Review: Seasonic X-400 Fanless   Posted on 27/08/2010 at 14:07 by Damien

	After launching the X-Series, its first 80 PLUS Gold power supplies in September 2009, Seasonic announced a whole range at Computex, going from 400 to 1200 watts. The least powerful versions, the 400 to 460 watt supplies, are both fanless, which is a first among 80 PLUS Gold power supplies. Promising on paper, will the quality of these power supplies be confirmed in practice? > Review: Seasonic X-400 Fanless (SS-400FL)

DDR4 unveiled   Posted on 17/08/2010 at 10:20 by Marc

	PC Watch has published a set of documents linked to DDR4 that were published on the occasion of MemCon10, a conference on memory that took place at the end of July. For the moment, the DDR4 standard hasn’t yet been finalised but should be during 2011, for introduction in 2012 and full roll out not planned before 2015! So we’ll have plenty of time to see it coming. As with every new DDR generation, DDR4 should double available bandwidth for identical memory cell frequency. Internal organisation will therefore be modified so as to double bandwidth and attain DDR4-1600, DDR4-2133, DDR4-2666, DDR4-3200 and even DDR4-4266! In terms of voltages, while DDR3 runs at 1.5V, with low tension 1.35V versions also available, here we’re talking a default of 1.2V with the possibility of going down to 1.05V, which means we won’t see energy consumption shooting up too high in spite of the increased speeds. Another important change is that the bus used should be a point to point type, so as to support the higher frequency of the external memory bus. It will therefore no longer be possible to use more than one memory bar on the same channel, unless you use additional chips to serve as switches and which would need to be integrated in the server platforms. This will push memory manufacturers to come up with ever denser bars, which should be possible with the arrival of 4 Gb and 8 Gb memory dies expected in 2011/2012 and 2014/2015 and which should lead to roll out of 8 GB and 16 GB bars.

The Kingston HyperXs take to the water   Posted on 03/08/2010 at 10:09 by Marc

	Kingston has announced its first memory kits that can run with watercooling, the HyperX H2Os. 3 kits are available: - KHX2000C9D3W1K2/4GX: 2x2 GB DDR3-2000 9-11-9-27 at 1.65v - KHX2133C9D3W1K2/4GX: 2x2 GB DDR3-2133 9-11-9-27 at 1.65v - KHX2000C9D3W1K3/6GX: 3x2 GB DDR3-2000 9-10-9-27 at 1.65v Prices have been announced at $157, $205 and $235 respectively. OCZ was the first to launch memory bars with a heatsink that could run with a watercooling circuit, namely the PC2-9200 FlexXLC Editions dating from November 2006.

4 GB DDR3 at DDR3-2133 from OCZ   Posted on 13/07/2010 at 11:14 by Marc

	OCZ is the first to launch 4GB bars of DDR3 certified at DDR3-2133. Part of the Flex EX range and sold as an 8 GB dual channel kit (OCZ3FXE2133LV8GK) or a 12 GB triple channel (OCZ3FXE2133LV12GK), it does however have the fairly high timings of 10-10-10-30. Nevertheless it still runs at the reasonable 1.65v. Like all bars in the Flex EX range, they have a cooler that can can include an existing watercooling system.

DDR3-2600 from Corsair   Posted on 09/07/2010 at 10:54 by Marc

	After the DDR3-2533 in May, Corsair has moved up a gear with a new Dominator GT bar, the GTX6, designed for the P55 platform. To get up to this speed, Corsais has however had to make an important concession in terms of the size of the bar, which has gone from 2 GB to 1 GB. Corsair says that the bar is in fact specified at DDR3-2625 in single and DDR3-2600 in dual channel mode, with (screenshot at the ready) DDR3-2976 within reach with an LN2 cooled processor. A bar that will, then, only be of interest to those who wish to break clock records!