Cases, Cooling & PSU News - Page 56

A little while ago we visited the Antec Taipei office here in Taiwan and got an early and exclusive look at its range of upcoming EarthWatts Platinum power supplies which are set to hit the market next month and really shake things up as far as pricing goes. Antec reckon their competitors are nervous.

Antec will soon launch the EA-650 watt Platinum, EA-550 watt Platinum and EA-450 watt Platinum. Each is certified with an 80 Plus Platinum rating which means they achieve up to 93% power efficiency, which is the best rating that can be given to a PSU. Antec claims that the EA-650 model can save up to 25% on your electricity bill - we aren't quite sure how they worked that out, but we'll have to take their word for it until we test their claims.

Each comes with a three year warranty and includes a "whisper quiet" 120mm double ball bearing fan with what Antec call long lifetime expectancy. There are little fancy features with these PSU such as an LED on the fan or modular cable management, but they still include key quality components such as Japanese heavy-duty capacitors and Antec CircuitShield which includes over current protection, over voltage protection, under voltage protection, short circuit protections and so on.

Thermaltake have just outed a new case, dubbed Thermaltake Commander MS-I Snow Edition, which sports a brand-new "snow look", which allows it to "move its way through a snowy battlefield."

The case comes with extra-long VGA support, which means it can house some of the largest GPUs on the market such as AMD's Radeon HD 6990 or NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 590. Cable management is of course a key feature, the case also sports a 12cm blue LED fan, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, 9 drive bays and more.

The "snow look" is actually quite impressive and I'm personally now a fan of it after checking out the screenshots and reading about it before typing up this piece. The case sports a gorgeous white "snow" color, but with an interior black and red design. It actually looks quite good, so kudos Thermaltake!

Earlier today we made our way over to the Antec Taipei office where we got given access to an exclusive video preview of the upcoming Eleven Hundred Gaming Series computer case.

The Eleven Hundred is the flagship model in Antec's gaming series of cases which brings with it full E-ATX and XL-ATX motherboard support and support for up to three-way SLI and four-way CrossFireX. It's a stylish looking case which immediately indicates great quality as we have come to expect from Antec cases in the past. It looks just like a typical Antec product with included traditional features we've seen in the past, but it's also mixing in a blend of new features.

On the top of the case is a 200mm exhaust fan with a blue LED and in total the case supports up to nine fans in total for some pretty extreme cooling potential. In the past we've seen Antec including the power and reset buttons towards the front top of their cases, but this time around with the Eleven Hundred they are move to the top front of the case, which is a much better position especially for when the case is sitting on the ground.

Earlier this week we visited the BitFenix office here in Taipei and got a look at its brand new Raider computer case which is being released today.

David from BitFenix in the video below introduces us to the Raider. He explains that the Raider is 100% focused on airflow with a mesh finish from the top all the way to the front of the case. The case features the nice and smooth BitFenix SofTouch finish - even the power button and fan controller switch on the top front right of the case features the SofTouch treatment. Gone are USB 2.0 ports as the Raider supports four USB 3.0 ports. There is also support for users with older motherboards without USB 3.0 by way of standard USB 2.0 adapters on the same internal cable.

Moving on to the inside of the case, the drive bays are all tool-free and there are five optical drive bays and room for six hard drives. At the bottom of the case is room for an additional 2.5-inch drive, meaning the case can support up to seven SSDs or 2.5-inch hard drives, if you can get your hands on one. Cable management is also taken care of well with lots of room behind the motherboard tray for large cables and rubber cable management holes should mean a neat and tidy case.

Xigmatek have a new weapon ready for battle in the highly competitive mid tower chassis market; the MIDGARD II. The new case gets the all-black treatment inside and out and gives support for mini-ITX, micro-ATX and full sized ATX motherboards.

Measuring 221 (W) x 473 (H) x 488 (D) mm and weighing in at 7.18Kg, the case sports a soft and elegant "leather-coating" on both the top and front panels and provides three external 5.25" drive bays with tool-free holders along with an additional Slim-ODD bay. The I/O panel positioned on top of the MIDGARD II gives 1x USB 3.0 ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports and audio ports. Further to this is a built-in docking station on top that supports both 2.5 and 3.5-inch SATA based drives.

