Peripherals maker Shogun Bros. has just outed a tweaked version of its Chameleon X-1 2-in-1 peripheral - a one of a kind peripheral in that it doubles up as both a gaming mouse and a game pad. The new X-1's outer body is completely rubberised helping improve grip, while its internals have been improved to make the unit more efficient in power usage (as it is also wireless, using a USB nano receiver and requiring just a single AAA battery).

The button sets are also said to have been given some tweaking, with better tactile feedback and a more ergonomic layout. The X-1 has a 1600dpi optical sensor, 16 buttons total with 2 analog sticks and force feedback support when set to 'gamepad mode'. It is available in three color options of Essential Purple, Graphite Grey and Passion Red and is set for release at the beginning of next month at $59.99 USD.

Colorful have unleashed a Radeon card under their ColorFire brand dubbed, ColorFire Xstorm HD 6850 X2 4GB. If you didn't already guess what it was from that ever so elusive name, it's a dual-GPU graphics card sporting two Radeon HD 6850 GPUs with a total of 4GB of memory. But that's not all, the designers of this card are trying out what they call "Silver-Plated Technology". All of the PCB's contacts, apart from the PCIe and CFBE interfaces are plated with silver. Silver being one of the best conductors, you can see why this card looks exciting.

ColorFire argue that the use of silver contacts reduces resistance and also helps with cooling. Next up we have DIP-switched based voltage control, which is an effective, yet old-school way of tuning voltages. Voltage measurement points are consolidated to a convenient location (next to the power connectors) and are angled for easy access. A pair of jumpers near the display output connectors allows the user of this card to switch between two sets of EEPROMs, each with different clock and voltage profiles.

The card chews through two 8-pin connectors, uses a 12-phase VRM which handles voltage regulation and also sports a custom design dual-fan cooler which uses a large heatsink and included five heat-pipes.

J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz expects that two new iPhones will launch this fall, with the iPad 3 delayed into 2012. This speculations comes from conversations with industry insiders and was detailed in a note to clients, according to reports. The iPhone 5 is reported to sport a lighter, thinner form factor as well as packing a larger display and an 8-megapixel camera. It is also rumored to be both GSM and CDMA-capable, making it a "world-mode" smartphone. It is expected to not include LTE connectivity.

The second rumored phone is reportedly going to be the iPhone 4-plus and will launch alongside the iPhone 5. The iPhone 4-plus is based on the current-generation iPhone but will feature a few improvements. This handset could target the mainstream price point and focus on the China market, but it's reported to not be exclusive to that region.

The iPad 3 is said to be delayed until 2012, mostly because Apple is currently dominating the tablet market. While they're ahead, why not push further? Why wait just because you "dominate" the market. The iPhone market will only peak with Android phones coming in from left, right and centre. These lawsuits against Samsung aren't doing Apple any favours.

A bold new full tower chassis has entered Thermaltake's eSports line-up today dubbed the Overseer RX-I. It boasts quite the head turning design and will no doubt gather much of a love or hate relationship straight off the bat. Features wise, it is decked out to quite the extent and should attract a lot of buyers at its €102 ($140 odd U.S.) price point.

Running dimensions of 535 (H) x 220 (W) x 580 (D) mm, the steel case weighs in at 10.3Kg and features an all-black paint job, inside and out. Its top mounted I/O panel gives a couple USB 3.0 ports as well as 2 x USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA and headphones + mic ports. There are four exposed 5.25" bays up front as well as five tool-free 2.5/3.5-inch bays internally and a couple pre-drilled holes at the rear for water cooling setups.

The case can accomodate Extended ATX motherboards and graphics cards that are up to 34cm long. Its cooling subsystem comes in the form of three fans total; there is a large 200mm fan with blue LEDs running at 600 ~ 800RPM up front; another of the same type on top, as well as a 120mm fan running at 1000RPM at the rear.

As we nudge closer to the highly anticipated X79 / Sandy Bridge-E launch, we're seeing more and more sightings of X79 boards in pretty much complete form. The X79R-AX Black Series from ECS is the latest X79 board to hit the lime light with pictures showing up on the web just recently.

