ASUS MARS II Dual GTX 580 3GB Graphics Card Review

URL: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/ASUS-MARS-II-Dual-GTX-580-3GB-Graphics-Card-Review

Quote: “The ASUS MARS II Dual GPU GTX 580 3GB graphics card isn’t
something that is built for most gamers. Instead it is built to show
off the engineering talents at ASUS, the capability the company has to
produce truly one-of-a-kind designs and to push the limits of the
technology they have access to. In traditionally “flagship” mentality
the MARS II is priced outside the realm of most gamers’ budgets but I
don’t think there will be any problem for ASUS to sell a cool thousand
of them.”

HornetTek Slipper U3 External Dock

The Slipper is a unique design for an external enclosure/dock, so we will be testing it to make sure everything works as anticipated. The Slipper name was clearly given to this dock because of the fact that it looks like a slipper; this design also makes it surprisingly easy to slide a hard drive into place. The fact that the dock supports hot swapping also makes it quite easy to change out hard drives even when the device is connected.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/articles/HornetTek_Slipper_U3_External_Dock/2115.html

Cadence 4-Bit Binary Leather Watch Review

“The Cadence 4-bit binary leather watch has a simplistic look to it, yet manages to seamlessly incorporate binary code onto the watch face. This watch will let your inner geek out so you can express yourself without having to wave that massive geek flag that you know you are hiding inside! Most people will likely not know that this is 4-bit binary, but for those that do it should be a good conversation starter…”

http://legitreviews.com/article/1689/1/

Cooler Master GeminII S524 CPU Cooler Review

Today we are reviewing the Cooler Master GeminII S524 CPU cooler, which has a horizontal heatsink, five heatpipes and a 120 mm fan. Check it out!

Here is a snippet:
“The GeminII S524 is a horizontal CPU cooler from Cooler Master, with five heatpipes and a 120 mm fan. Let’s check it out.”

Link: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Cooler-Master-GeminII-S524-CPU-Cooler-Review/1368

Tp-link TL-WR1043ND Wireless N Gigabit Router

Quote: We are going to review a router from Tp-link in todays review, they sent us a sample of their latest TL-WR1043ND Wireless N Gigabite Router. This has features such as wireless speeds up to 300Mbps, three removable antennas, gigabit ports and more… so lets get on with the review!

http://rbmods.com/tp-link-tl-wr1043nd-wireless-n-gigabit-router/

Astronomers discover carbon rich planet.

Astronomers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne have discovered a new planet approximately 4000 light years away from Earth, which is extremely dense and consists largely of carbon.

“The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon — i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun,” said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

The planet is orbiting around a pulsar, lovingly known as J1719-1438, which has a diameter of just 20km. But spinning at 10,000 rpm, this pulsar has a mass 1.4 times that of our sun. The accompanying planet orbits this pulsar in 2 hours and 10 minutes, at a radius of 600,000kms, about the same as our sun.

This planet is estimated to be 60,000kms in radius, about 5 times that of Earth, which, while not as large as Jupiter, has a mass slightly more than Jupiter. Astronomers say that if the planet were any larger, it would have been ripped apart by the pulsar’s gravitational force. Due to it’s density, the planet is believed to have a crystalline formation of carbon, i.e. diamond.

However, just because it’s made up of dense carbon doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a diamond. ”In terms of what it would look like, I don’t know I could even speculate,” said Benjamin Stappers of the University of Manchester. “I don’t imagine that a picture of a very shiny object is what we’re looking at here.”

Win a BlackBerry Torch 9800 [Red]

Adept for socially connected consumers and packed with the tools business customers love, the new handset is the world’s first smartphone to combine a BlackBerry keyboard with a full touch screen experience. Whether users choose to type out messages on the capacitive touch screen or easy-to-use BlackBerry keyboard, browse the Internet using pinch to zoom or fluidly navigate with the optical trackpad, the BlackBerry Torch allows them to communicate any way they want.

Thanks to RIM, we have a cherry red Blackberry Torch 9800 to give away.

IBM builds 120 petabyte storage system

IBM’s Almaden Research center is currently working to create a 120 petabytes storage solution system for an unnamed client. The 120 million gigabyte storage solution will be run by creating a cluster of 200,000 conventional hard rives. This new array will be using IBM’s General Parallel File System (GPFS) which will enable supercomputers to access data much faster. GPFS is the storage solution being used for IBM’s own Watson supercomputer as well.

Basically GPFS will use the cluster to spread and individual file over several hard drives so that data can be written to and from a file in quick succession. Should any one hard drive fail, the system will start backing it up to another HDD very slowly, so that the supercomputer’s operations can move along normally.

“This 120 petabyte system is on the lunatic fringe now, but in a few years it may be that all cloud computing systems are like it,” Bruce Hillsberg,  director of storage research at IBM and leader of the project told Tech Review. “Just keeping track of the names, types, and other attributes of the files stored in the system will consume around two petabytes of its capacity.”

This type of record breaking storage solution can be used to process large amounts of data for climate and weather modelling and large scale simulations for research labs among other uses.

