Thermaltake has prepared Commander MS-I Snow Edition to take on a gratitude mission of thanking our fans for the support throughout the year of 2011 as well as with a new suit to blend into the snowy battlefield for e-Sports enthusiasts.

Thermaltake Commander MS-I Snow Edition
Thermaltake Commander MS-I has made a huge blast since its first present in July 2011. This winter, with its determination and consistency, Commander MS-I is suited up with a brand-new snow look to move its way through a snowy battlefield. The Commander MS-I Snow Edition is equipped with extra-long VGA support which will hold some premium weapons (graphic cards) in the market, such as nVidia GTX590 and AMD Radeon HD6990 with ease, cable management and 12cm blue LED fan to enhance air mobility (ventilation), USB2.0 and USB 3.0(internal 19pin) front I/O slots allow direct data transfers during combat situation, and 9 drive bays grant with maximum magazine (HDD, optical drives) storability so you will never run out of resources.

"Our customers have been asking us for PWM versions of our fans for a long time, but the available PWM fan driver ICs simply weren't up to our quality standards", explains Mag. Roland Mossig, Noctua CEO. "With our NE-FD1, we've now got our custom-designed IC that allows us to build PWM fans that consume less power and remain quieter at low speeds."

Most conventional PWM fan driver ICs put out square signals that cause sudden torque impulses. These impulses can cause minute deformations of the entire fan structure which lead to audible "clicking" noises that are especially noticeable with many common PWM fans running at slower speeds. Adopting Noctua's Smooth Commutation Drive (SCD) technology, the custom designed NE-FD1 PWM IC slows down the slew rate of the output signal in order to give a smoother, less sudden torque impulse. This way, PWM switching noises can be effectively suppressed and the fan runs even quieter, especially at low speeds.

Noctua's NE-FD1 IC was not only fine-tuned for superior quietness, it has also been carefully optimised to allow for ultra-low power consumption. As a result, the new PWM models consume 25-40% less power than their non-PWM counterparts.

All models come with Low-Noise Adaptors, 30cm cable extensions and 4-pin y-cables that allow to connect a second PWM fan to the same fan header for automatic control. Equipped with Noctua's signature SSO bearing and topped off with a 6 years manufacturer's warranty, the NF-P12 PWM, NF-B9 PWM and NF-R8 PWM are a proven premium choice for the highest demands.

Price and Availability
The new PWM models are available immediately at a recommended retail price of EUR 19.90 / USD 24.90 (NF-P12 PWM), EUR 17.90 / USD 21.90 (NF-B9 PWM) and EUR 14.90 / USD 18.90 (NF-R8 PWM).

For more information, visit the product pages of NF-P12 PWM, NF-B9 PWM, and NF-R8 PWM. To learn more about Noctua NE-FD1 PWM IC, visit this page.

Antec is proud to announce the P280, the newest member of the award-winning Performance One Series. The P280 reflects the sophisticated appearance and Quiet Computing engineering of its Performance One predecessors, while offering a new set of features at an attractive price for users building with current- and next-gen hardware.

Continuing the legacy of Performance One enclosures, the P280 integrates quiet technologies such as sound-dampening steel / polycarbonate side panels, a triple-layer front door and hard drive trays with preinstalled vibration-reducing silicone grommets. Its understated aesthetics will appeal to gamers and enthusiasts who prefer a stylish, functional appearance.

Every feature in the P280, from the enlarged internal layout to the air filters & fan mounts, is included to accommodate high-end systems. Supporting up to XL-ATX sized motherboards and four-way GPU configurations, it offers a new level of expandability in the Performance One series.

Understanding the importance of convenience and ease-of-use, the P280 includes tool-less optical drive bays, 3.5

Today we peek at the Seasonic 1000W Platinum series. It's 1000W, Platinum certified, incredibly silent, modular and can be spotted for just 235 EUR. Hell they even throw in a 7 year warranty. That just oozes value, features and lifespan.

"We're at an inflection point," said AMD spokesman Mike Silverman, according to a Mercury News report. "We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mindset, because it won't be about that anymore."

Speculations are that AMD simply might halt high-end processors and focus more on mobile parts like the current Llano processors.  We can already see processor prices rise ...

