Feel the chill of New Year’s overclocking

INSTEAD OF breaking open the bottles of bubbly, the chaps at Custard PC would rather perform amazing feats with their CPUs. The geek factor will just tickle you silly viewing through this here video of brit overclockers taking their rides all the way up to 5.6GHz on liquid nitrogen. Chilling, isn’t it?

Another daring feat in overclocking is reported to us by Hardspell, but this time attributed to a mobo, rather than the advanced cooling system. An Asrock 4Core1600P35-WiFi+ OC’ed to 579MHz FSB, putting an Intel E6550 tearing up the tarmac at 3.47GHz. Apparently Asrock has a decent overclocking software they’re using to maximise the results. Oh, btw, this is air cooled.

Taking time thinking about how to setup your HTPC rig? Bit Tech took the Shuttle SN68PTG5 XPC – one of their SFF systems – out for a spin. The pricing seems to be very much what you’d wish for an HTPC box, plus the included AMD-oriented entrails - £173. It’s a DIY job, as most XPC kits are, so the boys at Bit Tech recommend you stick in a low power CPU like the X2 BE-2350.

Dragon Steel Mods provides us with a review of the ThermalRight Ultima 90. It’s quite small but has great cooling power. It bears a heat pipe design with 48 fins, according to the reviewer, and you can use a 92mm fan on it. It also includes mounting holes for 120mm fans – more effective and less noise.

A (eVGA) 8800GT faces off a (Sapphire) HD3870 at HillBillyHardware. Although putting up a decent fight against the 8800GT, the HD3870 is lagging behind when it comes to hi-res gaming, concludes George. However the power draw and price on the HD3870 seem to beat the 8800GT any day. Your choice, the money or the frames?

If you think you’ve seen everything there is to see in the way of CPU cooling, take a look at this oddity here. A Sunon Waturbo fan/heatsink combo that carries at the core a glycol-based that’s stirred around to cool down the CPU. It’s a decent cooler, they think, but does it have what it takes to face up to the big boys?

One source of mobile technology news, GSMArena, has their eye on the new Sony-Ericsson W890 mobile phone-made-MP3-player-made-camera. It’s a cool looking phone with all the features and apps you’ll want, but lacks a couple of critical features we’ve come to love from cameraphones. Read it here.

Laptop Magazine has possible one of the most interesting notebook reviews around – the HP Pavillion HDX Entertainment Notebook. “Why?” you ask. It’s one of the first Penryn-based laptops to reach the market. Unfortunately don’t count on having much battery life on one of these – it’s a 20.1-inch monster (yes, you read it right), and designed to sit somewhere and exalt the virtues of HD video. Right here. µ