Koolance rolled out its newest CPU water-block, the CPU-360. The new block boasts of broad compatibility with all current CPU socket types, an advanced microfin cold plate with 0.25mm fins, 0.30 mm channels, and an optimized flow path. The cold plate is complemented with a brass top, all metal surfaces have nickel plating to minimize corrosion. The block measures 4.9" x 4.9" x 0.6" (12.5cm x 12.5cm x 1.5xcm), and weighs 411 g (14.5 oz). While the package excludes nozzles, it includes all the retention material needed for Intel sockets LGA-775, LGA-1156, LGA-1366, and AMD sockets AM3/AM2+/AM2. The CPU-360 is listed on Koolance website at US $84.99.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, announces the latest HD5450 series and wraps with Go! Green features in this newest product lineup. PowerColor HD5450 Go! Green series offers environmentally friendly and power efficient for consumers. It features stealth like silence and low power consumption, providing a cost efficient and silent entertainment solution.

With full range support of DirectX 11 and Windows 7, Go! Green HD5450 series provides a stunning high-definition entertainment experience from Blu-ray playing or other HD resources. Also, with the support of ATI stream technology, Go! Green HD5450 allows GPU to work with CPU to accelerate applications beyond just graphics, but also enables a faster and easier daily application experience.

AMD today announced the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card, the latest addition to the award-winning line-up of ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series graphics cards. The ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card delivers a state-of-the-art HD multimedia and game experience at a value price. Sharing the same leading edge features found in the critically-acclaimed ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series - support for DirectX 11, ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology and ATI Stream technology - the ATI Radeon HD 5450 provides an uncompromising Microsoft Windows 7 experience.

Sapphire is ready with its entry-level DirectX 11 compliant graphics card based on the new ATI Radeon HD 5450. The design is a low-profile capable single-slot accelerator, with passive cooling for silent operation. This gives us a rough idea of how the move to 40 nm process helped AMD's lowest-end GPUs. This particular card has 1 GB of DDR2 memory across a 64-bit wide memory interface. As a first sighting, you can see ATI-branded memory chips on this card. Display connectivity includes DVI-D, HDMI (with 7.1ch audio), and D-Sub which protrudes out. A set of low-profile brackets is also bundled. The Cedar GPU bundles 80 stream processors and a 64-bit wide memory interface. Expect the card to be released soon, at a price targeting the sub-$50 segment.

MSI is readying a new ATI Radeon HD 5770 based graphics card with its new "HAWK" branding. Its design will involve overclocking headroom, and a cooler superior to the reference design in terms of cooling performance. The MSI R5770 HAWK is said to feature "Military Grade" components, and a cooler which looks like a shrunk version of the Twin Frozr II found on many of MSI's Lightning series graphics cards. Another interesting feature is its voltage measure points that pop out by two wires. These let you measure vGPU and vMem voltages. The PCB features just one CrossFire finger. Display connectivity includes one each of DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort. The AMD Juniper GPU powering it is DirectX 11 compliant, features 800 stream processors, and 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface, with which it connects to 1 GB of memory. There's no word on the release date or price yet, but we expect it to be out very soon.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, today announced a powerful upgrade to the latest DirectX 11 mainstream graphics: the PowerColor PCS+ HD5670. This latest graphics solution features factory overclocking with standard core and memory clocks at 785 MHz and 1000MHz respectively. Gaming performance is boosted by the GDDR5 onboard memory that enhances data transmission rates up to 4.0Gbps.

The PCS+ HD5670 also features an ultra quite 92mm cooling fan which is made of a low-noise impeller, leading to a cool and low-noise working environment measured under 30dB at load. The card takes advantage of power efficient features, consuming less than 75 watts, enabling immersive HD gaming without an external power connection.

