Water cooling goes mainstream

DAN'S TESTED two VOiP Phones. Now that broadband lines are ubiquitous, VOiP does make sense now. The wireless phone he tests is the Olympia DUALphone - which can also be used on a regular line - while another phone he tests is the Sedna, a wired version. Both of them are Skype compatible and have got some pretty good features.

OCinside.de, with its peculiar design, reviews the Asrock K8 Combo-Z motherboard. Its dual design - socket 754 and socket 939, makes it ideal if you want to upgrade at a later period. Asrock motherboards might be cheap but they do stand apart. This one overclocks very well and comes with SATA/PATA ports as well as 7.1 channel sound and eight USB 2.0 ports.

TweakPC tests the Leadtek Winfast PX7800GT TDH video card. German Translator needed. TweakPC has implemented a useful interactive benchmark feature which means that you don't have to go through 20 pages of review. The Leadtek 7800GT proves to be bargain as it does overclock nicely and should cost less than XFX and the likes.

Water and computers do not normally mix well. But MVKtech shows us how good water can be for cooling. Fury, the reviewer tests the Swiftech h20-120T TEC liquid cooling kit. With a maximum temperature of 5.5o C at full load, the Swiftech is the ideal candidate for those looking to overclock their gear. Fury took its 2200MHz A3500+ to 2730MHz and he says that memory - Mushkins in this case - was what limited overall overclock.

Another review of a water cooling unit comes from Gruntville. At $400, the Koolance Exos 2 is not you usual fan. This is the price you pay though for simplicity. Using the Exos 2 is far from being a complicated tasks. It has redundant pumps, a LCD temperature display, can cool up to five components and do not require a B.Sc in Hydrology. If you can live with the price, then it's for you.

William Henning of Neoseeker checks the OCZ PC3500 Gold GX memory modules, OCZ's entry level candidate. Not quite up with the big guys up there but still managed a rather good performance. The stick was compared to an OCZ PC5000 module, it will be interesting to see how it compares to other value memory modules. µ