Corsair Releases Two New Liquid Coolers

A photo of Corsair's new H100i cooler

Corsair has released two new liquid coolers called the H100i and the H80i, these coolers are revised versions of the H100 and H80. The two coolers according to Corsair feature better cooling fans, more efficient copper plates, improved manifolds and the overall coolant flow has been improved too. The H100i is selling right now for $119.99 and the H80i is being sold for $99.99.

Here are links for the H100i and H80i

ASUS Releases New 680 with 4GB of Video RAM

The revised ASUS DirectCU II 680 aside from having 4GB of Video RAM also has a sleeker two slot design. The card is much sleeker making it more compact than the previous version which has a 3-slot design. The card's memory clock boasts a clock speed of 6008MHz and ASUS says that the card handles higher resolution graphics because of the added Video RAM.

ASUS also released a new Direct CU II 670 which features 4GB of Video RAM as well. ASUS is even throwing in one free game with a purchase of their new Direct CU II 680 or 670 cards. The company is letting buyers choose one of the following games Assassin’s Creed® III,  I Am Alive™, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2®, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction®, or R.U.S.E®.

-Chris Zele

HTC Releases World's First 1080p Phone

The HTC Droid DNA is the first smartphone to garner a 1080p display. The phone has a monstrous 5" screen along with 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and a 1.5Ghz quad core Qualcomm processor. Another thing to add about the phone is that it is running Android 4.1 with HTC's Sense overlay. This HTC phone looks very good on paper but the 1080p screen according to many reviews of the smartphone say the battery life of the phone is very poor. Tech Crunch reported the phone usually lasted a measly 6-hours on one charge and in heavy usage it lasted just 4.5-hours. The disappointing battery life is a shame because I was actually excited about this 1080p phone since its' ppi is a ridiculous 441 ppi. I hope HTC comes out with a version that sports a 4.3" or 4.5" screen and hopefully it will have better battery life than just 6-hours.

Best Bang for your buck Laptops #blackfriday

Going out and trying to find a good laptop can sometimes be frustrating and daunting task for some people. The following laptops are the three of the best bang for your buck laptops in the laptop market today.

Budget Laptop

A laptop like this is great for people who use Internet applications, watch videos and do word processing. The ASUS laptop features an Intel i3 processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 15.6" display and a 320GB hard drive. The laptop's price tag is very light on the coffers at just $359.99. The laptop is currently being sold from Best Buy and if you don't want to be badgered about warranty offers I'd suggest ordering it online. Another thing to add about Best Buy is that it has a 30 day return policy too. 

Click here to look at the laptop

Middle of the Road

This laptop is for people who open several tabs while on the internet and for those who do heavy multi-tasking and want to do some light gaming or photo editing.The laptop is a Lenovo and sports an i7-3520 processor which is a dual core part instead being a quad core like i7 processors are which gives it better overall battery life. The processor has a massive turbo-boost from 2.9GHz to 3.6GHz and has 4MB of cache along with 6GB of DDR3 RAM, a 750GB hard drive, and a 15.6" display. The laptop as comes with Windows 8. The laptop is being sold from Amazon for $659.99.
Click here to look at the laptop

High End Gaming/Content Creation

This next laptop is from Lenovo again and it is for those who want to do things that are very heavy graphically like doing things from Auto CAD to playing Star Craft II. The laptop comes with a 3630QM processor clocked at 2.4GHz with a Turbo Boost up to 3.4GHz, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, an Nvidia 660M discrete graphics card, and a 1TB hard drive. The laptop is being sold directly through Lenovo for $849.

Click here for the link

Razer Announces Revised Death Adder Mouse

November 20, 2012

Razer's popular gaming mouse the Death Adder has been overhauled by getting a 6400dpi sensor which is a massive upgrade from the current 3500dpi sensor. The mouse will feature a textured rubber gripping that will be on the sides of the mouse to make holding the mouse easier. The revised Death Adder's shape is pretty much the same as the last iteration of the mouse and is selling now for $69.99. People who want to get the mouse now can order it directly from Razer via this link. The new mouse called the Death Adder 2013.