AMD today released the ATI Catalyst 10.1 driver suite, this year's first. The suite provides drivers and system software for ATI Radeon products (including Radeon HD 5900, 5800, 5700, 5600, HD 4000 series), AMD 7-series chipsets, All-in-Wonder, and Theater multimedia products. The new set of drives brings in application-specific performance improvements, OS and application bug-fixes, and new features. Notable ones are listed below:

• Left 4 Dead 2 - Overall performance improves as much as 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 series products and ATI Radeon HD 5800 series products
• Crysis - Performance improves as much as 3% on ATI Radeon HD 5700 series products and as much as 4% on ATI Radeon HD 5800 series products

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 10.1 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit

For a complete list of changes specific to your OS, refer to the Release Notes document.

ASUS is known to toy with bleeding-edge technology to give out high-end products. Earlier, ASUS put two GeForce GTX 285 GPUs into one accelerator to give out a custom-design product that outperformed NVIDIA's dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295. According to o.v.e.r.clockers.at, ASUS might be doing something similar, this time around with AMD's Cypress GPUs in its Radeon HD 5870 avatar. It is said to be working on a dual-HD 5870 graphics card, codenamed "Ares".

While the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 uses full-featured AMD Cypress GPUs (with all its stream processors and memory bus width available), ASUS will attempt to use the one disparity between an HD 5970 and two HD 5870 to its advantage: clock speeds. The Cypress GPUs in HD 5970 feature lower clock speeds (725/1000 MHz core/memory) compared to the single Cypress GPU on the HD 5870 (850/1200 MHz). Electrical constraints are probably the reason behind this. It is likely that ASUS will use stronger VRM circuitry to power the two GPUs to run at higher speeds, while also providing some overclocking headroom.

AMD in a recent conference call to the press said that it didn't expect to see custom-design HD 5970-like accelerators till Q2 2010, although we don't infer there to be any sort of restriction in place, as was the case with NVIDIA and its GTX 295. Ares is likely named after the Greek God of warfare by the name. An apt successor to Mars (which also happens to be the name of the Roman God of war), ASUS' previous attempt at an extreme high-end graphics card of its own design.

Worldwide PC microprocessor shipments in the fourth calendar quarter of 2009 (4Q09) rose modestly, compared to 3Q09, but still achieved all-time record levels for a single quarter, according to IDC's latest PC processor study. Notably, when compared to 4Q08, shipments in 4Q09 rose 31.3%. For the full year 2009, total PC processor unit shipments grew 2.5%, while revenue declined 7.1% to $28.6 billion.

"Compared to 3Q09, the modest rise in shipments in 4Q09 indicates that the market is returning to normal seasonal patterns," said Shane Rau, director of Semiconductors: Personal Computing research at IDC. "Compared to 4Q08, the huge rise in shipments indicates that the market has put the recession behind it. Both comparisons indicate that the PC industry anticipates improvement in PC end demand in 2010."

AMD is just about complete with its top-to-bottom lineup of DirectX 11 compliant GPUs, whose series is codenamed Evergreen. Under this, the company has a GPU and its derivative targeted at almost every price point, from the entry-level Radeon HD 5450, to the fastest graphics card - Radeon HD 5970. With the onset of NVIDIA's first current-generation GPU codenamed Fermi, NVIDIA might attempt to reclaim the performance crown, and infuse competition in the higher-end segment. Currently there's no news of lower-end derivatives of Fermi.

Probably in response to Fermi, AMD is readying a new GPU architecture slated for release within this calendar year, in the second half. "We are ramping the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series now and look forward to refreshing the entire lineup in the second half of next year," said Dirk Meyer, chief executive officer of AMD, during quarterly conference call with financial analysts. His reference to "next year" was of next fiscal year (FY 2010), in context of him speaking at a quarterly conference call with financial analysts for FY 2009. The new series of GPUs is codenamed "Northern Islands". At this point in time, nothing much is known about the new GPU series. TSMC, AMD's main foundry partner for GPUs and motherboard chipsets, earlier claimed that it will be ready with a 28 nm production node by the end of this year. Whether the new GPU series makes use of the new fab technology is anybody's guess.

