Back during the summer at E3, Razer unveiled its Starcraft II branded gaming peripherals to go along with the game. At the time, Razer only said the stuff would ship in the fall and offered little other detail on when gamers could get their hands on the stuff. Razer has now announced that the gaming gear can be pre-ordered directly from its site and all of the offerings will ship in November.

The peripherals will include the Spectre Starcraft II mouse with blue backlighting, 5600dpi sensitivity, a 3.5G laser sensor, and adjustable click force for the buttons. The mouse will ship globally in November with the US price of $79.99. Razer will also ship the Marauder Starcraft II keyboard in November around the world with the US price pegged at $119.99. The keyboard has blue LED backlighting, the Starcraft II logo, optimized key travel, and a lot more.

The final Starcraft II peripheral is the Banshee headset. The Banshee will sell for $119.99 and ship globally in November as well. The headset has blue backlighting, integrated volume controls, a mic with detachable boom, and 50mm drivers. A special messenger bag with Starcraft II designs for carrying all the gear will be offered for $89.99.

Patriot has been in the memory game for a long time and is one of the names many enthusiasts look to for RAM for their computers. Patriot has announced a new RAM line that is aimed at Intel platform users that offer an interesting heat shield that promises to improve the cooling capacity, which should mean the RAM can be overclocked further than similar RAM using conventional heat sinks.

The new Viper Xtreme heatshield has a copper insert that runs across the DRAM chips that is then covered with an anodized aluminum heatshield. The custom heatshield provides 5% better cooling that an aluminum only heatshield according to Patriot. The RAM will be offered in three kits to start with that are each hand screened and tested in the Patriot labs before they are shipped.

The line includes dual-channel kits in 4GB and 8GB capacity operating at 2000MHz for Intel P55 platforms. Patriot will be launching other kits aimed at the Intel X58 platform user later. The current kit includes an 8GB kit with a pair of 4GB DIMMS at 2000MHz with timings of 9-10-9-27. A 4GB kit with a pair of 2GB modules operates at the same frequencies and timings. Both of the kits have a lifetime warranty.

When it comes to overclocking one of the most basic things that an enthusiast does is move from air-cooling their hardware with fans to liquid cooling for better performance. Some enthusiasts have room for giant radiator setups and other don't. For the enthusiast that want liquid cooling with a system that can fit completely inside the case, CoolIT Systems has become one of the best brands to shop.

CoolIT and AMD have announced that CoolIT's line of cooling solutions are now available for computers that run the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T processor. The cooling solutions now also support the AMD Radeon HD 5970 GPU allowing for more overclocking potential of the GPU on the video card as well as the CPU. CoolIT and AMD are displaying thin and lower cost solutions at Technical Exhibition in Taiwan.

"I am excited to be speaking at the AMD Exhibition." remarked Geoff Lyon, CEO of CoolIT Systems. "AMD has raised the bar for affordable performance in the new AMD Phenom II X6 processor with advanced capabilities like its Turbo Core Technology, and the ATI Radeon HD 5970 continues its position as the fastest single video card in the world. When you combine these computing technologies with CoolIT Systems' high-performance Advanced Liquid Cooling line, the user experiences significant gains in both performance and acoustics."

Today Microsoft have launched Office 365, a cloud based service that includes Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online.

Designed for the business user, Microsoft say Office 365 will make working with different devices and collaborating with colleagues securely, easier. It has launched the beta in 13 countries around the world.

President of the Office Division at Microsoft, Kurt DelBene said:

Intel has announced plans to invest between $6 and $8 billion to upgrade multiple manufacturing plants in the US and also to build a new facility in Oregon. This would create up to 1000 jobs at Intel.

Intel President and CEO - Paul Otellini said, "Today's announcement reflects the next tranche of the continued advancement of Moore's Law and a further commitment to invest in the future of Intel and America," he added "The most immediate impact of our multi-billion-dollar investment will be the thousands of jobs associated with building a new fab and upgrading four others, and the high-wage, high-tech manufacturing jobs that follow."

The investment is geared toward Intel's move to manufacturing at a 22nm process. Intel is on track to deliver 22nm chips in 2011.

I am not a designer of anything so it's hard for me to fathom what goes into selecting colors for projects. I have been out before and saw a car or other item that had a cool color and wondered what the color was. I would assume that designers and architects have these same revelations and the main difference is that they might find a color that would be great for a project. At the same time, people are sure to bring material or other items to the designer and ask if they can use colors from the item in a design.