NameBench – find the fastest DNS for your connection

Before I go explaining this software, I think it is better to first explain a little about DNS servers to those people who don’t know what they do. Whenever you type a url e.g. google.com or tbreak.com, your ISP sends that request to a DNS server they have, to resolve the “Domain Name” back to IP address of website server and then your actual website starts loading. This is a slight overhead of time waste in loading websites. All ISP have configured their DNS servers that are by default used by your internet connection; but that doesn’t mean they are always the fastest choice for you.

NameBench is a software that benchmarks your current and other public DNS servers to check which DNS server works fastest for your region / connection. It will send multiple website requests to each DNS server in its directory and then check how much time it takes them to resolve and send back data to you. And then based on the benchmarks it will suggest to you the best DNS server setting for you.

The software itself is easy to use with nothing much to configure. You just install and run it and in the end it will give recommended DNS to use as well as graphs and benchmark results of all DNS servers it checked to base its suggestion on.

Many websites use data sources from multiple sites on their page, like other websites APIs, third party comments system, widgets, image hosts etc. and all these content are hosted on non singular domain name. The faster your DNS the more quickly they will all be resolved having a significant impact on the loading time of websites in your browser. This little handy tool is available for windows and mac.

Download @ Google code

Turtle Beach DPX21 Review

While the name may evoke imagery of cute turtles and soft sunny beaches, for the techie among us, the name Turtle Beach only evokes one picture: kick-ass surround sound gaming headsets. And what a lovely picture that is. Turtle Beach have been at the game for a long time, making a name for themselves by churning out impressive, high quality headsets for the current gen consoles.

Their Ear Force series has been particularly successful, especially the PX 21 headset, which now married (or forcefully packaged – however, you may look at it) with its Ear Force DSS sound processor, has been turned into a holy grail of surround sound of sorts. Or at least that’s what the fancy blood red packaging and the hefty $150 price tag may make you believe.

Right out the box, you will immediately notice that the actual hardware has not been renamed – the PX 21 and the Ear Force DSS still retain their original names despite the box featuring a DPX21 branding. So, it’s literally a mash of the two products with a fancy box attached, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. The PX 21 and the Ear Force DSS would cost you $80 and $90 separately, so that’s a cool $20 off on the bundle package.

This is my first time using the PX 21 and I was surprised how light and toy-like it feels in the hands. It also has a very clumsy styling that almost drowns in the overdose of black gloss and plastic, if not for its silver banding on the ear cups. It’s also quite flexible – it almost pours all over your hands with the ear cups so easy to twist, and the head band expanding as much to fit a giant.

But it oozes solid build quality despite its seeming frailness. It’s just one of those products that, although looks to be made of low quality material, is not and can easily, and has, taken a few beatings while it works to outlast you. And for all its lightness, it’s a great headset for prolonged use, barely burning at the edges after 3 hours, and once I almost forgot I had them on!

The main challenge I, and most users, will face is in installing the headset. It’s not particularly hard but as I found out, it wasn’t as simple as plug-in and go. Much like the Tritton headsets, the Turtle Beach uses a lot (and I mean, really, a lot) of wires to get to the using end of it. First, there is the actual headset with its unnecessarily long 16 foot wire. It ends with a USB and a 3.5mm plugs, both of which must go into DSS processor. A USB wire must then run from the DSS to the PS3 to power it; and an optical cable must run from the DSS to the PS3 to get sound. Suffice to say, once you have the cables setup, it can easily double up as a nest for your pet bird.

With as many wires going to and forth from the console, the headset and the processor, one has to wonder if it’s worth all the hassle. But let me sort that out for you: it is. Once you have it setup, once you have popped in your favorite game, and once you seated yourself in your favorite chair, the Turtle Beach DPX21 will transport you. The incredible thing about the headset is how full and vibrant everything sounds. It’s engulfing, it creates a field of sound around your ears, engrossing you in whatever you are playing, no matter what the quality of entertainment it is.

Then there is virtual 7.1 surround sound. Producing surround sound from a stereo headset is always botchy but the DPX21 duo pulls it off with aplomb. A heated session in COD: Black Ops left me overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things buzzing around my ears. Everything was sharp, crisp, punchy, and the sound positioning was class leading. It has certainly created a benchmark for other headsets at Tbreak.

And the best part about the DPX21 duo is the utilities it gives you to fine tune your listening experience, if ever so little. The headset features an inline controller that allows you to adjust the game and chat volume separately, adjust the bass, turn off the mic, and use a built-in sound ‘expander’ for ‘wider’ stereo performance (this is not recommended). The DSS processor too allows you to adjust volume and bass, and also features an option to force Dolby-esque surround sound with the material (this too, is not recommended).

Turtle Beach DPX21 then is a fantastic bundle that’s well worth its $150 price tag (the headset and the processor can be used separately as well, so that’s an added bonus). However, it demands gamers to ‘accommodate’ it into their setup, which is not many would be willing to do. It gives you fantastic aural experience at the cost of some convenience. If you can live with that, or if you are a single console user, or are a miracle cable manager, the Turtle Beach shouldn’t pose too much of a problem. For others with confined space and tight gaming setup, you might better forget about this.

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