The geeks around these parts slant to the more hardcore than geeks that might normally be looking at gaming PCs from Digital Storm. Most of us probably roll our own rigs, but there are times when machines offered out of a box ready to go have their appeal. This is one of those times. Digital Storm has unveiled a new gaming rig called the Sub-Zero Liquid Chilled system. The machine uses liquid cooling on the CPU and some of the other hardware inside.

The liquid cooling system isn't just a radiator and a couple water blocks crammed inside one of the gaming rigs the company already offered either. The machine uses a liquid cooling system that has liquid that is chilled to under 0C using peltier tech. Around these parts peltier tech is something many will be familiar with, but the general PC gaming geek might not be.

The system uses a cooling plate that is able to chill the liquid circulating in the closed liquid system. Digital Storm claims that the liquid can deliver CPU temps at 0C or under when the processor is at idle. That processor is an Intel Core i7-980X and runs at 4.6GHz. The base price for the rig is $3,899 and options will run that cost up greatly.

It's good to see both companies are on the dual-GPU hill this year. Last year AMD (well, back in 2009 it was ATI) were dominating the dual-GPU world with their 5970. Even now, it's still one of the fastest VGA cards in the world (it doesn't matter the amount of cores, just like a CPU).

Now there's a leaked slide out, with specs of the 6990.

The slide shows us that it should have 3840 stream processors, 4GB of GDDR5, and fits within the 300W TDP with idle power dropping to as low as 30W. Five outputs (2 x DVI ports and 3 x miniDisplay Ports) for your Eyefinity goodness.

Viewsonic are hitting the internet waves today with the announcement of their Pro 8 series projector, which is meant to be ideal for enthusiasts and installers.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of computing, consumer electronics and communications solutions, today announced the addition of the Pro8200 projector to its Pro 8 Series projector product line, equipped with Full HD 1080p resolution for high-definition viewing from the comfort of home.

Delivering true HD home theater entertainment, the Pro8200 is ideal for both the most discriminating home theater enthusiast as well as professional grade installers in search of a quality color projection solution with multiple input sources. Combining state-of-the-art DLP® and BrilliantColor™ technologies with 2,000 lumens and a 4000:1 contrast ratio, the Pro8200 delivers all-digital clarity in practically any lighting situation. Teamed with a native 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio and advanced 7-segment color wheel, the Pro8200 delivers a stunning visual experience with accurate and vivid color reproduction.

If you live in an area of the US, where you get cable from Cox Communications the company has announced a new service that will get your attention quickly. The new service wraps a new Trio program guide into a package with a DVR system that works for your entire home. That means you can record a program on any DVR in your home and then play it back on any TV in the house.

The part I like the best is that the new service has a bookmarking option. That means you can start watching a program in the living room and then bookmark it to pick up right where you left off in the bedroom. The DVRs used in the system have 500GB of storage.

That is enough storage space for up to 250 hours of video recording. The new package also comes with new HD channels for subscribers. The program guide lets the user schedule recordings for every TV in the home from one guide. The new HD channels include SWRV, DIY, the Cooking Channel, and the HUB among the 18 new stations total.

Generally, computers and beverages don't mix well. If you spill a beer or a soft drink on your computer, you may be kissing your rig goodbye. I am sure that many people (myself included) are perfectly willing to risk killing their computer in an effort to partake in their favorite frosty beverage while they play some computer games.

One geek has taken his love of beer and computers and used the two things to create an epic casemod that all you beer fans will love. The dude took an old Anheuser-Busch keg and cut it open with various windows and ports to be able to cram his computer hardware inside and keep the stuff running cool. The finished case was powder coated in black and then trimmed in chrome.

The case looks great and has a functional bottle opener on the side. One reader suggested it be filled with mineral oil so it would look like it still had beer. That would be cool, but from the pics I see this thing is far from watertight.

Dell has been talking up its interesting convertible notebook called the Inspiron Duo for a while now. The machine isn't like your typical convertible netbook where the entire LCD rotates around for tablet mode on a hinge. The screen of the Duo is attached to a pivot in the middle for the frame allowing it to flip around as needed.

