Following Senfu's withdrawal from the market(Senfu Overclocking DIY House - the original maker of the open-air testing frame), HighSpeed PC of Canfield, Ohio were left with customer demand and no product with which to satisfy that demand. Being an enterprising bunch, HighSpeed PC designed and manufactured their own version, with the aim to improve on the Senfu's functionality and performance.
The result is the HighSpeed PC Tech Station.
It is hard to view the Tech Station as anything other than overpriced. In the US, the Standard and Large Tech Stations are priced US$79.99 and US$139.99 respectively. Given the poor quality materials and flawed design, it is hard to see why you you would choose this product over a cheap case with a removable motherboard tray.
Regrettably the Tech Station was a disaster from start to finish. We could have forgiven the missing parts if we hadn't found that both our kits had missing components. To their credit, HighSpeed PC were very responsive when they found out we had problems, so we are confident they would look after you should you encounter problems.
Having said that, it is impossible for us to recommend the Tech Station in any way. If it was a £20 / $40 product then you might forgive some of the design flaws. If the materials and quality had been outstanding, then possibly you could justify the high cost. Unfortunately, the Tech Station is neither of these things.
Should you find yourself in need of a product like this, we suggest either buying the cheapest case you can find that features a removable motherboard tray, or design and build your own version of this Senfu / Tech Station idea using parts from your local DIY store.
Italian design house and coachbuilder Zagato displayed many of its classic cars at the Geneva Motor Show this year, but one of them had special significance - the 1956 Ferrari 250 GTZ. The classic custom Ferrari, shown above in a period photograph, has won both races and concours competitions in its 50 year lifetime as one of the most beautiful Ferraris ever built.
The 250 GTZ is the inspiration for Zagato's forthcoming Ferrari, the 575 "Zero." To commemorate the 250 GTZ, the new car will share the two-tone paintwork as well as various styling cues evocative of the '50s, undoubtedly including Zagato's trademark "double-bubble" roofline.
The DS Style Book is actually an obscenely frilly DS package for young girls. Young Japanese girls. As the above video suggests, Style Book comes complete with a scheduler, a diary, some sort of floppy-eared animal mascot and a cute DS carrying pouch.
$20,000 iced, gilded TrekStor i.Beat organix on display
Swiss site Needful Things has come across an 18 karat gold, 63-diamond-sportin' TrekStor's i.Beat organix that our terrible German (i.e. Babelfish) leads us to believe will be on display at CeBIT- a fitting debut for a project that took some very patient jeweler about 100 hours to complete. It's unclear which version of the organix -- the 512MB or 1GB -- was the lucky beneficiary of such intricate adornment, but it seems safe to speculate that any customer in the market for a $20,000, luxury item such as this, probably isn't evaluating storage capacity as part of his/her purchasing decision.
Judith Leiber carries over her cutting edge fashion sense from handbags to shoes. These Ornament Chain Slides are decorated with three pink crystals and accented with smaller white crystals across the straps. The heel measures at 3 1/2". Usually priced at $750, the web exclusive price is $375.
Salvatore Ferragamo's classic Gancio tote has an updated look with their crocheted version. Accented with natural wicker trim, golden hardware and pom poms at the base for a little fun. There is a zip top along with a flap/Gancio lock. Shown here in sand, also available in a baby blue version. Price: $1650.
Intel has created a self-contained watercooling unit that will enable the latest Pentium Extreme Edition chips to hit 5GHz with ease.
The cooler has come out of Intel's engineering department, which is staffed with a bunch of enthusiasts who have been trying to push the envelope at Intel to try and get the firm to move away from its 'overclocking is bad, mmmkay' stance.
The team, led by thermal mechanical engineer Gavin Stanley, spent an awful lot of time looking at current watercooling kits and systems on the market. They all shared several flaws, he told us: that they were complex to assemble, had a short life, consisted of too many different parts and used flimsy tubing.
The goal of his team, he laid out, was to come up with a more robust, reliable and efficient way of watercooling the processor.
The answer is this: Intel's Advanced Liquid Cooling prototype. It consists of a block unit which attaches to the processor. This contains the copper core which makes contact with the CPU, as well as a centrifugal pump which uses a DC brushless motor. This pumps the water up through solid metal tubing to a more traditional radiator, cooled by a 120mm fan. The integration of the cold plate improves thermal performance. The main body of the unit is made of injection-moulded plastic. Intel's R&D labs have the most outrageous equipment for measurements and designing, meaning that this has been designed to last for more than three years without leaking, failing or requiring a top-up of coolant.
Because of the unique elements of the design, such as the centrifugal pump, solid tubing, precise engineering etc, it is ludicrously powerful. We saw a unit up and running, cooling a 3.8GHz Extreme Edition chip to 5.01GHz (with the RAM and FSB overclocked). The temperature on the processor was 62 celcius, well within operating parameters.