This LGA2011 motherboard gives the full array of features you'd come to expect from this platform, including a strong looking 14-phase VRM setup and kaboodles of connectivity. There are four x16 slots on the board, providing the ability to run 4-way SLI or CrossfireX. Electrically, those slots work in a x16/NC/x16/NC configuration when using just a single card or in 2-way, x16/NC/x8/x8 for 3-way and x8/x8/x8/x8 for 4-way action.

There are a total of 12 internal SATA ports on the board, and two eSATA. Four DDR3 DIMM slots are split with two on either side of the LOTES socket. The board uses some cost-effective TI-made USB 3.0 controllers, with four USB 3.0 ports on the rear and two more available via an internal header. As well as dual Gigabit ethernet, 8-channel Realtek audio and all the other usual formalities, the board is said to ship with further connectivity options thanks to a bundled Bluetooth dongle and what looks like a WiFi N USB adapter.

Other World Computing have announced the launch of the 6G Mercury Aura Pro Express (say that 3 times fast), which is a replacement SSD for the 2011 MacBook Air. The new drive fully utilizes the SATA 3 (6Gbps) interface and is available in both 120 and 240GB capacities.

The drive sports the SandForce 2200-series controller with Tier 1/Grade A NAND memory which pumps along at 507MB/sec read, 454MB/sec write speeds which is roughly twice as fast as the stock SSD in the MBA.

Apple's MacBook Air ships with SATA 3Gbps SSDs even though the hardware inside is capable of SATA 6Gbps. But, the MBA uses a non-standard SSD form factor, which means the usual 2.5-inch SSDs on the market can't be used as a replacement. OWC says that the Aura Pro Express 6G SSD is the first and only 6Gbps SSD designed to work with both the 11.1-inch and 13.3-inch models of the new MacBook Air.

Archos, maker of well priced Android tablets is set to launch the first of its G9 tablet series before the end of this month in the U.S. - the Archos 80 G9 8GB. Costing $299 USD, the tablet uses Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) and runs off a 1GHz OMAP 4 dual-core processor. It sports an 8-inch (1024 x 768) touchscreen and packs an 8GB SSD. Archos has said it will be available for preorder from the 20th of this month, and online availability is planned for the 30th.

Come October, another four models will enter the G9 series, all using 1.5GHz dual-core OMAP 4 processors. They include the :-

- Archos 80 G9 with a 16GB SSD - $329

There are a couple of meanings for the tag line of this news editorial. You might think since Corsair is launching both a gaming headphone and gaming keyboard / mouse line I'm talking about that. I'm not. Corsair has taken aim at both Logitech and Razor and in one quick shot taken both their heads off. The ultimate one shot double kill.

Just a few minutes ago we publishing a news bit about the new Corsair Vengeance Gaming Headsets but we have another surprise for you, Vengeance Gaming Keyboard and Laser Mouse products.

The new performance keyboard and mice line up consists of four products. For MMO/RTS use is the Vengeance K90 and M90, K being for keyboard and M being for mouse. First Person Shooter enthusiasts have the K60 and M60 but feel free to mix and match.

Corsair picked up a talented new product manager over the Summer, Stan Kwong. Stan's roots trace back to Creative and Logitech and he's wasting no time using his skills at Corsair. Yesterday TweakTown made a quick stop in San Francisco to see the new Vengeance Gaming Headset products just down the road from Intel Developers Forum.

The new Gaming Headphone Lineup consists of three products, Vengeance 1500, 1300 and 1100 and are designed for excellent gaming audio reproduction, outstanding comfort and convenience.

The Vengeance 1500 is a USB gaming headset with an MSRP of 99 USD. This model has a unique aluminum structure not found on the Vengeance 1300. The 1500 and 1300 share the same circumaural, closed-back earpad designs and audiophile grade 50mm drivers.

Qualcomm have come out swinging with their roadmap for their Snapdragon range of mobile processors during their Innovation Qualcomm event in Istanbul. We should be expecting their next-gen chips to be available at an astonishing 2.5GHz. The roadmap (as seen in the pic below) shows that there will be four new Snapdragon classes. S1 class will be for the mass market with speeds of 1GHz and Adreno 200 graphics. S2 will be for high-performance smartphones and tablets based on a 45nm process with 1.4GHz processing speeds and an Adreno 205 GPU.