AMD introduced as many as five new value-thru-mainstream processors in its Athlon II and Phenom II series. It starts with the energy-efficient Phenom II X4 910e quad-core, which runs at 2.60 GHz, with 65W TDP, and features 8 MB of total chip cache. It is priced at $169. Next up is the Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition dual-core which runs at 3.20 GHz, 7 MB total cache, 80W TDP, and unlocked bus multiplier. This one goes for $99.

Then there's the Athlon II X4 635 quad-core chip which runs at 2.90 GHz, with 2 MB of total cache, and 95W TDP, going for $119. Next, Athlon II X3 440 triple-core processor. This chip runs at 3.00 GHz, with 1.5 MB of total chip cache, and TDP of 95W. It is priced at $84. Lastly, there's the Athlon II X2 255 dual-core chip with clock speed of 3.10 GHz, 2 MB of cache, and 65W TDP. This one goes for $74. All chips come in the socket AM3 package, support DDR2 and DDR3 memory, and are backwards compatible with the AM2+ socket. All prices are in 1000-unit tray quantities.

Coolink today introduced its new Corator DS CPU-Cooler. Featuring Coolink's exclusive Gapless Direct Touch (GDT) technology that allows for an all copper contact area, the Corator DS brings the concept of direct contact cooling to the next level by further improving heat transfer. Four large 8mm heatpipes, a dual fin stack design and a PWM controlled SWiF2 120mm fan are among the features that enable the Corator DS to achieve an optimal balance between outstanding cooling performance and quiet operation.

"True to our vision of innovating instead of following, we worked hard to strengthen the advantages of direct contact cooling and to eliminate its drawbacks", explains Timothy Chu, Coolink CEO. "Thus we're proud to introduce the Corator DS today, which is our first product based on Coolink's exclusive GDT-technology. Its innovative contact surface in combination with the other features allows us to offer a complete high-performance cooling solution at an attractive price point".

TSMC, one of the world's major semiconductor foundries, said that it has resolved all issues pertaining to proper yields of chips built on the 40 nanometre node. During a company event on the 19th, Mark Liu, Senior VP of Operations, said that the quality of production on the 40 nm node is almost on par with the 65 nm one. Liu stated that the chamber matching problems that had impacted yield rates for the company's 40nm node have been resolved.

TSMC caters to graphics processor giants NVIDIA and AMD, with both having designs of 40 nm performance graphics processors with multi-billion transistor counts. AMD has been selling 40 nm GPUs made by TSMC since its previous generation ATI Radeon HD 4770, it currently makes all its Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs on the node. NVIDIA is poised to release its first billion transistor 40 nm GPU, the GF100, in its consumer GeForce brand later this quarter.

In addition to this, TSMC has just finished building a new factory at the Hsinchu Science Park (HSP), Taiwan, part of its Fab 12. The new facility will be able to commence volume production of 28 nm products as early as by Q3 2010.

Toppan Photomasks, Inc. (TPI) and GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced that they have formed a joint venture for operation of the Advanced Mask Technology Center (AMTC) in Dresden, Germany. The joint venture will provide leading-edge photomasks to GLOBALFOUNDRIES and to TPI's European and global networks of customers.

Under terms of the venture, TPI's Dresden manufacturing facility and the AMTC will be combined into a single manufacturing facility. TPI will retain its Dresden sales, customer service and mask front-end functions. The new integrated organization builds on the AMTC's history of providing advanced masks, TPI's and GLOBALFOUNDRIES' manufacturing excellence in Dresden, Toppan's world-class mask technology development, and the extensive collaborative relationships that GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Toppan have established in the industry.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, is thrilled to announce the world's fastest GPU with liquid cooling solution: the PowerColor LCS HD5970 2GB GDDR5. Equipped with the award-winning EK cooling solution, LCS HD5970 enables superior gaming experiences, and easily boosts up the potential overclcoking ability in an ultra quite and cool operating environment.

