- Cooler and Quieter Barebones PCs

Tom's Hardware has gathered up several of the latest barebones PC's to have hit the market recently and put them to the test in terms of cooling, features, usability, and most importantly quietness. Head on over to get the full scoop.

Hundreds of e-mails from our readers and users lay claim to how important noise levels are. Indeed, while a typical desktop customer expects high performance for a comparatively low cost, a potential customer of a barebones system looks at noise levels. Of course, higher-performance also means hotter systems, which thus means high-performance cooling systems.

- 3D Video Card History

An article on the history of the video card market since 1996 has been posted over at FastSilicon. It starts back where 3DFX took off and follows the story through to where we are today. Quite an interesting read.

When 3dfx released their first card in October of 1996, it hit the computer world like a right cross to the face. That card was called Voodoo. This new card held the door open for video game development, accelerating 3D graphics like nothing before. The Voodoo card performed its magic via a pass-through connection to the user's regular 2D video card - a practice known as piggy backing. A few months later a new card was introduced, the Voodoo Rush, which combined both 3D and 2D functions into one card. However, it ran significantly slower than the normal Voodoo. This, combined with driver issues, caused the Rush to be seen as a flop by the community.

- Articles and Reviews from around the Web

- Spire SkiveStream II Socket A Cooler @ 3dXtreme
- SilenX 400 watt 14 dBA Power Supply @ 3DGameMan
- Xenarc 700TSV 7" Touch Screen VGA LCD Monitor @ ModTheBox
- Xtrac Ripper & Micro Mousepad @ Ascully
- Neon Red/Black Case Upgrade @ OCIA