If anything, 2011, with more than half a year of lacking an actual CEO, was a clear symptom that Advanced Micro Devices had to do something, and soon. The company has a new leader now and, sure enough, the man took some fairly drastic measures, and that includes more than this latest change in direction, as well as a branded RAM project.

The workforce also suffered, especially the PR and marketing departments (AMD axed large portions of each as part of its plan to cut total worldwide employee count by 10%).

The complicated thing about the focus on mobile is that ARM already has that well enough in hand, and NVIDIA just launched the Kal-El too. AMD may just be exchanging one headache for another with this.

Futuremark announced that it has started development of 3DMark for Android (working title), with the aim of bringing the industry standard gaming performance benchmark to Android powered tablets in 2012.

Companies involved in the manufacture of Android powered devices are invited to join Futuremark's Benchmark Development Program to play a critical role in the development of 3DMark for Android, from initial specification to final delivery.

Research groups such as Gartner and IDC are predicting explosive growth for tablets in the coming years. Undoubtedly games will be one of the key drivers of this growth as the performance and power of these lightweight devices improves. Fierce competition between Android devices means hardware manufacturers and their suppliers will need an objective, impartial and forward-looking performance reference to enable their engineers to deliver competitive products.

Jukka M

OCZ announces the Talos 2, a new enterprise solid state disk with the 6Gbps SAS interface.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, announces the Talos 2 Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSD Series, the follow-up to the high performance, high capacity Talos Series previously available only in a 3.5 inch form factor.

With capacities up to 1TB now available in a compact 2.5-inch form factor, Talos 2 offers increased I/O performance and scalability in enterprise storage environments. Talos 2 leverages OCZ Virtualized Controller Architecture

While we're still on hold for the first actual PCI Express 3.0 graphics cards and CPUs to release, PCI-SIG has already cooked up the PCI Express 4.0 draft specification. This new standard will enable a bandwidth of 16 gigatransfers per second (GT/s), twice as much as PCI Express 3.0. The final PCIe 4.0 specification is expected in 2014 or 2015.

PCI-SIG

Acer VP Scott Lin told DigiTimes that PC vendors will see more serious HDD supply issues in December as HDD inventory levels will soon hit bottom:

As PC brand vendors' hard disc drive (HDD) inventory level will soon hit bottom, vendors will start experiencing HDD shortages in December and the problem will reach its peak in February until recovery comes in March, according to Acer vice president Scott Lin.

Despite PC brand vendors having already taken measures to secure and expand supply sources right after Thailand's flood, sources from the upstream supply chain still estimate that the hard drive supply gap will reach 35% in the fourth quarter with PC vendors starting feeling the pressure in December.

Acer pointed out that all the newly-made notebook models will have price increases of 2-3%, in addition to the extra cost of HDD, the increased price will also cover the extra cost for adopting Intel's new CPUs such as Core i3 2330, 2430 and Core i5 2450.

Hackers can use the exploit to steal personal information and perhaps even set offices on fire. Columbia University Professor Salvatore Stolfo showed the press how attackers can heat up a printer fuser. During the demonstration paper in the printer turned brown and began to smoke before the printer's temperator-sensor shut off the printer to prevent a fire. But not all printers have such a safeguard.

HP insists it adopted digital signing on all its new printers since 2009, but the researchers found unsigned printers still being sold at office retailers in September 2011.

' The attack can occur remotely, if the printer is set up for "cloud printing" as HP is particularly fond of. Researchers scanned the internet and in minutes found 40,000 printers they could have potentially set the "catch fire" command & control package to.

But the true number of vulnerable machines could be much, much higher. Comments Professor Stolfo, "I think it is very wise to broadcast the problem as soon as possible so all of the printer manufacturers start looking at their security architectures more seriously. It is conceivable that all printers are vulnerable.

The product reviewed today comes from MSI. It's their all new GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 core tagged under the codename N560GTF-448 TwinFrozr III Power Edition, which comes factory faster clocked. The card comes with a triple over-voltage function which supports voltage adjustment of GPU, memory & VDDCI. And the power indication hints towards a P/S Switch Function where two fan speed profiles (Performance / Silence) can be configured. The product will get that new GPU seated into a custom PCB and will be cooled by that lovely TwinFrozr III cooler.

