Cubitek ICE: a new range of enclosures alu of the mini-ITX at the HPTX

Cubitek presents five new ICE, aluminum and visibly well-designed series enclosures.

Cubitek, manufacturer of boxes, presents a new line of products under the name "Ice Series". No less than five new models are introduced, all designed with plates of 2.5 mm thick aluminum. These five models range from the format mini-ITX at the HPTX, a range of prices ranging from $ 169 to 359.

                               

Their design is "anti-vibration", with hard disk drives mounted on rubber pads and walls which are based also on rubber bands. Aluminum design helps the dissipation of heat, and from the micro-ATX size, all these boxes are delivered with a large 200 mm mounted on the front fan, another turbine 140 mm on the top and a 120 mm at the rear.

                     

The motherboard plate is divided in such a way to allow efficient storage of cables, to properly mount configuration inside. The holes are protected by rubber parts to guide the cables coming to stay in the space of 19 mm between the plate and the wall of the enclosure. Finally, these five models of Cubitek ICE offer a front panel with two ports USB 3.0, two USB 2.0 ports and gold-plated Jack ports.

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AMD puts � day range of APU Brazos

at the presentation of the APU Brazos, promised to update each year its range of products. It is today with the announcement of three new APU.
The current C-50, APU Ontario bi-core running at 1 GHz and incorporating a RADEON HD 6250 is replaced by the C - 60, supported by a RADEON HD 6290 278 MHz and equipped with a frequency of 1 GHz that can achieve respectively 400 MHz to 1.33 GHz. We touch now to finger the main change in this update: Turbo-Core implementation. It is still also be stressed that the C-30 monocore is not renewed.

E - 240, APU Zacate also mono-core of a frequency of 1.5 GHz supported by a RADEON HD 6310 at 500 MHz, becomes the E - 300, APU become dual -

The flagship of the range Zacate, E-350, APU bi-heart measured at 1.6 GHz and equipped with an integrated RADEON HD 6310 is replaced by the E-450. It sees its frequency increased to 1.66 GHz, now incorporates a RADEON HD 6320 and is equipped with a new memory controller to manage the DDR3-1333MHz.

AMD, for his update, retained the same engraving process 40 nm. Update quite limited, as is particularly unfortunate that Turbo-Core is applicable only to Ontario. Note that the appearance of a Mini DP port that will be coupled with adapters DVI and HDMI, certainly to shrink even more devices incorporating such APU.

  

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OCZ announces a range of SSD with the Indilinx Everest controller

OCZ announces a range of SSD with Indilinx Everest controller.After of excellent DSS based on Indilinx Barefoot, a time not so long ago, but yet well gone. Performance has greatly progressed so Everest will replace Barefoot Indilinx or rather OCZ, the latter being owner of Indilinx recently.The Indilinx Everest controller is compatible with a wide choice of components while enabling a rich range of SSD.Thus, Everest is compatible with memory Flash (single-Level, 1 Bit per cell) SLC, MLC (Multi-Level, 2 Bits per cell) and TLC (Triple-Level, 3 Bits per cell).Everest also supports memory ONFI 2.0 and Toggle Flash 1.0 on eight channels with a flow rate up to 200 MT/s (mega-transfer per second), there where other controllers reach 166 MT/s from OCZ.

Advanced by OCZ sequential performance would be 500 MB/s. Everest is also optimized for writing small files with a size of 8 KB, thereby increasing performance for compressed files with a size of 4 KB to 16 KB.System startup time would also be 50% faster than the competition with new algorithms always from OCZ.

For successfully to all this, the Everest controller based on ARM processor dual core supported by of the DDR3 running at 400 Mhz with a capacity up to 512 MB. The maximum supported capacity is 1 To. It will also support the SATA 3.0 (6 GB/s) interface and will be therefore retro-compatible SATA 2 (3 GB/s) and SATA (1.5 GB/s) 1It remains only to wait and see what will actually be worth Everest competition that renews itself fairly quickly.Know also that Everest is already proposed for OEMs to be validated.The complete list Indilix Everest features:

SATA Revision 3.0 - Supports 6Gbps, 3Gbps, and 1. 5Gbps interface speedsDual Core ARM CPU1TB Maximum CapacityHigh Sequential SpeedsHigh Transactional Performance - Optimized for 4 K to 16 K Compressed FilesUp to 8 Channels of ONFI 2.0/Toggle 1.0 Flash at up to 200MT/s with up to 16 - way InterleavingAdvanced BCH ECC engine - over 70 bits per defined sector400MHz DDR3 DRAM Cache Interface with Support for up to 512MBProprietary Ndurance ™ TechnologyEnhanced Power Fail ProtectionSupports up to 1xnm Node NAND Flash with 1, 2, or 3 bits per cellEfficient NAND Flash Management - Dynamic and Static Wear-Leveling, and Background Garbage CollectionBoot Time Reduction Optimizations - Collaborative Platform DevelopmentNCQ Support up to 32 tail DepthEnd-to-End Data ProtectionTRIM SupportNumerous Over-Provisioning OptionsIndustry Standard SMART Reporting

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The death of the low range GPU?

