W.I.L. Hardware Tech-News Highlights for May 2006

My hardware toolbag – link.

Systems

ASUS’s A3Vc notebook has very appealing price/quality and price/functionality ratios for the targeted business user – review.

CPUs, motherboards, chipsets

Dell’s decision to use AMD chips is blow to Intel – link.

DDR2 SDRAM support from AMD’ Socket AM2 platform does not bring in any significant performance gain, but the positive effect from this transition will be more evident in the future – link.

Asus’s A8R32-MVP Deluxe based on the ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset is a pretty good way to go if you are looking for a high-end Socket 939 board that will run cool and quiet – review.

ABIT’s AN8 32X AMD Socket 939 motherboard represents a heartening, but partial, comeback for the company – link.

Meet Intel’s Viiv desktop platform – link.

VIA’s EPIA EN12000E Mini-ITX Mainboard with embedded 1.2 GHz Eden processor can fit the bill quite nicely if low noise (it can be run completely fanless) and power efficiency are your primary requirements and you are willing to sacrifice a little performance. Notwithstanding many horror stories about how poorly VIA’s processors fare compared to Intel’s or AMD’s chips, a Duron 750 system felt much slower than the EPIA, and in terms of responsiveness seemed roughly on par with the Sempron 3400+ (clocked almost twice as fast). It is definitely not for gaming, and also cannot handle HD video encoded in Windows Media format properly – review.

Graphics

Budget graphics cards compared – link.

3 tries to get back into PC graphics – link.

Ageia’s PhysX physics accelerator chip is pointless right now, but bears watching – link.

Fanless PCIe graphics cards from Asus and AOpen tested. They are suitable for some systems – reviews.

ASUS’s card based on Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT and equipped with their own patented passive cooling system, aka SilentCool, is one of the most powerful solutions among the quiet graphics accelerators today – review.

ATI and nVidia face off in the new generation of professional graphics accelerators manufactured with 90nm process. Your choice of a workstation graphics card will be strictly determined by the type of applications you will be running on your platform – link.

Memory, storage

Samsung’s Hybrid Hard Disk is the convergence of a flash memory chip and a conventional platter-type magnetic disk drive – link.

New high-capacity 2.5” HDDs are chasing the Seagate ST9160821A, but do not catch it – link.

Western Digital’s 150GB Raptor X HDD demonstrates superior performance in a single-user environment, and its transparent window makes the drive memorable – review.

The Newisys NA-1400 NAS applicance cannot run Windows, but moving mass storage away from the main system is a viable way to reduce noise … as long is it is far enough away from the user – review.

Cases, power supplies, cooling

SilverStone’s Temjin TJ-07 $350 case delivers handsomely with its cooling capabilities, but it does not offer much of interest to silencers – review.

Zalman’s HD160 is a reasonably successful first try at a quiet, high performance HTPC case – link.

The 120W picoPSU is tiny, silent and efficient. It can easily be used in a desktop system with a low-powered Athlon 64, or a laptop processor, but is not quite enough for a system with a decent graphics card – review.

Enermax’s Noisetaker II EG701AX-VE(W) (revision 2.2) 600W ATX12V 2.2 dual fan PSU is a sub-par performer vs. today’s competition. Hopefully NoiseTaker III will have better quality fans and a low-noise fan controller, and come in at a lower price point – review.

Spire’s Verticool II SP601B3 tower heatsink it offers a good cooling-to-noise ratio for its price range, as long as the fan speed is not turned down too far (so silence is beyond its capabilities) – review.

Miscellaneous components and periferals

PepperPad is a credible Linux-powered competitor to Microsoft’s Origami concept – link.

Is AMD’s Personal Internet Communicator rigged against Linux? – link.