Apparently, Intel does not like its customers overclocking their new Haswell chips on non-Z87-equipped motherboards. Several of the large motherboard manufacturers have released workarounds that allow their customers to overclock their Haswell processors on motherboards that did not feature a Z87 chipset.

Unfortunately, those workarounds will only function for just a little bit longer as Intel prepares a microcode update that will firmly lock overclocking abilities to only the Z87 hardware. The update appears to be scheduled for this coming week and it's not clear yet on how the update will be pushed to your system. Intel has also not released word on if the microcode update has already been implemented on new retail processors, but we're sure that they will begin pushing it to them soon.

It has been several months since I have made a Science Friday post here at TweakTown and I have been wanting to bring it back. So many of you have mentioned how much you enjoyed them, so I am going to attempt to make 1-2 science related posts every Friday. Today, NASA released a breathtaking image of Comet ISON taken with the Hubble Space Telescope back on April 30. The image shows ISON streaking through our solar system with many stars and faint galaxies in the background.

The image is comprised of five photos that the researchers at NASA stitched together to form such a wide field of view. "The result is part science, part art," Josh Sokol of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., which operates Hubble, wrote in a blog post last week. "It's a simulation of what our eyes, with their ability to dynamically adjust to brighter and fainter objects, would see if we could look up at the heavens with the resolution of Hubble."

Comet ISON, is a sungrazing comet discovered on September 21, 2012, by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok. The discovery was made using a 0.4 meter--16 in--reflecting telescope. As the comet warms as it moves closer to the sun, its rate of sublimation (a process similar to evaporation in which solid matter transitions directly into gas) will increase. The comet will get brighter and its tail will grow longer. The comet is predicted to reach naked-eye visibility in November.

Today, Apacer introduced us to some new RAM that they say will "once again bring overclocking techniques to a new level." The new ARES DDR3-3000 series is the same APACER RAM that broke records at Computex Taipei 2013 with a pair of modules reaching 3225MHz. The series includes 2800MHz, 2933MHz, and 3000MHz modules that are available in two different capacity packages. A 2x4GB and a 2x8GB kit are available to bring extreme overclocking to extreme players.

Apacer says that every module of ARES RAM has been thoroughly checked to ensure that they conform to the highest standards. The ARES series features an 8-layer PCB that was specifically designed for overclocking efficiency and to provide better noise and interference reduction which can otherwise prevent world class overclocks from happening.

T-Mobile USA announced today that it is updating its popular Un-Carrier strategy tomorrow to now offer all devices for $0 down. This means that customers can now upgrade their smartphones for free without signing a contract and just pay a monthly payment on the phone for 24 months. For example, you could upgrade to a new Samsung Galaxy S4 tomorrow for $0 down and just pay $25 per month over the next 24 months. That works out to $600 for the phone with 0% APR.

"The number of reasons not to switch to T-Mobile this summer is ZERO," said John Legere, president and chief executive officer, T-Mobile US. "This is a fantastic offer and we're making it easier than ever for customers to get the latest amazing devices. Adding Zero Down in addition to JUMP!, and Simple Choice with no contract is all about making wireless work for consumers and shaking up this industry."

From the release by T-Mobile:

Chromecast may just be the kick in the pants that Google TV needs. According to one employee, Google will be providing Google TV support for Chromecast. With all the talk of a new Google TV set-top box being readied for launch, this could mean that you would be able to plug your Chromecast into this new box, or it could mean that Google is bringing a Google TV app to Chromecast.

Warren Rehman, an employee of Google said that "Google TV isn't dead" and went on to confirm that Google will be integrating Chromecast into Google TV in some form. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that earlier this year at CES, they got a closed doors, private demo of Google's upcoming set-top box. The new Google TV box is said to feature a built-in camera, motion sensor, and have support for Google Hangouts.