The unit will fit ATX and BTX boards. Intel is currently looking to work with a technology partner to developer commercial coolers around this design. Because Intel designed it to be assembled from commonly made parts, final retail coolers are expected to cost less than $50!
We are looking to get our hands on one in a couple of weeks. This looks like it could be the most insane cooler ever created, putting extreme overclocking in the hands of the vast majority of hardware enthusiasts. Watercooling has been done before, but it appears that it takes a company with the expertise and resources that Intel has to really push it to the next level. Read more..!
The latest grown-up toy from Hammacher Schlemmer is this human-powered vehicle. It's the first velocipede with a carbon fiber monocoque chassis which is the same material used in Formula 1 cars. The vehicle which was designed by Michael Goretzky and offers the exercise benefits of a recumbent bicycle. The three-wheeled vehicle weighs only 60 lbs. and the two forward 20" wheels are designed for tight turns without tipping over. The cockpit shape is designed to lessen drag and the velocipede can be custom designed to fit your measurements. It has a headlight, tail light and turn signals that are powered by a rechargeable battery. It sells for $13,995.95.
The new card, from Sapphire, is an RADEON X1600Pro with 128MB of GDDR3 memory, but we can't tell if it's the same as the ATI HDMI card we saw leaked last month. Either way, looks like it'll be out in April -- hopefully not too late for consumers to sort out this HD mess the industry has made for them.
Famitsu fetes Final Fantasy XII with 40/40 review score
Final Fantasy XII may still be a ways off for Western gamers, but it's right on the verge of being released in Japan, having scored a perfect review from the folks at Famitsu.
The score should hopefully reassure FF fans who've been shaken by all the game's delays in release and changes in personnel (as well as gameplay). At any rate, the title's localization for other territories should be well underway, even if the release dates outside of Japan haven't been officially announced yet.
Logitech MX610 laser mouse takes a jump to the left
Logitech has announced a left-handed version of the company's MX610 laser mouse. The lefty mouse, due out in April, matches the features of its right-handed sibling, including dedicated buttons for e-mail and IM, volume controls, and four-direction scrolling. And, remarkably, Logitech is pricing the new version at $59.99.
This is a very simple application for making very simple presentations. Powerbullet Presenter just makes simple SWF files with bulleted presentations in it. You can make gradients, insert text, and some pics, but that's about it. The great part is, it's free, and will pretty much do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. One odd item is that you can dig around in the Powerbullet file format and find that it uses twips for X and Y parameters.
You've got to admit the iPod would certainly be a lot more fun if you could play Pac-Man on it. And now, thanks to the ipodMame project, you can. A subset of the iPodLinux project, iPodMame brings the MAME game emulator to iPods, allowing owners to play classic games on their audio players. Currently, the emulator is confirmed to be able to run Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man on the nano and iPod video. Other classic games supported by MAME are also supported, so you should be able to play Pengo and Joust on your iPod.
Heavy-truck industry struggles with business models
In the heavy-truck industry, the loyalty to a particular brand of engine is every bit as strong as - if not more than - one's affection for the chassis in which it's placed, a customer buys a vehicle from one manufacturer and then specifies an engine from another.
The heavy-truck business has gone in the other direction of less vertically integrated, with chassis vendors bringing engine development in-house. This could leave enginedrivetrain manufacturers such as Cummins and Caterpillar out in the cold. Cummins in particular is said to be in potential trouble, as it doesn't have its own line of off-highway equipment like Caterpillar.
GBA Super Robot Taisen titles coming to North America
Atlus is bringing two Super Robot Taisen titles to North America for the GBA this year.
According to the official press release linked, "Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation is scheduled for release in the summer of 2006, followed by Original Generation 2 in the fall of 2006." The Japan Original Generation was released in 2002, while the Original follow-up arrived in Japan in early 2005.
While the super-deformed strategy RPGs will feature Banpresto's original pilots and mechs, the new Original Generation titles unfortunately leave out SRT's traditional mash-up of Japanese anime robot warriors from Mazinger Z to Neon Genesis Evangelion. At least GBA and DS owners with a love for SRPGs will have something extra to look forward to later this year.
Developed by Fraunhofer: the aptly and succinctly dubbed Brain Computer Interface. The system reads brain-waves from 128 scalp electrodes -- very slowly, mind you -- and apparently over the last couple of years they've already honed the device to control a pointer and enable trained users to actually write a sentence with their mind alone (even though it may take between five and ten minutes to do so).
UltraCell claims two day run times in what they're showing in the UC25. It's only a pre-production model designed for military purposes right now, but UltraCell apparently had it going on at IDF in SF, and hopes to commercialize their products by the second half of the year.
-Lytir1
