Reviews Of Desktop PCs, DIY PC Builds, All-In-Ones, And Small Form Factor PCs
In-depth product reviews and news of Computer Desktops, DIY PC Builds, All-In-One PCs, and Small Form Factor PCs. If it crunches numbers, pushes pixels, throws down the frag or provides a digital canvass for content creation, you'll find it there.
If you are a regular here at HotHardware.com, you have most likely heard of Alienware, one of the companies that helped establish the market for high-performance, gaming PCs. Since hitting the scene in 1996, Alienware has become a leader not only in gaming PCs but also in high-performance desktop, notebook, media center, and professional systems. Alienware's refreshing philosophy emphasizes building a system "as if it were your own." As most of you probably know, Dell acquired Alienware about a year ago in order to leverage Alienware's edgy brand. Some may fear that this means the worst for Alienware, but for now, Alienware still operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary...
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Whether you are contemplating building a standard desktop, multimedia PC or that killer gaming rig you've always wanted, one of the biggest things to consider today is noise. There is a major shift in thinking lately, as a growing number of users, and companies alike, are tackling the problem of ambient noise in the quest for a quieter PC. With video cards and CPUs increasing in clock speeds, so has the heat they generate, which often has stock coolers running faster and louder than they ever have before. To combat this issue, we've seen some creative approaches to the noise problem. With regards to video card cooling, we've seen custom two slot coolers as well as innovative...
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With the advent of the mini-PC, a completely new industry has been born. Well, maybe it isn't so new anymore, but what started out almost as a novelty has matured into a major craze in the enthusiast market. Today's mini-PCs come in a broad range of flavors with a wide variety of features. Sitting high atop the list of unique mini-PCs is ASUS' latest offering, the S-press Deluxe (S1-P111) mini-barebones PC. As the "deluxe" name implies, the S-presso Deluxe is the most feature laden of two models ASUS is offering. The standard model follows a more typical mini-PC approach, while the Deluxe brings some unique options not commonly found in other offerings. ...
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The AOpen EZ65 & Biostar iDEQ 200T Shuttle Isn't the Only OEM Making SFF Systems... By, Marco Chiappetta December 16, 2003 With all of the buzz surrounding Shuttle's popular XPC line of small form factor systems, you'd think they were the only company producing these diminutive machines, which obviously is not the case. Over the past year or so, virtually every major player in PC hardware has brought their version of the mini-PC to the market. Some of them have been viable alternatives to the XPC product line-up, while others simply can't hold a candle to Shuttle's SFF systems. Today on HotHardware.Com, we're going to take a close look at...
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asetek Vapochill Extreme Edition How can cooling be such a hot topic? Written by: Robert Maloney September 29, 2003 What a better way to end the summer season then to write a review about CPU cooling, in this case about the latest Vapochill unit from asetek, the Vapochill XE. For the uninitiated, asetek, based out of Denmark, has been producing the Vapochill line of CPU cooling units since 1997. The technology behind these units is called Vapor Phase cooling, and although you may not know the name you should be quite familiar with its use. That's because pretty much every refrigerator in the past century or so is based on the same principle. In the Vapochill, heat from...
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asetek's ChillControl Windows beta An exclusive look at asetek's latest efforts Written by: Robert Maloney October 12, 2003 A first look at asetek's Windows-based ChillControl The best just got better As we alluded to in our review on the Vapochill XE Cooling Unit review, asetek has been working on a Windows-based version of their ChillControl software. In the past, making modifications to the cooling system required connecting a cable from the ChillControl unit to an available COM port, and then booting from diskette into a DOS-based version of the software. While not elegant, it still was an easy enough process to change the settings, although it required restarting the system...
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The Asetek Vapochill Vapor Phase Cooling System Taking the Pentium 4 To 3.3GHz And Beyond By, Dave Altavilla October 23, 2002 The last time we checked in with the folks at Asetek, back in July of 2000, we were working with the Pentium III at its highest core clock speed of 933MHz at the time. The world of Personal Computing has changed dramatically since then and so has the Vapochill, Asetek's Vapor Phase Cooling System for Pentium 3/4 and Socket A Athlon platforms. Back then, we were impressed with the capabilities of the unit but were set back a bit by its somewhat complicated and cumbersome setup and assembly process. Regardless, once the product was properly setup,...
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The Asetek Vapochill and Abit CX6 An Adventure In Over-Clocking June 27, 2000 - By Dave Altavilla Art form, hobby, addiction.... whatever you want to call it, Over-Clocking and the quest for every last MHz. that can be wrung out of a CPU, is beginning to become a national and global past time. With each new Motherboard, CPU, Heat Sink or Over-Clocking tool, new plateaus of performance are being reached that were unattainable with standard equipment. The "need for speed" has truly been the mother of invention. Some extreme over-clocking setups begin in the lab and others still are conceived in a garage or basement. In either case, the people behind the cause...
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