Zalman ZM80A-HP VGA Heatpipe: We've been hearing about these Zalman Heatpipe coolers for the video cards lately, so it is time to see what they are all about. In a nutshell, they are claiming to be able to give sufficient cooling for performance video boards without the use of a fan. TweakTown's Mike "Darthtanion" Wright takes a look at both the installation and performance of the Zalman ZM80A-HP VGA Heatpipe and finds out the final answer if this contraption can really work.

Anandtech has taken Gigabyte's latest motherboard offering for spin. This one is based on SiS' latest core logic chipset the 655. It offers dual channel DDR support, AGP 8x, RAID, onboard LAN, Serial ATA, USB 2.0, FireWire and even more goodies. Here is a snip that will make you go hmmm: One of the most anticipated aspects of SiS 655 motherboards has been their support for multiple memory frequencies. While there isn?t a single Granite Bay motherboard on the market that supports more than dual DDR266 operation, all SiS 655 boards will support at least dual DDR333 operation. Interestingly enough, Gigabyte decided to go all out and provide an option in the SINXP1394 BIOS for up to dual DDR540. Obviously you won?t be hitting anywhere near DDR540, but there is an option for dual DDR400, which can be run quite successfully on the SINXP1394.

After collecting an obscene amount of data and asking a whole lot of questions about certain things, GeekExtreme has posted it's review of the APC Back-UPS ES 725 Broadband. Read More for a snip.

Rainer over @ Teschke.de send me a word that he has now finished his english review about the Prosilence 350 Watt Fanless PSU.
So, you want to read the pure english version and not the google-english version, click here.
You will find the german version here.

Antec Hard Drive Cooling System HDCS: Every time you turn around these days, hard drives are getting faster and faster. At speeds of 7200 RPM common and higher speeds peeking around the corner, cooling of these vital components is becoming more important than ever. Come join TweakTown's Mike "Darthtanion" Wright as he takes a look at the Hard Drive Cooling System (HDCS) from Antec. Since we already know that cooling the drives is essential, it is time to see if this device can carry the load!

Just got word from Rainer @ Teschke.de that their Prosilence 350 Watt fanless PSU review is up! It's only available in German, an English version will follow shortly but until then I've done a google translation!

LSDsmurf sends word that Dvhardware.net have posted their Sunbeam EL Stri^p review!

It's colourded, 1.2cm width, 150cm long and it gives off a colourded light what is it? An EL Strip! Sunbeams EL Strip is basically available in orange, yellow, blue, green, light red and many other colors.

Xbitlabs.com send word that their 3ds MAX 5 Rivalry: Nvidia Quadro FX against ATI FireGL X1 review has been posted.

Today we would like to offer you a really cool fight, a clash of strong wills: the new rumored Nvidia Quadro FX based on the latest NV30 chip against the ATI FireGL X1 in one of the most widely spread professional applications - 3ds MAX 5. I don't think I need to tell you more.

zenith: n. - the highest point; peak; acme: the zenith of someone's achievements. Will the Chaintech 9EJS1 ZENITH be just that? We'll be investigating that today! We were able to POST at 16x200, but no luck in getting into Windows. Dropping down to as low as 12x200 didn't fare any better. I decided to stick with a 16 multiplier for now, and drop the FSB one MHZ at a time until I could get stability. At 190FSB, the system was as stable as a rock.

We informed you about the Sony VAIO PCV-W10 back in November 2002. Now DesignTechnica was able to review this design-livingroom-PC system. Check out a photo via the above link or go ahead an take on the review: The VAIO W Series PC is the definition of Sony style. Sleek elegance blended with high tech mastery, the W has it all. During the time that I had it there were no major problems. One of the first things that I did was watch a DVD. Using the Cyberlink PowerDVD software, which was included on the machine that I tested but is not listed on the system specs, I was enjoying the movie DOT with very little effort. The widescreen, 16x9 format is a definite plus. Going back to the standard monitor resolutions is going to take some adjusting. I was getting used to seeing more information on the screen at any given time. DesignTechnica VAIO PCV-W10 Review

VR-Zone.com has just posted a review of the Leadtek K7NCR18D-Pro nForce2!

With the K7NCR18D-Pro, we were able to reach a max stable FSB of 185 with a 12.5x multiplier, giving us 2313mhz, or an overclock of 238mhz. We were not able to adjust the multiplier since the BIOS did not have the feature, but we did use a Vcore of 1.90v. A feature worthwhile to mention of the K7NCR18D-Pro and the other nForce 2 boards on the market is that PCI frequency stays locked at 33mhz even when overclocking your CPU, giving you a more stable system when overclocking.