There has been a lot of discussion about the destruction of Metropolis in Zack Snyder's reboot of Superman, Man of Steel. Sure, there's insane amounts of destruction, but when two God-like (fictional) beings fight each other in an otherwise realistic portrayal of a city, what do you think would happen? Other than it causing an estimated $700 billion worth of damage, it would be an intense few nanoseconds.

The video above goes into the science of what would happen if Superman punched you, and has so many numbers and facts that it'll make you laugh out loud at how ridiculous it would be if Superman really did punch someone in real life. The punch itself would be so quick, you wouldn't even see it for one. Secondly, it would have so much force it would create a 1km deep crater in the ground.

It would take just a few nanoseconds for it to happen, before a blast radius of several kilometers engulfed into fury and flames. So, what we see in Man of Steel is more 'realistic', but it could've been so much worse. I loved the destruction in Man of Steel, and thought it was one of the more realistic superhero movies to depict God-like beings fighting in a city.

Some interesting information is coming out from Intel engineer Ronak Singhal, who has spent most of his 17-year career at Intel developing relationships with the top computer experts in the world.

The experts he has worked with include huge companies such as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and more. Singhal spoke with EE Times during a break in a press briefing in regards to Intel's latest Xeon and Atom server chips, where he said: "When three of them all tell you they want the same thing, you know you are on to something."

But, as you can imagine, some companies don't want the same thing and want a CPU that is custom-made to their specific needs. In the last couple of years, Intel have been providing some of their biggest customers like eBay and Facebook, with custom versions of their CPUs. Intel is taking this slow, and isn't rushing into custom-made processors for companies just yet, though.

Intel have provided some details on their new SSD 530 Series of drives, which include some M.2 form factor models. There will be four M.2 form factor models, coming in at 80GB, 120GB, 180GB and finally, 360GB. The 80GB drive will be capable of up to 540MB/sec sequential read speeds, and up to 480MB/sec writes. We'll have 24,000 IOPS for random 4K reads, and up to 80,000 IOPS for writes.

When it comes to the 120GB, 180GB, and 360GB drives, Intel kicks it up a notch by offering up to 540MB/sec sequential read speeds, and up to 490MB/sec writes. As for random 4KB read/writes, we can expect 41,000 IOPS and 80,000 IOPS for the 120GB and 180GB drives, and we see a big drop to 37,000 IOPS for random 4KB writes on the 360GB model.

There will be plenty of other models, with four mSATA-based models coming in at 80GB, 120GB, 180GB and 360GB and six models in the usual 2.5-inch flavor. We should expect the 2.5-inch form factor to see 80GB, 120GB, 180GB, 240GB, 360GB and the biggie: 480GB. All six of these drives are capable of 540MB/sec and 490MB/sec for sequential read/writes and 41,000 IOPS and 80,000 IOPS for random 4KB read/writes, respectively.

Ever since Google's Chromecast media streaming dongle was announced yesterday, I have been curious as to what hardware lies inside. I am after all, one of the type of people who enjoy taking things apart to see how it ticks. Thanks to the FCC and Anandtech I do not have to wait for my Chromecast to arrive. The FCC Chromecast documents have been released and they contain images of the naked Chromecast PCB.

Powering the device is a Marvell DE3005 chip while AzurWare silicon handles the Wi-Fi duties. For those interested, you can view the full FCC documentation along with the photos and even the devices user manual by visiting Source #3 below. I placed an order for a Chromecast unit shortly after the announcement yesterday. No shipping info has been provided yet, but we are hoping to have our unity by Monday or Tuesday and will have a full review up shortly thereafter.

Julian Assange has launched the WikiLeaks Party in Australia, all the way from his current 'home' in London's Ecuadorian embassy. The WikiLeaks Party have announced their candidates, shortly after their site went down due to a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack from an American "hacktivist".

The candidates for the WikiLeaks Party for the upcoming federal election in Australia are standing for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. In New South Wales, we have human rights lawyer, Kellie Tranter, and academic, journalist and former public servant with the Department of External Affairs and Department of Foreign Affairs, Dr Alison Brionowski.

