Gigabyte announced this week a new technology which it calls Ultra Durable 3, promises that motherboards featuring the new technology will achieve better overclocking, reduced heat and increased energy efficiency. The premise of the new technology is actually rather simple; increasing the amount of copper used in a motherboard will lower the impedance, reduce heat and improve signal quality.

According to Gigabyte, Ultra Durable 3 motherboards will be the first consumer desktop motherboards to feature 2-ounces of copper for each power and ground layer, doubling that of traditional motherboards.

A bit like how a larger copper heat sink often works better than a smaller one, having more copper throughout the motherboard allows for more efficient spreading of heat. As such, heat created by critical components on the motherboard will spread out across the entire motherboard more effectively, which Gigabyte claims can deliver 50°C cooler working conditions than traditional motherboards. Somehow that claim seems to be a bit misleading, but it should be interesting to see in tests how much cooler the motherboard components actually do get.

Doubling the amount of copper should also help to reduce the amount of impedance, which Gigabyte says is lowered by a factor of two. Impedance is like resistance in that is opposes the flow of electrical current, so reducing the impedance will also reduce wasted power. Less wasted power means less generated heat, cooler components and a lower power bill. Gigabyte claims the extra copper cuts the total amount of PCB electrical waste in half, which probably still does not amount to actually a whole lot, but every bit helps.

One last aspect in which the added copper apparently comes in handy is with improving signal quality, which results in a more stable system and greater overclocking margins. Of course, all these claims still need to be substantiated, but the theory behind adding extra copper looks sound enough.

For some users, the need for extra copper in motherboards may not be really all that important or necessary, especially if it comes at a premium cost. For serious overclockers and enthusiasts however, the little extra copper found in those motherboards will likely be welcomed, even if the effect turns out to be minor.

Kingston is one of the larger memory vendors and has
long offered upgrade kits and enthusiast memory, along with related
products such as flash memory devices. When we called for a 4 GB DDR2
memory kit, we received a HyperX kit with two 2 GB DDR2 DIMMs called
KHX8500D2K2-4G, from which you can already tell these are PC2-8500
DIMMs (DDR2-1066 speed). The HyperX family is Kingston’s product line
for enthusiasts, and there are DDR, DDR2 and DDR3 memory kits
available. However, Kingston does not belong to the group of memory
vendors that races for maximum clock speeds. This isn’t really a bad
thing. In fact, Kingston is actually the only memory company that
provides a truly solid technical specification sheet. You can get information on Kingston products on the corporate website www.kingston.com, while there is a microsite to deal with the HyperX line.

Package, Specifications

Believe it or not, we really liked the way Kingston
boxed its memory. Both DIMMs fit into an anti-static plastic box with a
clear cover, which is sealed with the product specifications. That’s
not as fancy as a huge color box, but it’s as much as you really need
to box a pair of memory modules. Both DIMMs are inserted in such a way
that prospective buyers can examine the product stickers. These tell
you about the part number and the voltage specification (2.2 V in the
case of our test samples), but they don’t tell you anything about
memory latencies. Only CL5-5-5-15 timings are supported, at 1.8 V
default voltage or at 2.2 V maximum voltage. The SPD ROM is programmed
to run the memory at DDR2-800 speed, 1.8 V and CL5-5-5-15 timings,
which are the default values.

When we tried to find the best prices for the Kingston
KHX8500 4 GB kit, we instantly found a great deal on shop.kingston.com,
where the regular $150 price was discounted to $135—not bad for a 2 x 2
GB memory kit. You may also go for a product version that is based on 4
x 1 GB modules, but the 2 x 2 GB kit we reviewed was temporarily out of
stock when we checked.

Overclocking

We started our overclocking attempts at the default
DDR2-1066 voltage of 2.2 V, which didn’t take us much further than the
default speed. However, a slight increase to 2.3 V helped to reach
DDR2-1130 reliably. Any faster speed would result in the system
becoming unstable.

Kingston provides an amazingly attractive price for
performance within the expected range. If you can live with the fact
that it doesn’t overclock much, this product provides an excellent
value and receives our Recommended Buy Award.

Modding
your computer to look cooler is one thing, and overclocking it your
processor and memory is pretty cool too. But someone has managed to
stuff a fully operational desktop PC into Nintendo's Minuscle Wii.!! Of course, the internals of the Wii were gutted and
everything taken out. But the end result is very interesting. While the
Wii is very small, similar desktops are available from companies such
as Dell and Apple — like the Mac Mini and Dell Studio desktop.

The
feat of course is doing it yourself. And this guy has stuffed an Intel
Celeron 1.3 GHz processor, a motherboard based on Intel’s 852 chipset,
512 MB of memory and a 40 GB hard drive. Other included accessories are
integrated Wi-Fi, digital video output via a DVI connector and even
three USB ports — one at the back and two where the original GameCube
controller ports were.