AMD sees graphics solutions integrated into the CPU fairly quickly replace entry-level graphics cards...

Our colleagues from Xbit Labs were able to attend the telephone conference that followed the publication of the latest results of AMD. They are thus the words of Thomas Seifert, CEO of AMD acting, who referred to the death of the entry-level graphics cards, which will be quickly replaced it graphics solutions integrated into the CPU. Talking, for example, the famous APU Fusion of the skier, who recorded a very good start. "More or less long term, a part of the market of graphics cards will be cannibalized and the less powerful cards will be logically replaced by products such as Fusion." "For us, it is a good thing, because this will replace products that the margins are low by products on which our margins are more comfortable" says, not hiding the interest of some skiers to see these low range GPU.

A Radeon HD 5450 is within €40 in trade...

However, he explained that cards like the Radeon HD 5400 and 6400 series will continue to be marketed as a first step, despite their relatively weak performance and the rise of the market of integrated graphics solutions. Is that if the graphic chips integrated into processors of the Llano and Brazos ranges provide interesting performance and are sufficient for most uses (except the high-end game, of course), associated processors are not yet powerful enough to solve the equation. Indeed, many users, for flexibility, want to have a very swift processor, to which they want to associate a graphic chip for entry-level to not increasing their invoice. They thus sacrifice graphics performance of their configuration, but not its overall computing power.

Not sure, to these expectations, that AMD can stop in the short term the marketing of its most accessible graphics cards...

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The death of the low range GPU?

AMD sees graphics solutions integrated into the CPU fairly quickly replace entry-level graphics cards...

Our colleagues from Xbit Labs were able to attend the telephone conference that followed the publication of the latest results of AMD. They are thus the words of Thomas Seifert, CEO of AMD acting, who referred to the death of the entry-level graphics cards, which will be quickly replaced it graphics solutions integrated into the CPU. Talking, for example, the famous APU Fusion of the skier, who recorded a very good start. "More or less long term, a part of the market of graphics cards will be cannibalized and the less powerful cards will be logically replaced by products such as Fusion." "For us, it is a good thing, because this will replace products that the margins are low by products on which our margins are more comfortable" says, not hiding the interest of some skiers to see these low range GPU.

A Radeon HD 5450 is within €40 in trade...

However, he explained that cards like the Radeon HD 5400 and 6400 series will continue to be marketed as a first step, despite their relatively weak performance and the rise of the market of integrated graphics solutions. Is that if the graphic chips integrated into processors of the Llano and Brazos ranges provide interesting performance and are sufficient for most uses (except the high-end game, of course), associated processors are not yet powerful enough to solve the equation. Indeed, many users, for flexibility, want to have a very swift processor, to which they want to associate a graphic chip for entry-level to not increasing their invoice. They thus sacrifice graphics performance of their configuration, but not its overall computing power.

Not sure, to these expectations, that AMD can stop in the short term the marketing of its most accessible graphics cards...

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The true cost of the graphics cards top of range

We test lot of graphics cards, but this time, we wanted a less conventional than usual approach and measure the power consumption of these devices between the time where we switch the computer, for example to read his mails or to play, and where we extinguish it.

It seemed in fact that extrapolations and estimates that everyone is usually at the start of the consumption minimum and maximum figures did not sufficiently reflect reality. Today, we therefore decided to measure the actual consumption of several graphics cards top range for a given period and different patterns of use, which seems more logical insofar as well rarely that a possessor of PC turns on his computer and start to play without ever nothing.Moreover, it is important to clearly define this "something else". As we proceed with longer tests that usually, we will take the opportunity to verify the consumption-induced by a series of software and services and compare it to the consumption at rest. Addition to the games in full screen and windowed modes, we will also analyse the influence of the video playback so that execution of D2D and D3D mode applications windowed.Our goal, of course, is to determine the actual consumption of our components, and not only consumption peak or at rest. This brings us to the heart of this article: of course, everyone knows that the most powerful graphics cards are expensive, but what the daily? Use really so much that it? A PC equipped with a high range 3D map and dedicated to the game really take influence on your electric bill at the end of the year? If Yes, how?Somehow, the tests that follow akin many mixed consumer testing that realize the automotive professionals. With the difference that we express our results in watts-hours rather than litres per 100 kilometres.

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