ECS 9800GTX+ Hydra does SLI-in-a-box

ECS ISN’T THE FIRST NAME that pops to mind when you think “enthusiast graphics”… at all. But this year they’re coming up with some novel ideas like the ECS 9800GTX+ Hydra SLI pack that’s on review at Guru3D. The pack includes two graphics cards plus a Thermaltake Bigwater cooling system. Yeah, that’s right, water-cooled SLI for the masses… if you can afford it, of course. It’s a nice idea, but it costs as much as an HD 4870 X2… Get your review, here.

Ze Professor at 3DProfessor had an exclusive last Friday, something we missed on, but in all fairness deserves to be posted up here. It’s that Intel SSD again rearing its ugly head and crushing the competition… again. As things stand, Intel is well positioned to corner the market (if they so wish). Still, it’s not an entry-level product nor will it pop up in any EeePC you know of.

The guys at Anandtech, Tech Report, Network World (wozzat?) and Legit Reviews also landed some X25-M drives, so you can check out their reviews too.

Benchmark Reviews is performing a type-fest of sorts with Enermax’s new keyboards: the Aurora Premium, Caesar and Aurora Micro. The PSU maker marks a good start into the peripheral world, and even seems to do things with a bit more sense than expert keyboard makers such as Logitech who engage in really silly things – rea d the article for some clarification…

Thrusting Reviews is testing a laptop. Not a netbook, not a DTR… a real life laptop, the kind of laptop you’re likely to carry around as a work tool: the Samsung R510. It’s a budget 15.4-inch lappie that retails in Blighty for around £489.70 and, according to Ardjuna, has a great screen for that price tag. The integrated Bluetooth 2.0 doesn’t hurt it either, and 3GB of RAM seem to be on target for whatever you need to do… The review.

OCIA.net has written an “overclocking basics” for Intel’s Core 2 Duo series. It’s really a beginner’s guide and you’ll appreciate the content if your new to overclocking. The Core 2 has so much OC potential that it has been the object of many of these articles. OCIA has just given this one a slightly different spin. Edjucate yousself.

Small Net Builder is doing what many of us have been thinking of ever since Intel launched Atom: building their own NAS. This is the first installment of the article, but you get a good idea of how the Atom platform behaves in storage. Unfortunately this may all be a bit of overkill because the Atom itself draws more than twice the power of off-the-shelf solutions. It does perform quite well once tweaked and tuned, tho’. Get the article here. µ