Journalist, Gerry Georgatos and economist and CEO of the Epilepsy Association for Western Australia, Suresh Rajan, are standing for Western Australia. Victoria will see Julian Assange himself standing, as well as author, ethicist and activist, Dr Leslie Cannold and RMIT lecturer, Dr Binoy Kampmark.

Today, Reuters has reported that Yandex Co-Founder and CIO of the Russian search giant Yandex has been pronounced brain dead. Llya Segalovich was recently diagnosed with a treatable form of cancer and has been receiving treatment for some time now and this turn of events came abruptly and was quite unexpected.

"Mr. Segalovich had been diagnosed with a treatable form of cancer and was responding well to treatment and working a full schedule, before unexpectedly succumbing to complications last night," the Russian company said in a statement at 10:55 a.m. in Moscow, after receiving information that he had died.

"We want to clarify an earlier statement that the company put out. We have since learnt that Ilya is in coma and on life support although not showing any brain function. Our thoughts are with him at this time," Arkady Volozh said on a conference call later in the day.

You can always count on NVIDIA to release something that gets your wallet craving an emptying, and today is no different with the announcement of their new professional-grade GPU, the Quadro K6000.

NVIDIA are calling their new Kepler-based, professional GPU "the fastest and most capable GPU ever built." It has replaced the Quadro 6000, and features an insane 12GB of DDR5 RAM, 2880 streaming multiprocessor cores, ultra-low latency video I/O and the ability to pump graphics out to four simultaneous monitors at 4K resolutions. Yeah, nice, isn't it?

Just how fast is NVIDIA's Quadro K6000? Well, Nissan have said they can nearly load almost-complete vehicle models using NVIDIA's new GPU. Impressive. It's actually not too badly priced either, comign in at $2250.

Finally. The day has arrived: Google have unleashed Android 4.3 to the world, keeping the "Jelly Bean" codename intact. What exactly does Android 4.3 bring to the tablet versus Android 4.2?

Well, we have a bunch of multi-user settings, which includes the ability to restrict profiles for younger people. This is a great feature to keep your content, or the ability to access adult content, from children. You can restrict app content at the user level, with a user enjoying the ability of restricting a number of puzzles within a game to a specific profile.

On top of this, you can prevent kids from going crazy and racking up huge bills with the in-app purchases. This is a must-have for all parents, in my opinion. Apple, where are you?

In a day that seems to be all about Google, the company has released yet another new and exciting product. Google has just launched a new Android app named Google Play Games, which will serve as a central location for social gaming as well as game and content discovery. We first heard mention of this new app at Google I/O but details were a bit scarce and we almost forgot all about it.

The new app aggregates all of your installed games into a single location where you can see earned achievements, multiplayer engagements, and a list of frequent opponents and public leaderboards. The app is very similar to Apple's Game Center, which has been around for almost 3 years now. Unlike the Game Center which uses your Apple ID for identification, Play Games requires a connection through Google to update your account with new achievements and data.

For years now, San Francisco citizens have wished for there to be a free Wi-Fi service in their parks, and now thanks to Google, 31 of the city's plazas, playgrounds, parks, and rec centers are getting just that. Google donated $600,000 to install the free service, which is still pending approval.

The $600,000 gift will cover the equipment, installation, maintenance and service for the next two years after which it is still uncertain what will happen to the networks. If things go as planned, installation will begin as early as November and would wrap up sometime in April of 2014, just in time for park weather. Advocates and Google hope that this installation will serve as a model that will eventually grow into a city-wide free Wi-Fi network.

A full list of the areas getting the new free Wi-Fi are listed below:

Any of my regular readers know that I absolutely, positively, 100 percent hate patent trolls. They do nothing to further innovation and quite frankly, they hurt the US economy more than anything else. Today, Newegg informed us of updates in a pending patent infringement case in which they have been battling a lawsuit filled by the notorious patent troll TQP Development, LLC.

