liquid cooling
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OCZ intros "world's fastest" 1200MHz PC2-9600 Flex XLC RAM
Champs don't stay that way long in the computer hardware biz, but one way to ensure that the crown stays in the same camp is to one-up yourself before another firm can beat you to the punch. OCZ seems to be feelin' said mantra, as the company's latest Flex XLC RAM overtakes the previous rendition to claim the "world's fastest" title at 1,200MHz. Of course, we've seen quicker memory stuffed onto graphics cards, but the new motherboard-ready PC2-9600 Flex XLC modules sport a svelte hybrid cooling system that melds passive air and liquid injection systems to give you all the bragging rights you'd ever need. The DDR2-1200 modules are currently available in 2GB (2 x 1,024MB) kits, come with a lifetime warranty, and will run you right around $250.[Via Gearlog]
UK scientists testing air-conditioned vests for military use
Air-conditioned vests have certainly graced the bodies of armed men and women before, but an elusive new breed is being tested in the multi-million dollar Spinnaker Building at the University of Portsmouth to ensure that it'll keep soldiers cool from the brutal conditions in Iraq. Scientists at the school weren't at will to disclose all the nitty gritty details about the classified gear, but we do know that these bad boys utilize "a combination of air, liquid, and new applications of old technologies such as converting paraffin wax into liquid in chambers within the vests to absorb heat from the body." The gist of the testing is to create a suit that actually improves one's ability to make sound judgments while in the field and under extreme conditions, and it was also mentioned that a mysterious US defense contractor is hoping to tweak these and have 'em out "within one to two years." Now, if only these things were available en masse for our poor laps, we'd really be in business.[Via Gizmag]
Shuttle XPC goes 1337 with custom-painted SDXi gaming rig
Flame jobs on a PC most certainly aren't new, but we fear it's a fad that will always burn on in some regard, and its companies like Shuttle that keep on fanning it. While the rectangular-shaped box has made its way into a many of homes, gamers looking for some serious horsepower in a mobile rig can find a quite a potent system in the firm's forthcoming 1337 SDXi series desktops. While all the specifics aren't nailed down quite yet, the machine will boast an Intel X8600 or QX6700 quad-core processor, liquid-cooling system, unmistakable custom-paint job on the case, keyboard, and mouse, ATIs X1950 Pro CrossFire graphics cards, support for up to 8GB of DDR2 RAM, gigabit Ethernet, and a hint of that early 90s vibe to boot. Unfortunately, such a flashy rig sports an equally stunning pricetag, as these bad boys will be "starting" at $4,999 when they land later this month.[Thanks, Marshall W.]
OCZ kicks out liquid-cooled PC2-9200 FlexXLC Edition memory
Sure, liquid-cooling your gadgetry is oftentimes done to prove your 1337-ness, but in cases like Apple's oh-so-toasty Dual G5 PowerMac and Microsoft's notoriously warm Xbox 360, we consider the task quite appropriate. In OCZ's case, however, we're leaning towards the unnecessarily flashy side, as the company's PC2-9200 FlexXLC (Xtreme Liquid Convention) Edition memory touts both air and water cooling possibilities. Dubbed the "world's fastest DDR2 RAM" at 1,150MHz, the modules feature an eight-layer PCB which hinders crosstalk and improves signal integrity, and sports a "fin-like heatsink" to waft warmth away from the components. Moreover, it also boasts liquid-dispersing units that pass water across copper lines to cool things off when taxing your system. While we're not sure how much this showstopping memory will run you, it does feature a lifetime warranty in case the liquid decides to boil over and create a bonafide disaster.[Via Electronista]
NEC Valuestar X VX780/GD packs Blu-ray and liquid-cooling
While there aren't too many PCs that come with standard Blu-ray drives as of yet, there is surely also only a small selection that come with standard liquid-cooling. Well, a prototype of the new NEC Valuestar X VX780/GD with both is currently on display at the Ceatec expo in Chiba, outside Tokyo. According to IDG News Service, the Valuestar runs super-quiet at 31 decibels, or slightly above a whisper. Beyond the slick cooling system and the swanky optical drive, the computer comes with a digital TV tuner, a 3.4GHz Pentium D processor, 1GB of RAM, dual 250GB hard drives, a remote control, and a 20-inch LCD. But all those bells and whistles will set you back a hefty ¥543,000 (over $4,600), so start fishing out those stray yen coins out of your couch now. Hundreds of thousands of them.[Thanks, Dave]
NVIDIA busting out liquid-cooled GeForce 8800 in November?