Internally there are six drive bays that will accommodate both 2.5 and 3.5-inch sized drives and provide anti-vibration rubber. Xigmatek has made sure to consider those using water cooling and includes four holes to route your tubing at the rear of the chassis.

Thermaltake has just launched another variant of its Frio CPU cooler line which Thermaltake says incorporates some of the most up-to-date CPU cooler technologies and preserves the greatnesses from its predecessors of Frio and Frio OCK.

This time around Thermaltake delivers that same tower-shaped design, but with the ability to handle up to 240W processors and supports all Intel LGA 2011/1366/1155/1156/755 and AMD AM2(+)/AM3(+)/FM1 processor sockets. The cooler itself measures 130.6 (L) X 122 (W) x 159.2 (H) mm while weighing almost 1Kg @ 954 grams.

The cooler makes use of five 6mm sized Direct Touch copper Heatpipes and it comes with a couple 13cm fans strapped on, operating at between 800 and 2000RPM (with 21 to 44 dBA sound output).

Use a Noctua cooler? Upgrading to Sandy Bridge-E/LGA2011 in a few months when its released? Well, Noctua have continued their tradition of supplying their customers with SecuFirm2 mountings free of charge. The NM-I2011 kit allows Noctua users to upgrade to Intel's upcoming LGA2011 socket for Core i7-3000 (Sandy Bridge-E) processors. The NM-I2011 is backwards compatible with all Noctua retail coolers since 2005 and will be supplied to users free of charge after they upload proof of purchase on Noctua's website.

Mag. Roland Mossig, Noctua's CEO says:

We feel that product quality and service quality should always go hand in hand, so we're determined to give the best possible support to our customers. Having provided free mounting upgrades for the last generations of Intel and AMD platforms, we're happy to announce that we will continue this tradition with the NM-I2011 kit for LGA2011.

Aerocool is targetting gamers with its latest run of "Strike-X" series power supplies which are certainly easy to spot with that big red 'X' fan grill over the top of the 13.9cm PWM fan and red+black theme going on.

There are four new models in total, all of which are 80Plus certified and sport a modular design, as well as complying with the ATX 12V 2.3 and EPS 12V 2.92 standards. They are equipped with active PFC (Power Factor Correction) and carry an MTBF of over 120,000 hours. All four models are set up with a single 12V rail as well as having over current, over voltage, over wattage, over temperature and short-circuit protection.

Here is a breakdown of the four models on offer, including their respective (Euro) pricing :-

eXtreme Outer Vision's online PSU Calculator tool serves as a very useful one when wanting to ensure a given power supply is enough to meet the demands of all the specs crammed into a particular system. It assits in helping one determine not so much just how many Watts their exact system configuration needs, but even more importantly how much amperage is required to back said Wattage up.

The service has just been updated with an easier, faster way to select your CPU and video card(s). The Lite version of the tool also now supports up to four video cards + a PPU (Physics Processing Unit). Furthermore, all the most recent video card models from both AMD and NVIDIA have been added to the list of selections along with new sockets including LGA 2011, AM3+ and FM1. With that, there are now a range of Intel Sandy Bridge-E processors, AMD Zambezi and latest server class Xeon and Opteron processors to choose from.

If you're in the market now, or in the near future for a quality PSU to power up your new rig, this tool should serve as a great guide in helping you make a wise decision about your purchase without under-cutting or going overboard.

The best bit of this news isn't the cooler, but the wickedly cheesy video that goes along with it. Before you check it out, here's some details on EVERCOOL's latest cooler, the Transformer S. The Transformer S is only 13.5cm high which means it'll fit into most ATX cases. It sports dual 6mm heat pipes and one 9cm fan with special fan blade design which makes the Transformer S quieter and provides greater cooling efficiency.

Additionally, shock absorption rubber nail design can reduce the shake and goes further to reduce noise levels. EVERCOOL's Transformer S also includes compatibility for both AMD and Intel, including Intel's upcoming LGA 2011 socket. The nine fan blade design on the Transformer S can spin up to 2200 RPM and even at that speed, its noise is less than 20 dBA. All of this tech rolls into one great CPU cooling package, inclusive of a cheesy video which I'll now show you below: