The mates at Engadget are reporting that Hitachi is about to release a SSD-equipped laptop optical drive.

The HyDrive is a standard form factor optical drive (DVD burner or Blu-ray will be available), but there's a 32GB or 64B SSD (not just a strip of NAND, we're told) tucked below. When this gets stuffed within a laptop, you're immediately able to access an optical drive, an SSD (for your operating system and critical launch applications) and a spacious HDD for storing music, media, etc.

If all goes well, the first HyDrive will ship in August 2010 (in South Korea; globally in September) within the 102 Series of Moneual HTPCs, though second-generation devices will scale all the way to 256GB. Other future plans are to slim the HyDrive down and possibly shove it within a netbook, set-top box or tablet (yeah, they name dropped the iPad and HP Slate here at their Computex press briefing), and there's also plans to move from SATA 3Gbps to SATA 6Gbps in due time. Of note, the very first generation will measure in at 12.7mm thick, and we're told that it won't fit into most conventional laptops; instead, it'll be aimed at small form factor (SFF) PCs, HTPCs and other mid-tower desktops. In March 2011, however, Hitachi-LG will be embedding the SSD within the PCB assembly, enabling it to reach a 9.5mm height (and thus, a much larger target market). ASUS has also announced plans to cram the HyDrive into some of its own machines, with the Eee Top all-in-one desktop line getting 'em first and the N61DA laptop getting the slimmer second generation edition.

We aren't generally the betting type, but it seems safe to assume that a whole slew of other PC makers will hop onboard here -- there's not likely to be too much of a price hike, and the benefits in terms of overall performance and system flexibility will surely appeal to the technophile crowd. Speaking of MSRPs, the company wouldn't reveal individual stickers, noting that OEM agreements prevented that kind of disclosure. It did say that an average thin-and-light priced at $649 sans an SSD would likely be priced at $849 with a HyDrive, shedding light on an estimated $200 uptick in price with a lower-level HyDrive in place. We asked if retail sales were being considered, and were told that it was "a possibility" for future years (but it wasn't going to happen in 2010) [via engadget]

Biostar is showing Sandy Bridge ready gear at Computex. Intel's H67 and P67 chipset will be paired with the upcoming LGA1155 Sandy Bridge CPUs, due next year, so these board are somewhat early to show alright. Anyway, check these out, these are the new Intel P67 and H67 chipsets, designed for the upcoming Sandy Bridge class of processors.

Above (click on the thumbnail) an Intel P67 based motherboard using an 8-phase power design, hopefully the chipset will finally come with native USB 3.0 in addition to the earlier SATA 6Gbps standard. They should bring very high speed DDR3 memory support and eSATA2.

Below is the H67 chipset supporting newer Sandy Bridge class processors with integrated graphics, hence the H extension.

Featuring Dual Fans and 4 Video outputs which support HDMI, DisplayPort, and two Dual-Link DVI display outputs. The Palit cooler & quieter thermal solution is designed with more fans and fins in order to optimize the revolutionary Fermi architecture performances. The cooler & quieter thermal system features Dual Fan to get double air-flow, a heatsink made of a pure cooper base and heat pipes attached to aluminum fins to maximize cooling performance. The cooler consists of a PWM fan with optimized heatsink, giving it excellent thermal performance while making it an ideal cooling solution.

The GeForce GTX 465 is built upon the same great DX11 architecture as the GTX 480. It has 352 CUDA cores, 44 texture unites, 32 ROP unites and a 256-bit memory interface with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. It relies on the same GF100 chip used in GeForce GTX 480 and 470 GPUs. GTX 465 also provides gamers with core GeForce GTX features such as 3D Vision, PhysX and CUDA, which enhance the gaming experience. PC Gamers who upgrade to GeForce GTX465 will get great frame rates on the DX9 and DX10 games that are predominant today, and also be ready for the next generation of DirectX11 games of tomorrow that will be released over the next few years.

GeForce GTX 465 single and SLI gets tested

Today NVIDIA launches the GeForce GTX 465. We will review not one, but two cards from the blokes at Point of View meaning we'll have a peek at SLI as well.

Based on the same 40nm GF100 as the GTX 470 and 480 will thermals be better?, will the noise levels stay within normal limits ? Well, you are here to find all that out. Have a peek at what is introduced today at the start of the Computex 2010 exhibition in Taiwan, the all new GeForce GTX 465.

Check out this full Guru3D article right here.

Being based on the X58 chipset, the board supports Intel LGA 1366 CPUs. The Gene uses an eight-phase power design, has six DDR3 memory slots, two SATA 6.0Gbps connectors and six SATA 3.0Gbps ports.

There are two USB 3.0 ports and just as many PCI Express x16 slots, fully prepared for SLI or CrossFireX multi-GPU setups. As for connectivity and I/O, ASUS' product provides FireWire, 7.1 channel audio and Gigabit Ethernet, among other things.

Obviously, being a ROG device, this mainboard has its own overclocking-friendly features, such as on-board Power, Reset and Clear CMOS buttons. Unfortunately, the folks at Trusted Reviews were not able to get any sort of info on when and where this small beast will show up for order, or how much it will drain from one's finances. It is possible that shipments will start sometime in June, like for so many other recent arrivals, at around $250, but is just a rumor.

Check the thumbnail for a larger photo.

Here I'm sitting happy as a puppy dog with a 6-core processor, thinking about a 8-core processor release later this year or early 2011 in mind. But the colleagues over at X-bit Labs heard that Intel has started to ship prototype systems with its 48-core processor to software developers. Intel Corp. has started to ship its systems powered by its prototype processor known as single chip cloud computer (SCC) that contains 48 x86 cores to software developers outside the company. The world

For those affected, shortly after the ATI Catalyst 10.5 release, ATI issued a hotfix driver specifically for Battlefield Bad Company 2 for radeoN HD 3000 / 4000 series users. This fix should solve long load times:

The ATI Catalyst 10.5a Hotfix provides resolution for the following issue:

* Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Long load times for new maps when using a Windows

OCZ Enyo USB 3.0 Portable SSD review

OCZ Enyo gets tested. Back in January earlier this year when we visited OCZ at CES in Las Vegas, we noticed a cool little external storage unit, it's called the Enyo and it pretty much is a USB 3.0 portable Flash SSD. However it's not 'just' an external device, it is done OCZ style ... and that entails amazing and breathtaking performance taking full advantage of that USB 3.0 SuperSpeed 5Gbps port. The product is tagged with specifications like Maximum read speeds of 260 MB/sec and 200 MB/sec on the write performance. All that housed in a sleek stylish aluminum housing. Good stuff for a nice little review

Check out the Guru3D review right here.

Guru3D Rig of the Month - May 2010

Tom (Cirvato) Michiels is the the Rig of The Month May 2010. Meet the dude at the age of 35, he has been a Guru3D aficionado for a while and this is his second entry into the competition, he surely shares our passion of building nice PCs.

His PC will be the Rig of the Month and he has built his PC with some interesting components. He certainly has spend a lot of time and effort on his rig, making not only beautiful looking, but an ubercool and high performance one as well.

Check out his rig right here.

This is an interesing product, a mATX enthusiast case with all the glory of the big ones, but just for the little ones. Tweaktown has made a review of it in all of it's glory, you can check it out here.