Dumb down your overclocked system in anger

PURE OVERCLOCKER has taken on the task of reviewing two 20-inch wide-screen monitors from well known names Dell and Samsung. At first glance these may seem very similar, but the features, price and the technology that drives them are rather startlingly different. In essence the Pure Overclocker team is looking at the differences in today's monitors and how that affects buyers and the overall results make for interesting reading.

Our friends over at Evil Bastards have been testing out the super overclocked Asus EN7900GS TOP, the TOP standing for, well, top. The idea is a card that ships significantly overclocked, rather than the timid hikes offered by most manufacturers, to help squeeze out the maximum performance and really get a good bang for your buck. Although given the substantial boost this card is getting, whilst keeping a standard cooler, I can only hope that the bang is not literal.

PC-Treiber has reviewed the Asrock ALiveSATA2-GLAN, a Via K8T890 CF based board for socket AM2. Given the shiny pictures and graphs and the 'Hot Stuff' and 'Price Award' at the bottom I would guess it's pretty good, but as I can't really read German it's hard to say for sure.

To power all of this you're probably going to need a new power supply as well Enter the Antec Truepower Trio 650 Watt Power Supply. Antec has a good reputation in PC hardware enthusiast circles, and this latest offering continues to live up to the tradition. According to the site, this power supply is stable, quiet and powerful enough to run your dual graphics card setup and your watercooling system and all for a reasonable price. In fact the only negative aspects of the review centred on the lack of frills.

Certainly not for the faint hearted, Club Overclocker has been testing the new Cooler Master Eclipse CPU fan. Priced around $50 MSRP and being the size of a 1980's cell phone, it's not aimed at your average end user, but rather tech-heads who want to max out their processors, while still keeping their system as quiet as possible.

If a noisy PC is the bane of your existence you may want to take a page out of Bill Todd's book. An electronic engineer who built himself a completely silent, fairly modest Pentium III machine using nothing more than some basic physics, recycled electronics heatsinks, plywood, gelpacks and some wheels from old scooter. Sounds simple enough, right?

Finally, Panasonic has jumped into the digital SLR camera market with a flurry. Camera Labs put the Lumix DMC-L1 through its paces. With a somewhat retro look and feel this offering comes up trumps and really marks Panasonic's entry into this field. µ

* SEND YOUR hardware news to Ian Williams.