"Macs. You either love 'em, or you hate 'em. Either way, you have to admit... their towers look swank. Beautiful silver coated in crystal-clear high-quality plastic. The transparent handles blend in artistically with the rest of the case, and the chrome accents on the fascia get even the mightiest of Mac-haters weak in the knees. Some PC enthusiasts who have fallen for the "Mac looks" have gotten their hands on a empty or faulty tower. Then, in an attempt to mate Mac design with PC functionality, they try to assemble a PC inside the Mac tower, only to find it will require hours of modification for everything to fit right."

The Review

Zardon at DH sends word that he's thrown up his latest TEAC CD-W552PUK USB 2.0 review for your reading pleasure! Here's a snip.

CD writers are taken for granted nowadays with almost every machine having one as standard. But is there really that much of a difference from drive to drive, and really what is the point of having a USB2 external drive? Well, Personally I have always fancied the idea of having an external drive to move from machine to machine without the need of opening them up, removing drives and configuring IDE slave and master settings.

VR-Zone today has taken a look at the newest phase change cooling solution from the Chip-Con team. They are definitely working hard since just 6 months after the first introduction of their Prometeia, they have launched the second generation of Prometeia known as the Mach II with even better cooling performance and better protection too.

Prometeia Mach II is probably the most advanced cooling solution to date. It has the capability of removing up to 200W of heat dissipation which allow you to overclock your Pentium 4 to reach 4Ghz or Athlon XP to 3Ghz comfortably.

Legit Reviews Nathan Kirsch has thrwon up his ABIT IS7 W/ "PAT"? review ! Here's a snip.

The ABIT IS7 could be the best enthusiast i865/i875 chipset motherboard released by any company thus far. Now that Tom's Hardware has uncovered the truth about PAT technology, a handful of companies have begun to unlock PAT technology on the Intel i865 (Springdale) chipsets. Last week ABIT-USA sent an unreleased BIOS for the ABIT IS7 that "increases performance."

AnandTech has posted a comparison of DDR400 memory modules from five different manufacturers on a total of 17 different Springdale and Canterwood motherboards. Motherboards from Abit, Albatron, AOpen, Asus, DFI, Epox, Gigabyte, and MSI were tested to determine which modules perform the fastest and have the fewest compatibility problems. For the review they compared five pairs of modules: Corsair LL (Low Latency) TwinX DDR400, Crucial DDR400, OCZ EL DDR400, TwinMOS DDR400, and Kingston HyperX DDR433 (running at 400MHz DDR). Check it out

Hexus has reviewed the latest all copper Pentium4 heatsink from korean manufacturer Zalman. The huge heatsink, taking up an area of 109mm x 109mm, is the biggest we've seen. Opening up the package reveals the CNPS7000-Cu in all its copper glory. Aesthetically pleasing too. The fan's an oddly-sized 85mm in diameter. Simple mechanics tells us that a larger diameter fan can push a greater CFM of air given the same RPM as a smaller one. Alternatively, you can lower the rotation speed to achieve the same air displacement as the smaller fan. The overall very positive review can be found here.

This blue beast is one feature packed board, not only does it have Firewire, GigaBit Ethernet, 4 DIMM slots, the board also has support for 10 ATA devices, 4 on nForce ATA133, 4 on the GigaRAID , and 2 S-ATA drives on the Silicon Image controller.

It was stable in standard configuration and had no trouble running my XP 2500+ at XP3200+ 400FSB settings. The GA-7NNXP is also an excellent overclocker with stable FSB speeds in excess of 240MHz. The Dual BIOS is a useful feature and can prevent unnecessary RMAs.

Today we take a look at another product from Boogie Bug, the CCFL Rounded Fan. Boogie Bug is a trademark from Bacatá. The package of the product is designed in France, but the actual product is made in China. I think the CCFL ring is made by Sunbeam, this is not a bad thing, because Sunbeam is known in the modding world for their quality cold cathodes.

OCworkbench.com have thrown up their ASRock K7S8X-E mainboard review based on SIS's 748 chipset and not forgetting they already have a Voltage Modification Guide up for the same board! Here's a snip.

ASRock K7S8X-E is the first board that incorporates the latest SIS 748 chipset. If you have been following our discussions in our forums, you should have read that the performance levels of the SIS 748 chipset is pretty good and it reigns in price/performance ratio. The ASRock K7S8X-E is such a board that has this in mind -a board that provides stability and performance at a fraction of the high end K7 boards out there in the market.

SharkyExtreme has posted an interesting review of Intel's latest batch of CPU's. In terms of comparison processors, they've got the Pentium 4-3.0C GHz (800), Pentium 4-3.06 GHz (533), Pentium 4-2.8 GHz (533) and Pentium 4-2.53 GHz processors for the Intel contingent, along with the Athlon XP 3200+, 3000+ and 2700+ on the AMD side. These CPUs represent a nice cross-section of the high-end and mid-range CPU selection, and should illustrate exactly where the new Pentium 4 "C" models fit in. Please note that that Hyper-Threading has been enabled for benchmarking, on all applicable Pentium 4 processors.

