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PC cooling specialists Thermalright have come out with a new mean looking VRM cooler for AMD's top-end ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards. The company has already released aftermarket VRM coolers for the HD 5800 series in the VRM-R3 and VRM-R4, but this new VRM-R5 improves on them both with superior cooling properties.

The VRM-R5 can cool passively or actively in conjunction with an 80mm fan of choice. It is designed for the purposes of cooling the graphics card's VRM chips as well as the components surrounding the GPU and memory chips. Thermalright has made it compatible for use together with some of its existing VGA coolers on the market including the Spitfire.

Measurements for this cooler come in at 118 x 117 x 122 mm with a weight of 140 grams. Two 6mm heatpipes assist in heat transfer to a large block of aluminum fins that are punched to improve heat dissipation. It is on this block that the 80mm fan can be attached to dissipate the heat at a faster rate, thus improving overall performance and giving better headroom for overclocking.

As we just heard the other day, NVIDIA finally let everyone know of its plans to unveil its next-gen GTX400 (Fermi) series graphics cards on March 26 (during PAX 2010). That's the big day most of us are holding out for so we can get a better perspective on just how well it'll deliver performance wise.

However, the company is certainly not in pause until such time. It is continuing to refresh its somewhat mundane GeForce 300 series of products and has just released some OEM-only cards in the form of the GeForce GT 320, 330 and 340. The folks at Hexus nabbed a picture of the GT 340, as seen below :-

Running over the GT 340s specs, its GPU is clocked at 550MHz with options of 512 and 1GB GDDR5 memory clocked at 3400MHz effectively, whilst the 96 stream processors are clocked at 1340MHz. Hexus ascertain from this information that the card is basically a re-branded GT 240 which was a 40nm DX 10.1 based card that launched in 2009.

USB 3.0 hardware was spotted in droves at CES in January and more of the gear will be coming to market this year. To take advantage of USB 3.0 you will need either a new computer or an add-in card for your existing machine.

Belkin has announced its new line of USB 3.0 gear for computer users that will all ship in the US in April. The line includes a new USB 3.0 PCIe add-in card selling for $79.99. A SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ExpressCard for notebooks will sell for the same $79.99 price point. Both will support up to 127 USB devices with enough hubs attached.

Belkin will also be offering a full line of USB 3.0 cables. The cables will come in 4 or 8-foot lengths with A-B or Micro to B connectors for $39.99 and $49.99. It's hard to stomach paying $50 for a cable when we all have gobs of USB cables lying around.

Lenovo has debuted several new notebooks today and easily the coolest, most interesting, and expensive of the bunch is the new W701ds. The ds notebook has two screens and is also available in a single 17-inch screen version.

The W701ds version has the 17-inch screen plus a slide out 10.6-inch WXGA screen on the right side of the main screen. CPU options include the Core i7-920 Extreme or i7-820QM quad core. Windows 7, Vista Ultimate, or XP Pro are the OS choices. Graphics options include the Quadro FX 3800M or FX 2800M.

Both notebooks have X-Rite color calibration and Wacom digitizers. Storage is up to 500GB with 80GB or 128GB SSD options as well. Connectivity includes a single USB 3.0 port, four USB 2.0 ports, VGA, DVI, and DisplayPort. The single screen machine weighs almost nine pounds. The W701 starts at $2,199 and the W701ds starts at $3,799.

Maybe it's just me, but If you swipe something from an Apple Store without the employees knowing it you might not want to post the item on eBay for sale stating that you liberated it from the store. An eBay auction has turned up for a stair from the Apple Store on 5th Ave in NYC.

The guy offering the stair says that it was cracked when someone dropped a bottle on it and was replaced by store workers. The guys states he took the stair before the workers could throw it away. What he should say is I took it before I thought they were going to trash it.

The dude claims that the stairs cost $10,000 new and he wants $2,500 for the stolen, cracked stair. I have to wonder how Apple will feel about this. The guy could be looking at serious jail time if Apple wants to press this and the $10K price is accurate. You are an idiot if you buy this, I'm just sayin'.

TweakTown's own video card guru, Shane Baxtor has acquired some more specific details about NVIDIA's upcoming Fermi powered GTX 470, one of their first two DX11-ready cards to hit the market in answer to AMD's top-end HD 5800/5900 series.

With the very active rumour mill giving a hint that NVIDIA plan to make a big announcement regarding Fermi within the next 12 hrs, Shane gets an early scoop on the pricing and PSU requirements for the GTX 470. He learns that the official launch price looks to be $299 USD which sits in line with AMD's HD 5850, though performance is expected to be more around HD 5870 levels.

Power wise, NVIDIA is apparently slapping on a minimum requirement of 550 Watt, up slightly from AMD's min requirement on the HD 5850 at 500 Watt. In any case, it shouldn't matter to most people wanting a card like this, knowing full well that a quality PSU with plenty of headroom makes for a much more stable gaming rig.

