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Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov
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Tuesday, 21 August 2007 |
If you haven't figured it out yet, HPC means Heat Pipe Conduit, each stick of Reaper ram has, essentially a mini heatpipe cooling system built right in to keep your ram running nice and cool under the heaviest loads. The copper heatpipes are connected to the heatspreaders and then run up to a heatsink that encircles the hetapipe itself allowing for greater heat dissipation.
Everything was nicely packed inside and well protected. Getting it all out we have the following items: 2 satellite speakers, subwoofer, control center, audio cable, audio pass-through cable, iPod video adapter, iPod Nano adapter, Microsoft Zune adapter, and the user manual.
The Vantec 5.1 audio adapter came in the hard-to-open hard plastic display packaging that's both difficult and dangerous to open. You usually need a pair of garden shears and protective eyewear to crack the seal on this packaging, the sharp edges of which are defined as a dangerous weapon in 43 countries. This one's a bit easier though, since there's a strip down the side of softer plastic that can be more easily cut, but you'll probably still want to keep small children away.
The Z-Machine GT1000 comes in two flavors - Black with Red LED fans and accents, or Titanium with Blue LED fans and accents. I was grateful to get the Titanium version as the Black/Red motif reminds me of the horrible FC-ZE1. Zalman has done more than update the color scheme of this case. They've added some much-needed features and made many improvements to this enclosure. If you can't wait to see what has changed, take look at the feature list on the box.
Currently, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 is available with either a B3 stepping or G0 stepping. Without some research on your part, the chances of you getting a G0 model is roughly 25%-50%. Note that these findings were based on some pretty intense research that not only involved the results of most purchases from certain vendors and/or retailers, but all based on a large number of calls to a majority of companies offering this product for purchase. You really want a "guaranteed" G0 stepping Q6600? You actually do have options if you take the time to do your research.
This is the full name of tested modules, which belong to the PC3-8500 class, i.e. operate at a clock speed of 1066 MHz. The default latencies at this clock speed are, as we mentioned before, 7-7-7-20, and the voltage is 1.5 V. Physically, the chips are almost identical to DDR2 ones. Even the pin number is the same - 240, but they are divided in a different way. The chips were manufactured by a well-known Japanese manufacturer, Elpida. Chip-packaging is FBGA (Fine Ball Grid Array), which is usual for DDR3 chips. These modules belong to Kingston's "Value" product series, which means they should provide satisfactory performance at a low price. Still, this didn't stop them from being sold at a price higher than 200 €, which is really too much for what they provide.
New sockets and processors are slowly arriving to the motherboard market but the Am2 socket is still the most popular one. Today we are looking at an sample from MSI as they sent us their K9N4 SLI motherboard that seems to have most of the neat new features that are needed. We are going to compare vs an older MSI board to see what upgrades have been done.
As far as aesthetics are concerned, the Real Power 700 is not designed to stand out in a crowd. It features a flat black finish and is designed more to work than look good. Along this line, the PSU is rated at 700 watts of continuous draw and besides the 5v and 3.3v rails also includes four 12v rails. This multiple 12v rail design has been used by many manufacturers and is designed to provide a more stable flow of power to those hungry peripherals.
The cooler itself is of rather robust size with a side mounted fan. The fan on the Intel model is a PWM speed controlled 92mm unit with a variable rate stated as 1000 ~ 2300RPM. Our test unit however, had a max fan speed of 2400RPM which is no big deal just something to pass along. Side mounted fans on LGA775 coolers are always welcome as they can be mounted in such a way as to blow air toward a rear case fan or the power supply to exhaust warm air out of you system.
So what has Zalman done to make their power supplies about the quietest on the market? Very simple, they added a heavy duty heat pipe which works to draw heat away from the key electronics components in the power supply and by doing this greatly reduces the heat and prolongs the life of the power supply. Some fanless power supplies have a huge heatsink fin sticking out the rear of the case and in my opinion this makes for one obtrusive power supply. The fact that Zalman's heatpipe is completely self-contained is a good reason to be immediately impressed with this unit.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 22 August 2007 )
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