Some seven months after AMD first tooted its horn about creating the "world's most advanced x86 CPU," the quad-core Opteron is finally shipping. Effective today, consumers eager to wrap their brains around all that purported power can find the chips residing in a variety of HP machines (read: servers) as well as in systems from other "distributors, system integrators and specialized OEMs." Unfortunately, little is said about the widespread availability of the CPU beyond that, but at least it's getting out the door in one way or another, right?

[Via CNET]

Read - Opteron heads to select partners
Read - Opteron now available in OEM platforms

Gigantic, festering CD collection got you down? Need some solution to get all of that music onto a hard drive, but simply don't have the patience or skill to use iTunes and an external hard drive? Well you're in luck, because the Ripserver is here. Acting as a completely stand-alone solution, this handsome black or white box lets you rip and store your music without any additional hardware or software. The RAID 1 device comes in 500GB or 1TB configurations, rips as FLAC files or MP3s (with adjustable bit rates), functions as a NAS device with UPnP support, supports connectivity with additional USB drives, and is DNLA compliant. The Ripserver runs a Linux build atop an Epia 1GHZ CPU, with 512MB of RAM, and boasts VGA, USB, and PS2 ports. The 500GB will run you £599 (or around $1,189), and the 1TB £699 ($1,388) -- both are shipping now.

In a woefully unstimulating press release, AMD has meekly trumpeted the fact that it's demonstrating its "first 45nm quad-core chips running multiple operating systems and a range of processing intensive applications" at CeBIT. Unfortunately, little is known beyond that -- aside from the fact that the processors showcased ("Shanghai" for servers, "Deneb" for desktops) were produced in Germany at the firm's Fab 36 300mm manufacturing facility, that is. Still, AMD managed to reiterate that "this milestone" would be "the first of many" as it moves toward the release of 45-nanometer products later this year. Huzzah?

Continuing its push into greener computing, IBM today announced the launch of its so-called "Mainframe Gas Gauge," which promises to let its server customers monitor their exact energy consumption in real time. What's more, IBM also announced that it'll begin publishing typical energy consumption figures for its z9 mainframe systems, following a recent EPA report that advised server makers to do just that. That data will be collected from some 1,000 servers around the world (a process that actually began in May), each of which employ sensors to monitor actual energy and cooling statistics, giving IBM enough info to determine the average watts per hour consumed and the total watts per unit. Individual server users will also get weekly reports on their machines' energy consumption in addition to the real time data, and they'll be able to make use of a new "Power Estimator Tool" to help them determine the most efficient means of expanding their server farms.

[Via Slashdot]

Ready or not, Exceptional Innovation is already showing off its latest LifeMedia server, complete with four CableCARD tuners. We know you're itching to see such overkill in more detail, so follow the trail to the gallery and gawk away.

Intel previewed its quad-core Tigerton processor way back in October of last year, but the company has just now let all that server-specific power loose on the general populace, with a couple of slightly scaled back versions also thrown in for good measure. Likely to attract the most interest, however, is the top-end X7350 processor, which clocks in at 2.93GHz with 8MB of shared on-chip cache and a thermal design power rating (otherwise known as TDP) of 130 watts.Rounding out the quad-core line-up are the 2.4GHz E7340, the 2.13GHz E7320, and the 1.6GHz E7310, each of which boast a TDP of 80 watts, as well as the 1.86GHz L7345, which drops the TDP back to 50 watts. If that's all a bit too much for you, Intel's also rolled out two dual-core Tigertons, including 2.93GHz E7220 and the 2.4GHz E7210, each of which have a TDP of 80 watts and 8MB of shared on-chip cache. Look for these to set you (or your company) back anywhere from $856 to $2,301 per chip, in 1,000-unit quantities, that is.

Don't fancy picking up a fully configured NAS with a bunch of off-the-shelf drives? Well then, Synology's Cube Station CS407 might be the NAS for you. Coming bare bones with four slots for SATA hard disk drives of your choice, the CS407 includes out of the box support for iTunes serving, a PhotoStation2 image hosting service, and PHP and MySQL support. It has a Gigabit Ethernet port, low power consumption, quiet operation, and came out OK in the performance tests that Hot Hardware carried out. The CS407 ain't perfect though, with its slightly dodgy build quality, standard rack mounts for Hard Drives, and slightly dear price tag of around $649.

