kodak Printer Dock Plus, HP Photosmart 325, Olympus P10, performances compared to the R300 and photo lab prints.

Behardware

Hexus.net have a roundup of products from Gainward's Hollywood@Home range. Most will be familiar with Gainward's graphics cards, but they also have a collection of multimedia products, from TV-capture cards to 5.1 headphones (which can apparantly be rather immersive.)

About four years ago, Microsoft's Research and Development team came up with a new technology called Smart Personal Object Technology (SPOT) that uses FM radio signals to broadcast news, weather and other information to wristwatches. The first Smart Watches leveraging SPOT were first launched last January at the Consumer Electronics Show however it did take them a few extra months to get the wireless service running with all its features and have wristwatches available more widely.

Dreamnid.com has an in-depth review and round-up of all the high-end speakers. Although the Klipsch and the GigaWorks perfrom quite good, under the GigaWorks section the reviewer seems to prefer the GigaWorks: " To me the S750 is of beter overall quality and would be my choice if I had to have only one PeaSee speaker system." The reviewer seems to think that the Logitech is in a different, lower class.

The Nforce 5 Chipset will be a highly overclockable chipset. Our sources confirmed that the Nvidia Pentium 4 chipset will go up to FSB 1200MHz, using 300MHz rather than 200MHz multiples.

The Inquirer

Samsung Electronics announced Thursday that from Jan. 1, customers who discover defective pixels on an LCD monitor produced by the company less than six months after its purchase may have the panel replaced free of charge.

According to The Inquirer, Korean company HiTeC Digital Audio told us that it finally has a PCI card. The company called it HDA Digital X Mystique 7.1 gold and this is supposed to be the first PCI based 7.1 Channel Dolby Digital live sound card. Of course it supporst real time content encoding and supports various standards such as Dolby Digital/Dolby Prologic II/DTS and DTS ES.

The Thermalright SI-97, Scythe Kamakiri and Spire VertiCool compared by the Madshrimps using a variety of fans and reference heatsinks. Does the new generation Athlon XP coolers deliver good value for money? Read on to find out

Want the chance to WIN a NVIDIA GeForce 6600, or a AMD 64 3000 939 or 754 CPU?... Even a DFI Lanparty 260UT or Patriot PC3200 2x256 "TCCD"? Perhaps simply Half-Life 2 & Far Cry gamepacks? Make sure you check out our AUSFX NEW YEARS GIVEAWAY thread in the forums for more details on how you could win some stuff!

There is a new trend that recently emerged in the world of power supplies, the wireless trend. Yes, the industry is moving towards reducing the unnecessary wires from the power supplies to better assist in system aesthetics and overall heat dissipation. Personally, this is one of the impressive, long awaited changes that have happened to power supplies in a long time.

SLI - Nvidia's new dual graphics technology, has only one SLI capable chipset for desktops right now. That is the nForce 4 SLI. At least... officially this is case. However, MSI have produced an SLI capable motherboard based on the nForce 4 Ultra. Furthermore, the additional PCB on the motherboard required to change the wiring to the PCI-Express slots is gone. MSI have engineered a way around it. Pictures and analysis can be found at Hexus.net. This solution should be cheaper than the nForce 4 SLI, but the question is how significant will the performance difference be?

I decided to check nvnews forums before i went to bed, and noticed a thread that really stuck out. A Dual GPU 6600GT made by Gigabyte, apprently to be available in January 05. Looks like ATi will be shaking in their little red and white space boots. Here's a link to the THG article.

TrustedReviews has just put up a group test of 7 different 16-speed DVD writers covering the most common brands on the market.

All these DVD writers will burn to DVD+R media at 16x and some of them will even write at 16x to DVD-R discs as well. Unfortunately there?s no 16x DVD-R media available yet, so we couldn?t really test that part of the feature set, although a couple of the drives were able to write at 12x to 8x DVD-R media.

As some of you may know, Extreme Cooling Technology APs (ECT) has recently purchased the assets of nVentiv, aka Chip-con, and is now producing new Prometeia Mach II GTs and accessories. ECT has over 60 years of refrigeration experience and considerable expertise in developing extreme cooling. ECT would like to introduce itself and hear from its customers about what products they'd like to see as well as improvements o­n its existing o­nes. We have been informed that the Intel 775 kit will be out shortly with all distributors and resellers are fully stocked with Mach II and Mach II GT's and accessories for immediate delivery. o­n a last note, warranty service is now the responsiblity of the local distributor and units do NOT have to be shipped back to Denmark. ECT believes that this arrangement will enhance the end user experience and provide a higher level of service that their customers deserve.

OCAU checked out a nifty little gadget from Sitecom. It lets you connect an additional monitor to your PC, using only a USB port. Just the thing for multi-screen goodness on a laptop. Read the review here