The House of Asus is under construction

GAMERS AND MODDERS are particularly proud of the unique look and performance their rigs carry, even though component makers have hardly made it easy for users to get that result.

Well, we came across this user review (googlenglish) on the XFastest forums, and it shows Asus’ brand new Lion Square CPU cooler being installed and tested. Without getting into too many details, the Lion Square not only has a cool looking faceplate, but the 90mm mag-lev fan is enclosed by the cooling fins, instead of being mounted on the side or top. Add to this the eight heatpipes and the review shows some pretty good results with a 3.4GHz CPU (we didn’t do the maths) measuring 40 celsius vs the 59 celsius measured under the Intel stock cooler.

We don’t know the pricing on this thing either, but we’d go out of our way and buy the cooler on looks alone. Oeerrr did we mention it has four shiny blue LEDs on the faceplate?

OCC is reviewing the Asus Striker II Extreme, the notorious water-cooled, 790i SLI-based, DDR3-2000 supporting, Tri-SLI-enabled mobo *gasp*. All the Asus technologies under one roof, actually. You can use the Linked and Synced or go Unlinked to tweak your CPU to Memory ratios. OCC really liked that one. Overclocking is also pretty damn stable. Naturally there’s a steep price to pay for this - $469 – which will deter most consumers, but if you’re a die-hard enthusiast, you’re wibbling the right way.

James at Overclock 3D has a face-off of 3 dual-GPU solutions: 3850X2, 3870X2 and the 9800GX2. Yes, all three cards are from Asus (and no, this isn’t a sponsored roundup), but it does stand to reason as pricing is always an issue, and this is a worst-case scenario. James introduced an additional graph per benchmark (cost per frame) that shows the return on your buck (or pound, or euro) – funny... they all tie in that department. You probably know the performance results, but the bang-for-buck department might give you a surprise. Read it here.

Legionnaires have wibbled an article on Intel’s E7200 and the Phenom X3 8450. Both are sub-$150 processors, and both deliver serious performance for the buck. The E7200, however, gets Steven’s preference, even though it runs on two legs rather than three, it still outperforms the Phenom in most benchmarks. It does look like the Phenom continues the strong FPU tradition that AMD has shown since the original Athlon, but it’s lacking in other respects. Overclockability, for one. Read on.

Tweaktown reviewed MSI’s N9600GT with Hybrid Freezer technology – a dual-slot design that is very similar to the Zalman solution used on the Vvikoo cards. The card isn’t a final spec so it was tested at stock speeds, however, Shane feels confident MSI will market this at least at 700MHz GPU and 1900MHz RAM (although 1GB o’RAM does little to improve performance). It’s pretty silent under load, but, again, it’s working at stock speeds. Read on.

Apevia (formerly Aspire) is beginning sales of their X-Jupiter G-Type cases in the ‘States, and Virtual-Hideout had a peek at their kit. It’s a massive tower that can house everything under the sun, and do it in style. Most of the case is tool-less, allowing you to slide in your HDDs, optical drives and secure your PCI cards. It’s got plenty of (theoretical) air-flow too as it comes with four 120mm fans - and you’ll appreciate the speed-sensitive LED lights and the LCD temp sensor. On the downside, you’ve got the short cabling length that might get in the way of some configs. It’s also pretty cheap... Observe. µ