More of an experiment than anything else at this point, but we’ve put together a quick, low production value (emphasis on low production value) video spotlight of the Rampage II Extreme. We cover the included accessories, the board layout, and we’ve got some pretty good video shots of the product itself.

As always, your comments are essential to making our production more successful.

Well we just got a shipment of GELID Solutions fans, and with all of the rumours about Nanoxia and these nano bearing fans going around, I had to see them for myself.

GELID is a new company, but the management team is actually the same Swiss guys that started Arctic Cooling a few years ago, so I was already pretty confident that their product would be good.

They perform well at stock speed (well, the WING series anyway, I haven’t played with the Silent/PWM/TC models at all) and aren’t unreasonably loud, but they really shine when you undervolt them. Not a hint of a ticking or buzzing or whining once I dialed the voltage down so that they still moved a reasonable amount of air.

Here’s one more shot of the 120mm fan sitting next to a test bench.

I’ve been asked by some of the fellows over at XS to provide proof of my overclocking results with an undisclosed processor (original blog post here), so I thought what better way to launch my new video blog!

Enjoy.

Since the first time I saw a Clear CMOS button on the back of a motherboard I’ve wondered what happens when  a user inadvertently bumps it while trying to plug in a USB humping dog or other accessory. Always the daredevil, I decided to try it.

The answer, at least on the Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME, is that nothing happens. My Steam chat and other activities were completely uninterrupted. So there.

I’ve had a chance to play around with a new processor from an undisclosed vendor, and there might be some other results on the web about these chips doing crazy LN2 and DICE clocks, but what it really comes down to for the end user is what performance HE can actually get out of a chip.

With modest air cooling (TRUE + random fan) 3.6GHz was doable easily with 8 hour quad Prime95 stability, and more than that with the water cooling setup featured above. We don’t know the prices of these new processors (though my crystal ball says they should weigh in under $400CAD).

Processor price is obviously not the only factor. I remember the good ‘ol days when a premium AMD motherboard cost 1/2 of an equivalent Intel one, and that’s what made it such a good value.

Well the new NCIX Tech Tips is here. We didn’t have any samples to work with until only a few days before the retail launch, so we’ve spent a lot of time playing with these chips, researching online, and putting together this overclocking guide for the Core i7.

It’s not as in-depth as I would necessarily like, but at 8 minutes long it’s already a bit of a heavyweight. The white board I had in front of me looked like some of my calculus lectures!

The messaging on ECS’s web site *should* make you think of high performance computing, overclocking, reliability, etc.

After seeing this banner though, the first things that came to my mind were ebony pornography and racist hate-speech!

It gets better though. Here you can view the “Black Adventure” flash video. Guaranteed to make you laugh.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/extra/x58_campaign/global/00-flash.html

Maybe a couple of review sample boards to key websites would have been a better investment, hm?

Well, it’s another gadget blog post, and for about $10-15 this thing is a steal. It uses 3 bright LEDs, a very very flexible neck, and a USB power outlet to give off a pretty decent amount of light.

I’m not sure how Syba escaped our notice for so long, but now that we’ve started carrying most of their product line, I can really see how large a hole they’ve filled in our product catalogue. Something we’ve been working on quite a lot lately is filling in the gaps and it’s great to see how successful some of these projects have been.

Here’s a couple shots of the USB lamp. It looks great and very shiny in person. The base feels cheap and so does the lamp head, but the metal neck feels very robust and sturdy in my hands. For scale that is a 24″ monitor next to the extended and curled up lamp.

Here’s the problem with lifetime warranties on memory products: Who actually needs that SDRAM 10 years down the road? Corsair has come up with an innovative solution to this problem starting with their DDR2 line of products.

Once the memory dies at some point when it’s not even worth the shipping cost to RMA it, you can simply pop it out of the system, and it begins its new life as a hair styling device. Kudos to Corsair for this new paradigm in computer parts design. I’m expecting to see motherboards on the market soon with a mirror on the back so that you have something to look at while you’re getting ready for that big Friday night date.

Just kidding. You don’t have a date.

….. With some modifications. Here is a picture of the RAM Freezer 4 on top of a Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME motherboard with all of the DIMM slots populated.

As you can see, if you are running 3 modules in tri-channel, the RAM Freezer 4 is just wide enough to be able to get RAM spreaders on both sides, but you will need to remove the material in the middle of the RAM Freezer 4 in order to get a RAM spreader on the middle module. Overall with a Dremel the mod should not be very complicated and should not affect the structural integrity of the RAM Freezer.