Via's Luke Core Fusion picoplatform reviewed

IN THE wake of its rumoured withdrawal from the motherboard market - something that it officially denied on its web site, Chaintech got its VNF4 Ultra motherboard reviewed at sysopt - which BTW have a new design. It is the cheapest nForce 4 Ultra board out there but does not give away that much. With a good software bundle, great stability and all features offered by the nForce 4 Ultra chipset, you can't beat it for its money/value ratio. It is so good that apparently one graphic manufacturer has rebranded it and sold it at double the price.

Tai-Chi is a chinese exercise that has millions of adept around the world. It is also a new High end Aluminium Tower casing launched by Thermaltake and reviewed at TweakPC. With its 20Kg supported by four caster wheels, this casing is massive. You get loads of space for your cooler, two handles for carrying it around and a hydraulic front door. 11 bays are available and there is even a small drawer for anything you might want to hide. German translator needed.

Another German website is reviewing the Yakumo Q8M Turion64 YW notebook. Never heard of that brand but the fact that an unknown brand has come out with a solid AMD Turion design is quite surprising. The specs of the machine is very much like the first Acer Turion laptop we tested some time back. It comes witha Turion ML30, 512MB memory, a 80GB HDD, dual layer DVD writer and integrated graphics plus the usual communication peripherals and ports. A babelfish translation unfortunately finds it uncompetitive even against its cheaper sibling.

Gognet eye straining website has been updated with a review of the Asetek Vapochil Micro - a mini monster with 53 aluminium fins and three heatpipes, all capable of pumping out 150w of heat. Available in three categories, the Vapochill micro cools efficiently and most of the time silently. While it can't beat the leaders, it is an affordable solution for those looking for calm.

You cannot not be thrilled by what the Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS is capable of. It is not larger than a usual memory stick and yet, it is capable of providing analogue and digital television. You even get a remote control - which incidentally is far bigger than the USB drive. Else, you get all the goodies you could expect like EPG, Videotext and a surprisingly good software bundle. Unfortunately, input and output options are fairly limited. No digital IOs or PIP option.

Luke, John and Mark are three of the forthcoming technologies from VIA. HKEPC reviews the Luke CoreFusion where VIA managed to cram a whole motherboard in a 80x80mm space - probably the smallest x86 complete unit in the world. While not exactly a performance hulk, it does compete with AMD's Geode in terms of power dissipation/consumption. Everything is embedded though, even the memory. But don't expect it to come cheap or close to modern powerhouse in terms of performance. µ