Monday's Daily Hardware Buys

UK
Tiny.com cum thecomputershop.co.uk is offering a great PC deal (£499+VAT) based around the latest entry level Intel processor, the Celeron D 320 which runs at 2.66 GHz. It is however closer to the older Pentium 4 Northwood rather than to the older Celeron Model. expect improvements of up to 25% in some cases; in fact, the CPU is based on the newer Prescott Core, the same as the newer Intel Pentium 4 family. The chip sports a 133Mhz rather than a 100Mhz Quadpumped FSB, strained 90nm manufacturing process, half L2 cache (256Kb) and twice L1 (16Kb) cache. Furthermore, the newer Celeron has an additional set of instruction sets, the SSE3 to help it improve its performance. To stuff information in the CPU, 512Mb of Micron DDR memory is provided as well as a 7200RPM 120GB Seagate hard disk. As if this was not enough, The Home PC3200 also provides with a NEC Dual Fomat eight-speed DVD Writer (probably the ND2500a) as well as an additional DVD drive and the usual floppy disk drive. Uncommon in this range of price is the presence of a separate 128Mb Geforce FX5200 graphic card with TVO with a PC-TV card which also includes a remote control. The rest of the computer is pretty standard as compared to the previous components; a 17" monitor, onboard 5.1 sound module with a pair of speakers, five USB2.0 ports, LAN connections, 56K modem, Windows XP home, Works 7 and some Cyberlink Software. µ

USA
My quest for superlative computational power is not over. For power users, Dumpinggoods.com is proposing a refurbished Asus PU-DL motherboard for only $209 featuring Dual Intel Xeon processor support through an Intel E7501 chipset. It has six DIMM slots allowing up to 12GB of Registered ECC memory in your future computers but only two ATA connections (up to four devices connected). Furthermore, it has four PCI-X slots for server-based PCI cards and two PCI slots for "normal" PCI cards as well as onboard ATI Rage XL 8Mb video module and two Gigabit LAN connnections. Only problem that might arise is with your casing: the extended ATX format motherboard is large enough to warrant a radical move to a server casing. To nice complement the ASUS PU-DL, get yourself a couple Intel Xeon 2.8Ghz processors. Even though it is based on the older Prestonia Core, has only 512KBL2 cache and runs on a 400Mhz FSB, it should still provide lot of firepower for all but the most power hungry applications (rendering Shrek 3 for example). The ASUS PU-DL does not provide with lots of overclocking options, but if you can manually force/change the FSB to 133Mhz, you will find yourself with a couple of 3.7Ghz processors. The Xeon processor consumes only 1.475v and since it was built on a 130nm process, we can expect to react positively to that "slight" overclocking. Anyone fancy two Xeon processors and one motherboard for $555? µ

France
Surcouf.fr, which means pirates in English, has a product which might be classified as a "why-it-did-not-exist-before". The BTC combo CD writer, on sale at 69 € (around £37+vat) combines a CD writer and a seven-in-one card reader. Comnining these two finctions into one drive did not increase the size of the writer and saves one 3.5" external bay. The CD-writer is fairly standard in itself with a write and read speed of 52x, a rewrite speed of 32x, Superlink buffer underrun error technology, a 110ms access time and 2 MB buffer memory. The interesting bit is the seven-in-one card reader capable of reading Compact Flash, MicroDrive, Smartmedia, Memory Stick/Pro, Secure Digital and MMC, nothing about the latest xD memory devices though. The drive however is quite expensive and it would cost you less to buy the drives separately. A DVD-writer combo might have been a substantially better option by now as CD Writers are gradually fading into oblivion and it might help save a few pounds. Nero 5.5 is the software provided with it. µ

Singapore
Hardwareplace.com is selling a mini-barebone for S$239 (around £67+VAT). The iWill XP4 is a Pentium IV MiniPC, boasting an Intel 845GV chiposet without AGP slot, support for Northwood processor (533Mhz FSB), two IDE connectors, Realtek 5.1 sound module and LAN connectors, Intel Extreme Integrated graphics, one PCI slot, thirteen external connectors and a silverish glossy look alike Shuttle's range. The XP4 is quite small as compared to a desktop and does not cost that much expensive. The lack of support for the AMD platform, no firewire, no external 3.5" bay and no external AGP port might reduce its appeal but its cost, its no-thrillness and its look will win may hearts. Overclocking is possible although no miracles can be expected. Overall, a good machine for those looking to shrink their desktop. Cluboverclocker says of it that it "is an awesome solution for the office and at home where hard core gaming is not a concern. It looks good and it does what it is designed for. It even throws in a few extra options that you wouldn't expect on a Small Form Factor computer, like overclocking options." µ