As if the world of high-performance gaming graphics wasn't already out of control, NVIDIA is rumored to be working a their next-gen "G80" GeForce 8800 card, which will be liquid cooled, and purportedly chows down on 300 watts of electricity to push its pixels. The news comes our way via [H]ard|OCP, which has spy pics of the monstrosity, and DigiTimes, which pulls on their usually cadre of shady insider sources for dirt on a mid-November launch. The card is designed for DirectX 10, allowing for beefier graphics and the offloading of some CPU duties, but DigiTimes is hearing word that DirectX 10 won't be ready in time for Vista's launch (it'll instead be available for download from Windows Update at a later date), and since the new graphics API won't be available at all for previous versions of Windows, a November launch seems a pretty risky move for the GPU builder -- though we're sure the DirectX 9.0 speed gains won't be non-existant. And of course there's always the pure, unadulterated geek cred of having a liquid-cooled supercomputer dominating that PCI-E x16 slot of yours -- not even Vista can take all the fun out of that.[Via I4U]Read - NVIDIA launching GeForce 8800 mid-NovemberRead - G80 spy pics
Alienware's Area-51 7500 gaming desktop reviewed
When you pack Intel's blazing new Core 2 Extreme processor and a pair of top-of-the-line nVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX graphics cards into a single gaming desktop, you can pretty much expect it to post impressive benchmark numbers. It's no surprise, then, that Alienware's newly-speced Area-51 7500 showed the videogame addicts over at IGN some of the best performance they've ever seen, and ran surprisingly quietly while doing so -- thanks in no small part to the liquid-cooling system. Also noteworthy was the new P2 chassis Alienware employed for this model, which improves on older cases both aesthetically -- it sports a glossier paint job and more configurable lights to play with -- as well as functionally, with the shorter-but-deeper design intended to support extra-long graphics cards. Besides the relative lack of configurability -- there's only one open PCI slot, so you can add a physics processor or dedicated sound card, but not both -- the only real knock against this machine is it's price; at just under $5,000, you're paying a lot for the snazzy case and Alienware support network. Still, busy gamers don't always have time to build their own rigs (sometimes they don't even have time to go to the bathroom), so this version of the Area-51 sounds like a good way to get "best-of-the-best" performance without spending hours hunched over your work bench; instead, you'll be spending those hours working overtime at your day job to afford it.[Thanks, David]
Koolance's pricey Xbox 360 cooling kit
We're not sure what type of person would spend as much on cooling their Xbox 360 as they spent on the console itself, but the folks at Koolance must think they're out there, buried under bags of Doritos and aging laptops in dank cellars; probably why they're releasing a heavy duty liquid cooling kit for the hefty sum of $394.99 US. The kit (available in silver or black) includes Koolance's Exos-LT cooling system, CPU and GPU liquid blocks, an AC power adapter, and mounting hardware for the Xbox. However, Koolance is quick to warn that performing the necessary modifications to your Xbox is "not for the faint of heart" and that it will certainly void your warranty, meaning that there's a good chance you'll inflict more harm on your console by messing with it than a little over-heating could ever do -- and you'll be stuck without a way to return it. Par for the course though, right?[Via Joystiq]
More liquid cooling goodness
Liquid cooling is the new black it seems. The boys at Xbox-Scene give us the first glimpse at a do-it-yourself liquid cooling kit for the Xbox 360. While it may not be as "cool" as the internally cooled 360 we covered last week, this kit from Koolance promises to keep your 'box frosty for the incredibly affordable price of US $394.99. An undertaking of this magnitude can be very difficult and Koolance warns that it is "not for the faint of heart." Let me ask all the modders out there: for that price, how cool does your 360 need to be?
IBM, GIT overclock chip to 500GHz
If you were wowed by those Japanese modders who overclocked their stock CPU to 7GHz, wait till you hear about IBM's latest foray into the world of ultra-fast computing: together with researchers from the digital camera-hating Georgia Institute of Technology, Big Blue has managed to overclock a chip to an unheard of 500GHz. Granted, the model they used already had a blistering native clock speed of 350GHz to begin with, but we're still floored that you could actually coax a small silicon wafer into operating at an incredible half-terahertz. As you probably suspected, there's no way to achieve speeds like this at room temperature, so the team froze their high-performance silicon-germanium chip to a super-chilly negative 451-degrees Fahrenheit, which is just eight degrees above absolute zero. Unfortunately, after learning about this breakthrough, electronics giant Sony apparently felt that consumers would no longer be impressed with their much-hyped Cell processor, so they've once again delayed the PS3 until IBM can make the liquid helium-cooled CPUs suitable for mass production . Expect the 500GHz PS3 to hit stores sometime in 2011.[Thanks, bento-san]