Read the full article right here.

We review the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 core. Our model is factory clocked and originates from Gigabyte. They armed it with a custom PCB and their WindForce3 cooler. Will the card be a good chunk faster then it's predecessors ? Anno 2011, the GTX 570 is the closest family member really. Take a GeForce GTX 570, disable one shader processor cluster and boom that's the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 core -- a product that carries the same clock frequencies as that GTX 570 yet with fourteen shader processors clusters out of the fifteen on the GTX 570. In theory that means that the GTX 560 Ti 448 Core is merely a fifteenth slower than the GTX 570.

Read the full article right here.

After the introduction of the first models with 750, 850 and 1200 Watt ratings in October of this year, Enermax now releases its Platimax series with five new PSU units that are also 80PLUS Platinum certified.

Enermax' Platimax series is now comprised from a total of seven models that are rated to provide between 500 and 1500 Watts of power, and all of these feature an advanced series of technologies meant to improve power delivery.

One of the most important innovations introduced in the Platimax series is the Copper-Bridge Array transmission technology which replaces conventional wires to provide up to 3% better power regulation.

Enermax states that this improvement enables its PSUs to deliver cleaner DC power and raises the system's stability.

The Platimax power supplies feature between three and six 12V rails rated at either 25A or 30A each, and their combined power output varies according to the model.

As it's usually the case with high-end power supply units, Enermax' Platimax series features a modular cable design and all the models come bundled together with a wide variety of PCI Express connectors (both 6 and 8-pin) as well as with various SATA and MOLEX plugs.

Outside of the 80PLUS Platinum certifications, which ensures that the PSUs are able to deliver at least 94% efficiency in any usage scenario, Platimax power supplies are also compatible with the ErP Lot 6 standard.

The rest of the PSU features include 105

We made mention of this months ago already, but AMD outted their Radeon branded memory line in a press-release.

AMD today announced North American retail availability of the first AMD Memory branded desktop system memory modules, debuting with partners Patriot Memory LLC and VisionTek Products, LLC. AMD Memory branded products will help take the guesswork out of DRAM selection, providing an easy and straightforward experience when looking for the ideal match for gaming or multimedia PC needs.

As part of AMD

Most clock speeds are similar to today's Sandy Bridge LGA1155 processor models, some have Turbo Boost speeds as high as 3.90 GHz. Since Ivy Bridge silicon is an optical shrink of Sandy Bridge LGA1155, from 32 nm to 22 nm, and since Intel is using a more energy-efficient transistor design, there are significant improvements in TDP ratings. Have a peek, click the thumbnail:

NZXT presents the Hale82, a new series of modular power supplies with 80Plus Bronze certification.
Case specialist NZXT presents their newest line of modular power supplies with the Hale82 units. Consisting of three different versions with 650, 750 and 850 Watts along with 80Plus Bronze certification, these offer a great value with uncompromising performance. With their black housing and cables, the Hale82 goes perfectly with the many black cases out there.

With the first power supply series - the Hale Power 90+, NZXT answered to the demand of the users by offering an extremely stable and high-efficient power supply with the coveted 80Plus Gold certification. On top of that, being modular ensures a clean case interior, as the user may only use the cables needed. This reduced cable clutter also improves the internal cooling, as nothing obstructs the air flow.

The new Hale82 units also offer a similar cable management, including the use of the special, flat cables for easy routing within the confines of a chassis. The line-up consists of a 650, a 750 and an 850W variant to meet the different needs of the consumer. As the name suggests, the Hale82 series offers an 80Plus Bronze certification with 82% efficiency at 20 percent or full load, and 85% efficiency at 50 percent load.

Even so, the units include only the highest quality components. All capacitors within the Hale82 units are made in Japan, which ensure that the power supplies deliver a stable stream of power to the internal components. This, in combination with the long list of well engineered protection implementations allow for up to 70 Amps to be delivered within the 850 Watt variant for example. In addition, a 120 mm ball bearing fan has been included, which is not only extremely quiet, but also keep the Hale82 units cool.

