W.I.L. Hardware Tech-News Highlights for September 2005

Systems

The history of the ATX form factor and some of the lessons learned about power supply and chassis standardization – link.

Cheap $100 laptop unveiled. Among the key specs a a 500MHz AMD CPU and flash memory instead of a hard drive – link.

Designing and building a Mini-ITX computer which runs off of a USB flash drive, with the goal of building a system which is silent and as simple as possible. Puppy Linux was used for an OS – link. Discussion here. The Mini-ITX Project revisited adds a little more functionality – link.

CPUs, motherboards, chipsets

BIOS for beginners – link.

PC processor microarchitecture evolution – link.

IBM’s Power-style promotion of the Cell processor – link.

Toshiba preps cell motherboard for developers – link.

ECS, the third largest motherboard maker in the world, presents quite a few innovative ideas for the motherboard market. Will they deliver, and will there be buyers? – link.

ASRock’s 939Dual-SATA2 is the first retail ULi PCIe/AGP-based board. It supplies top-performing AGP on a PCIe board, and is a value board but provides all the features, including SATA2 with NCQ, that you would expect on an up-to-date AMD64 motherboard. Cons are 10/100 LAN vs. Gigabit, and there are no Firewire ports – review 1, review 2.

Intel said it is developing an ultra low power version of the 65nm process technology which it claims will cut down leakage by 10,000 times – link.

Supermicro’s PDSGE mainboard has great networking capabilities, excellent software bundle, and reliable operation – review.

MSI and Gigabyte bring full-featured motherboards to market based upon the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition and Intel 955x chipsets – review.

A first look at Via’s C7 platform – link.

Graphics

The fastest graphics cards of Summer 2005: Ultimate testing of 17 GPUs in 30 games – roundup.

ATI’s CrossFire takes aim at nVidia’s SLI – link.

Will S3 be an effective third competitor in the graphics market? – link.

S3’s Chrome20 chips might actually get it back into contention - link. Discussion here.

Matrox Millennium’s G550 for PCI Express has been a good 2D graphics card for many years, and it maintains its reputation with the move to PCI Express – review.

Sapphire’s Radeon X550 low-cost graphics card suits anyone who needs a stop-gap measure while waiting to save up for a next-generation card, or someone who needs a basic card with dual-monitor and TV-out support … but the Abit RX300 may be a better value – review.

ASUS’s Extreme N6600GT Silencer/HTD is a fanless graphics card is noiseless without sacrificing too much performance, but is not particularly cheap and will not fit into all systems – review.

PowerColor’s Bravo X700 graphics card may be interesting for people who are building a silent computer, who do not care about playing games in high resolutions, and who have a limited PC budget – review.

PowerColor’s X800 GT graphics card provides worthy competitor to the nVidia GeForce 6600 GT, while demonstrating quiet operation and excellent overclockability – review.

Memory, storage

RAM explained – link.

Can Gigabyte’s i-RAM replace existing HDD’s? It makes less of a difference than one might expect in home use – review.

Nanotech to enable 100GB solid state memory? – link.

Two fast and functional USB Flash drives: Memina’s 4 GB Rocket and Kingston’s DataTraveller II Plus Migo Edition, which carries your e-mail and Windows installation files around and imports them onto other desktops – reviews.

Small, smaller, and smallest CompactFlash memory cards promise mass data storage in truly tiny packages – link.

How to use smartmontools to view S.M.A.R.T status information, which can be used to predict if and when a hard drive may fail – link.

Comparison testing of 22 HDD’s – roundup.

Maxtor OneTouch II external HDD’s FireWire 800 interface ensures data-transfer rates comparable to standard HDDs connected via ATA or SATA interfaces. – review.

MSI’s DR16-B2 DVD±RW dual layer burner is quiet, inexpensive and provides excellent burn quality with most disc formats – review.

AOpen’s DUW1608/ARR DVD±RW dual layer burner showed very low noise levels and operational temperatures during work – review.

Sony’s DRX-800UL is a great all-purpose external DVD burner – review.

5 DVD-ROM drives compared – roundup.

Cases, power supplies, cooling

Thermaltake’s Tai-Chi case delivers on its promise of achieving harmony with aesthetic appeal, smart design, customizable features, and quality aluminum components … at a price – review.

Zalman’s CNPS9500 LED CPU heatsink provides excellent cooling performance – review.

Titan Vanessa S & L-Type and Thermaltake Big Typhoon vs. Zalman CNPS9500 LED cooling solutions tested – link.

4 CPU coolers from Thermaltake tested – link.

Miscellaneous components and periferals

Creative’s X-Fi sound cards brings a whole series of technological innovations that make its introduction nothing less than a watershed event in the history of sound on the PC, and the price is not exorbitant – link.