Rumors surface all the time in the tech world and some are more believable than others. Some rumors start out of the blue and others are based in at least a little bit of fact. The new Sony rumor circulating today has a bit of fact behind it.

The rumor started when a patent surfaced showing that Sony was at least thinking about creating a universal controller for game consoles. Universal would mean a Sony controller that would work on the Wii, Xbox, and PS3. That hardly sounds like something Sony would do.

The patent outlines a controller with an LCD screen that would be able to show the buttons for specific consoles the device was connected to. The big (BIG) issue here is that the buttons are mostly virtual. I can not imagine that many gamers would want to play with a virtual button control for long.

My DVR is one of the most important gadgets in my house. I use the thing daily, without it I would miss all the shows I really love, and even worse, I'd have to watch commercials again. TiVo has been granted a patent on technology commonly used in DVRs everywhere after filing the application way back in 1999.

The patent covers TiVO's Season Pass technology and sounds harmless enough on the surface. Look into it too closely though and the horror of what this patent means becomes clear. The patent covers software that sits on the DVR and allows the DVR to resolve conflicts with other shows over the course of a season.

For instance on Thursday night if you have three shows you want to watch, the software in question will let the DVR record the two shows that are the highest priority to you. Without the software, the DVR would not know what to record and what to skip. This is a feature that every DVR out there has today. TiVo has no problems filing suits against anyone that infringes on its tech, which after this patent is everyone making DVRs. The question now is when the inevitable suits come, will your DVR provider cough up the licensing fee or simply remove the feature and castrate your DVR in the process.

In offering support for the Haiti earthquake victims, custom PC builder MAINGEAR are now running their Relief for Haiti charity auction in which they are advertising a special edition verion of their award winning flagship SHIFT gaming system on eBay with 100% of the proceedings to be donated to the "Save The Children" charity organization.

This SHIFT system is one of a kind in that it makes use of one of AMD's rare Phenom II X4 TWKR processors of which only a handful were made. In a previous eBay sale for charity, one of these processors went for over $10,000 alone. They are said to be special hand-picked chips which promise unprecented overclocking headroom.

The below image gives light on the rest of the system configuration that's up for grabs :-

We first heard about OCZ's plans to bring a SandForce based SSD to market late last month but weren't exactly sure when it would arrive.

Today finally sees the launch of the MLC based Vertex LE (Limited Edition) series which thanks to the use of the new SandForce controller will see excelled transfer rates of up to 270MB/sec read and 250MB/sec write, also said to reach 15,000 IOPS (4K random write). They come in 100 and 200GB capacities and feature TRIM support for Windows 7.

The Vertex LE series are backed by a 3 year warranty and should be available off the self within the next few weeks. Several Euro sites have them listed for pre-order now at 350 Euro and 700 Euro for the 100 and 200GB models respectively.

The rumor wagon is in high gear today with another new product rumor surfacing. According to this rumor, AMD is getting ready to launch a new video card next week. The card is said to be the Radeon HD 5830.

The video card is pegged for a February 25 launch and will boast 1280 stream processors, 750MHz core speed, and 1GB of GDDR5 running at 4000MHz. AMD is also said t be getting ready to launch a new version of the Radeon HD 5870 called the Eyefinity 6 edition.

The card will have the same specs as the stock HD 5870. The stock card has DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort connectivity, which the Eyefinity 6 version will lack. Instead, the Eyefinity 6 version will ditch the stock connectivity in favor of six DisplayPort connections.

HP gave word to the folks at Engadget that since being first displayed at CES last month, several improvements have been made to its upcoming Compaq AirLife 100 Android PC and more confirmation was given as to its final specs list. With that, Engadget managed to tee up a time to come visit HP and get an update along with some video coverage on how it's shaping up.

They learn that it will indeed be powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon and HP aims to sell it exclusively through a deal with Telefonica. It isn't a Google certified device so unfortunately the user won't be able to access Google's Android Market, but Telefonica will give access to its own service called mstore which hopefully offers a good range of easily accessible store offerings alone.

As per the video demonstration below, it looks really well rounded features wise with 10.1-inch touchscreen and the option to use a touchpad with three handy Android buttons for home, menu and back. The video shows the unit to be quite zippy with no stuttering when scrolling etc.

Following yesterdays coverage on AMD's plans to significantly enhance its Catalyst Drivers in its next two driver sets (10.2 and 10.3), today sees the 10.2s officially released.

As mentioned, the 10.2s are a significant update with a much improved feature-set, especially for CrossFire users. The new features found in this release include the following :-

• ATI Catalyst application profiles for ATI CrossFireX supported configurations

AMD today revealed its plans to signficantly enhance its upcoming 10.2 and 10.3 Catalyst Driver Suite for Radeon graphics cards in both desktop and mobile form. The company has been working hard to put together a whole host of new features and improvements that grant a lot of peoples wishes and give a better overall support package.