PowerColor LCS HD5970 has a full water block mounted, which fully covers the memory and power regulator chip. With a copper base design, it is reduces temperature up to 30°C compared with the reference version. PowerColor packages a high-flow 3/8" and 1/2" fittings (barbs) to maximize water flow with captured o-rings to prevent leakage. Gamers can effortlessly customize their own liquid cooling system using these two fittings.

Lenovo today announced the ThinkCentre A63 desktop, an essential desk side companion for small-to-medium businesses (SMB). The new desktop combines powerful productivity features such as Lenovo's Enhanced Experience for Windows 7 for blazing fast boot-up time and choices for the latest AMD Sempron processors, AMD Athlon II processors and AMD Phenom II processors, all at an affordable price tag starting at $329.

"We know that PCs are the technology backbone for SMBs to run their businesses," said Dilip Bhatia, executive director, ThinkCentre Marketing, Lenovo. "The new ThinkCentre A63 desktop delivers on the three 'P's' that businesses need in today's fast-paced, cost-conscious environment: power, peace of mind and price."

Gigabyte is expanding its Super Overclock family of graphics cards with a highly tweaked model based on the ATI Radeon HD 5870. The Gigabyte GV-R587SO-1GD features a complete design overhaul over AMD's reference design, with the card sporting a typical Gigabyte-blue colored PCB, and a custom-design double-slot VGA cooler. The PCB uses Gigabyte's Ultra Durable VGA construction which makes use of a PCB with 2 oz copper layer, ferrite core chokes, low RDS (on) MOSFETs, and Japanese solid-state capacitors. The VGA cooler consists of a GPU base from which four copper heat pipes convey heat to aluminum fin blocks cooled by two 90 mm fans.

The GV-R587SO-1GD comes with out of the box clock speeds of 1000 MHz (core), and 1300 MHz / 5.20 GHz effective (memory), against reference AMD clock speeds of 850 MHz (core) and 1200 MHz / 4.80 GHz (memory). ATI Eyefinity support is retained with a display connectivity that resembles the reference design: two DVI-D, and one each of DisplayPort and HDMI. The GPU features DirectX 11 compliance, 1600 stream processors, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. It connects to 1 GB of memory.

SAPPHIRE Technology is now shipping a new family of graphics cards in the highly successful HD 5000 series. The SAPPHIRE HD 5670 is a new low power model aimed at the mainstream market, whist sharing many of the exciting features of the latest high end series.

The SAPPHIRE HD 5670 is based on the latest graphics architecture from the ATI division of AMD, the second generation of GPU to be built in its 40nm process. It supports the advanced graphical features of Microsoft DirectX 11, and delivers spectacular video clarity, speed and visual effects, whilst consuming very low power levels.

Scythe is announcing today a new High-End TOP-Flow CPU Cooler by the name "Grand Kama Cross", which is the successor of former Kama Cross CPU Cooler. Grand Kama Cross is based on an X Structure layout using total of four 8 mm copper heatpipes for fast transfer of heat from the copper base to the aluminum fins. Thanks to the X Structure Design, easier mounting on CPU sockets as well as higher compatibility to tall RAM and Northbridge coolers are accomplished. By using the angled fin shape, airflow is redirected to allow additional cooling of surrounding components such as RAM, Northbridge and Voltage Regulators. For the optimum airflow, new Slip Stream 140 mm fan is first introduced with Grand Kama Cross CPU Cooler. PWM support allows flexible fan speed in a range between 500 and 1,300 rpm, automatically controlled by the motherboard creating airflow from 46 to 119 m³/h and accordingly 27.2 to 69.93 CFM. Both Slip Stream 140 mm fan and Grand Kama Cross CPU Cooler are using standard 120 mm fan mounting holes which allow the use of common aftermarkets 120 mm case fans as a replacement.

AMD today introduced the ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics card, the latest addition to the award-winning line-up of the world's first and only graphics products to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11 gaming and computing, as well as new innovations such as ATI Eyefinity technology. Priced at less than USD $100, the ATI Radeon HD 5670 graphics card enables a superior HD gaming experience in the latest DirectX 11 titles, employs ATI Stream technology to boost performance in video playback and productivity applications, and helps enable the full Microsoft Windows 7 experience.

