Conroe runs on super cheap i865 mobo

THE SYMBIOTIC relationship between Nvidia and ATI is explored by Rahul Sood in his regular blog. How those two giants have stumbled and take turns in what happens to be a well defined cycle gets his attention. From the Fan buster FX 5800 to the X3200 chipset, Rahul congratulates both manufacturers for their altogether gratifying show and hails the competition between them as being something fundamentally good for the industry as a whole. If no one falls, we are looking for a very competitive horse race, he adds.

Certainly one object of desire. The Asus W5F laptop is a 12-inch subnotebook with a Core Duo CPU. Although not stylish as Apple's model - I still have to figure out why there are so many stickers on it. There are quite a few accessories including a bonus Bluetooth mouse, digital audio output and even an integrated camera. The laptop is compared with the Compaq V2410 and was found to be faster than the latter. The only serious thing was the fact that there was only one SO-DIMM slot free.

Over at HKEPC, they tested the next generation Conroe - Intel Core E6700 - is tested on an Asrock 77i65G motherboard. This is a i865G motherboard with ICH5, which means that it was meant for last generation's Pentium but is still compatible with the fastest CPU Intel has. The rev 2.0 version comes with an AGP 8X slot - I am not kidding - a mATX format, three PCI slots, RoHS compliance, SATA/PATA ports and DDR400 compatibility. HKEPC did not overclock the Conroe which runs at 2.66GHz. There are a couple of 3DMark 05 benchmarks as well.

DoomedPC tests the Akasa Pro-Grade 460 and the Pro-Grade+ 5022 thermal compounds. The first one is a silicone-technology evolution while the second one excels at low pressures. The two page reviews even includes some temperature charts at stock and overclocked, the Akasa compounds shave some degrees centigrades from the chart. They are both quite cheap and the reviewer happily recommends the Akasa compounds, especially the 5022 one.

What a contrast when you compare the above board to the AOpen i975Xa-YDG motherboard tested at Anandtech. This model is a perfect match for the new generation Core Duo processors. The board is powered by a 975x Intel chipset with PCI express, four memory slots, loads of E/SATA and PATA ports, most RAIDed, PCI-e LAN, Firewire and HD Audio. What this means for the enthusiasm is high price, extra high overclocking and extreme stability. It is Crossfire compatible, although this can be very problematic. Now if Aopen could get the prices down, that would be a good thing.

Tweaktown reviews the Asetek Vapochill Micro HSF, a very small cooling unit which combines the concept of phase change cooling with air. This has not been tried before to my knowledge. It is cheap - at around $60 including fan and the trick works out very well. There are three fan choices and performance is excellent. So good it is that the reviewer will put it in its air cooled system. There are some pitfalls but nothing worrying enough to remove it from your list of selected coolers. µ