DFI is showing off all of their mATX boards aimed at the gaming enthusiast. These come in all kinds of flavors, sporting all available CPU sockets and also offering multi GPU possibilities. Their newest addition is the X58 based one, which has all the features of an ATX board but gives the user the possibility to pack everything into an mATX chassis.

The CoolIT Systems booth has grown considerably in size, over the years. Even though their booth is not as big as at CES, the crowd is basically running them down. The Domino A.L.C cooler - of which you can expect a review soon - is being accepted by the public and the industry quite nicely. They are showing off two custom made PCs, which are made by Kobalt Computers. Both are cooled by CoolIT technology. The one which really impressed me - both due to build quality and the amount of CoolIT hardware used is the black unit. These two are probably the craziest systems I have seen this year around.

OCZ is making some waves with their Z Drive, which is a PCIe based SSD enclosure for four hard drives. They have a unit up and running in white, while it is also displayed in a black color. The Z Drive is intended to be used with four SSDs, which allow for some insane speeds. The entire unit is interfaced with a PCIe x8 and requires two Molex connectors. But wait - there is more!

G.Skill did not have a booth in the public area last year. This time around, they have such a presence and are showing off their newest DDR3 line-up. Gone are the tiny and fairly noisy fans. Gone is the rainbow line-up of colors for heatspreaders. The compnay has really cleaned up their product line and is opting for different looking heatspreaders for their different type of memory. The very successful PI series has been expanded to DDR3 as well. G.Skill is also introducing three differently named triple channel kits. The fastest, running at 2133 MHz with CL9 is called Trident and can be viewed in a running system, with a base clock of 133. The second model is named "Perfect Storm", runs at 2000 MHz CL7. The last is the afore mentioned PI Black series, running at 1800 MHz CL7. All of these modules are actively cooled with various clip-on or screw-on fans.The DDR2 memory also features a similar active cooler and the PI series is available with up to 1200 MHz CL5 as a 4 GB Kit.

We all remember the move from SD cards to SDHC. These offer more space in the same physical package, but are not backwards compatible. Now that SDHC is reaching is maximum capacity, a new format has been announced back in January, called SDXC. It will support up to 2 TB capacity, while keeping the same form factor. Walking the show floor, we found Pretec quietly displaying a 32 GB card at their booth. Remember, while older cards work in SDXC card readers and devices, you will need a new reader or device to use SDXC cards. Déjà-vu anyone?

Scythe is displaying quite a few new cooling solution as well as some prototypes. Let us start with the concepts first. The "Godhand" is an extremely large CPU cooler, which hovers over the top half of the mainboard. Then there is a large, passive block with heatpipes. This unit is intended for midrange GPUs and can handle around 60W of heat. Then there is a large version of the Kama Cross, simply called Kama Grand Cross.

There are several manufacturers showing off P55 based boards at CeBIT. We have posted some of the boards which were mentioned at other websites, but Jetway is also throwing their offering into the pool. The board uses bright colored slots on a black PCB. There is an unknown slot next to the memory modules - named CNF 1. The board features 14 USB 2.0, 7 SATA, 1 eSATA, two PCI x16 slots for GPUs and a third named "HD Display slot".

Kingmax is showing off various watercool flash devices, as well as some memory products. The sealed units are hanging in small aquariums. The company is offering SDHC, microSDHC and USB flash devices with this attribute. There are a few more interesting things, hit the"Read full story" link for more.

The CES '09 aftermath has just died down and we are in Germany right now, getting ready for the CeBIT 2009. Having had the chance to walk the show floor today already, watching the manufacturers build their booths, there seems to be a cautiously optimistic vibe in the air. We do expect a few surprises and will try our best to let you know about them - with a lot of pictures of course!

