February 2008 Hardware Roundup

Tom's Hardware has a nice roundup of some of the new shiny hardware for February '08. Everything from a screaming fast 2 GHz DDR3 to liquid cooled cases and back again. "Unlike previous Zalman cases that used a heat pipe assembly, the LQ1000 has a traditional water pump and flexible hose for connecting the case's sinks to CPU and graphics coolers. A passively-cooled finned side panel and fan-assisted rear radiator remove heat, while a lighted flow indicator shows the bottom-mounted pump in action."

Comments

Stop this.

[BeeBeard]

Please stop linking to "articles" on the page-o-ads tomshardware site and making them money. They have a hardware roundup every month; there's no need to link to them just to improve their ad revenue stream.

Re:Stop this.

[TubeSteak]

there's no need to link to them just to improve their ad revenue stream. Linking to ad-filled pages is kinda how the internet works.
If you don't like it, get an ad-blocker, stop visiting those sites, or visit the printer friendly link.
It's 21 pages in 1:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/01/hardware_news_roundup_january_2008/print.html

Thanks, but no.

[JK_the_Slacker]

I'm waiting for the swimsuit edition.

Traditional?

[Applekid]

traditional water pump and flexible hose Water cooling is traditional now? I guess I gotta start shouting at kids to get off my lawn because my computer is air cooled.

Summary if you don't want to go through it all

[Gat0r30y]

- a bunch of novelty cases
- overpriced power supplies
- and 6 new DDR3 modules at varying frequencies

WARNING: Link is GNAA

[celardore]

It's a link to last measure. Don't click it, just a heads up.

21 Pages?!?!?!

[dbleoslow]

Wow! 21 pages with 50% ads. Now I remember why I stopped reading Tom's Hardware years ago.

Re:Depressing

[Kraeloc]

If you buy second-rate to begin with, though, then you can enjoy it for years before it turns third-rate. A much better investment, and usually a lot cheaper.

Big and bulky

[Telvin_3d]

Is it just me, or is everything in that article big and bulky? It's all RAM that's been made faster by adding cooling fins the size of bricks to them and other hardware made for running a server. I realize that all these hardware sites pander to the extreme gaming crowd, but where is the sleek and small?

Instead of the case larger than some bookshelves, where is the one designed to run silent and unnoticed by my TV or under my desk? Instead of the super ram and massive hard drive racks, where is the clever wireless network storage solution that will move media around my house? Instead of the computer case with a big fat LCD screen built into the front, where is the sleek standalone screen that that can wirelessly connect to the server in the basement and display pictures when not in use?

I don't think anyone is surprised to discover that by making everything twice as big, loud and hot you can get the most blazing performance. How about showing me something that impresses me instead?

Re:Big and bulky

[jfuredy]

It sounds like you should be looking at Silent PC Review instead. They focus more on how you can get a moderately powerful computer without it being obtrusive. Maybe a little bit extreme at times, but always good info.

Re:Big and bulky

[Rene S. Hollan]

Start with Damn Small Linux. CPU Mobo

Hard Drive DVD ROM Case

Other software:

0. Install DSL to hard disk, reboot, and configure

1. Upgrade (Apps->Tools) to gnu utils

2. Install gcc

3. Install zile (MyDSL) for editing convenience

4. Other software (for building natively and installation):

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.7/linux-2.6.23.tar.bz2

ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-1.95.tar.gz

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-2.4.tar.bz2

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/m4-1.4.tar.bz2

http://www.oberhumer.com/opensource/lzo/download/lzo-2.02.tar.gz

http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz

http://www/perl.com/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.8.tar.bz2

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.61.tar.bz2

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-1.5.24.tar.gz

http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/X11R3/src/everything/index.html

`grep bz2 index.html | sed s/^.*\.bz2\"\>// | sed s/\<.*// | sed s,^,http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/X11R7.3/src/everything/,`

http://gitweb.freedesktop.org?p=xorg/util/modular.git;a=blob_plain;f=build-from-tarballs.sh

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/expat/expat-2.0.1.tar.gz

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/libpng/libpng-1.2.24.tar.gz

http://www.fontconfig.org/release/fontconfig-2.5.0.tar.gz

http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/freetype/freetype-2.3.5.tar.bz2

http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist/libxcb-1.1.tar.bz2

ftp://xmlsort.org/libxslt/libxslt-1.1.22.tar.gz

ftp://xmlsort.org/libxslt/libxml2-2.6.30.tar.gz

http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist/xcb-proto-1.1.tar.bz2

http://www.paldo.org/paldo/sources/pthread-stubs/libpthread-stubs-0.1.tar.bz2

http://www.paldo.org/paldo/sources/xau/libXau-1.0.3.tar.bz2

http://www.paldo.org/paldo/sources/xproto/xproto-7.0.11.tar.bz2

Just the opposite, I'm afraid.

[BalorTFL]

I'm not sure who told you that DDR3 RAM was low latency, but the statement is dead wrong. If you RTFA, you'll see that the new 2+GHz DDR3 has a CAS 10 latency!! While it's true that it's clocked more than double a typical DDR2 module @ 800mhz, these DDR2 modules are typically CAS 4 or 5, and timings can sometimes be tightened even further. The throughput of DDR3 memory is certainly boosted greatly over DDR2, but no matter how you measure it, memory latency has not seen the same improvement.

Re:Since we're all here

[HebrewToYou]

The new MacPro supports up to 32 GB of RAM and is the best option for a true pro workstation. I would purchase my monitors, hard drives and additional RAM separately as Apple tends to mark those up significantly. Just configure the high-end model -- dual 3.2Ghz quad-core xeons -- with the minimal specs and install the rest yourself. It's fairly easy to do. Such is my advice to you.