The Inspiron Duo is on the Microsoft Store online for pre-order right now. The machine will cost you $549 for the netbook only and you can add Signature Premium to it for an additional $99. Signature Premium service is an entire year of VIP tech support and LoJack for laptops.

The machine uses a 10.1-inch LED backlit screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768. The CPU in the netbook is an Atom N550 at 1.5GHz and it has 2GB of RAM. The HDD inside the netbook is 320GB and the OS is Windows 7 Home Premium. Like most netbooks, the Duo lacks an optical drive. It has a battery good for four hours and packs in Bluetooth and WiFi among other things.

FinalWare Ltd has today announced it has acquired Lavalys EVEREST - whom own the diagnostics, hardware monitoring, network audit and benchmark software that is used by many around the world.

"Today is a significant step forward in our progress to deliver a class-leading diagnostics and benchmarking solution," said Tamas Miklos, managing director of FinalWire. "The addition of Lavalys' customers and technologies will enable us to accelerate investments, meet a wider set of customer needs through a richer solution set, increase efficiencies and significantly expand our opportunities for growth."

Beginning immediately, FinalWire will execute on the planned integration of the two companies' technologies and customers to ensure a smooth transition that will deliver immediate value for customers, partners and investors.

I am a big fan of my iPad. I use it for reading mostly, but it's nice to know that the thing can play some cool games and surf the web when I want it to as well. A normal eReader can't do that. The iPad is mostly aluminum on the outside today, but future versions may be made from high tech carbon fiber that is generally found in high-end sports cars and racing vehicles.

A patent application has surfaced that shows Apple is considering carbon fiber for the frame of the iPad. The app is called "Reinforced Device Housing" and outlines a method that Apple would use for creating the carbon fiber housing in the form we are already familiar with. The outer shell for the iPad would be made from "layered fiber-in-matrix type material, such as CFRP."

CFRP is also known as carbon fiber-reinforced polymer. I would love to see a carbon fiber iPad myself. I would hope if Apple did move to carbon fiber they would leave the weave exposed. On the other hand, they could opt to go with the ugly dry carbon fiber that looks like a matte black backside of fiberglass to me. The application also states that to prevent any tendency to crack the case would have an internal frame made from carbon fiber as well.

I would bet all the readers of TweakTown are familiar with 3DMark. This benchmark has been around for a very long time and is used in our reviews of video cards and computers here and all around the web. Anytime a new version of 3DMark comes out, we all get excited and sit up to find out more. We already know most of the details of the new benchmark, but we now have the final pieces of the puzzle.

Futuremark has now revealed that the final version of 3DMark 11 will ship on November 30, which is only a few weeks away. The real-time 3D graphics benchmark will sell for $19.95 for the Advanced Edition. Along with new screen shots showing off some of the really cool looking benchmarks, Future Mark has also posted a number of videos to YouTube that show off the new GPU tests.

The video and screens show off the before and after tessellations, volumetric lighting, and other effects in DirectX 11 games and capable video cards. A new trailer shows the Deep Sea and High Temple scenes in a bit more detail. Along with the $19.95, Advanced Edition of the software will be a free Basic Edition as well. The Advanced version will have a lot more features and benchmarks added in and will have no advertisements. You can Pre-Order right now.

I am sure lots of the gamers and PC enthusiasts out there remember when we moved from the AGP slot over to the first PCIe slot. The performance improvement coming from an AGP video card to the PCIe cars was very impressive. Later the PCIe 2.0 slot came out with about twice the bandwidth of the original and again brought video cards that had more performance. Now there is a new specification for PCIe that is ready to be downloaded by PCI-SIG members.

The new specification is PCIe 3.0 is backwards compatible with PCIe and PCIe 2.0 devices so your old cards will work with the new spec once it starts showing up on the market. The 3.0 specification has a new 128b/130b encoding scheme and has a data transfer rate of 8GT/s. The original PCIe spec has 2.5GT/s and the PCIe 2.0 spec has 5GT/s transfer rates.

According to the PCI-SIG the 3.0 spec has bandwidth of about 1GB/s in one direction on an x1 slot and can scale up to 32GB/s on an x16 slot commonly used for graphics cards. More bandwidth should mean that the video cards could offer gamers more performance for their favorite games. The new spec also has a number of other enhancements.