Bits and bobs of hardware will knock your socks off

WITH THIS YEAR'S Winteryulevalerabbiton Festive Season gaining momentum, we're all wondering what to buy our favourite tech-heads for the traditional gift giving day. On this note, PC Perspective has compiled a Hardware Leaderboard to help buyers find the best bits, or entire system, depending on what sort of level of budgetary constraints they may be under.

Similarly SysOpt has released a Holiday Gift Guide 2006: Portable Storage For All, looking at a range of very different portable storage gadgets for your geek on the go.

Virtual-Hideout has reviewed the Abit AN9-32X AM2 NVIDIA 590-SLI Motherboard. The board snags and Editors choice award so it certainly seems to tick all the right boxes, but the bit that really caught my eye was the Abit µGuru Panel that comes with it to provide system status information as well as a few ports and a CMOS reset switch, perfect for overclockers.

Cameralabs has done what comes naturally and brings us a review of the Fujifilm FinePix F30. The result is a camera that comes highly recommended, especially in low light conditions.

Bjorn3d has reviewed the ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium and while the board is solid and packed with features, it is also fairly expensive and with the much improved nForce680 chipset boards already making an appearance it seems like this mobo is just a little late in coming out.

PC Perspective also brings us the Thermaltake Mozart Tx Entertainment Center Case Review. It's a very interesting square design with all sorts of weird and wonderful features, including a 7-inch bay for use with a retractable LCD monitor, that won't necessarily be everyone's cup of tea, but may be music to the ears of a fair few people.

Rbmods has reviewed the QPAD EC-R Mousepad. Aimed at gamers it provides a big, medium rough surface that won't move around in the heat of the battle.

Phoronix has reviewed the Razer Barracuda AC-1 Gaming Sound Card. The card is a PCI based card with optical in and out and the HD-DAI for use with the Barracuda HP-1 Headphones. µ

* SEND YOUR hardware news to Ian Williams.