OCworkbench has posted their review of ECS's new PT880-A board which uses VIA's new PT880 dual-channel DDR chipset! Here's a snip.

ECS dishes out another Pentium 4 solution based on the new VIA PT880 Dual Channel DDR400 chipset. The ECS PT880-A supports the Socket 478 P4 and Prescott making it one of the newer member of the ECS line of P4 boards. This board uses the VIA PT880 paried up with 8237 South Bridge. It supports DDR400 with up to 3 GB of DDR400.

Hexus have thrown up their review of Nvidia's upcoming nForce3 250 mainboard! Here's a snip.

It's been an almost insufferable wait for the second generation of Athlon 64 and Opteron chipsets from AMD's chipset partners. While the initial products - VIA's K8T800 and NVIDIA's nForce3 150 spring immediately to mind - are competent and allowed the processors to breathe freely and perform well, there's always been a couple of annoying niggles, as is always the case with the very first revisions of such things.

I am quite happy with the Epia ME6000. Certainly, there are a couple things that I would have liked to see done differently. The ability to handle faster DDR would have been nice, not to mention the availability of more USB headers on the motherboard. And were it possible, an AGP slot would propel this motherboard much further for HTPC users. Lastly, the file transfer on this system is quite slow.

However, let's stack that against the boards strong points? low power consumption, fanless for ultra-quiet operation, geared toward HTPCs and multimedia users, 6 channel sound, embedded MPEG-2 decoder, DDR support up, and the list goes on.

Today TweakTown are playing host to Western Digital's Raptor WD740GD 74.8GB Hard Drive which includes an impressive list of features such as 10,000 RPM, SATA connectivity and Command Tag Queuing and it is the fastest consumer level Hard Drive they've tested. They compared it against two Seagate 7,200 RPM PATA and SATA drives.

Back when I used Athlon XP?s I went through a plethora of motherboards trying to find one that worked the way I wanted, had the features I wanted and was reasonably priced. Eventually I settled on the NF7-S (2.0) which was a great board. As well as meeting the above requirements it was also an excellent overclockers board if you had the right CPU.

Therefore when I decided to make myself a Pentium 4 system a couple of months ago the first motherboard manufacturer I looked at was ABIT, eventually settling on the AI7. Hoping for a similar experience to the NF7-S would I be disappointed?

The FiringSquad have thrown up their review of ATi's lastest AIW graphics card the 9600! Here's a snip.

Traditionally the PC has been used for gaming and productivity applications, relegating its use to the den or home office, ten years ago many didn?t have a PC at home at all. Then the Internet revolution began. The Internet age was filled with buzzwords, many wanted to ?surf the web?, but had no clue what was involved. Eventually, the bubble burst. The market was over saturated and the cool factor was gone. The PC industry needed another killer app.

Are you ready to take the next step into creating your ultra quiet PC? Many of us are plagued with noisy VGA coolers that just seem to get louder with time. Today we don't have to put up with that noise anymore! Zalman has a reputation for silencing PC parts, and this new VGA cooler does exactly that. The question is, at what cost? Is there a downside?

Today Cooltechzone have the Cheetah 15K.3 SCSI hard drive from Seagate. The drive is for enterprise environments so it was tested accordingly in our lab. The results still provide some in-sight to general enthusiast crowd.

With modern graphic cards producing as much heat as a modest desktop processor, 3rd party graphic card coolers have changed from being an exotic piece of aluminium owned by geeks to a necessity for silent/cool computing. Here they test 7 popular VGA coolers to see which one would suit your needs best, whether you are searching for silence or extra performance.

The last week we analyzed a block of high benefits for CPU, today is the turn to this block for Chipset, with an aesthetic one very taken care of, Z-Chip this made in copper to guarantee the greater refrigeration, it includes racores for tube of 12 mm that allow a great water volume, the model that we analyzed is designed for chipsets Intel 865/875 but also another model for AMD exists. Just click in the image to read review.

The many programmable buttons mean that you can configure your remote to your liking. The RWII can take care of all of your entertainment needs, from playing tunes in WinAmp, to watching movies and TV via ATI's MultiMedia Center.

The unit is much better designed, sitting comfortably in your hand, and the mouse handling is far, far better than that of the RWI. Lastly, the fact that ATI is planning future support for IR Blasters means that this unit will be able to handle your hardware needs for quite some time.

A couple of weeks ago we looked at the Athlon64 FX-51 and how it compared in single channel mode to the Pentium 4, Athlon XP, Opteron and Athlon64. The result was that the AFX and p4 were the clear leaders however neither really established its dominance. So today we take a look at the 2 leaders and see if there is a clear winner when the Athlon64 FX moves into dual channel mode. We?ll also take a look at how well the FX-51 overclocks.

While most of the reviews out there give you an idea how fast a video card is, almost none show you what the actual visual difference is between a DX8 and a DX9 capable video card. In this article Madshrimps will show you what improvements you get when upgrading to a DX9 graphics card, the Powercolor R9800XT (XR98T-D3)

The Hornet PC-80566 Micro-Tower Case by Chenbro is a cutting edge micro design with a load of great features. The exterior is very stylish and flexible with the multiple front door design. The interior for a micro ATX case is really easy to work with because of the quick release drive bays. Overall, if you going to build the micro system, get a Hornet, you won?t get stung...

Fans cause most of the noise in PC's today... Companies have taken notice of this and started creating fans that move decent amounts of air while staying as silent as possible. One such company is Acousti with their AcoustiFans that are imported to the USA and are quickly making a name for themselves as one of the quietest fans available. For those of you who have been dealing with the groaning of noisy fans for far too long, these might be just what the doctor ordered. Check out this review and find out more at HTPCnews.com

OCIA.net checks out the Thermalright SLK-948U in their latest review! Here's a snip.

The only solid section of the heatsink is the center portion over the core. This design allows the air to flow through the heatsink and creates a more postive airflow through the heatsink. Warm air is not forced to change direction and exit out left or right from the heatsink but is allowed to flow clear through and then change to be deflected by the motherboard.

I am very impressed with this combo. Not only did it perform exceptionally well (both as a gaming and an office mouse), but the Bluetooth integration via the hub makes this a multi-functional device worthy of its price tag.

The MX700 made a name for itself as the best mouse available in its price range, and it still maintains that title. However, for those wanting more from their mouse, the MX900 is a clear winner. For those looking to consolidate other Bluetooth devices via a hub, the MX900 is a fantastic option. The software bundle is very user-friendly, yet offers powerful configurations to make your life easier.

Usually with a water cooling setup this has been confined to the Do-It-Yourself?ers out there but more and more we are seeing companies provide complete kit solutions for those who do not wish to piece together their cooling system. This is where Evercool has come in with the WC-201, a complete water cooling kit solution for the average user.

Zalman has dedicated their efforts to producing silent PC products and have won industry wide awards for their excellence. We have also reviewed Zalman's products and have been very impressed by the performance. Zalman's main goal is to produce products that are silent as well as functional. After the CES, Zalman released various products, all targeted towards the enthusiast crowd and for those who prefer quietness around their PC.

Well from the graphs we can see that the Athlon 64 3200+ trounces all over the XP 3200+, beats the P4 in most game tests and although loosing out in PCMark2004 and in rendering in Cinebench, it does tie very closely in the rest of the tests and pulls the fastest score here in the Winstone benchmarks. This is all before we get to see how the Athlon64 performs in a true 64bit environment.