Next up we have the multi-tasking and advanced gaming devices which will have 1.5GHz dual-core chips slapped inside, with Adreno 220 graphics, 3D and 3G HSPA+. Finally, there's the next-generation devices which will get the S4 polish which includes a 28nm-based manufacturing process, up to 2.5GHz CPUs which will be made available in single, dual and quad-core configurations, dual or quad-core next-gen Adreno graphics and 3G/4G LTE networking.

Still sitting down, or are you on the floor in a puddle of drool? These new Snapdragon parts should be sent to manufacturers by years' end and consumer-based products should launch in early 2012. This means we might see some mobile phones at CES 2012 at the earliest, if not, possibly the Mobile World Congress shortly after. Excited?? I am!

While voice command tech is nothing new in this day and age, you have to admit this particular implementation has quite the cool factor associated with it.

Apparently MSI is aiming to role in a new technology called "Voice Activated Motherboard" for select models of their mobo lineup which instantly raises a number of questions about how it would work.

Imagine being able to simply look at your PC, then say a given word (or words) that would have it power on from a halted state, go into suspend, or power down. This is what MSI is looking at doing.

AMD have shown off their first working 28nm notebook GPU to the public at a media event held in San Francisco, California. The chip is part of the upcoming AMD Radeon HD 7000 series and was shown off displaying Dirt 3 but resolution, graphic settings and FPS were unknown. The upcoming HD 7000 series dons the codename "Southern Islands" and is being built by TMSC. The new cards are looking to be unleashed onto the market by the end of the year - but there are also rumors TMSC are having issues with the 28nm production.

The new cards are expected to support switchable graphics and continue pushing current technology features such as Eyefinity and H3D stereo 3D gaming. There are reports that AMD are planning to launch four different GPUs based on the 28nm version of the VLIW4 architecture and will use them in three different series: the Radeon HD 7800, HD 7600 and HD 7500. These GPUs will sport between 768 and 1536 stream processors as well as using GDDR5 memory.

Later on, AMD will launch the Radeon HD 7900 series featuring the new Graphics Core Next (GVN) architecture that is has been talking about since June. The idea behind GCN is to create a GPU that can perform well at both graphical and computing tasks.

IDF 2011 - Gigabyte have shown off their high-end X79-based motherboards at IDF, with the following models on show: GA-X79-UD5, GA-X79-UD7 and the G1.Assassin 2. There is a difference between the UD5 and UD7 this time round, though. Usually the UD7 is jut a beefed-up UD5 with added features and better cooling. This time the two boards are totally different from the PCB to the features they offer.

The UD5 model targets the premium user, with eight DDR3 DIMM slots, and suited to 3-way SLI/CrossFire. The UD7 on the other hand is bleeding-edge with just four DDR3 DIMM slots and support for 4-way SLI/CrossFire with a bunch of overclocking features to boot. Finally there's the G1.Assassin 2 which targets the gamer-overclocker market with features such as hardware-accelerated Creative X-Fi audio, a Bigfoot Killer NIC and support for [only] 3-way SLI/CrossFire.

The above pic is of the GA-X79-UD5 which sports 14-phase CPU VRM, eight DDR3 DIMMS with support for up to 64GB of quad-channel memory. Expansion slots include three PCI-e 3.0 x16 (x16/x8/x8 or x16/NC/x16), two PCI-e 3.0 x1, and a legacy PCI. 12 SATA ports are on the board, 8-channel HD audio, one GbE, four USB 3.0 ports and power-eSATA.

With one of the highest anticipated launches of this year closing in after recent word of a supposed October launch, the lads at VR-Zone have managed to get a peek at an almost finalized (engineering sample) version of the mighty Quantum Force X79 LGA2011 motherboard from Foxconn.

Compared to an earlier revision of the board sighted at Computex earlier in the year, primarily speaking, this new one looks to have a different physical expansion slot arrangement, a more finalized looking heatsink onboard and some front panel header adjustments.

The board is given 14-phase VRM power for the CPU using DirectFET MOSFETs, known to give smooth voltage control when backed by a decent I2C-capable VRM controller. For overclocking support there is the inclusion of a redundant firmware (BIOS) feature as well as dedicated OC hard-tuning buttons and a consolidated region of voltage measurement points.

