Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

Western Digital launches new Velociraptor

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Today (yes, this IS fresh news, even I can’t believe it!) Western Digital announced the shipping of the new Velociraptor drives with the slogan “The world’s fastest SATA hard drive now has twice the capacity”.

Velociraptor 2.5"
Velociraptor 2.5″

The new Velociraptors actually come in two flavors – 450GB and 600GB. MSRP for ’em are $299 and $329 respectively. Features are: SATA3, 10000 rpm, 2.5″ size (3.5″ available too), 32MB cache.

Velociraptor 3.5"
Velociraptor 3.5″

You can view the original press release here.

nVidia’s GeForce PC Kit

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Instead of a fully working Fermi prototype, nVidia’s announced yesterday a new Do-It-Yourself kit simply named ‘GeForce PC Kit’.

It’s main purpose (aside nVidia getting some fresh cashflow) is supposed to be teaching more people how to assemble their own machine.

Don’t expect any fancy parts, though. Here’s what you get in the box:

CPU: Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 @ 2.6GHz
Cooler: GlacialTech Igloo 5058
Motherboard: MSI G31TM-P21
Memory: 2GB DDR2-667 Corsair Value Select
Graphics Card: XFX 9800GT 512MB (most likely using DDR3)
Hard Drive: 3.5″ Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA2
Optical Drive: LG DVD-RW burner
Power Supply: Ultra LifeTime 500W
Keyboard and Mouse: Microsoft keyboard and mouse
Chassis: CoolerMaster Elite 334 NVIDIA Edition

Included are the standard cables and adapters one can expect to find in such a kit, and some glossy color manuals, making life easier for ordinary users.

As a bonus for giving 500 dollars to nVidia, you also get a limited edition nVidia screwdriver. Oh, the irony… 😉

[slideshow id=1]

AMD’s new 12-core Magny-Cours Opterons available for sale

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Missouri-based custom server and workstation maker Oakville Mehlville Computers started selling four 12-core Opteron 6174 processors on eBay today. The starting bid for the four-pack is set to 7,000$.

Magny Cours

The interesting thing here is that these processors are not announced by AMD yet. Still, judging from their markings, they don’t seem to be engineering samples. Each one of them features twelve cores running at a clock speed of 2.20GHz, has 12MB of unified L3 cache and 6MB L2 cache (512KB of cache per core). The central processing units code-named Magny-Cours have quad-channel PC3-10600 (DDR3 1333MHz) memory controllers and are designed for the socket G34 platform.

Magny Cours

The processors are tray-packaged, so the lucky bidder must think of a way to cool them. More over, at the time of writing this, there are no announced socket G34 motherboards available for sale… 😉

WD1002FAEX – Western Digital’s first 1TB SATA3 hard drive

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Although SATA3 (a.k.a. SATA 6.0Gbps) is still a relatively new standard and only a handful of high-end motherboards support it, California-based manufacturer Western Digital released it’s first hard disk drive utilizing it last week in some Japan stores.

WD1002FAEX

It’s a 1TB Caviar Black, featuring a regular 3.5″ form factor. The exact model  is WD1002FAEX and it has 64MB of cache. It’s based on two 500GB platters which rotate at a standard 7200rpm.

WD1002FAEX

The retail price of the new drive in Japan is around 118$, which is somewhat higher than the previous 1TB Caviar Blacks.


Computer Limbo