Ahhh, the money shot! In the event you've already forgotten how much loot you saved by not purchasing a top tier DX10 videocard, Foxconn's 8600GTS takes the minimalist approach to remind you this is geared towards the budget conscious shopper. There's no beefy card-covering heatsink (making this a single slot card), and as such, no snazzy artwork to, uh, NOT show off once it's installed upside down in your chassis, and the PCB comes in the familiar green prevalent of value priced silicon.
On each side of the PCB two memory IC's have been placed, and as you can see on the picture below those chips don't come with any kind of heatsink/fan cooling solution. The black heatsink found on the front of the card doesn't provide additional cooling for the front mem-IC's, these are DDR2 and don’t really needed when used at lower clock speeds.
It has two coaxial inputs, which allows you to connect Digital and analog TV sources to the card without any need for extra components. Next to that we see the Composite adapter cable connection that allows you to connect various video sources to the card (CCD Camera, Camcorder, VCR, DVD/VCD Player, or Video Game Console). To the right of that you will see the mini-jack connector for the remote controls sensor.
The camera itself is interesting in it's shape and design, kinda cool actually, but it's rather large to be carrying around honestly. The lens is located in the center of the device, it can move up and down, and features a focus ring as well.
Silence is something that many require when it comes to PSUs and many companies have begun to cash in on it with buzz words like "Silent" and "Whisper Quiet" being placed all over packaging. Today however, I have a company that has "silence" in their name, well, sort of. Here with me is the Xilence Power 600w Gaming Edition. Well, let's see if its Xilent and if it games well; to the test bed!
There's nothing wrong with that of course, back in the day Quake was amazing in its own, essentially plotless, right. But it's interesting that only recently has a push for coherently told storylines appeared among FPS fans, bought on by another few years of maturity in what is an undeniably young medium. Paintings and music have both been around since time out of mind, but computer games have only been around for a couple of decades and only recently have they begun to be recognised for the artistic merit posed by their interactivity.
The GT1000 isn't the kind of case you take to the local LAN. It is a seriously luxury item, and you never know what will happen if you show this kind of kit off, apart from several guys just standing there drooling. If the unlikely event of all consuming jealousy did occur it isn't like the would-be thief could make a quick getaway. The Z-Machine is a somewhat heavy case at just over 27 pounds. A lot of the weight has to do with the 5mm thick anodized aluminum that the unit is comprised of, also a big feature of the Fatality model. This also helps quite a bit with heat conduction away from internal components.
Of course the highlight is this videocard's rather unique passive cooler. What it is comprised of is a copper plate directly over the core which is connected to the main aluminum heatsink via two heatpipes. The heatsink is then connected to itself through two more smaller heatpipe to distribute the heat throughout the whole surface area instead of just in the direct area where the main heatpipes attach.
It is fully possible that Samsung does not include these two cables as part of the regular packaging, because the assumption is that you already have a digital flat panel of some kind in your home, and as such, you'd already have a DVI cable kicking around. Where this theory fails is if someone is upgrading from an analog LCD (and thus uses a VGA cable). If you ask most company reps -- Samsung or otherwise -- they'll probably rationalize that this helps to keep the overall price down, as they don't need to absorb the costs of shipping a couple of extra cables with every monitor.
Built around a steel SECC chassis, the NZXT Blackline utilizes steel panels, with a clear "stealthed" acrylic (read: cracks very easily) window. Unlike the marketing images, the side window is not red... but it could be with a little effort. The plastic front bezel completes classic look, with a single strip of fiber optic plastic to transmit the light from a hidden red LED.