Improvements include a better game profiles system that will give updates to the latest games in a much shorter time frame. CrossFire technology is also enhanced with the ability to make use of it even when Eyefinity is enabled for dual-monitor setups. On that note, Eyefinity in itself is going to be even more useful with the ability to compensate for monitor bezels to better line up the screens and other various improvements.

The mobile crowd won't be left out either, with AMD reporting their commitment to start providing monthly updates (as they have been doing for desktop users for quite some time).

When it comes to connecting multiple computers to a 3G connection on the road, you need a mobile router or a personal hotspot. There are several on the market, but most of them are self-contained and won't let you use an existing USB modem for connectivity.

A new mobile hotspot called the Wi-Reach has been unveiled at MWC 2010 by a company called Connect One. The device is battery powered and charges via USB. It has 5 hours of run time per charge and a built-in USB port for plugging in your modem.

The device supports 3G and 4G USB modems and can connect up to ten computers to the internet via WiFi. The router is available direct from Connect One for $99 and will be offered through private label programs as well.

Boards based on AMDs new 890GX chipset are starting to show up in final retail form on the web and ASUS has two models in its lineup readied up; the M4A89GTD Pro and M4A89GTD Pro USB3 (with the latter obviously including USB 3.0 connectivity).

In conjunction with the new 890GX chipset, these boards are of course AM3 socket based and use a 10-phase CPU VRM and 2-phase memory VRM with four DDR3 slots resident. 890GX also brings with it integrated DirectX 10.1 compliant graphics and AMD's SB800 Southbridge which gives SATA 6Gbps support (six ports). ASUS also includes a JMicron controller on the board that gives IDE support and an eSATA port on the rear I/O.

As you can see in the picture above, there are two PCI-E x16 slots (electronically running at x8/x8 mode when the two are in use together). Further to those are two legacy PCI slots and a PCIe x4 and x1 slot.

Android has proven to be huge in the smartphone market and has helped more than one phone maker grab a new share of the smartphone market. Motorola was hurting prior to Android with no significantly popular handsets to speak of, but Android has changed that.

Motorola announced a new Android device today that will ship around the world and be known as the Quench overseas and the Cliq XT here in America. The handset has a 3.1-inch touchscreen that supports pinch and zoom gestures. The device also uses the Motoblur UI.

An onscreen QWERTY keyboard is integrated and it has a touch pad on the front of the phone for navigation. A 5MP camera is built-in with autofocus and LED flash. Other features include 3G connectivity, WiFi, Bluetooth, and aGPS. The device will ship in Q1 2010.

We recently reported about a new version of WD's 1TB Caviar Black series hard disk that first showed up in Japan which makes full use of SATA 3.0 (6Gbps).

The folks at PC Perspective have obtained a sample in which they compare the drive's performance to a stack of other WD drives currently on the market. They test with Intel's ICH10R as well as making full use of SATA 3.0 in conjunction with a couple controllers from Marvell; one with caching and one without.

The WD1002FAEX can now be found on the market at a price point not far above the $100US mark. This should drop below $100 once the drive becomes more widely available.

Our resident video card Guru Shane Baxtor has just posted on his blog some of the whispers that he's hearing about the upcoming HD 5830. It seems that come launch day we won't be seeing retail versions of the HD 5830.

Tracking down a second sample of the model just two days before CNY holidays was hard, from most companies I was told "We can't ship due to our factory already shutting down". Now this I can understand, and with the NDA date looking to be around the 26th, companies will be able to come back from CNY and get a sample out in time.

I'm a bit closer with some manufactures than others though, I had a few actually tell me that ATI had told them they can't ship out to reviewers and one even told me they weren't allowed to ship to their distributor.

A few years ago at a CES party I met a trio of MPAA lawyers hanging out with us tech media folk. Who would have ever thought I would get a chance to chat these guys and gals up when they were off guard and drinking up others party favors? I have to admit that they didn't appear to be the sleaze balls I pictured, they were young and had the kind of charm that you would find when taking a trip to Kansas. Seeing my opportunity I had to ask about their own music / movie downloading habits. To my surprise all three admitted to downloading both music and moves from the internet but wouldn't suggest others do it because "now days people are watching."

One group that is currently under the microscope is Newzbin Ltd. What makes Newzbin different than the Torrent trackers is that it catalogs some of the internet's oldest files that sit on Usenet. Newzbin does not have their own Usenet servers but simply catalogs and organizes. The MPAA feeling like they own the Internet has chose Newzbin as their latest victim of legal harassment and court proceedings are already underway.

Newzbin has taken to updating the court proceedings on their home page that serves as a news page. It seems that things are not looking too good for the company at this point but Lady Justice has yet to sing. You can read about the updates by clicking on the News Source link below.