Cool your Dothan CPU with Liquid Nitrogen

APOLOGIES for stating that the P D 820 has 4MB cache when it actually has 2MB cache. Still the gap between the P D 820 and the the P D 805 is even smaller than $30 according to pricewatch.

Verbatim is known for their media solutions like floppies and optical media. Since that market is becoming more and more crowded. So we've started to see Verbatim USB drives and lately, MP3 players coming from them. IT-review checks one of them. A very small article. That MP3 player should be dirty cheap. The device has a small OLED screen, 256MB memory and work on a single AAA battery. It has a SD/MMC port and a joystick. What's the price though.

Proclockers reports on the Thermaltake Silent Boost RX K8 cooler. With a price less than $30, it is cheaper than you might expect, especially when it carries the Thermaltake brand. From the moniker, you can also guess that it is geared towards the Athlon platform. The RX is small and therefore ideal for something like a HTPC platform. So small it is that it does not require you to remove the motherboard and it is heavenly quiet. Obviously unless you want to do some light overclocking, this little baby won't quench your thirst for speed.

Bjorn3D checks the HIS X1900XTX and HIS X1900 Crossfire edition cards. The 48-PS, 8VS monster is more than a match for Nvidia's 7900 platform. The X1900 consumes more power than the 7900 though. The XTX and XT reviewed here have significantly lower Core and Mem speeds as compared with Nvidia's. They are loud and expensive, the bundle is not great and getting a Crossfire does not mean that you will get twice the performance. But on the other side, in absolute terms, they are very fast, they tend to be in stock and video quality is superb.

Madshrimps reports on how to overclock the Intel Dothan 780 using Liquid Nitrogen - hehe. Don't forget that you should be very careful about water condensation which will obviously ruin your ultra expensive rig. The reviewer uses the P4C800-E motherboard with the adapter and shows with loads of photos how to do the things properly. They even show you how to clean your mess after finishing the experiment. Obviously, like modded cars, you won't expect to use this kind of computer in everyday life. They only benchmarked the system with Superpi and reached 3868MHz. Not bad.

Techpowerup tests the Evercool Turbo2 cooler which is used to cool your video cards - both Nvidia and ATI models. The cooler is pretty big and thick - 44mm. I don't know if you'd be able to use it for SLI/Crossfire configurations. The cooler comes with thermal paste and a pack of screws. The cooler is actually like a heatpipe with copper tubes and aluminum fins next tot the red blade cooler. A very silent cooler, but it doesn't cool your memory and it is cheap. Go for it if you are not running multiple GPU configurations.

Finally, Phoronix has a go at the Acer AL1732 Prestige 17-inch LCD monitor. It has both DVI and VGA inputs; don't know if you can use both of them at the same time. If has a good viewing angle and a correct response time plus the speakers should be useful. On top of that, Acer seems to have put some thoughts in the design since it includes a metal stand and good looks. The lack of pivoting options might get some heads turning but for casual users. the AL1732 should fit the bill. µ