The ability of AMD's Phenom II X3 processors dole out an additional core thanks to flaws in BIOS programming, has been one of the most interesting events in the computer enthusiast industry this month. A simple toggle of an option would unlock the disabled core, appreciating the value of the processor. It was earlier known that only chips belonging to 0904 (fourth week of 2009) batch of the processors would be able to respond to the mod successfully, but now, a fresh finding by German website Hartware.net suggests that even chips made in the 51st week of 2008 batch responded to the mod, and the fourth core could be enabled. Hartware.net used Biostar's TA790GX A2+ motherboard for the feat.

Meanwhile, the only entity that stands to lose due to this rather bizarre "phenomenon" has stepped in. AMD has reportedly requested motherboard manufacturers to not to release motherboards with the "buggy" BIOS, and to devise a fix for the issue immediately. Manufacturers are requested to release fixed BIOS updates. Evidently Phenom II X3 could cannibalize higher quad-core chips by the firm. The company is yet to release an DDR3-supportive quad-core chip based on the Deneb core with the entire 6 MB cache enabled.

Ubuntu's contribution to propagating Linux to the client platforms (general desktop/notebook) is invaluable. Its developers are known to codename major builds of the OS after animals. An upcoming version, 9.10 has been codenamed "Karmic Koala", after the cute and cuddly animal from south-east Australia. Going by Ubuntu's six-month development cycle, 9.10 should follow 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope" slated for this April, and should be coming out by October.

The new client-version is expected to be netbook-friendly, with having significantly lower boot times. The target booting time for 9.04 is 25 seconds, while the developers hope to improve that figure further with 9.10. The developers will be integrating features from Intel's Moblin platform in order to improve performance on Atom-based devices. The Server Edition based on Ubuntu, which is steadily gaining in adoption, yet lagging behind offerings from market heavyweights such as Red Hat and Novell, will also get its share of improvements, one of the most important of them being enhanced support for cloud-computing.

In an exclusive interview with the guys at Neowin.net, Microsoft have confirmed, that provided no serious problems arise, they are on track to release Windows 7 RC on April 10. As yet the only changes which are known about, are User Account Control (UAC) fixes which prevent malware from disabling UAC all together.

More information about the development of Windows 7 comes from Geeksmack, with their email conversation with Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft Senior Vice President of Windows. Sinofsky said, "We have received an amazing amount of feedback, many suggestions for new features too, during the beta-over 500,000 suggestions just from the Send Feedback button." What was also interesting to note, "... by far the most humorous element has been that the build numbers blogged about are higher than our current build. Today's build is 7046, but it hasn't completed yet :-)"
Sinofsky is also said to have spoken to Ars Technica, and said that, "The build will be available broadly".

The Intel Developer Forum (IDF) serves as a platform for technologists to discuss Intel technologies and products based on or around Intel technologies. With China and Taiwan being almost the epicenters of consumer electronics manufacturing and development, Intel began holding annual events in the two countries, apart from the event at San Fransisco, United States. The IDF schedule for 2008, for example, included events in Shanghai, China and Taipei, Taiwan.

Fresh news emerging from Taiwan, sourced by industry observer DigiTimes suggests that Intel canceled IDF Taiwan 2009, originally slated for November, later this year. The company is holding this as part of its cost-reduction efforts to counter the global economic slowdown. The move comes as a surprise to Taiwanese computer hardware firms affiliated with Intel technologies, as the company has been hosting the IDF Taiwan event since the year 1996. Additionally, the company plans to restructure the IDF Beijing event scheduled in April from a two-day event to a one-day event focusing on China. Intel however clarified that it will continue to maintain its cooperation with the Taiwanese to sustain the country's industrial growth, which it hopes to achieve through presence at the Computex event. The main event held in San Fransisco, however, will not be affected. The company hopes to maintain the event in the same proportions as it was, in the past.