In terms of cable management, the new Hale82 offers the utmost flexibility, as only the necessary leads, the 20+4 pin ATX12V, 4+4 pin EPS12V & up to four 6+2 PCIe, are firmly attached to the unit. All other cables can easily be attached to the separate connectors present on the power supply itself.

In addition to the firmly attached ones, the PSUs ship with the following modular cables: one additional 8-pin EPS12V, one 6+2-Pin PCIe, two SATA power cables with four connectors each, along with a pair of cables with three Molex connectors a piece. Thus, NZXT offers an excellent choice for all who want a high quality power supply at an affordable price point and an impressive 5 year warranty.

The modular NZXT Hale82 series will be available at the end of December starting at 109,90 Euro.

Reports say that Samsung will discontinue its netbook products in 2012, instead the company will offer more powerful 11.6" and 12" ultraportable laptops as well as ultrabooks later in 2012.

Samsung, presumably earlier this week, sent an email to one of its partners notifying that already in the first quarter of next year it would discontinue its 10.1" netbook range and instead will offer more powerful 11.6" and 12" ultraportable laptops as well as ultrabooks later in 2012. While the move does not directly claim that Samsung shuts down its ultra low-cost personal computer (ULCPC) business, it is clear that the devices with 10.1" screens should be tablets.

"Following the introduction of our new strategy in 2012, we stop the production of the 10.1" range (netbooks) in Q1 2012 in favour of ultraportable products (11.6" and 12") and ultrabooks to be launched in 2012," the alleged Samsung e-mail, which was published by Blogeee web-site, reads.

• Improved occasional performance issues resulting from long term play (PlayStation 3)
• Fixed issue where textures would not properly upgrade when installed to drive (Xbox 360)
• Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz (PC)
• Fixed issue where projectiles did not properly fade away
• Fixed occasional issue where a guest would arrive to the player
  

This is the first beta release from the Release 290 family of drivers. This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs.

New in R290 Drivers

NVIDIA PhysX

• Updates PhysX System Software to version 9.11.11.07 for the best PhysX experience in Batman: Arkham City.

NVIDIA SLI

• Added or updated SLI profiles for Crysis 2, Heroes and Generals, Inversion, Stronghold 3, and Syndicate.

HD Audio

• Updates HD Audio driver to version 1.3.9.0.

Some Key Bug Fixes

• Fixes random flickering as Windows boot logo is loading or fading away.
• Fixes corruption in Crysis 2 with SLI and lower quality shadow settings.
• Fixes corruption seen in Settlers 7 with 275.33 drivers.

Other Details

• Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology* on DirectX 9 and OpenGL.

*Note: The following SLI features are only supported on Windows Vista and Windows 7: Quad SLI technology, 3-way SLI technology, Hybrid SLI, and SLI multi-monitor support.

Download

 NVIDIA GeForce 290.36 Win 7 Vista 64-bit
 NVIDIA GeForce 290.36 Win 7 Vista 32-bit
 NVIDIA GeForce 290.36 XP 32-bit

We have a discussion thread open on these drivers right here.

Each month here at Guru3D.com we feature one of you guys, your PC, your DIY project. It is quite honestly amazing how much detail and dedication you put into an PC, and every now and then it really shows.

The Rig of the Month November 2011 carries the keywords dark, excellent, simple yet downright nicely done. Caolan Cullum who transformed one PC into a very quality build.

You can check the article right here.

Here's an unofficial NVIDIA 28nm manufacturing process roadmap for Kepler in 2012.

The high-end chip will have a smaller die than the massive Fermi and will bear the name GK104.  With 384-bit memory support, it can churn out 2 TFLOPS (30% more than GTX 580) and will be ready by the middle of next year.

Unfortunately, the prowess comes at the price of a high power consumption, 250W, which makes one wonder how much energy the GK110, a dual GX104, will need (will appear soon after).

Much sooner than GK104 will arrive the GK107, the first model as it were, which is a notebook part, with a memory interface of 128 bits and PCI Express 2 support (other GK chips have PCI Express Generation 3 support).