Kogan have begun a new phase in their mission to make the latest technology affordable for all. How will they do it? They're now sourcing brands like Canon, Nikon, Apple and Samsung by cutting out the middle man and sourcing the products higher up the supply chain, then selling direct to customers via Kogan.com. Until now, Australian-based customers have been ripped off by consumer electronics with prices significantly above World averages.

Kogan is already globally renowned as the place to go for best value consumer electronics that they design, assemble and deliver, including TVs, Blu-ray players, Digital Internet Radios, Home Appliances and more. The initial products that Kogan will add to their ever-growing list will include popular Digital SLR Cameras and Tablets. As with all Kogan products, they'll come with a 12 month warranty, extendable to up to 5 years.

As for pricing, how good is it? Well, let's use 2 examples:

Microsoft's BUILD conference in Seattle is well underway and every tech site in the world has been throwing news up like there's no tomorrow, so instead of rewording the news, I'll provide some links and some thoughts on Windows 8. Windows 8 has not only myself excited, but most of the tech-related community. It seems like an utter overhaul of the Windows UI as we know it, with a smash-up of the Windows Phone tile-based UI and something new.

"Something new" is what seems like a million new ideas and features built-in to Windows 8. The major changes are [of course] the UI, but Windows 8 brings performance increases, a new lock screen, an entirely new home screen, a new task manager, cloud-syncing and so many others things it's hard to tell you a handful. Instead of this, check out a bunch of screenshots, videos and links to preview thoughts below.

If you want to try it out, download the developer preview here.

IDF 2011 - Intel is committed to low-power computing and to show their commitment to it, Intel CEO Paul Otellini challenged the Intel Labs to create a demo of just how far Intel can push technology at this current moment in time. Paul added "the ultimate goal is the most power-efficient devices known to man". Intel Labs were able to create a CPU that was capable of running Windows, powered by a tiny solar cell.

An Intel engineer stepped onto the IDF 2011 stage to show off a demo which involved a nodding cat wearing headphones. The engineer said:

AMD held a tech day for its upcoming Bulldozer architecture and while not much is allowed to be said, Anandtech have come out swinging with the overclocking potential of the Bulldozer chip. Most people wouldn't think it could hit these speeds, but just wait until you see what AMD can do. AMD used different overclocking experiments and had three different stations setup for people to look at.

The first one used a sub-$100 closed-loop water cooling solution from Antec in the form of the Kühler series, on this solution the Bulldozer was able to reach 4.8GHz as seen below:

The next test used phase change cooling. With the phase change cooling system, AMD was able to push the 8-core FX CPU up to a decent 5.894GHz at 1.632V, with a video of this achievement below:

Microsoft is prepping to show off a Windows 8-based, Intel-powered, Samsung-built tablet at the Microsoft conference this week with at least one of the tablets being shown will not only be distributed to some attendees, but will be built from Intel silicon. People were expecting a move to ARM-based processors, but Intel seems to have won that battle. ARM-based providers such as Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and NVIDIA all provide hardware for Motorola, Samsung and Sony tablets that are Android-powered.

It's not yet known if the Windows 8 tablets will be running ARM, but Intel is reported to be a go. ARM processors are generally favored for their power efficiency over Intel CPUs, but we should see a change in the wind coming in the form of next-gen Atom chips from Intel coming soon.

Microsoft is preparing to show off their upcoming flagship operating system, Windows 8, at their Build developer conference in Anaheim, California next week. Microsoft have said they want an operating system that feels at home whether home means an 8-inch tablet or a powerful desktop computer connected to large-screen monitors.

Window President, Steven Sinofsky says "It's 'no compromise' and that's really important to us". Commitment like this is great to see, especially in a changed battlefield against companies like Google and Apple.

Microsoft have signalled at much faster boot times as well as introducing Office's "ribbon" interface into the Windows desktop. Microsoft are also aiming at not just having an Intel show this time, but letting a wide range of companies come in for attention from the press and developers. With Microsoft saying at CES in January that Windows 8 will run on ARM-based processors from Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and NVIDIA as well as traditional x86-based chips from Intel and AMD.