Silent graphic cards tested

CORSAIR IS bringings its know how to the world of cooling, more especially, water cooling. With COOL, Corsair tackles the coveted domain of high end cooling. Xbitlabs is impressed by its performance and its compact size. A pity though you can't control the speed of its fan and it is pricey.

Phoronix checks the Link depot 21-in-1 card reader. In a not-so-far future, 50-in-1 plus card readers are not a remote possibility at this rate. The number of cards it support is simply astounding. It needs no external power supply - it comes with a 1M USB cable and is compatible with Mac OSX, Windows but no Linux. While it ain't the fastest, it is quite small and has a good build quality.

Guru3D tests the Albatron PC6800 with wise fan III heat pipe technology. Albatron, formed by former Gigabyte execs, started life as a mobo manufacturer before branching into graphics. The card actually uses two cooling technologies - three fans and one heatpipe cooler. No it is not a low profile card; not yet and the PC6800 performs similarly to other competitors and overclocks similarly well. Just how to see availability now.

Know optorite? Well they make optical drives - dvd, cdrom, dvd burners, you name it. They decided to branch out to another optical thing, not laser printers but rather mice. They have released the second laser mouse on the market, the ML100/101, tested at firingsquad. Simpler in its packaging and presentation than the MX1000 which preceded it. To answer some gamers request, a corded version hsa bene introduced. Good mouse without being exceptional. Oh, and lefties, just pass your way, this 1600dpi rodent ain't for you.

Gotapex tests the Sapphire X800XL Ultimate Edition which comes with 256MB memory. It supports Composite and S Video as well as HDTV component out. The X800XL places itself between the X800 and the X800XT - plus it has a Zalman cooler to boot with it. Performance is inline with other X800XL but the price is higher. You decide if its near silence is worth its weight in gold.

Insanetek gets a go at the Gigabyte X800XL 256MB PCIe RX80XL256V graphics card which is just like the above, but at a lower price. Additionally, this one is completely silent thanks to its heatpipe cooling. Now the decision couldn't be simpler between those two cards. It might not be very overclocking friendly but as John Chen puts it, you just can't compete with 0 dBa when it comes to the noise. µ