Gelid Silent Spirit CPU cooler reviewed

GELID IS A little known Hong-Kong company that makes CPU cooling solutions – fans, thermal paste, you name it. They’ve sent a CPU cooler down Guru3D’s way, the Silent Spirit model. Hilbert plonked the fan on a QX9770, pretty much the most demanding processor out there, overclocked the CPU and read the signs... silent and effective, for just 23 Euros. Read it here.

As Intel release the Core i7, it will keep launching E8000-series dual-core processors. In fact, Core 2 Duo processors are very mature products right now, as can be seen by the newly-released E0 stepping, that Nordic Hardware is analysing, over here. Don’t see why you’d want a quad-core, right now, at least for gaming...

Velociraptors have become synonymous to high-speed, high-performance hard-drives. Adrian Rojak has a story on the evolution of the famous HDD and it’s impressive performance credentials. Desktop PC users are lucky as they get the pick of the litter. Pricey little things, they are. Get your speed fix, here.

Sean at Planet X64 is benching the Asus P6T Deluxe OC Palm Edition motherboard. This X58/Core i7 mobo comes with an external overclocking readout to make life easy on the amateur overclocker, as well as working great straight outof the box. Although it’s one of the first X58 mobos out there, it’s likely to be one of the best. You do pay a steep price, $309, for it... Read about the P6T here.

Sapphire’s HD 4550 might not be a gaming powerhouse, but it seems like it’s got enough firepower to keep you in the fun, according to XS Reviews. The mul timedia option pretty much sucks as it’s limited to D-Sub and DVI output, which is a shame. However it has a couple of redeeming features: fully passive (ie: silent) and dirt cheap. Get it here.

Fudo’s Sanjin has a preview of Gainward’s extremely non-reference HD 4870 X2. It’s called the Rampage 700 and it sports a three slot cooler... Thanks to which it clocks in at 790MHz core/3.8GHz memory (2GB of it, btw). First tests show small gains, but the full review should be out soon. Walk this way.

OC Workbench is playing around with an Asrock P43DE ICH10 mobo. This is the kind of motherboard that will do the trick if you’re not one to go SLI or CrossfireX. It even supports Extreme edition CPUs... If you need a cheap, yet powerful Intel mobo, this could be it... Read the Workbench.

TweakPC in Germany has discovered a Nettop called the Mini Pirate. It’s a Mini companion PC of sorts. The full system costs just €199, no monitor included, of course, and you get the mini PC case, Atom processor & Atom motherboard, a gig of RAM and 160GB HDD. Good for the kids (or if you’re on a serious budget), we reckon... The article is in German, but we Googled. µ