Digit-life.com have thrown up two new articles the first one is a 6 board Intel 875P Based Mainboards Roundup and the second item is their Secret of Performance of ASUS i875P/i865PE Based Boards! so let's kick off with a snip from the 875P Roundup.

The i875P chipset has strengthen the position of the most efficient solution after almost two months of its existence, and now it keeps on carrying the baton taken from the i850/E in detour of the iE7205. But its market position is not clear as compared to the previous chipsets developed for workstation/enthusiasts, and even the AGP Pro port, a traditional accessory of the workstation class which often came with iE7205 based boards, will be attached to i875P based boards only in 50% of cases...

VR-Zone has tested the new GeForce FX 5600 Ultra final edition clocked at 400/400Mhz core/memory, up from the previous 350/350Mhz core/memory clock. GeForce FX 5600 Ultra (NV31) encompasses most of the nice features of the NV30 core architecture and improvement to the core/memory clock from the usage of Flip Chip package and 2.2ns memory chips.

The GeForce FX 5600 series are meant to replace the current GeForce 4 Titanium series at a lower price point of US$199-250 for the Ultra version and US$149-200 for the non-Ultra version.

Serial ATA is poised to replace Parallel SCSI in the mid-range, but only if there's a drive that can meet the performance and reliability requirements of that market. That drive is the WD Raptor! (Yes it really is that good) The WD Raptor is a new class of hard drive that matches SCSI performance and reliability and provides simplified connectivity, all at up to 30 percent less cost than Parallel SCSI drives.

Can a notebook computer deliver desktop-style graphics performance? ATI brings its RV350 core to notebook computers, along with DX9, new power management, and even dynamic overclocking. ExtremeTech were checking out the performance of the mobile gamer's dream: The Mobility Radeon 9600 (MR9600) brings the four-pixel pipe/two-vertex pipe Radeon 9600 Pro architecture into laptops. Like its desktop counterpart, the GPU is built on 0.13-micron process technology, allowing for higher clock speeds. The GPUs we tested were clocked at 350MHz, a 45.8% increase from the preceeding GPU - the Mobility Radeon 9000. Because the MR9600 is built on 0.13-micron, it can acheive this maximum core clock rate while still fitting within the power and heat constraints required by mobile computing. The operative word here is maximum core clock speed, since the GPU only hits that speed when a laptop is plugged in, or when a 3D application demands maximum performance from the GPU.

VR-Zone has reviewed the latest card from Triplex. The new Eye Bomb series from the taiwanese vendor, in this case the Radeon 9800 Pro card comes in a nice clear acrylic box! Here's a snip.

This card looks exactly like the ATI reference card and is clocked at 380/340Mhz default using the 2.8ns Samsung memory chips. We have compared this card against the Nvidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, GeForce FX 5800 Ultra and the Radeon 9700 Pro. We have managed to push the core clock to 420Mhz and memory clock to 360Mhz on stock cooling and further to 490/370Mhz on better cooling.

The peeps at Extremetech have reviewed "OrbiTouch: A keyless Keyboard" here. Snip "Imagine a keyboard with no space bar, no letters, no numbers? no keys at all. In fact, forget the entire idea of a keyboard, as you know it, altogether. Just reach down with both hands and grab your knees (assuming you have two knees), and close your eyes. Only subtle differences exist between this sensation, and the experience of first lowering your hands and gripping the OrbiTouch Keyless Keyboard".

Paul Thurrott has published "Windows Server 2003: The Road To Gold Part Three: Testing Windows" at Winsupersite. In the whole series Paul has tried to give a insiders view of "How MS churns-out OS in Redmond" . Its a very interesting read for anyone and particularly for people using Windows Xp and Windows Server 2003. And also Paul is going to publish "Windows Server 2003: Part four :The Road to Gold".

HardOCP have thrown up their review of Nvidia's upgraded GeForceFX 5600 Ultra video card, apparently a real replacement for the mainstream performance sector, the new FX chip is higher clocked, cooler and overclockable.

The NV31 core is based off of the technology of the NV30 GPU. That means it fully supports every 3D feature present on the NV30. You will find the CineFX engine bringing with it support for Floating Point 128bit Internal Precision along with DirectX 9 level shader support of Pixel and Vertex Shader 2.0.

If you are looking for the best performing, P4 motherboard then look no further. The ABIT IC7-G is built for overclockers by overclockers and it shows. The wide range of FSB frequencies and voltage adjustments just show where this board is aimed at. And in fact the BIOS is so well laid out that even the uninitiated can build themselves a sweet overclocked system. The IC7-G has one of the best filled rear IO panels I have seen, with a huge array of sockets. The board layout is also excellent, and by keeping the CPU in far from the edge allows the installation of larger quieter coolers.

Fan grills have two main functions: First they offer protection, so you can't accidentally hurt your fingers by putting them between the fan blades, to prevent any of your pets to hurt himself (like a cat tail between the fan blades... gotta hurt I think), or to prevent any wires from hitting the fan blades. Another, and these days even more important reason why people buy them is because they look pretty.