Turn your hardware inside out

VICTOR AT Bjorn3D has an interesting “concept” goodie for your gazing. It’s called the ULTRA Stackable and is, in essence, a modular stacking system that allows you to move a lot of junk from inside the PC to the outside, as well as eliminating some cable clutter. The base consists of a 180-watt power supply, and the stackable add-ons can be any of the following: 3.5-inch IDE enclosure, 3,5-inch SATA enclosure, media card reader with six USB ports and a USB seven-port hub. You can rack up to six devices on top. It sounds like a good idea for your DTR or SFF system. Give it a read.

Getting samples ahead of the market seems to be a no-brainer for the chaps at Expreview. This time they’ve banged away some decoding tests on the brand new Radeon HD3450 128MB. This is the low-end of the food chain when it comes to gaming performance, but it’s got what you need if you’re thinking HTPC – including the next gen DisplayPort. Although gaming is nothing to write home about, you’ll still be able to couple an IGP to the HD3450 and do Hybrid CrossFire. Read all about it.

The Asus Xonar D2X is faced-off with the Auzentech Prelude 7.1 at Tech Report. They use different sound chips, but have exactly the same price and market segment, so you can compare things right off. They’re both winners, they think. Literally. Their only differentiator is the OS criteria – if you’re using Vista, Xonar is the way to go. If not... you’ve got Auzentech’s baby. Get your audio delight here.

Legion Hardware has a retail E8400 on the bench (which, frankly, is closer to reality than having the Engineering Sample). They face it off with an extremely expensive QX9650 and an E6850. They were particularly impressed with the price point and power consumption on this CPU. Take a look at the benchmarks... that E8400 trails the QX9650 quite closely, doesn’t he?

ECS – not a first tier graphics vendor – has done the trick on the 8800GT. They’ve killed the noisy fan and replaced it out-of-the-box with an Accelero S1 heatsink. ECS aren’t the hottest items on the market, they’re usually the most sensible. With the massive Accelero on board you can add fans, but the whole idea is to keep it quiet. The Accelero makes it a two-slot design, so be careful when planning your PC.

Power over Ethernet is back in the Antipodes. OzHardware.com.au has a test on the latest-and-greatest DHP-300 Powerline Adapter. Compared to previous generation Powerline, the software now has an interesting QoS feature, so you can tweak your network to certain types of traffic. It’s big though and resembles those air freshners you plug into the wall. Read it if you don’t want to spread Cat5/5e around the house, you’ll thank us later. µ