ATI's X1800XL card not doing so well

3D CHIP reviews the Arctic Cooler NV5 Silencer Rev 3 which is the staple kind of cooler you would normally find on high end video cards from Sapphire et al. The cooler is compatible with most recent PCI-e graphic cards, it does more than a decent job when it comes to cooling cards. After two hours under load, it beats Nvidia's reference cooler by a full 19 degrees. Well worth the money spent.

Another German-speaking review is that of Hardware Overclock - from Austria though. It shows how to overclock the Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ processor effectively. They used the Asus A8N-SLI motherboard to do that operationand managed and 24% overclock up to 2850MHz, well short of the 3GHz limit but still not bad.

Bittech checks the white Sapphire PI-A9RX480 motherboard. Interesting features include 8-channel HD audio, GbE, RAIDed SATA2 and Firewire. While general performance and looks are great, they cannot save the PI-A9RX480 from being a poor buy thanks to its very high price.

Trusted reviews has a test of the Lexmark E342n Mono laser printer. Quite a bit pricey; there are at least half a dozen of colour laser printers in the same price range. It holds its own though. Adopting the kind of colours that caracterise Dell's printer lines, the E342n prints up to 28ppm, comes with three connections and a useful backlit LCD display. Good product but far from being top of its range.

Two of OCZ High Grade Memory, a PC 4800 DDR and a PC 5400 DDR2 memory parts are tested at Tweaktown. They are put through the usual series of benches. The former was found to have a good performance, eventually made better when overclocked while the second was a bit outdated and came with a high price.

Techspot closes today's column with a test of the Sapphire X1800XL. Interestingly, this one is a one slot solution with a massive cooler and a long rectangular heat sink fin and two DVI ports. The X1800XL has its weaknesses as you might have guessed but it did come with an overclocking utility. Another itssue was the fact that temperature can rise quite a bit. µ