The folks over at HKEPC managed to get hold of an engineering sample MSI P45 Diamond motherboard.

From what we have seen in the past few months, it does indeed look as if MSI is getting very serious about its high-end motherboards with more and more exotic and interesting features. GIGABYTE and ASUS are only getting stronger and stronger but MSI seems to be very far from giving up.

While the early shots we can see so far are of an ES product, it does look to have quite a bit of potential. Not only does it see a rather full on heat pipe cooling setup for the chipsets and power but you can also go a step further and add water cooling to the setup.

OCZ isn't holding back when it comes to releasing high performance DDR3 memory.

The American company has just announced its latest memory kit, PC3-16000 Platinum Edition. Designed to work hand in hand with Nvidia nForce 790i SLI motherboards with EPP 2.0, it will rock the memory clocks at a staggering 2000MHz DDR. You will need to pump 1.9 volts of power through the 4GB kit (and 1.8 volts through the 2GB kit) to reach those speeds.

The memory comes covered in OCZ's Platinum Z3 XTC heat spreaders and is also covered by OCZ's lifetime warranty. If you are interested in latencies at this high speed, OCZ claim the RAM will work at 9-9-9-28.

Thermaltake's mammoth MaxOrb CPU cooler has just been pushed to the side in Tt's lineup for the even more serious MaxOrb EX; this is one very copper-happy cooler with the six radial heatpipes, fins and base all being made out of pure copper.

Tt's product page explains the benefits of their patented Radial Heat-Transfer Technology whereby this copper version only improves upon an already proven method. The fan itself is 120mm in size with blue LED and VR control. At minimum speed, it only produces 16dBA of noise whilst still promising excellent performance for the hottest of CPUs.

You can find full details and specs of Thermaltake's new flagship cooler here.

The official launch of P45 chipset is a month away, and usually this means Taiwan manufacturers are at the Alpha or Beta stage of development for their new products.

Foxconn it seems has stepped ahead of the pack with a product that is complete and ready to launch ahead of schedule. We at TweakTown got some very tasty pictures and some pretty hot tips on the expected features of the Foxconn Quantum Force "Avenger" motherboard based on Intel P45 chipset.

The motherboard is aesthetically appealing in a standard blue color with quite a few colored ports, connectors and slots.

Finally after months of guessing, Paramount has confirmed their triumphant US return to the Blu-ray fold on May 20th by announcing 4 new release titles; Bee Movie, Face/Off, Blades of Glory, Next and re-releases of their previously released titles. These titles will suprisingly be shipping to stores as early as next week. Then in June, Paramount will bow Cloverfield, There Will Be Blood, and The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Whilst Paramount Home Entertainment Australia have yet to make a similar announcement, our spies tell us to look for releases beginning in July.

And no, no word of Transformers just yet; I just hope they don't hold off until Transformers 2 which will be released in July 2009.

If you're looking for a well equipped mid-tower chassis with bling, Thermaltake have just introduced a new model into their lineup that may be of interest.

The new M9D has a glossy finish to it with a large side window and 23cm Touchcolor fan which is where the bling comes from. The fan has a special switch located on the side panel which allows you to choose between five color modes; red, green, blue, random mix LED, and random single / mix LED.

Furthermore, there are two additional 120mm Turbofans located at the front and back of the case for better assisted airflow and some of the other highlights include a tool-free design, removable HDD cages and a very generous nine 5.25" drive bays.

Palit were one of the first companies to let us know about its custom designed and factory overclocked GeForce 9600 GSO graphics card.

Before you get too excited though, Nvidia's GeForce 9600 GSO is not new and is nothing more than a relabeled GeForce 8800 GS. In default configurations, it carries the EXACT same clock speeds and specifications.

The question on many enthusiasts lips at the moment is why does the new 3DMark Vantage benchmark from Futuremark lack DirectX 10.1 support.

It has full support for DX10 but not the extra extensions in the newer version. AMD and S3 are currently the only companies which offer DX10.1 support on their graphics cards with Nvidia lacking it at this stage of the game. Fudzilla is already making certain claims that Nvidia may have had something to do with the lack of DX10.1 support in the new benchmark, since its current GeForce 8 and 9 series cards do not support it.

HighPoint has long been producing affordable and relatively well performing RAID controller cards for various markets. Up until recently though, its product portfolio was missing true hardware controlled products.

That all changes with the launch of the RocketRAID 3120 two port PCI-Express x1 RAID controller card. It has its own onboard I/O controller and memory, which is essentially what makes it hardware controlled, rather than relying on the system CPU to take care of the important controller duties.

OCZ are now offering DDR3 memory as part of their Special Ops Edition lineup, these comprising both PC3-8500 and PC3-10666 singular modules in 1 and 2GB sizes as well as dual channel 2 and 4GB kits.

The Special Ops Edition Series of modules is primarily aimed at the gamers crowd, featuring a unique camouflage motif heatspreader design. The PC3-8500 (1066MHz) modules operate with latencies of 7-7-7-24 at 1.6v whilst the PC3-10666 (1333MHz) modules are set with timings of 9-9-9-27 at 1.7v.