Having reclaimed the positions of having the fastest graphics cards and the most powerful GPU with the DirectX 11 compliant Radeon HD 5000 series, AMD is looking to make DirectX 11 accessible to all market segments. Later this month, AMD is expected to announce its lower-mainstream Radeon HD 5600 products, but with it, also an addition to the Radeon HD 5800 series: the Radeon HD 5830. This product is expected to fill the gap between Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 5850.

The Radeon HD 5770 is priced in the sub-$200 range, while the HD 5850 at around $300. This gap is currently held by the previous-generation Radeon HD 4890, which faces competition from some NVIDIA GeForce GTX 200 series products. It is expected that the Radeon HD 5830 will be about as powerful as a Radeon HD 4890 in current applications, while being priced slightly lower, and a little more competitive owing to its feature set and future-proofing. The new product could be announced on the 25th Jan. No additional details or specifications are known at this point.

Two of ECS' upcoming motherboards based on AMD's 890GX+SB800 chipset, supporting socket AM3 processors have been pictured: the A890GXM-A Black Series, and the IC890GXM-A. The two are ATX motherboards which build slightly on the chipset's features on offer.

The A890GXM-A Black Series is the higher-end part aimed at overclockers and performance users. It has an elaborate heatsink that covers the 890GX northbridge and CPU VRM area, which makes use of a heatpipe for uniform heat dissipation. It is marked with "Six Core CPU Support", indicating that it is ready for AMD's upcoming "Thuban" six-core desktop processor. The CPU socket is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots to support dual-channel memory. DDR3 memory with speeds over 1800 MHz are supported by overclocking.

HIS released a custom-design graphics card based on the ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU, part of its generally cost-effective "Fan" series. The HIS HD 5770 Fan 1GB (H577FL1GDG) uses a GPU cooler which uses heat pipes to transfer heat to a circular aluminum fin array surrounding a fan. Unlike with older Fan series models (such as the HD 4850 Fan) which had seemingly skimpy cooling, HIS placed a plastic shroud on top of the cooler. It uses reference AMD clock speeds: 850 MHz (core), 1200 MHz (memory), and sports 1 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit interface. Connectivity includes one each DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort. It is expected to be priced around $140~$150.

MSI is ready with two new custom-design graphics cards based on the ATI Radeon HD 5800 graphics processors: the R5870 Lightning and R5850 Cyclone. The R5870 Lightning, as expected features a Twin-Frozr II dual-fan VGA cooler designed by MSI on a custom-designed PCB which makes some high-grade components, specifically in the card's VRM area (12-phase PWM, dual 8-pin PCI-E power input), to make it fare better at overclocking. Other notable features include v-check points and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory across the GPU's 256-bit wide memory interface. Connectivity cluster resembles that of the AMD reference design, retaining Eyefinity technology support. The R5850 Cyclone, on the other hand, uses the familiar Cyclone GPU cooler MSI used in the past on some Radeon HD 4800 series graphics cards. MSI designed its own PCB here too, but with a few smart cost-cuttings, although the quality of the components used isn't affected. The two will be out in this quarter.

At the ongoing CES event, ASUS displayed some of its upcoming motherboards which included the M4A89GTOD PRO, an ATX form-factor model based on the AMD 890G chipset. The AMD 890G seems to be a successor to the AMD 790GX, in being a performance integrated graphics part. It integrates a DirectX 10.1 compliant IGP while supporting discrete graphics with 2-way ATI CrossFireX.

The M4A89GTOD PRO comes with an expansive feature-set thanks to the AMD 890G. The more interesting component being the AMD SB800 southbridge chip, which is on its way to being one of the first PC motherboard chipsets to natively support SATA 6 Gb/s. The chip doles out six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, while doing away with its on-die IDE controller. An external JMicron-made storage controller compensates with an IDE connector, a SATA 3 Gb/s port (colored black) and perhaps an eSATA port (at 3 Gb/s speeds), too.