Core i5 in an X-Slim
A year ago MSI pioneered the affordable thin-and-light with the X-Slim X320 and now it has taken the concept one step further, thanks to Intel’s new Arrandale ULV chips.
The sleek chassis of the 13.4-inch X-Slim X360 has remained largely unchanged, and frankly there’s not much to change, as it still looks stunning. However, there’s quite a few changes under the bonnet.
Cebit 2010: Aims at that part of market as well
After introducing its A50 water cooler, Corsair has decided to introduce its first air cooler as well and has obviously deemed CeBIT the right place to do it. Corsair will have two coolers that will support both Intel and AMD sockets.
The Air Series A50 has three 8mm heatpipes that are in direct contact with the CPU, while its bigger brother, the Air Series A70 will have four 8mm heatpipes and support for dual fans setup. While the A50 is limited to one fan, both models will be using the same low-noise, low vibration 120mm fans with rubber stud mounting that will spin between 1,600 and 2,000RPM.
Both models will feature a two years of warranty but unfortunately the availability date and the price are yet to be announced.
Cebit 2010: Looks quite good
Corsair has been showing its new Padlock 2 USB flash drive at Cebit and we were quite keen to learn what is the difference between the original Padlock and this new drive. The first and main difference is that this time around, Padlock looks like something that really comes from Corsair as it has the looks and build of a Voyager drive.
Another difference which can be easily considered the most important one, is that Corsair has included both the PIN lock and 256-bit hardware encryption, while the old one was limited only to a 4-10 PIN digit lock. It also comes with a fail safe which locks the device for 2 minutes after repeated failed attempts at unlocking.
The Padlock 2 will be available only as an 8GB version and will feature a limited 10 year warranty.
Cebit 2010: Should be called the H70
We managed to find out that Corsair is working on another water-cooler that should be called the H70. It looks like that Corsair has had some nice success with its water coolers and wants to introduce yet another that will be a high-performance part.
Considering what Corsair did so far with its H30 and H50, we guess that the new one will have a dual radiator design and maybe even a better pump, but considering the fact that it is still in development we guess that a lot of things could be changed.
The new H70, as we’ll call it for now, aims to fit perfectly within Corsair Obsidian cases as both have room for dual radiators, so we guess that is the direction in which Corsair is heading.
Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to squeeze out release date info.
Cebit 2010: The cool yellow ones
Although these have been listed for a while, Corsair has also showed its newest Voyager GTR drives at CeBIT. The new Flash Voyager GTR USB drives will be available from 32 to 128GB in capacity and will feature water-resistant, shock-proof rubber housing, USB 2.0 interface and quite fast transfer speeds.
The new drives come in yellow and feature quad-channel design that give them maximum read and write speeds of up to 34MB/s and 28MB/s. The drives should be at the top of portable flash offer from Corsair and we must admit they look quite good. As you can see from the picture below, the 128GB version is a bit larger that the rest, but despite the size it can still fit into your pocket.
The price starts at around 90 for the 32GB version, while 64 and 128GB are listed for 172 and 277. You can find them listed here.
US $429.99 in the States
Although it was rumored about and then announced back in November, MSI’s Wind12 U230 has finally started to ship in North America. Based on AMD’s second generation ultra-thin platform, the new Wind12 U230 features either an Athlon Neo MV-40 or Athlon X2 L335 CPU paired up with Radeon HD 3200 integrated graphics.
The Wind12 U230 has 297×190x31mm dimensions and comes with a 12.1-inch screen with 1366×768 resolution. The rest of the specs include 2GB of memory, either a 250 or 320GB HDD, 802.11bgn WiFI, three USB ports, D-Sub and HDMI outputs, 1.3M webcam, and a 4-in-1 card reader.
Both SKUs that are currently available in the States feature a 6-cell battery and weigh around 1.5kg. Both the Wind12 U230-033US with Neo MV-40 CPU and 250GB of HDD and U230-040US with X2 L33 CPU and 320GB of HDD space are currently available at Newegg.com and MSIMobile.com with US $429.99 and US $479.99 price tags and one-year warranty.
Radeon HD 5450
If you got tired of waiting for the mighty Fermi and you want very cheap DirectX 11 solution, ATI has its Radeon HD 5450 for you. The card is out for roughly a month and sells for 35 or more depending on the configuration. This is by far the cheapest DirectX 11 card on the market.
It is based on Cedar Pro chip clocked at 650MHz and we’re talking about a 40nm card with 512MB of 400MHz DDR2 memory. The cheapest one listed here is Power Color AX5450 and even this one has VGA, DVI and HDMI support, making it great for home theater PCs.
The same configuration by Sapphire will cost you 4 cents more or 34.84 and it offers roughly the same card just with blue low profile PCB, something that we have tested here.
Its not really fast due to its 64-bit memory interface, but at least its the cheapest DirectX 11 card on the market. It’s also well worth noting that entry level Fermi probably wont come for at least three more months if not more.
Cebit 2010: Next-gen ION
Since Fermi was scarce at CeBIT show, Zotac has decided to put its main focus around its motherboard business and has showed a rather unique and quite cute ZBOX nettop which will be available as a barebone without memory and HDD.
The new ZBOX is based on Intel Pinetrail platform and next-gen ION and will be shipped without the HDD, memory or OS, as Zotac wants to give its customers as much freedom with the configuration as possible. The specs include Intel’s Pineview ATOM D510 dual-core CPU paired up with a GT218 GPU with 16 cores and 512MB of DDR3 memory.
The rest of the specs include a single SO-DIMM DDR2 memory slot, a place for 2.5-inch HDD or SSD, 6-in-1 card reader, 802.11bgn WiFi, Bluetooth and HDMI and DVI outputs. As you can see from the pictures below, the system will be cooled by a single fan that should take care of both the CPU and Nvidia’s ION 2.
The new ZBOX can be used with its own stand or mounted on the back via standard VESA mount. Zotac also made sure that installing or upgrading the new ZBOX is easy, so this time you just need to unscrew the two thumbscrews and open the lid which should be quite simple for pretty much anyone.
The new ZBOX will be available pretty soon with a US $209.99 price tag.
Cebit 2010: Aluminum and portability
Titan is our old friend and we were happy to see the guys at Cebit. They are very well known for good cooling solutions and we want to present you recently announced TTC-G9TZ, a three in one notebook cooling pad
Half a dozen cores coming this month
Intel’s Core i7 980X Extreme Edition has been listed by several European retailers, starting at 931.
The six-core behemoth, codenamed Gulftown, based on the 32nm Westmere architecture and it is clocked at 3.33GHz. Thanks to Turbo overclocking 980X can run at 3.6GHz and it supports Hyperthreading.
There are a few downsides. The price isn’t all that great, but in this market segment that’s not a very big deal. The triple channel memory controller officially supports 1066MHz memory, although we’re confident it will be able to cope with somewhat higher clocks. With a 140W TDP is seems there is not much room for overclocking, but with six cores ar 3.33GHz, there really isn’t much need for overclocking, either.
According to Intel’s plans, the 980X should start shipping by the end of March, probably sooner rather than later, so start looking for your piggy banks.
