• VIA, SiS to launch new chipsets in November to extend business momentum
• AMD pushes Hammer development with new resource centre
• 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 details exposed
• DFI's Granite Bay mobo revealed
• Dell: Who needs a floppy disk?
• Report: Digital photos not bumping film

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Now let's try to sum it all up. The results we've got during the tests indicate that the situation in the Socket A chipset market may change soon. If nothing extraordinary happens, we may see the fall of the Taiwanese VIA in this field. VIA's got a strong and resourceful rival, NVIDIA, that has learnt from its technological and marketing mistakes and is ready to fight for the customer. Our investigation suggests that the nForce2 chipset from NVIDIA is a high-performing and multifunctional solution for advanced users.

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From the moment I laid ears on Logitech's 4.1 Z-560 speakers last year -- one of the best-sounding four channel (plus subwoofer) models I'd heard yet -- the first question that I had was, "So, when are you doing a 5.1 version?" The Logitech marketing types would only give me a Cheshire Cat grin that told me it was in the works, but that they weren't ready to let that cat out of the bag. Well, the wait is over, and the 5.1 Z-680s are here, and they are a winner. Leveraging the same driver design that's found in the Z-560s, the Z-680s add a larger subwoofer, a bigger amplifier, and a Dolby Digital/ProLogic II/DTS decoder. These are some of the most impressive PC speakers we've ever heard.

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Flash forward to today, and their products are still some of the best on the market. They have no trouble keeping up with long time heavyweights Alpha and Swiftech in the cooling department. Thermalright’s latest and greatest for the Athlon is the SLK-800, an all copper follow up to their excellent aluminum\copper hybrid AX-7, which Ben reviewed here. The SLK-800 is the subject of today's review.

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PowerStrip provides advanced, multi-monitor, programmable hardware support to a wide range of graphics cards - from the venerable Matrox Millennium I to the latest Radeon 8500DV and GeForce4 Ti4600. It supports multiple graphics cards from multiple chipset vendors, simultaneously, under every Windows operating system.

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It's been a while since I've dealt with Iwill products but I've always had a lot of fun with them. Iwill isn't really targeting the overclockers with the P4GS, but more likely the average user who wants a solid motherboard, with a lot of features. A quick glance at the hardware features shows us that the P4GS is a pretty well rounded motherboard, it has onboard 10/100 LAN, 5.1 audio, IDE Raid, Serial ATA, support for memory stick and secure digital cards.

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Here we have Cool Max's Green rounded ATA-133 IDE cable. Now you may be wondering, what's so good about a rounded cable? Well, let me tell you. You know those ugly, flat, IDE "bus" cables that litter your computer case and disrupt airflow? When you replace them with a few of these, not only is it going to look a whole lot nicer, but instead of blocking airflow like the ugly flat cables (just imagine what would happen if one of those flat ones got stuck in front of your CPU fan), this will allow the air to flow freely around it causing virtually no disruption in air flow.

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Finally though they’ve decided to raise the bar on their own multimedia systems, & now offer the MegaWorks 210D & 510D – high end 2.1 & 5.1 speaker systems based on the Newton Series MC50 satellites, as offered by Cambridge SoundWorks, with the 510D offering 500 Watts RMS of power, much like the Klipsch Promedia 5.1. In this review I’ll take a look at what this system has to offer you & whether Creative’s long awaited re-entry into high-end multimedia speakers has actually been worth it.

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Now I’m neither a NvIdiot, nor a FanATIc, I just go with what is posting the best performance. If you’re looking for the fastest, most awe inspiring graphics card at the moment, look no further than the ATI Radeon 9700. ATI has pummeled the competition at the moment. They have hit a homerun like the one the Brooklyn Brawlers hit against Bugs Bunny. This screamin’ puppy ain’t stoppin’, even if Bugs climbs up the flag pole with stilts on. Seriously though, the 9700 one serious piece of hardware, and ATI is still workin the 0.15 micron core. I had it on good authority that ATI basically locked up their engineers, gave them a case of Krispy Kreme’s, some instant coffee, locked the door, and told them not to come out until they had something to make Carmack squeal like a little school girl. Well not really, but the thin line between my reality and fantasy is becoming distorted more and more with the new addition of the 9700 to my rig.

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Once I had the materials gathered and the design work done, I was able to complete the entire project in less than four hours! I can’t stress how easy this was to make and am stunned by the output of the subwoofer for such a simple project. Please understand that a standard cheap subwoofer system advertised for computers at $29 simply isn’t in the same league as a professional larger system like this. Most computer "subwoofers" have 4" or 5" drivers that are physically not capable of producing an adequate low frequency response. You WILL be pleased with the difference.

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The Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra has a very clean, very functional layout that's got an answer to nearly every complaint a reviewer and user might have for clichéd layout problems. The board is very spacious; this is obvious after only a cursory inspection of the layout. What's more, the RAM slots are far enough away from the AGP slot that you can add and remove RAM without having to also remove your video card. This is a major plus right there. The primary IDE slots are high on the board, placing them closer to your case's drive bays, and the CPU has a nice clearance on 3 of the 4 sides. On the last side, there is a row of large capacitors. While the clearance between the this row of capacitors and our cooler was greater than what you'd find on other boards, I'd still say it was a little too close comfort. On the other hand, Soyo neatly sidestepped the biggest headache associated with rows of capacitors by leaving a gap right where the Ziff arm locks onto the CPU socket. Quite neat actually..

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This year I have seen quite a few new ideas in the world of water cooling. The biggest trend is the all-in-one water cooling kit. These all-in-one kits have a preassembled water cooler mounted inside a computer case. All you have to do is install your computer hardware and mount the water cooling block on your CPU. No messy filling of fluid levels, no modifications, no installation... It couldn't get any simpler than this.

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XFX Graphics is a relatively new combatant in the fierce competition of the video card manufacturing, however from the performance perspective you never would have known that they were new. The secret to their success? They already have a lot of experience in the game of making top-notch components and cards as the company is a subdivision of Pine Technologies. In this review we are looking at XFX's Geforce 4 Ti4200 64MB, we will be examining all aspects of this card, and whether it is a card worthy of your purchase.

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In this narrower SLK configuration, the air from the fan, blows through the fins directly onto the mainboard keeping the hot stagnant air from just sitting there keeping the base warm. The thinking behind the more traditional SK ‘squarish’ base is that the additional metal will help pull heat laterally away from the processor helping to evenly distributive the heat along the length of the cooling fin.

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So you want an aluminum case but you don't have the time or skills to modify it properly. What are you to do? Come join Mike "Darthtanion" Wright as he takes a look at the Sky Hawk Jupiter Case. It offers an aluminum construction, factory mods and some other items that make it an intriguing enclosure. But of course, we'll also be looking at it's cooling potential and everything else that we can think of. Come see if this is the case for you!

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At least Intel have modernised the Celeron processor to some degree. The fact that it overclocks so easily bodes well for increasing the basic clock speeds to the 3GHz level, should they need to. I just feel that the debilitating effects of only specifying 128kb of L2 cache really do impact heavily upon performance if your inclination is towards gaming or SETI. Intel have made sure that the Celeron cannot pose a realistic threat to their P4 processor when evaluated through a number of benchmarks.

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