by Dhruba Bandopadhyay on Sat, 02 Feb 2013 13:05:20 +0000
TastyPC.TV is one of my favourite hardware channels on YouTube run by a reviewer called Lauren. Recently she produced a time lapse video of her creating a watercooled build backed by music from Spaze. I really enjoyed this video so I’m sharing it with you in the hope that you too will enjoy it. She did leave the GPU out of the loop but that’s because this build was just to review the case after which it would be dismantled. The video did so well that it even made it onto Asus’s gaming site, Republic of Gamers, so well done Lauren! Enjoy.
by Dhruba Bandopadhyay on Sat, 19 Jan 2013 17:31:51 +0000
The all-in-one cpu liquid cooler wars are on with numerous hardware vendors now manufacturing products in this category including Corsair, NZXT, Coolermaster and Enermax! Recently NZXT released the Kraken X40 and X60 based on the 140mm fan form factor and standardised on 15mm spacing between fans. These proved to be very popular and outperformed Corsair’s flagship coolers – H100 and H100i.
Corsair, competitively, now also has adopted the 140mm form factor in their new releases – the H90 and H110 (press release). I personally am very glad to see Corsair upgrade to 140mm and I think the H110 will be my preferred CPU cooler from now on though I am very disappointed that manufacturers have not been able to standardise on fan spacing lengths. Most manufacturers support 15mm which is why NZXT also recently standardised on it but Corsair appear to have opted to remain with their original choice of 20mm fan spacing.
I think this may be because their cases to date support 20mm and they want maximum compatibility. However NZXT also had this problem and they instead chose to resupply panels for existing cases with the new spacing as well as do new case releases for existing models to support the new spacing. This split support for fan spacing will unfortunately mean that you can’t just buy a 140mm or 280mm cooler and expect to fit it into just any case with 140mm fan mounts. You have to check the fan spacing. And this is sad but there are so many examples within consumer hardware of such proprietary divergence in standards. Nevertheless it is very good to see 140mm being supported. The larger radiator size will have a greater surface area and provide better cooling and the larger 140mm fans will push more air with less noise than 120mm fans. So all in all – a win.
Note that the H90 and H110 are not ‘i’ versions and will not have the additional Corsair Link software integration that the ‘i’ series offers. This isn’t a bad thing for me as I feel that the additional features are extraneous and keeping the coolers simple also makes them cheaper and less prone to problems.
by Dhruba Bandopadhyay on Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:46:09 +0000
Asus ROG RAIDR Express PCI-E SSD
Asus have announced the Asus ROG RAIDR Express PCI-E SSD at CES 2013. This is significant for a number of reasons. Recent sata SSDs have broken the 550MB/s sequential transfer rate barrier and saturated the 0.6GB/s bandwidth available through SATA3. The next SATA standard – Sata Express – has gone into ratification phase and promises 1GB/s. In the mean time a number of manufacturers including the very prominent OCZ have had PCI-E SSDs available but I get the feeling that they are still perceived as being for niche use or enterprise use.
Asus has released the Raidr Express as an ROG product thereby categorising it as a high end gaming related product. It bears the classic black and red ROG theme, is bootable and is rumored to have some form of raid on it already. This, I think, will bring PCI-E SSD into the mainstream at least for gamers and perhaps non-gamers too. It’s been in development and testing for 11 months to ensure maximum interoperability with all of Asus’s motherboards and various other motherboards too. I can’t wait to make this my primary boot drive as a disk i/op upgrade is the best investment one can make for greater performance and responsiveness.
by Dhruba Bandopadhyay on Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:10:31 +0000
OCUK – Asus HD 7990 ARES 2 6144MB GDDR5
The Asus Ares II announced at CES is now available for preorder in UK at OCUK apparently exclusively for £1200. So if you want one you should preorder right away to avoid disappointment. Only 1000 units are being made worldwide so chances of getting one are slim. I’m thinking about getting one but I doubt I actually will. I don’t have any use for one at the moment and by the time I do these will no longer be available which is a shame.
I feel like it’s a late Christmas. First Corsair release the Obsidian 900D – a perfect case for dual psu multi gpu watercooling rig. And now Asus have released something I would have appreciated greatly a few months ago when I built Project Rogue – an all in one liquid cooled dual slot 7970 GHz [...]
Today, on the first day of CES 2013, Corsair finally officially announced the huge, the imposing and the beautiful Obsidian 900D! This case is not only a thing of desire and beauty as per the Corsair rulebook of aesthetics but it also natively fits a lot of radiators and supports dual PSUs! Perfect for 8 [...]
OCUK have released a budget AMD Radeon HD 7990 card which is a dual 7970 card. It looks identical to the PowerColor Devil 13 including the red booster button at the back which makes me wonder who is actually manufacturing this card. At £720 though it is definitely a good deal giving you each single [...]
Impressive and cool. A cluster of 64 Rasberry Pi boards with networking and graphics capability. See the article below for what so many other people have done with this budget small factor board. Source: ArsTechnica
CES 2013 will be held between Jan 8-11 and will see numerous new hardware announcements from a number of manufacturers. We’ve already witnessed the unofficial photo unveiling of the Corsair Obsidian 900D as well as Fractal Design’s announcement ahead of time of the Define XL R2 both of which are very exciting products indeed but [...]
In August 2012 an information leak revealed that Corsair was working on the much anticipated Obsidian 900D – the successor to the 800D. Not long after, CorsairGeorge, a product manager at Corsair validated this finding and confirmed that they were indeed working on such a case whilst at the same time pointing out the presence [...]