Based in East Texas, TQP has filed hundreds of lawsuits against pretty much every kind of business imaginable over patent infringement. In the case against Newegg, TQP says that Newegg has violated its patent on encryption used on eCommerce websites. Newegg filed a Motion to Compel Discovery of TQP's communications with its patent monetization firm IP Navigation Group, which is associated with yet another patent troll, Erich Spangenberg.

Magistrate Judge Payne of the Eastern District of Texas denied Newegg's Motion on July 23, and said that the communication between TQP and IP Navigation was privileged as "work product" and were to be treated as mental impressions and notes created during litigation. This ruling came even though TQP never argued that its privilege applied to any of its briefs. Additionally, the judge ordered Newegg to pay 50 percent of TQP's reasonable costs and legal fees that occurred as a result of the motion filed by Newegg.

This morning, ROCCAT announced the release of a new gaming mouse alongside a new mousepad to match. The new Kone Pure Optical Gaming Mouse is designed for those who do not want the high dpi resolution of a laser mouse, but prefer the softness of an optical mouse. Additionally, the company released the new Sense Meteor Blue Mousepad which is the latest installment in the company's praised Sense line.

"The new sensor featured in the Kone Pure Optical is the successor to the sensor featured in the famous Savu mouse. The Savu drew praise from gamers and reviewers alike, who complimented the mouse for its accurate and reliable tracking. Building on this success, the Kone Pure Optical has a new and more powerful MCU, which features more memory, and two new native DPI steps." said ROCCAT founder and CEO Rene Korte.

Today during its breakfast event, Google officially unveiled the next-generation Nexus 7. Unfortunately for Google the cat has been out of the bag for well over a week now as the next-gen Nexus 7 is one of the most leaked devices of the year.

Pretty much all of the specs that we reported on earlier today were confirmed during the event and it appears that nothing extra popped up. Additionally, ASUS appears to continue to be the manufacturing powerhouse behind the 7-inch slate.

The second-gen Nexus 7 features a 7-inch 1920 x 1200 display and is set to life by a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, while 2GB of RAM handle the memory duties. An Adreno 320 graphics processor crunches HD video and games, while Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and Wi-Fi handle the network connectivity. The long-anticipated Android 4.3 is the Nexus 7's OS of choice, which brings forth a new camera app and several other exciting features.

Today Intel confirmed the existence of the 4.5 watt Haswell CPU that popped up in a datasheet last month. Intel says that the chip will hit markets before the end of the year and that it will be geared towards fanless tablets and convertibles, which do not have much space for cooling hardware.

The 4.5W Haswell is expected to fill in the blank left by Intel's 6W Haswell processors that require an active cooling solution.

It should be noted that the 4.5W rating is the SDP or Scenario Design Power, which describes the sustained power consumption for sustained workloads, and that Intel has not released any information on the processors TDP, which is used to describe power draw in short burst.

This morning Google announced the release of a new media streaming dongle dubbed Chromecast. The small $35 HDMI dongle mirrors content that is being played on a nearby smartphone, computer or tablet. Coming in at just 2-inches long, the device plugs directly into your HDTVs spare HDMI port.

The device is able to run certain apps and if you are an early adopter, you will get a free three month Netflix subscription. Google says that Chromecast runs a simplified version of Google's Chrome OS and unfortunately, it will require a separate USB power source. The device features 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and comes with an HDMI extender, a USB cable and a USB power source.

Chrome apps that work with Chromecast will feature a "cast" button that will push the video feed to your Chromecast connected television. "Once Chromecast is plugged in, you just go to YouTube on your smartphone," Google reps said. "You'll see the cast button in your UI and you press it -- Chromecast will pull the info you requested from the cloud and play it on your TV." Google demoed the device at this morning's breakfast event and showed how Chromecast could display a YouTube video from your tablet onto your TV, and still allow you to use other apps on your tablet at the same time.