Liquid Cooled HD 4870 hits the spot

LIQUID COOLING on an HD 4870 seems quite interesting, particularly if it isn’t over-the-top expensive. That’s what Powercolor is showing off at Driver Heaven. The LCS HD 4870 is a single-slot solution with a +50/+50MHz overclock and a $340+ price tag. You get low noise and a moderate boost to frame rates for the extra $70 or so. Check out the card in all its liquid glory, here.

XBit is covering the Asus P5QL-E, a cheaper P43-derived board that carries with it lots of features and only a minor restriction that most single graphics card users won’t care much about. P45 can do 2x8 PCIe channels, while the P43 won’t split the channels, leaving you with a single PCIe x16. If you want to run a stock machine with just about everything Asus has in its bag of tricks, this one is worth a look.

Fudo’s crew is testing Club3D’s HD 4850 OC Edition. The card improves upon the reference design by adding a Zerotherm cooler and a very light overclock. Slobodan’s overall impression is that the card fails to deliver any significant improvements in terms of performance (even with higher – 680MHz - overclocking) but it is worth the extra 20 €urobucks for the cooling quality alone. Sub-€150 mainstream card, right here.

Tom’s Hardware wrote a roundup of cheapo memory. Nine dual-channel kits from nine different brands vie for leadership in this very competitive market. Since you can basically pick any type of DDR2 for next to nothing, the “bang-for-buck” comparison is included. Get it here.

PC Games Hardware has picked up the three fastest SSDs on the market and faced them off. Although it’s a pick-n-mix of MLC and SLC drives, Intel’s X25-M (MLC-based) manages to keep the price reasonably lower than its SLC-based counterparts. Memoright has the fastest overall but Intel’s $5.37-per-GB unit beats the rest on price. Catch it here.

PC Games Hardware also posted a neat guide to AM2+ motherboards that support the Phenom II processor. We couldn’t find the English version of the article, but it’s easy enough to read, as it’s mostly model numbers. You can find it here.

Palit’s Revolution R700 Deluxe monster is again in the spotlight, this time at Think Computers. This $540 card gives enthusiasts much-needed reassurance that those very high temps in the GPU aren’t actually burning a hole in the PCB. The three-slot setup will likely inhibit you from doing Quadfire but, then again, the X2 already trounces everything you can throw at it. Catch it here. µ