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."

Unfortunately

[opusman]

By the time you've clicked through all 21 pages, it will be March already.

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.

Since we're all here

[rhdaly]

Since the hardware experts are all here and you're all complaining about Tom's Hardware's advertisements and novelty/enthusiast equipment, can anyone recommend a good hardware review site, especially for (comparative) beginners? I'm a graphic designer and could use some advice on buying a new computer that's more detailed than, "buy the mac that fits in your budget." And even if the best advice really is to buy that mac, I'd be a lot more comfortable paying it's thousand dollar price tag if I knew why.

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.

only one am2+ nvidia board and where is sb700 for.

[Joe The Dragon]

only one am2+ nvidia board and where is sb700 for the AMD chipset boards?

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:Since we're all here

[Hatta]

And even if the best advice really is to buy that mac, I'd be a lot more comfortable paying it's thousand dollar price tag if I knew why.

Because of OS X. The hardware doesn't even enter into the equation.

Re:Big and bulky

[Rene S. Hollan]

Start with Damn Small Linux [damnsmalllinux.org]. CPU [via.com.tw] Mobo [via.com.tw]

Hard Drive [seagate.com] DVD ROM [panasonic.com] Case [silverstonetek.com]

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 [kernel.org]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

`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 [freedesktop.org]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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