The GK106 will come second, a mid-range GPU, featuring 256-bit memory. Along with the GX107, it will show up at some point during the second quarter of 2012.

So far, the Santa Clara company seems to have similar designs as AMD, but the similarities end at the end of 2012 / early 2013, when NVIDIA will again launch a GPU with a massive die: GX112, with 512-bit memory.

So far, things sound optimistic, but there is always a catch and, in this case, it is TSMC that might cause disruptions to this plan, as well as AMD's own.

Many fear that the nightmare behind the 40nm low chip yields, which hit both companies very hard last year, will repeat with 28nm.  

The first signs are already showing in fact, as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is already experiencing a high demand while producing only 20,000 units per month.

Now that Intel has launched its first desktop processors based on the high-performance Sandy Bridge-E architecture, the chip maker is racing to get out the Xeon version of these CPUs and the first benchmarks showing the performance of such an 8-core SKU have recently made their way to the Web as softpedia reported today:

The chip is question is actually an engineering sample processor based on the Sandy Bridge-EP core and its performance was put to the test in both 3DMark 11 and CineBench R11.5.

In both of these benchmarks, the Intel eight-core CPU managed to outperform its desktop counterpart by quite a large margin, as the graphs put together by HardwareLuxx go to show.

From what we can tell, the ES processor used for these tests has a base frequency of 3.11GHz and Hyper-Threading seems to be working, but we don

 SteelSeries and one of the most recognized and accomplish gaming teams, Team Fnatic, introduce the SteelSeries 7H Fnatic Limited Edition headset and SteelSeries Sensei Fnatic Limited Edition mouse. Available now on SteelSeries Web Shop, the Limited Edition 7H headset features 50mm dynamic driver units with new, sound isolating SNDBlock ear cushions; while the Limited Edition Sensei features award-winning technology like its 32 bit ARM processor that powers SteelSeries

Over at Kotaku they heard Microsoft is working on two Xbox 720 consoles. One model will focus on being as cheap as possible, it will be positioned more along the lines of a set-top box and may be targeted as a Kinect-themed gaming portal, while a more fully-featured Xbox 720 is expected to deliver an optical drive, a HDD and backward compatibility with the 360.

"It's...believed that Microsoft will continue its successful two SKU strategy", the story claimed, "and indeed take it much further with its new platform: a pared down machine is to be released as cheaply as possible, and positioned more along the lines of a set-top box (the use of 360 as a Netflix viewing platform in the US is colossal) and perhaps as a Kinect-themed gaming portal, while a more fully-featured machine with optical drive, hard disk and backward compatibility aimed at the hardcore would be released at a higher price-point."

That's being caught with your pants down really, Dell used a pretty deceptive method to urge customers to upgrade to a high-end graphics card:

At left is a desktop with a normal graphics card, juxtaposed with an identical machine packing Dell's "high-end" GPU. Both are displaying a Windows desktop at the same resolution, but the render on the left looks noticeably blurry. As many Reddit users soon pointed out, even the most prosaic of graphics cards would be able to transmit a blur-free Windows desktop, implying that the PC manufacturer may have taken some unfounded liberties with its imagery. PC Pro notified Dell of the discrepancy, and the graphic has since been removed. The company also issued the following apology, claiming that it had no intention of bending the truth:

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Dell endeavours to help customers to make the best decisions regarding their purchases. It was never our intention to mislead customers, and we apologise for any confusion caused. We have now removed the image from our Global sites. Dell remains committed to delivering the best possible experience to all our customers.

Now drumroll -- here's how Dell shows the difference inbetween a 'regular' and a 'highend' graphics card.

Valve CEO Gabe Newell explains to IGN why piracy is a result of bad service rather than high price, and how Valve expanded Steam into Russia without rampant piracy resulting and grew it into their biggest region in Europe:

"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy," Newell said. "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24/7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country three months after the U.S. release and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable.

"Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customer's use or by creating uncertainty."

He adds, "Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our company. For example, prior to entering the Russian market, we were told that Russia was a waste of time because everyone would pirate our products. Russia is now about to become our largest market in Europe.

"Our success comes from making sure that both customers and partners feel like they get a lot of value from those services. They can trust us not to take advantage of the relationship that we have with them."