Now the problem exists as to how to integrate USB 2.0 into a system that does not support it natively. Well, Belkin has done it again by creating a simple solution: the USB 2.0 Upgrade Kit. Everything you need to bring USB 2.0 compatibility to your PC is here in one box.

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• AMD Releases Most Powerful Notebook Chip Yet
• Plasmon to show 30GB UDO drive at Comdex
• First-tier mobo makers broke sales and shipment records in October
• Non-volatile memory technology claims breakthrough
• ECS goes for high end graphic cards
• IBM bakes new 3D circuit design

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With ATi unleashing blow after blow on nVidia this summer and taking the performance crown home to canada, we took a look at the more affordable products based on the RV250-Chip.
How did the Radeon 9000, Radeon 9000 128MB und Radeon 9000 Pro from PowerMagic against competitors from their rough price range?
We put together our testbed and rigorously checked on the performance and the drivers of the Radeon9000-Series against their elder brethren Radeon7500 and R8500LE, against the sub-150?-priced products from nVidia and even against the infamous Xabre400 from SiS.

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The nForce2 platform is the first dual-channel DDR solution to enter the mainstream - beating Intel's upcoming chipsets to market and giving the Athlon the platform it needs to compete with the upcoming Pentium 4 CPUs. nForce2 also offers support for 333 MHz FSB and a wealth of features that is currently unmatched. Is this chipset able to keep its promises and put Athlon back to the very top? We took a pretty close look at the first three motherboards from Asus, Chaintech and Leadtek.

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For the P4 Northwood front, we are still seeing the P4 2.5Ghz with C1 stepping being the best overclockable CPU.

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For T'Bred front, the magical 3Ghz mark for AMD processor is nearing as the highest overclocked speed of XP2400+ now stood at 2.91Ghz!

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We at PCExtreme are in the planning stages of a large LAN event and technology expo in our home town of Lawton, Oklahoma which is about 225 miles North of the Dallas metro. We expect to have 2000-3000 attendees from within a 300 mile radius of the Lawton area, and will be advertising the event on TV and radio stations in Oklahoma City, Lawton, Wichita Falls and Dallas.
The event will be held at the Great Plains Coliseum, Lawton OK on March 28th and 29th from noon to midnight both days.
We are planning to have accommodations for 500+ gamers in the LAN area, and have room for 20 sponsor/demo booths.
Game tournaments will include Quake 3 Arena, Counter-Strike, Jedi Knight II, and Unreal Tournament 2003.

Prospective sponsors include:
Bawls Guarana
Linksys
Intel
TechTV
Infogrames
Xoxide
AMD

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He then told me that he wanted a case made out of Legos. No, not Legos stacked around a normal case, or even a standard frame and Legos built around that. He wanted nothing but Legos. I wasn't even sure that this was possible, so I consulted a few sites to look up things like EMI and grounding components. After coming to the conclusion that a Lego case would work in theory, I started this project.

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The star of today’s review, XtremeDDR PC-3500+, comes outfitted with an attractive orange aluminum heat spreader with the RAM speed grade information on it. The module itself is single-sided, -5ns Samsung C4 memory chips. The 512MB modules are doubled-sided and feature the same specifications as our 256MB stick. Here’s what XtremeDDR has to say about their PC-3500+. “XtremeDDR PC3500+ is pre-tested memory from a batch of Samsung C4 -5ns chips. Hardcore gamers searching for the highest crop of memory from respected manufacturers such as Samsung need apply.

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As of late water cooling has been steadily gaining speed in the enthusiast market, and more and more H2O shops are popping up. CoolTechnica has a plethora of H2O systems and components to satisfy just about every experience level. Today we are looking at the Maze3 water block, Eheim 1250 pump, and Black Ice Pro radiator that comes in the AquaXtreme-XP water-cooling kit.

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Today’s review focuses on a board from Abit called the BE7-RAID and of course this is another i845PE board. However, Abit are here to prove that the BE7-RAID is not just another i845PE board. Sporting ATA133 RAID, DDR333, 6-Channel Audio, USB 2.0 and 10/100 LAN are just some of the features that Abit are hoping will set the BE7-RAID apart from the competition. Nevertheless, it will take more than a few added features to make this board a winner.

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Lian-Li has paid great attention to detail (as usual) and has added a touch of style to an otherwise boring-looking, boxy aluminum case. I highly recommend the Lian-Li PC-6087 to anyone looking for a high-quality aluminum case, and wants something just a tad different than the aluminum cases that everyone else has.

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ATI RADEON 9700 PRO is the most powerful gaming graphics chip today and as such it easily leaves NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 behind in high resolutions. There is also no doubt that the gap will only increase if we enable anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. But in lower resolutions, when the graphics card workload is rather low, it's the CPU that determines the overall system performance. And here we see that the system with NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600 outperforms the system with ATI RADEON 9700 PRO. The most disappointing situation takes place with AMD Athlon in games that use OpenGL: GeForce4 Ti4600 is much better here than RADEON 9700 PRO

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My primary goal during this "surgery" was to trim away everything possible and still have the clock operate. For example, I knew I didn't want to actually use the radio feature, so I stripped it off of the PCB. I also stripped off the tuning dial, clipped the internal speaker, etc., but after each "strip", I plugged the clock back in to make sure it was still functioning. I'm a Systems Engineer, not an Electrical Engineer, so my knowledge of what I could remove without damaging the clock was very limited. Luckily, the thing still worked after I had removed everything and basically had a barebones Indiglo LED plate with a stripped-down PCB.

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Getting back to the heatsink itself, we see that a 3 prong clip is used to mount this sink. This type of clip has a love-hate relationship in the community; either your love it or hate it with a passion. I personally love it. It lets me rest assured that the heatsink will not "fall" off of the socket. In the strange instance that your center socket clip is missing or damaged, you can still use this heatsink. I bring this up as I had a bad experience back in the day with a Chrome Orb. At the time, this 3-prong clip had yet to make its appearance and I was forced to either purchase a new motherboard or a pricey Swiftech MC462. I chose the latter.

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Despite that fact, some businesses may fear a loss of computational productivity, and gamers may want to avoid a potentially deadly drop in frame rates, just to be safe. Rather than simply trusting that Folding@Home doesn't impact system performance or assuming that running the client will slow things down, we've run the client through a gauntlet of tests to set the record straight, one way or another. Read on to find out just how much of an impact, if any, running Folding@Home will have on system performance.

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The Xabre 400 is not exactly a high performance GPU and so most would argue that it would not take the advantages offered by the increased AGP8X bandwidth. In fact, we speculated that the AGP8X would be more significant with faster GPUs (or VPUs) like the newly announced GeForce4 Ti 4200-8x. Well, we promised you guys that we'll update with AGP8X vs. AGP 4X results and we have got a full set of results with the GeForce4 Ti 4200-8x right here.

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In a nutshell, Windows NT and 2000/XP can allow you to set file level security. This is especially useful if you share a computer with another user. How this works is that you can set a file you created to only be read, changed, or deleted by you. Useful if you want to hide your porn from your parents.

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With all the hype about modding cases and all the expense of those great premodded ones, how can a person with a few bills and a case get their fair share of looks? This guide will show you how to do an easy and inexpensive mod on your existing crappy case! You'll be able to brag to your friends that your case cost like $30+ mod expenses and it will look very nice. Get your stuff together, we are painting and adding a window to that case of yours!

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