"Currently I would suggest the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro to anyone looking to make an upgrade to their video card. Keep in mind that this card can now be purchased for around $280 for the Pro version making it at least $100 cheaper than the nVidia Geforce FX." Read the complete review @ 3dXtreme

AOpen has a wide range of Pentium 4 motherboards and of course that includes the new SiS655 chipset as well. VR-Zone has done up a review on the AOpen AX45-4D Max based on the SiS655A0 chipset and sports nice features such as Dual Channel DDR266/333, Dual BIOS, Firewire, LAN and Audio. The performance scales up pretty well as the memory bandwidth increases and no doubt SiS655 is the performance leader now overtaking the Dual Channel DDR266 supporting Granite Bay.

Just got word from AC @ Nvmax.com that he's posted his LeadTek A180 8X Graphics card review. And did I mention that AC managed to get the cards memory up to 703MHz? Nice :D

The LeadTek A180 is not a high-end gamers card but comes up trumps for multi-use functionality. The ability to use nView and video-in is a big plus for such a cheap card and it's software and game bundles place it in front as the best GeForce 4 MX440 package we have seen to date. Admittedly we at nvmax.com dislike the GeForce 4 MX chipset for its lack of pixel and vertex shaders but LeadTek have almost hidden it in feast of a package at a stompingly good price.

Thanks to LSDsmurf for this review at DVhardware: Overall Skyhawk brought a cool looking and cheap aluminium case with the Skyhawk Galaxy Lx. It has some very cool and unique features like the bubble tubes and the UV reactive front and Q-panel. It has some downsides like the backplate wich isn't very solid and the side panels wich are a little bit hard to remove, but when we compare prive/quality this is a very good case.

PcPop have posted their 26 page review of Nvidia's GeForce FX. What is nice is that they stripped off the Flow FX unit to show us the VPU and some detailed photos of the retention mechanism. Here's the direct link Babelfish Translation

Mit dem Design hat Thermaltake bestimmt einen Volltreffer gelandet. Dieses Gehäuse wird zwar nicht jedem gefallen, aber da auch auf das verkleben der Front verzichtet wurde und alles verschraubt ist, bieten sich zahlreiche Möglichkeiten für individuelle Umgestaltungen. Wie zum Beispiel deine Gravur des Frontplexiglases oder der Einbau einer anderen Inverterfolie. Das Thermaltake auf ein neues Innenleben gesetzt hat, und nicht mehr das von Chieftec verwendet, ist bestimmt das die beste Entscheidung bei der Entwicklung des neuen Xaser III gewesen. Dadurch bietet das Gehäuse nicht nur viel mehr Platz, sondern auch noch einen einfacheren und komfortableren Ein-Ausbau von Laufwerken. Was sonst noch neu oder verändert wurde....... erfahrt Ihr beim Klick auf das Bild

Lars over @ Caseumbau.de had informed me that they have written a review about the Thermaltake Xaser III case.

The review is in german but the pictures are talking enough ;-)

Click the picture to enter the review.

Just got word from Julio @ TechSpot.com that their Creative Inspire 6700 6.1 Speakers review has been posted! Here's a snip.

The Inspire 6700s are the first 6.1 capable PC speakers system to be available in the market. Touted as the ?perfect companion? for Creative?s own Audigy 2 soundcard, the most obvious addition is the rear centre channel that takes full advantage of Audigy 2 features and grants you some Dolby Digital® Surround EX support, however what makes this more interesting is CMSS (Creative Multi-Speaker System) that is said to up-mix surround to 6.1 channels when used with a 5.1 sound card! I suppose one of the most common questions among the people reading this is going to be, what kind of improvement resulted from the 5.1 to 6.1 jump? We tested with both 5.1 and 6.1 cards to give you a fair answer.

EPoX 4PEA+ (i845PE) Motherboard: It seems that the Intel crowd keeps getting bigger and the chipset market is up to the challenge with new designs all the time. But how can the end user know what works and what doesn't? Join TweakTown's Cameron "Sov" Johnson as he answers these questions in regards to the EPoX 4PEA+ Motherboard. It uses the i845PE chipset and has a list of features that will make most folks drool, but can it cope with the stress that the enthusiast will put it through?