Power Supplies, Water Cooling, FireWare Configuration and More!

Good morning all!  Time for your Thursday morning news post.  There is a lot going on today, with plenty of material to quench your hardware news thirst.  So pour that coffee, rub the sleep out of your eyes and get down to business! 

Beginners Guides: Firewall Setup and Configuration @ PCStats.com:

"To prepare yourself for today's Internet environment, you need the holy trinity of computer security: effective antivirus/anti-spyware software, regular updates and a firewall. We'll be looking at the latter today, in detail. In this guide, we will walk you through every procedure involved in setting up and configuring a hardware or software firewall to protect your computer or network. We will also cover how to circumvent the problems firewalls can often cause to applications, and tackle the issue of hosting a game, web or FTP site on a firewall protected system. In short, this should be the last firewall article you'll need to read. As for the first article you should read, our original guide to firewalls and Internet security contains more information on how firewalls work and the kind of threats you face on the web."

Fastest Pentium 4 Platform: Performance of i925, i915, i875 and i865 with DDR2-533, DDR2-400, DDR533 and DDR400 SDRAM all compared @ xbitlabs:

"We compared the performance of the new Intel chipsets when they work with the memory of various types against that of the previous generation Intel chipsets also working with different types of system memory. Well, it looks like the old buddies are still pretty powerful and shouldn't be disregarded when it comes to figuring out the configuration for the fastest Pentium 4 platform."

Smart Drive 2002 Silent & Cool HDD Enclosure @ Systemcooling.com:

"We all know hard drives can get hot and become noisy at certain times. The heat issues may not be as big of an annoyance as the excessive noise. And combating the noise is not always as easy as getting rid of the heat. Today we'll be taking a look at new product supplied to us by the good people at Sharka Computers called the Smart Drive 2002C. The Smart Drive claims to be able to silence that hard drive crunching and rattling and at the same time keep it cool."

Logisys Armor Gaming Case @ BigBruin.com:

"This case has two features of particular interest on the front. The most notable is the large LCD temperature display. It allows users to monitor any piece of hardware or ambient case temperature using a small thermal diode... The other feature is a hidden side access panel. Located on the front plastic bezel, it allows users to conveniently connect peripherals without crawling to the back of their machine."

Albatron GeForce PCX 5750 Reviewed @ VR-Zone Hardware:

"Going into this review, I really did not know what to expect when overclocking the Albatron PCX 5750. The GeForce FX 5700 Ultra gave us good results when overclocked, but nothing spectacular. The same can be said of the Albatron PCX 5750. From a core speed of 425MHz and memory speed of 500MHz, we were able to overclock the core 85MHz and memory 115MHz. These were good overclocks by all accounts, and we'll be using our overclocked speeds to test against stock frequencies and the ATI Radeon X600 XT."

AOpen EX915 Socket-775 Pentium 4 SFF Barebones @ GamePC Labs:

"Today at the GamePC Labs, we've taken a close up look at AOpen's latest small form factor PC system the XC Cube EX915. The EX915 is the first SFF system to actually hit the market using Intel's new Socket-775 CPU architecture, and boasts such features as PCI Express X16, four-port Serial ATA/150 support, Gigabit LAN, and digital audio."

Power Supply Unit: Architecture Explained @ CoolTechZone:

"The Power Supply Unit (PSU) is the most neglected component in many computer systems even though it is the original source of all the good things that your computer can do on a regular basis. We have listed quite a few things that you should consider when you make your next power supply purchase. Without further ado, let's begin..."

HEC Power OP 475 Review @ AMDZone.com:

"As CPUs and video cards continue to grow in transistors and power consumption having a reliable power supply becomes more and more important. Cheap power supplies are one of the most common problems with many computer problems particularly from the DIY crowd. With out enough power when you slap a high end video card and fast CPU along with a couple of hard drives you can quickly eat up the watts."

Koolance EXOS Al Water Cooling System @ HardOCP:

"Bottom line is that if you are in the market for a all-in-one water cooling solution there simply is no better option than the EXOS or EXOS Al."

That's all for now gang!  Don't forget to check out our latest post too!  Rob did a nice job reviewing an impressive X800 Pro from Sapphire.