Here are some more photos of the revised mouse

The mouse looks very much the same as the old Death Adder and follows the old formula if it's not broken don't fix it formula.

Overclockers Fight for Clock Speed Crown

November 20, 2012

Yesterday I posted about how AMD's 8350 processor became the fastest clocked chip in the world having been overclocked to 8.37GHz by alvinkenzo with liquid nitrogen. That record has been shattered and has been broken several times since then.  The new world record now is 8.67GHz which was set by AndreYang; who used a 990FX Asus Crosshair V Formula Z motherboard, 2GB of G.Skill DDR3 memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 graphics card. This hardware info was found on Maximum PC

The photo above is of the Motherboard used in the overclocking world record

Recommended PC Builds

I've spent a lot of time on the Maximum PC website answering people's forum posts and the most common question I have answered is What parts should I use in my PC build?

Here are two builds I have one is for the Budget minded minimalist and the other is for the hard core gamer or content creator looking to spend under $1200 on their high end rig. I chose all the parts from Newegg but I will be doing a Newegg vs Amazon price PC part comparison soon; to see which e-tailer is cheaper. 

Budget Build: 

This build is one with no frills and is for people who want a computer to just do the basic things like go on the Internet and use word processing.

Case and Power Supply 

Rosewill R519-BK Black ATX Mid Tower Computer Case with 500WPower Supply

$69.99

Processor

Intel Pentium G620 Sandy Bridge 2.6GHz 65 Watt Dual-Core Desktop Processor 

$65.99

Motherboard

ASRockH61M-LGA 1155 Intel H61 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard 

$44.99

Video Card None

Heatsink Stock

Memory

G.SKILLValue Series 4GB DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory

$17.99

Optical Drive

LITE-ON DVD Burner 

$17.99

Hard Drive 

Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 7200RPM 

$49.99

Operating System

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OEM

$99.99

The cost with tax is about $375 but this will vary of course by state because of America's slew of different tax rates.

Gaming/Content Creation Build: 

The next build is for those who want a build for hardcore gaming or those who use applications like Photoshop or Auto CAD.

Case 

NZXT Phantom 410 

$99.99

Power Supply 

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W

$89.99

Processor

Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo)

$219.99

Motherboard 

ASUS P8Z77-V LK

$139.99

Video Card

EVGASuperClocked GeForce GTX 660 Ti

$284.99

Heat Sink

COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus

$29.99

Memory 

CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (2x4GB sticks)

$36.99

Optical Drive

Lite-On Blu-Ray Drive

$54.99

Hard Drives 

Samsung 840 Series 120GB SSD 

$99.99

Samsung 2TB 7200 RPM hard drive

$129.99

Operating System 

Windows Home Premium 64 Bit OEM

$99.99

The total cost should be about $1150 

Part prices were taken from Newegg on 11/19/12

AMD 8350 & 7970 Set New Overclocking Records

My goal with this blog is to provide people with PC news and to do it from the perspective of a young geeky college student. I currently attend San Francisco State and I am also interning right now at Maximum PC where I write small articles and mess around with hardware. I would appreciate any feedback on my blog so feel free to send me feedback at chrisz2012 (AT) gmail or comment. 

AMD 8350 & 7970 Set New Overclocking Records

November, 19, 2012

AMD might be in what seems to be their darkest hour right now, but their new Vishera FX-8350 CPU has set a new overclocking record of 8.37GHz. The Overclocker named alvinkenzo used an MSI 990FXA-GD80 motherboard to achieve the beastly overclock along with liquid nitrogen to cool the FX chip. The other hardware used in the overclock was a Radeon 7870, but no other details are not known. 

This is a photo of the board used in the overclocking feat by alvinkenzo

Another record that was broken in was in 3DMARK 11 which was with an MSI R7970 Radeon video card which had a whooping score of 18,103. The Overclocker named TOLSTY used liquid nitrogen to cool the card and a 3770k overclocked to 5.79 GHz to get this godly score. He also used a Z77 MPower MSI motherboard and G. SKILL RAM overclocked to 2300MHz, but the hard drive he used is unknown. 

Here is a photo of the card used in the badass overclock by TOLSTY