Despite the available disc slot on the face of the Wii,
he was unable to integrate an optical drive to utilize the opening.
However, this is easily remedied by attaching an external optical
drive. The builder also managed to stuff in two fans to keep the unit
cool. Unfortunately, the fans are small and because of this, have to
run at high speeds to keep the overall unit cool. However, if you were
building your own miniature PC like this, you can source out small fans
that don’t spin so loudly.

The "Wii PC" runs a copy of Windows XP SP3 and while it
isn’t the fastest PC out there, it is certainly one of the coolest —
especially if you’re a fan of Nintendo and its Wii.

A
lot of readers might remember the release of the Killer NIC in 2006
from Bigfoot Networks. At a ludicrous price for a network card, it was
big news. Bigfoot Networks pioneered the concept of a Network
Processing Unit (NPU) for consumers when it launched its first
generation of the Killer NIC. The whole idea behind the Killer NIC was
to offer consumers a very high-end network interface card that would
reduce lag/latency while playing online games.

It looks as though Dell remembers the whole craze about
the Killer NICs as well – according to a Dell press release they now
offer the Killer NIC K1 in its XPS 630 and XPS 730 gaming desktops.
Dell tosses this into the mix along with Nvidia’s PhysX card under
Dell’s “Gaming Essentials” section when customizing the said system
models. Dell has it priced at $149 – which is what you can expect to
pay for this specific model of Killer NIC at other online retailers
currently.

The Killer NIC is however a client-side device on a
network, so it is quite limited as to what it can actually do for the
user in terms of improving actual performance over the wire. It does
have tricks up its sleeves however. In all reality though, one could
sacrifice the cool black PCB of the Killer NIC and big fancy heat-sink
on its more expensive model and just purchase an Intel Server NIC for
less than half the price and get the exact same features and
performance. You’ll just be stuck with a non-attractive card – for
those of you with windows on your side panels.

In the end though, the biggest factors will always be
the path the packets are taking from your desktop to the server you are
playing on. There is nothing you can do about what happens in between.

Corsair’s Dominator memory is the state-of-the-art
product line offered by the memory specialist. Launched in 2008, it has
been extended from 2 GB kits to 4 GB kits and from DDR2 to DDR3 memory.
You’ll recognize it by a great mixture of low latencies, high clock
speeds and Corsair’s proprietary Dual Heat Exchange (DHX) cooling
technology, which dissipates heat through the inside of the memory
module as well as through the outside.

We looked at various types of Dominator memory, and
found all of them to offer great performance, while often still having
some overclocking margin despite their high stock speeds. However,
Dominator comes at a price: they are among the best, but also the most
expensive memory options at around $400. That said, the PC2-8500 kit,
which reaches only 1066 speeds, is much more affordable at less than
$200.

Product Details

We received a TWIN2X4096-9136C5DF kit for review, which
represents the top-of-the-line DDR2 memory kit. It consists of two 2 GB
modules, both supporting the Enhanced Performance Profile that is used
by Nvidia nForce 600 chipsets and higher models to automatically set
the fastest possible settings. The SPD-ROM is programmed for JEDEC
default CL5-5-5-18 timings.

Performance Specifications

PC2-9136 specifications equal DDR2-1142 speeds, which
represents a 571 MHz base clock speed. Corsair specified CL5-5-5-15
timings at this maximum clock speed, and requires a 2.1 V memory
voltage. An EPP-capable chipset is able to automatically set these
parameters, while you will have to make settings manually on Intel or
AMD chipsets.

All Dominator DIMMs include the Dominator Airflow, a
memory cooling device based on three 40 mm fans. The Dominator Airflow
can be snapped onto almost all memory sockets, so it can also be used
with non-Corsair hardware. We found the Dominator Airflow to be a nice
addition to ensure stable memory operation at high clock speeds, but we
consider it not a real advantage to reaching those faster memory
speeds. These are typically limited by the memory ICs and the cooling
solution, which is very solid in the case of the Dominator memory.

Overclocking

We wanted to see how far the new 2 GB DIMMs could go,
given that this 4 GB memory kit is already rated as PC2-9136. We looked
at the maximum clock speed using the specified CL5-5-5-15 timings at
the default 2.1 V voltage; the fastest stable speed was DDR2-1142 or
571 MHz base clock speed. Our next step was a voltage increase to 2.3
V, which we applied for all of the memory products to check maximum
overclocking, since we consider this the maximum value that should be
reliable over time. DDR2-1200 speed was possible here, but we found it
to be not entirely stable. Further voltage increase helped to make the
setting reliable, but this wasn’t what we wanted to do. Our goal was
secure overclocking at the specified timings and voltage, so we reached
a maximum of DDR2-1176 speed, which represented only a small overclock.