If geeks love it, we’re on it
The SilverStone Tek Gamer PC Tower just kept revealing itself. The SilverStone Tek designers took many ideas from the competition and made them fit into SST-B032FW. The Gamer PC tower is solid, packed with features, stylish...and...takes some getting used to. Add comment
7.1 audio couldn't be easier. M-Audio's Sonica Theater simply plugs into an available USB port on a laptop or PC then it's a matter of connecting it to powered speakers or a home Theater amplifier. Add comment
Short-Media challenged our enthusiasts to dream up the cheapest PC around and one that only Howard Hughes would own. They did just that and told us, in their words, what they did to get there. Add comment
Why pay money for these rounded cables when you can make your own for nothing? Put the money you save towards an upgrade in your true hardware. Add comment
In the first article The Broadcast Box Short-Media took a single processor system into the heart of a television production. It would have been simple enough to build a system to impress but we added one restriction and that was money. It had to be affordable for the average home or small business. In other words the Broadcast Box had to be relatively cheap.
At the heart of any computer is the processor and two must be better than one....right? Add comment
Audio is usually the last item on the priority list for a computer buyer. M-Audio has one solution with the external Sonica USB audio card. This simple device delivers 24 bit/96kHz audio in analog or digital straight to the desktop speakers or home theatre system. Add comment
The mid tower Koolcases Silver Fusion PC case stands out from the pack. The Silver Fusion boasts drive rails, screwless PCI slot mounts, front intake grills with foam mesh and solid construction. Add comment
Low temperatures are what we want. PC cases become like Swiss cheese riddled with fan holes in the quest for cooling. Is there an optimum configuration? Is one cooling fan enough or is it the combination of fans? One PC case was set aside and filled with fans to find out just what combination works best for airflow's effect on heat. Add comment
This is a complete step by step guide on how to assemble a PC from a box of parts to a working computer with WindowsXP fully installed, updated and tweaked. This guide will take you from parts to software the right way. Add comment
The question to be answered is: "Does this new version carry enough new features to warrant an upgrade from the previous version?" Add comment
AMD HyperTransport technology may be the new era of PC performance and capability. HyperTransport technology isn't a radical new gadget but a new I/O bus that increases the speed in device communication point to point. This may be old news to some but the HyperTransport motherboard is coming...sooner than you think. Add comment
ABIT continues to take bold design step going places others don't. The AT7 series broke new ground in full featured motherboards and now ABIT steps out on a limb with the KV7 KT600 motherboard. The KT600 chipset promises many improvements including reduced latency through faster access to system memory, improved six-channel sound and native serial ATA/RAID support. These improvements may be more of a benefit to the manufacturer than the enthusiast as many are discovering. Add comment
Can a set of headphones be classified as a "quiet computing product"? They most certainly can compared to the alternative of blasting through a game surrounded by loudspeakers. Zalman is well known for quiet computing products and steps up front and centre (and rear) with Theatre 6 Real Surround Sound Headphones. Zalman knows that enthusiasts desire the 5.1 experience and the ability to enjoy it without intruding on and annoying others. Zalman claims to deliver that 5.1 surround experience, normally had with 6 speakers, in a set of headphones. Add comment
The thought of hanging a heatsink that weighs nearly 2lbs. on the motherboard scared the crap out of me. I had nightmares about the socket giving way under the strain and this copper behemoth crashing down to the bottom of the pc case taking the processor and video card with it. The Zalman CNPS7000A-CU pure copper heatsink tips the scales at 733 grams (1.61 pounds) and, quite frankly, is one of the best heatsinks for noise, ease of installation and cooling efficiency. Add comment
Super Video CDs are a fantastic way to compile a movie from any number of video sources and formats to a format which is able to play back on most set top DVD players without the necessity of a CD burner. As I have no CD burner myself, one can see how valuable this technique is for me. Such a method has also helped me evolve the production of multiple video technologies, included but not limited to: DiVX©, XViD, DVD, VCD, SVCD, XSVCD, XVCD, KVCD, KSVCD, and CVD. Add comment
DiVX is fine, but you have to pay for it or allow Gator (Hiss) onto your system should you wish to access the pro features. The pro features are already included for free on XViD. Furthermore, the pro features are required to produce the quality that XViD is capable of without them. I've had my fun with DiVX and it's now obviously poor frame quality and size/quality ratio. DiVX tends to produce blocky video at bitrates whereas XViD does not. After all this ragging, you'd think DiVX is the worst thing ever, but it really isn't. DiVX is a quick-and-dirty solution to produce acceptably small downloads with reasonable viewing quality. XViD is a codec designed exactly for what we're doing here: making high quality video in MPEG4 format a reality. Add comment
In the second installment in a long line of digital video processing articles, this tutorial is focused on getting retail Digital Video Discs to archive on DVD±R media. Within the tutorial, the necessary instructions, pictures, and programs will be written, posted, and linked to successfully make replicas of your purchased DVDs. In the first installment, the DivX Tutorial, the process of archiving DVD content to CD media and/or hard drive was thoroughly examined. Add comment
A PC case with headlights and a grill? It's true and AMK Computers let us take DaBenz out for a test drive. It has been our experience that many PC cases are the same chassis except for the bezel but AMK chooses their product line carefully. It's not until the "up close and personal" do the reasons why become obvious. Add comment
To survive in the computer case market manufacturers must offer their consumers many features and options. These include cooling, special features, build, and aesthetics. Some manufacturers concentrate on only one of these qualities while others provide a mix. Can a manufacturer produce a PC case that offers a buyer a lot of features or will the entire design suffer? Thermaltake is one such manufacturer and their PC cases offer many qualities but have they bitten off more than they can chew? Add comment
Within this tutorial you will find, in order, the steps required to take any NTSC DVD disc and convert to a high-quality DiVX edition that can fit on 1-4 CDs as you choose. More specifically, this tutorial will outline how to produce a DiVX copy with 5.1 AC3 audio encoding at a DVD bitrate, as well as a picture that has a resolution that bears the same dimensions as its DVD-counterpart. The final movie will be essentially the same as the DVD, except approximately 1/4th the original size (5GB down to 1.4GB). Add comment
A beginner's guide to successful non-linear editing. Add comment
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