Intel pushed its performance supremacy lead further up with the introduction of the Nehalem micro-architecture. The introduction served as a milestone event in the company's history, where it sought to rearrange various components of the PC, by moving certain parts of the chipset to the processor package. In the months to come, with the introduction of the Ibex-Peak platform, the company hopes to migrate even more components from the system core-logic to the CPU package. A lot of engineering potential is unlocked due to the modularity of the various components of a Nehalem-derived CPU.

At the upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) event, Intel plans a decent set of technology demonstrations and papers. The advance program information document shed some light on Intel's itinerary. In session 3 held on February 9, Intel will present papers on its 8-core Xeon processor, following which is a session on 45nm IA processors. The session is on processors built with features characteristic of the Nehalem micro-architecture, in having integrated memory controllers, a coherent point-to-point interconnect, and up to 8 processing cores. Interestingly, the description included a note on the power consumptions, ranging from "sub-10W to 130W", which leads us to believe Intel to have plans on making derivatives of the Nehalem micro-architecture with some very low energy footprints. Another interpretation would be that a new breed of processors could have idle power consumptions as low as <10W. Currently the most energy-efficient Nehalem-based processor known to be in the works is the Xeon L5520 that has identical features to those of the Core i7 series while having a clock speed of 2.23 GHz and a rated TDP of a mere 60W.

Having reacted rather sharply to the ongoing global economic slump by planning massive workforce and production cuts, one would expect Intel to be conservative with its development potential. In a contradiction to just that, a recent conversation EETimes had with Mark Bohr, director of Intel's technology and manufacturing group, the director said that the company is on course with its plans to introduce the newer 32 nm silicon fabrication technology by late 2009.

"The 32 nm technology is getting ready to go into the manufacturing phase, we are lining up fabs to support it and we expect great demand. We are on track for shipping products in the fourth quarter and have 22 nm technology in development for 2011" said Mr. Bohr. The conversation previewed some of the papers Intel plans to present at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference that convenes next week.

Intel follows a "tick-tock" model of product development cycle, wherein, the company designs new microprocessor designs and silicon fabrication technologies in alternation. In each cycle, an architecture gets to be made on at least two successive fabrication technologies before itself being succeeded by a newer design. Currently Intel employs the 45 nm High-K metal gate manufacturing technology, on which it introduced later variants of the Core 2 series CPUs, and has introduced its Nehalem architecture, with Core i7 being its first commercial implementation.

Weakening demand, deteriorating economy and product launches by the dozen have led to ASUS, one of the largest manufacturers of computer hardware to suffer overstocked inventories. A local daily in Taiwan in a recent report suggests that the company is planning to reduce its inventories by as much as 30% in Q1 2009. ASUS currently holds US $1.33 billion-worth inventory, which it plans to reduce to $1.03 billion.

In the process, the company may incur losses amounting of around 20% amounting to roughly $35.5 million for the fourth quarter last year due to depreciation, the paper noted. Inventory levels of motherboards and graphics cards by ASUS may be sized down to the levels of 8~10 weeks, with those of pre-built PCs expected to be lower. The company also reduce its operating costs by 10%. In the wake turbulent economic weather the world over, ASUS will be employing new strategies to face fluctuations in exchange rates.

A few days ago, we covered the release of an NVIDIA graphics update from Apple, which was intended to address issues when using the Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter on MacBook Air, MacBook and MacBook Pro and improve cursor movement and playback of HD videos running on systems with NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT or GeForce 9600M graphics. Within just two days of the update being posted, the page and downloads were removed from Apple's site, for initially unknown reasons. It seems that not long after the update was released, the Apple discussion forums started filling up with people having either the same, or in some cases, worse problems following the graphics update. According to CNET, "This issue only affects those with the MacBooks, MacBook Airs or MacBook Pros redesigned in October, and it seems to only be a problem when running the integrated graphics on those machines."

CoolIT is showing off a few very interesting concepts and implementation of their cooling technology. The first is a PC which is completely cooled by such a system. The prototype is hand made but features high-end components in a unique formfactor. To control all aspects of the system there is a special PCB, to which you may connect multiple fans among other things. Then there is the notebook cooling prototype. It actually pushes cooled air into the notebooks air vents, to be exausted by the internal cooling fan.

