Diablo 3 has been in a "friends and family" beta for quite a while now, but today that changes. Blizzard have announced that the closed beta test for the game has officially begun, with the first wave of invitations being sent as we speak. More beta invites will fly out over the course of the beta, so refresh your e-mail inbox every 35.2 seconds!

The closed beta test of Diablo 3 has players fighting their way through part of Act I as any of the five hero classes. Barbarian, Witch Doctor, Wizard, Monk and Demon Hunter are all up for play and go head-to-skull against the Skeleton King, taking him on alone or playing co-operatively with other adventurers. You'll also get to meet up with some of the artisans, followers and other key characters from Sanctuary and try out the game's skill and crafting systems.

Mike Morgaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment says:

Homefront creator KAOS Studios shut down during the summer and it left fans and THQ wondering what would happen to the sequel without its developer and especially after its cliffhanger ending. THQ has now hired Crytek to develop the sequel which is expected to be out in 2014 for PC and console platforms. Crytek only recently launched their DX11 upgrade for Crysis 2 to spruce up the console-ported games graphics so we should see the next Homefront game get a visual polish to define it well.

Danny Bilson, EVP Core Games from THQ says:

Battlefield 3's open beta begins on September 29. Yes, you read that right - it's nearly here. Those who pre-ordered through EA's Origin service will have access to the beta 48 hours before the rest of the people who didn't pre-order. Those who purchased the Limited Edition of Medal of Honor will also get access to the beta. EA also say that "ORIGIN WILL BE USED TO DISTRIBUTE THE BETA INSTALLATION AND RUN THE GAME AND THEREFORE NECESSARY TO PLAY." Not my caps, that's EA's work.

As for system requirements, they're not too bad at all:

Minimum:

Kal-El has had a lot of news since it was first announced, but now NVIDIA have said it will not only arrive sometime in Q4, but it will sport a fifth core which is a "companion" core. This is built using a "special low-power silicone process" which works on tasks at a low frequency. NVIDIA calls this approach "variable symmetric multiprocessing" and it basically allows it to use this extra core for handling low overhead tasks such as e-mail syncs, social media syncs, etc.

Each core is an ARM Cortex A9 CPU that is individually enabled and disabled based on the workload or task, but all five can't run at once. The low-power 'companion' core runs at a lower voltage than the other four cores and is only used when the performance state requested by the OS/apps isn't higher than a predetermined threshold. Once the threshold is reached, the low-power core is disabled and the high-performance A9 cores take over, enabling between 1 and 4 cores as needed.

The result? A quad-core processor that consumes less power and yet provides higher performance than the Tegra 2.

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.