Pantone has a new device called Capsure that allows these designers to capture color information and then find the exact Pantone colors to use in projects from the items. The little handheld device interfaces with Pantone software and can capture colors from just about any material including fabric, patterns, and carpet among other things. The scanner uses tri-dimensional technology to eliminate shadows and interference that might prevent accurately capturing colors.

The tech works by shining light on a material from three angles. At the same time the material is illuminated the Capsure takes 27 color accurate images in a 1.6-second period. Using those images the Capsure device can extract up to four dominant colors from the material and the user can select the colors individually. The Capsure device works with Creative Suite and a lot more software and can be purchased now for $649.

Creative has been known for its line of sound blaster sound cards in gaming circles for years. The company did for audio what ATI and NVIDIA do for graphics in gaming computers. Over the last year or so, things have been quiet on the sound card front with few new products coming to market. Creative has unveiled a couple new Sound Blaster sound cards for the Australian market today.

The new sound cards include the PCI-E X-Fi Titanium HD discrete audio card and the USB Sound Blaster Digital Music Premium HD digital audio system. Both of the devices have THX TruStudio PC audio tech inside to add quality to audio listened to on the PC. The X-Fi card has audiophile grade DACs and has a 123db signal to noise ratio.

The sound card has RCA line out, RCA line in, and a headphone output. The 3D sound effects are positional and use EAX 5.0 and the card supports DTS and Dolby Digital sound. The USB sound card has an analog photo input and standard audio inputs as well. Analog audio from records and cassettes can be turned into MP3, AAC, and FLAC with the device. It has a RCA line out, RCA and photo line input, and SPDIF output for digital audio. The X-Fi card will sell for A$299.95 and the USB card will cost A$149.95.

If you have a bunch of HDDs or SSDs around your home or office that you don't want to throw away, but you lack the space to put them into your computer you need a HDD dock. Sharkoon is famous for its docking stations for SATA HDDs and SSDs and the company has unveiled a new docking station aimed at notebook users with small mobile hard drives they want to access on the go.

The new docking stations are called the QuickPort Mini for 2.5-inch SATA HDDs or SSDs. The dock can be had with either a USB 2.0 port or a USB 3.0 port. The USB 3.0 version is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports so if you want the most flexibility that is the version to get. Both versions measure in at 85mm x 55mm x 45mm and are sized to be easily portable in a notebook bag or backpack.

The docks have a plug-in slot for the thin 2.5-inch drives and have an eject button to remove the drive quickly from the dock. An LED on top of the dock shows when the drive is transferring data. Both versions of the dock come with the cable needed to get connectivity and all the power the docks need for operation comes from the USB port. The USB 2.0 dock will sell for 9.99 euro and the USB 3.0 dock is 24.90 euro.

Western Digital has announced today that their Caviar Green line of hard drives will now include 2.5 terabyte and 3 terabyte 5400RPM drives; the largest single internal drive in the industry. The 3TB drives will have four platters at 750GB a piece and both drives feature Western Digital's GreenPower Technology, which lowers power consumption, noise, and temperatures for increased reliability and comfort in operation.

The initial problem of drives larger than 2.19GB not being able to be addressed by current PCs has been addressed by WD with their included "Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)-compliant Host Bus Adapter (HBA), which will enable the operating system to use a known driver with correct support for large capacity drives." The 2.5TB drive will retail for $189.00, while the 3TB drive will cost $239.00.

"WD remains a leader of hard drive capacity and low power innovation. With our WD Caviar Green drives, we enable energy-conscious customers to build systems with the highest capacities that deliver the optimal balance of system performance, ensured reliability and energy conservation," said Jim Morris, executive vice president and general manager of WD's client systems storage group. "Customers will be able to take advantage of this breakthrough capacity point now for secondary external storage in legacy 32-bit systems that run on Microsoft® Vista® or Windows® 7 platforms."

This didn't take long!

These benchmarks compare the 768MB and 1GB flavours of the NVIDIA GTX460 against the 960/1120 shader (6850 and 6870) Radeon cards. Both are tested using DX11 titles.

First up, we have Dirt 2 results - running Ultra DX11 at 1920x1200, 8xAA, 16xAF.