One device, which I forgot to take a picture off, is their Domino ALC CPU cooler. It is a pre-filled and ready to go liquid cooling solution. But fear not, we will have a review of the system shortly.

Microprocessor mogul Intel, has been fairly invincible to the ups and downs of world economy, in its 40+ years of existence, owing to the market position it has been holding since the success of its microprocessor technologies. For the first time in 87 quarter fiscal years, the company is bracing itself for a red-quarter, meaning losses.

Intel's CEO Paul Otellini thinks that with the company seeing profits go down by as much as 19% in Q4 2008, one can expect only the worse of Q1, with an ailing world economy coupled with the expected fall in sales post the winter shopping season. The company is exercising all means to cut operational costs while attempting to meet sales targets, though it is not looking at workforce reductions as an option just as yet.

Kaspersky Lab, a leading producer of secure content management solutions, announces the release of a technical prototype of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7. The prototype is based on the new antivirus engine which provides complex antivirus protection from all types of Internet threats.

The new technical prototype of Kaspersky Anti-Virus is designed to secure computers running under Windows 7. The beta test version of Microsoft Windows 7 operating system was released at the beginning of January 2009. Kaspersky Lab simultaneously released its technical prototype providing greater efficiency and complex antivirus protection for the new operating system.

Bloomberg reports that Intel is planning on releasing a new, higher-capacity solid state drive, which will provide users with up to 320GB of storage capacity. In Q4 this year, the company will begin selling a total of eight new drives with capacity of 320GB, that will be part of Intel's Extreme and Mainstream SSD series. The chips used for these drives will be build using 32-nanometer production technology, Intel's most advanced manufacturing method for the time being. The source also clamins that Intel has already contacted its partners and informed them for the new drives.
The world's largest chipmaker also plans to introduce a new product called "Braidwood" that's slated for Q4 2009 too. It will include as much as 16GB of flash memory that will create "better responsiveness and boot-up time." Though it's unclear whether this solution will be integrated into Intel based motherboards or it will stand for an optional separate storage drive, made only for installing operating systems.

EVGA is also showing off a few very interesting items. The first being a remote thin client. This unit gives you the ability to access a PC from an outside location, while the machine itself remains in a secure location. All the data is transmitted through a network connection. This includes the display information over DVI. The thin client can drive two DVI based displays, USB and audio. Read on for information on the X58 Classified board.

QNAP is showing off their newest NAS enclosures. The first is a single hard drive enclosure, which also acts as a media center. It is one of the few out there, whiche manages 1080p output. It has all the usual connections as well as HDMI. There is a remote control included and the user interface is very clean and easy to use. But this is not the only new product - read on...

In Win is showing off quite a few new and interesting items. There are several new cases and hard drive enclosures. The first one does not yet have a name, but come with 11 expansion bays, has a screwless system in place for the drives, a bottom mounted PSU and is water cooling ready. In Win is one of the companies with bold case designs in many aspects. The second chassis is called the BS653. It also has a very unique outer design with up to 9 external expansion bays, removable hard drive cage and bottom mounted power supply. The last mid-tower case is called "X-Fighter" and has a unique air vent design, as well as animated LED lighting. Hit the "Read More" - for more!

We got to take a look at Sennheisers newest offering: the HD800. This unit is their new flagship part and even though I am no audiophile: they sound amazing. The materials have been kept as light as possible, while the vibration of the unit has been nearly eliminated, giving you the best possible sound quality. The ear drums are not completely sealed, but give you an amazing soundstage.You will also find their new portable series, which is intended for the audiophile music lover on the go. The HD218 gives you great sound quality with a normal, but powerful bass, while the HD228 adds further bass. The high end HD238 goes a step further, giving you even more "umpf" for your money.