Power to the people

1000W OF POWER may seem like a lot to most of us, but enthusiasts across the world are tooling up for the greedier demands of power hungry graphics cards and other components. Although the PC industry has taken great steps in reducing power consumption and making your PC more efficient, you tend to fill your rig with power-hungry extra components. XBit Labs has a roundup of ten 1000W+ power supplies (all the way up to 1500W). The verdict? Aim at the middle of the group, where the mid-price, low-noise, “average” power units rule the roundup – if you need such high power, that is.

What will hopefully be a decent budget CPU from Intel, the Q9300 makes its debut online at PCGamesHardware.de (English here). It won’t be a great overclocker, they figure, ‘cause it’s already running a 1333MHz bus. It does, however, perform slightly above the Q6600, and will most likely suck less power than its older sibling.

EXPReview has been tinkering with two flavours of the 8800GS from Palit, the 384MB and 768MB ones. The card looks tailor-built to counter AMD’s HD3850, stripped of extras to shave off some cents – no temperature sensor, apparently, so the fan is always running at top speed... and making a helluva noise, according to this.

Heatpipes are the hottest feature to hit cooling systems since all-copper blocks, and the Scythe Ninja Copper features six pipes. At Pro-Clockers you’ll find fins pipes and block in a full copper configuration. The Sycthe Ninja Copper is a mid-range CPU cooler with a massive weigh - you’d better get a solid mobo to put it on... it weighs 1.13Kg. Get every gram of it here.

If you’re wondering which Core 2 to buy, TechARP will lend you a hand. They’ve gathered up some of the Core 2 family members and thrown them in the benchmarketing machine. Core 2 Quad Q6600 seems to be the sensible choice for users (ie: not an extremely expensive CPU). Compare your Intel CPU at this place here.

Virtual Hideout has some NAS for you. Thecus supplied the 5200 and 5200Pro series NAS Servers. These are 5-drive units that can support multiple RAID systems within the unit – which offers you performance and security without (entirely) sacrificing storage. VH think these units offer all customers, even home users. Cost and expertise aside, this unit looks good. Read it and see it, here.

If this UMPC fad never ends, then sites like Pocketables.net will become mainstream in no time. Pocketables reviews the Fujitsu Lifebook U810, based on Intel’s Ultra Mobile Platform. It’s small, it’s light, it’ll let you type really fast and, whether you like it or not, you get stuck with an 800MHz CPU, 1GB of RAM and Windoze Vista – which being the case, will reduce your “PC” to a basic typing+browsing device. The up side is that it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg – just $849 USD. µ