Just as HP reportedly delayed its own Windows Home Server-based device, Medion's iteration is getting all fleshed out, so let's get right down to the dirt, shall we? Apparently, the MD 90110 will feature an AMD Sempron 64 or Intel P4 LGA 775, an AMD RS-690 / Intel 945GC chipset, be based on a MicroATX motherboard, and include 1GB of RAM, between 500GB and 2TB of RAID storage space, an eSATA port, gigabit Ethernet, and four USB 2.0 connectors. Additionally, users can look forward to "screwless internal hard drive bays," a recovery button, HDD status LEDs, and a variety of configurations to fit your needs (and budget). Per usual, there's no hard data available just yet in regard to pricing or release dates, but we'll keep you posted.

[Via WeGotServed]

Fujitsu-Siemens is supposed to debut the Scaleo, its first entry in the Windows Home Server market, later this week at IFA, but this press shot -- the first non-renders we've seen -- have surfaced a bit early, along with some more specs. The Scaleo will feature 4 internal drive bays, four USB 2 ports, two eSATA ports, "always-available" operation as opposed to being always-on, and silent operation. No word on that rumored two-drive RAID array or that 50W power consumption, but we'll know more when we get our hands on one at the conference.

Yeah, we've seen our fair share of pricey accidents, but this one is just brimming with ridiculousness. Reportedly, a mysterious IBM server that was headed to the US Patent and Trademark Office managed to fall off of a forklift managed by federal contractor T.R. Systems. The firm claims that the mishap occurred after the forklift "hit the raised surface at the entry door of the warehouse," but rather than taking the fall for the incident, it's seeking damages in excess of $1.4 million from IBM for Big Blue's shoddy packaging. Not surprisingly, IBM has stated that it will "defend itself vigorously" in the case, but there's no word on whether the traditional shipping cartons will be replaced with armored iterations in the future.

C'mon, we all knew PS3 clusters were good for more than academia, right? Thankfully for those who are itching to jump right into a worldwide dogfight when Warhawk lands, it looks like Sony has you covered. Granted, the game will allow for PS3 owners to host and play on their own matches, but the Ranked-Dedicated servers that you may also opt for shouldn't be lacking in terms of sheer power. Constructed by the SCEA IT team, this ginormous PS3 cluster will soon be used to connect Warhawk gamers everywhere, and while we're never told precisely how many PlayStation 3s were scrounged up in order to make this happen, feel free to click on through for another shot and start countin'.

In a bold and presumably calculated statement, Sun Microsystems has proclaimed that its newfangled Niagara 2 is "the world's fastest multi-core commodity chip." Clocking in at 1.4GHz, this eight-core chip also boasts 64 threads, eight lanes of PCI Express I/O, and four memory controllers, all of which will supposedly boost server performance beyond anything we're currently seeing. Reportedly, the aforementioned claim was based on a "pair of record-setting SPEC benchmark results," but we still think that's a bit dodgy to base such a remark on. Nevertheless, Sun is suggesting that this CPU will "consume less power and do more work per clock tick than its rivals," and isn't shying away from taking on the likes of Intel, IBM, and AMD. Eh, we'll stick with our 8.18GHz Pentium 4.

[Via The Register]

We've seen NAS BitTorrent drives / servers before, but none quite as cheap or ugly as the AirLive WMU-6500FS. The Inquirer has gotten its hands on the funky gray PATA- or SATA-ready media stealer, and they give it a pretty decent once over. The drive comes with 32MB of RAM on board, 4MB of flash memory for the OS, and 802.11g. The BitTorrent and HTTP / FTP server clients all reside in the box and are accessible through your web browser, allowing you to engage in all sorts of energy-saving activities -- like downloading lots of "films" without the need for any computers around. According to the review, the whole package can be yours for around $100. Of course, you can get all the thrilling details if you simply hit the read link.

[Thanks, Tech Luver]