Posted 03/10/10 at 10:00:58 AM by Paul Lilly

Not everything being shown off at CeBIT will actually make it to retail, so we may never actually see Lian Li's PC-T1R chassis. Judging by the pictures, that might not be a bad thing.

Lian Li certainly found itself thinking outside the box on this one, perhaps a bit too far. At first glance, the PC-T1R looks like a gigantic metal spider, but that's not even the quirkiest part. What we can't wrap our heads around is why the oversized contraption only accommodates micro-ATX motherboards. The whole point of building a mATX system is to save space, but good luck stuffing the PC-T1R into your home theater cabinet or any other tight squeezes.

Misgivings aside, the PC-T1R also makes room for a hard drive, optical drive, and power supply. There's an on/off switch, and according to news and rumor site Fudzilla, should this make it past CeBIT, you'll be able to buy it in red or black for about $225.

More pictures here.

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Posted 03/05/10 at 08:42:26 AM by Paul Lilly

Citing sources from hard drive makers, news and rumor site DigiTimes says that Apple's iPad could end up slowing SSD growth in the market place. Say what?

The reason, sources say, is because the iPad might create a shortage of NAND flash chips. Apple already consumes about one-third of the total NAND flash output because of the company's immensely popular iPod and iPhone devices, and if the iPad proves to be just as hot, NAND flash supply could tighten.

The news gets even worse for SSD fans. The cost of NAND flash has been the biggest roadblock in pushing SSDs into the mainstream, and the sources noted that prices are continuing to increase. That should change once the NAND flash industry transitions to a 20nm process technology, however that isn't expected to happen until at least the second half of 2011. Bummer.

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Posted 03/05/10 at 08:17:55 AM by Paul Lilly

The hottest rumor on the Web right now is that BFG might go play for the red team and start producing ATI Radeon videocards. Could this possibly be true?

"The rumor we are hearing today is that BFG is going RED!," HardOCP.com founder Kyle Bennett posted on Thursday. "Totally unconfirmed, but given the history heard over the last few years...yes years...this does not sound implausible. I am waiting for a response from BFG's CEO, but none is forthcoming."

If this turns out to be true, it would be quite the score for AMD, who in late 2008 managed to pry XFX from Nvidia's exclusivity grip. Like XFX, BFG is one of just a small handful of GPU vendors who offer lifetime warranties on their parts, EVGA being the other.

While this wouldn't be the end of the world for Nvidia, it does seem as though the GPU maker can't catch a break. Everything from failed parts to losing the performance crown have been thorns in Nvidia's side, and it remains to be seen what kind of cure-all Fermi can provide.

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Posted 03/04/10 at 10:58:28 AM by Paul Lilly

In another nod towards the increasingly popular SandForce controller, Corsair today announced its Force Series SSDs built around SandForce.

"The Force Series are the fastest SSDs that Corsair has launched to date," stated Kevin Conley, Vice President of Engineering at Corsair. “We have been very impressed with the SandForce SSD Processor innovations in the months that we have been working with them, and we can’t wait to get these extraordinarily fast SSDs into the hands of our most demanding customers."

And fast they are, at least on paper. By combining the SandForce SF-1200 SSD processor with MLC flash memory, Corsair claims its new SSD line can race along at 285MB/s read and 275MB/s write speeds.

These will be available in 100GB and 200GB capacities and come with TRIM support in Windows 7. No word yet on price or availability.

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Posted 03/04/10 at 10:33:27 AM by Paul Lilly

Dutch website Tweakers.net posted what they claim are honest-to-goodness pictures of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 480 videocard, otherwise known as Fermi.

The pictures were taken during the CeBIT exhibition and show Fermi unmasked. The site says it's an A2 revision GPU, though identifying marks have been blacked out. You'll also notice 12 memory chip, 128MB each, for a total of 1.5GB of memory.

While the cooler has been removed and is visible from the underside in just one of the pics, you can see heatpipes extending upwards. Tweak.net says this will be Nvidia's standard cooler, adding that you'll likely see AIB partners add their own cooler to cut costs.

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Posted 03/04/10 at 09:48:58 AM by Paul Lilly

OCZ has been so busy pumping out SSDs as of late, it's easy to forget the company also churns out power supplies. OCZ hasn't forgotten, and coming soon, the company will add to its PSU lineup with a new Fatal1ty 750W unit.

Currently being shown at the CeBIT exhibition, the Fatal1ty sports an all new modular design fitted with low-profile modular cables. It also boasts a single +12V rail, a staple of PC Power & Cooling units, now a subsidiary of OCZ.

Other features include all Japanese made solid-state primary capacitors, a double ball bearing 135mm red LED fan, and 80+ Bronze certification with 85 percent efficiency.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Posted 03/03/10 at 01:59:49 PM by Paul Lilly

Western DIgital is no stranger to low capacity, high performance, pricey storage solutions, only up until this point they've always fallen under the company's VelociRaptor line. That all changes today, as WD announced its first-ever consumer-oriented solid state drive (SSD), the SiliconEdge 2.5-inch SSD family.

"The development of the WD SiliconEdge Blue product family leverages WD's extensive experience in designing and manufacturing highly reliable storage products and the company's worldwide sales and distribution network to accelerate SSD technology adoption by OEMs, technology enthusiasts, gamers and road warriors," said Michael Hajeck, senior vice president and general manager of WD's solid state storage business unit. "Customers who demand the ultimate in performance will find the WD SiliconEdge Blue SSDs exceed all their requirements."

The new drives ship in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities and features a native SATA 3Gbps interface. Read speeds come rated at up to 250MB/s, while WD says you can expect writes in the neighborhood of 170MBs. TRIM support also comes standard, as does NCQ.

In addition to performance, WD is touting the SiliconEdge family's ruggedness, saying the product line has "passed WD's extensive functional integrity testing procedures" consisting of over 250,000 of testing.

The drives are available now for $279 (64GB), $529 ($128GB), and $999 (256GB).

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Posted 03/03/10 at 01:59:37 PM by Paul Lilly

Gigabyte is apparently taking this whole USB 3.0 thing pretty seriously and is stoked that two of its P55-based motherboards -- GA-P55A-UD7 and GA-P55A-UD5 -- have passed official certification by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF).

But the SuperSpeed buck doesn't stop there. Gigabyte says it is "aggressively adopting USB 3.0" on all of nearly its platforms, including the Intel X58, P55, H57, P45, and P43 chipsets, as well as AMD 790FX, 790X, 770, and 785G chipsets.

"We are investing heavily in developing the USB 3.0 ecosystem and are overjoyed to see that the majority of motherboards listed on the SuperSpeed USB Compliance Web page are from GIGABYTE," said Henry Kao, Senior Vice President, Motherboard Business Unit, GIGABYTE Technology Co. Ltd. "As the Windows® 7 upgrade cycle progresses, we are finding that onboard USB 3.0 is a powerful deal clincher as consumers look to future-proof their new purchases with the very latest technologies and specifications. As such, the timing for the introduction of USB 3.0 could not be better, and we are excited about working with the USB-IF to ramp up SuperSpeed adoption and explore the new possibilities that it has to offer."

Gigabyte is getting a bit of help from NEC, which is providing the uPD720200 host controller for all of the company's USB 3.0 compliant boards. In addition, a handful of models also feature 3x USB power boost, which you can read more about here.

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