ABIT hasn't been on top form recently when it comes to motherboards, but its new financial stability means more focus on R&D. Does this latest SLI motherboard mark a return to form for the enthusiast vendor? We investigate.

Bit-Tech

Another big hurray for Thermaltake?s Power Express 250W. Other than being the first of its kind in the market, Power Express 250 just passed nVIDIA?s qualification and officially become ?The World?s First nVIDIA Certified SLI-Dedicated Graphic Card Power Supply".

OCIA.net takes a look at the SilverStone Zeus 650W - ST65ZF in their latest review.

Moving to the bottom of the box, we get a good look at the NVidia, AMD, and Intel logos indicating their endorsement for this unit. It's always comforting to know the maker of your CPU and VGA card/s recommends the unit you're using. This was the first true 600W+ NVidia certified SLI PSU available for purchase as of 02/24/2005.

OCZ PC2-6400 GOLD has been around awhile and is a great choice for the gamer on a budget. Perhaps not as exciting as some of their recent memory, it´s a practical choice for 915 to 975 chipset based systems, gives a decent overclock and looks great dressed in GOLD

OCIA.net takes a look at the Zalman VF900-Cu VGA Cooler in their latest review.

Following Zalman's directions to the T, I install the uh, nipples and rubber rings onto the base. But wait a minute, which set of holes do I use for my 6600? According to the compatibility table I need to put them in either position 1, 2 or 3. Gee, thanks. In other words, try them in each position until you find one that fits.

Founded in 1993, Actiontec Electronics is dedicated to enriching consumers' lives with great connectivity solutions. Over the years, Actiontec has developed numerous products in broadband, entertainment, home networking and communications categories. Their latest product, VoSKY Call Center has become one of the leading products in IP telephony marked.

Now though, PCI Express has helped alleviate some of the form factor issues, allowing for greater flexibility in terms of graphics chip placement, and newer silicon tuners have also reduced the PCB footprint of the tuner element.

It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it! The downsides of barebone system are most of the time the weaker PSU, diminished cooling abilities and expansion limitations. Aspire has built a small case, the X-Qpack, that looks like a barebone, but just a tad bigger and aims to remove these restrictions

DV Hardware has a review of the PictureMate 500 Photo Printer:

The PictureMate 500 is marketed as a printing accessory for any digital camera, it supports direct printing from PictBridge cameras, popular digital camera technologies and a computer is optional for most printing tasks, however it can not execute complex manipulations, such as red eye reduction.

What happens when you pack a quad-SLI graphics subsystem, a Sound Blaster X-Fi audio processor, a physics acceleration chip, a RAID 10 disk array, four gigs of DDR2-1200 memory, and Intel's next-generation dual-core processor into a single box with a 64-bit OS and fire up Unreal Engine 3? I have no idea, but to tide us over until that's possible, today Intel is introducing a new speed grade of its top-end desktop CPU, the Pentium Extreme Edition 965.

Water cooling has come a long way in the past few years. With Intel's recent innovation it could become more maintenance free and mainstream than ever before. In that same vein of relative maintenance-free liquid cooling, Thermaltake brings us the Tide Water All in One VGA Liquid Cooling Module. My first reaction to this was "neat, but probably too good to be true". Was my hunch correct? Let's find out.

When the research and design team of Thermaltake Technology finished the MATRIX chassis, they realized they have built something unprecedented. With the information technology market growing so fast, the computers now are not just machines that manipulate software and browse the internet. The computers now can be used for home theatre environment setup, multimedia, and can be controlled remotely. The MATRIX uses the simplistic silver and black outlines to blend into the home theatre environment.

Today, Intel is announcing the final chapter of its NetBurst architecture with the successor to the Pentium XE 955. We run the Pentium Extreme Edition 965 through our battery of benchmarks - read on to see the first benchmark with an Intel beating an Athlon in ages.

Is the Silent Storm case from Sunbeamtech able to live up to its name? The Silent Storm has some innovative features which aim at improving the airflow; the Madshrimps take it for a spin and compare its performance to that of a worthy competitor.

Zalman has a real winner in the VF900-Cu. It brings it all to the table, with its excellent performance, quiet operation and ease of installation. The fit and finish is outstanding and it weighs less than the stock solution that came with my card. As the VF900-Cu is still new to the marketplace, its availability and price point can't be ascertained with any degree of reliability at this time. At $50, this is not a cheap cooling system, but its performance goes a long way toward making the VF900-Cu a good value.

OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today announced the release of the fastest memory product available on the market?a new DDR2 series capable of 1000MHz (1GHz) speeds at CAS 4 latency (4-5-4). The PC2-8000 DDR2 Platinum XTC Extreme Edition was designed to be the ultimate memory solution for today?s PC enthusiasts that demand leading-edge PC hardware.

Some people say bigger is better, and when it comes to heat sinks Thermaltake seems to think so. Today we take a look at Thermaltakes's Big Typhoon heat sink. This monster of a heat sink/fan combo boasts a quiet 120mm fan rated 16dBA and six heatpipes. To top it off the Big Typhoon will fit Intel P4 LGA 775, AMD K7, and K8 processors.

To explore the X-Fi's potential with X-RAM onboard and a collection of extra I/O ports at its disposal, we've cornered an X-Fi Fatal1ty for testing. Read on to see if it can match the XtremeMusic's impeccable audio quality?and whether X-RAM makes a difference in the games that support it.

The TechReport

A new red dawn is upon us as today we present to you with the first world wide exclusive showing of the mighty new ATI FireGL V7350 Top End Professional Graphics Card. Its sibling the FireGL V7300 we shall cover this card in a separate review later in the month. Though today, we have to sit back in awe admiring this remarkable long awaited product which should put back in to play both parties on an even keel.

Shuttle is the inofficial mother of the SFF market and it launches new systems more or less all the time. Shuttle SN25P is one of the hottest models for AMD's Socket 939 platform sporting all the latest features such as PCI Express, 8 channel sound, Gigabit Ethernet etc. Based on NVIDIA's nForce4 Ultra chipset it has basically tried to build a barebone offering both good performance and expansion possibiities.