A team of computer geeks have set up a PC system equiped with one of the fastest CPUs on the market today - the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - in order to see the top frequency that can be reached. While the price for such a CPU is around $1300, the benefits are quite obvious when the respective platform will be used for applications which require a very strong processor. The QX9650 was built using the new Yorkfield architecture, which means that it is the first Intel processor to reach the 45nm design process. QX9650 is also the first quad-core processor to sport a 12MB L2 cache while it matches the 3GHz operating frequency of the QX6850. While the 3GHz frequency is rather something "normal" for QX9650, the 45nm building process makes it possible to require 25% less power and to be 26% cooler than QX6850. And that's what made the PC builder team wonder what the frequencies would be this CPU able to reach if overclocked. And, without any water-cooling system they managed to reach 4GHz - and easily too: the CPU was mounted on an ASUS P5E3 Deluxe, with a normal cooler and with the change of 10% in performance increase only! The Bios setting was changed from 9x to 10x CPU multiplier and a change in power consumption - 1.450v. Only on thsese settings did the QX9650 reach the 4GHz but also it was running as hot as QX6850 at 3GHz. The conclusion is that in the case of QX9650, the 4GHz frequency is not a problem and it doesn't require any special cooling.

Another piece of hardware that made its way onto CES 2008 was Casio's Exilim EX-F1 digital camera. Originally the camera was supposed to be able to shoot movies at 300 frames per second on a resolution of 640x480, but at the launch the specs changed: the resolution was only 512x384. Anyway, HD video can be captured at a resolution of 1920 x 1080, when rolling at 60fps, and the camera has a 1280 x 720 resolution for when working at 30fps - which is more than acceptable. You can use an HDMI cable to see your images or movies on the big HDTV set you might own or settle for the 2.8 inch LCD display of the camera. The 10.1-megapixel that the EX-F1 has helps in capturing still images in burst mode at 60 shots a second. This rate, as Casio claimed, was unheard of until now and allegedly shows that the camera is able to capture motion that even the human eye is not able to see. The 12x optical zoom, ISO 1600 sensitivity and SDHC memory card support are also good specs, but unfortunately no release date or price has been confirmed yet.

The latest card from GeCube's list of products from the Radeon 3800 video cards is the GC-HD385P3-E3, a Radeon 3850 with a special cooling system that is.

The video memory is 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 and should be quite effective in the requirements of the games of today. The card is mounted on the mainboard of the computer through the PCI-Express 2.0 slot. The video processing unit is a Radeon HD3850 (RV670PRO), produced under the 55nm standard which helps in reducing the power resources and the cooling requirements. Beside the support for the Direct X 10.1, the card brings 1080p resolution image through the integrated HDMI port including built-in 5.1 surround audio, HDCP and native support for Blu-ray and HD-DVD movies playback. Among other features, the card is fully compatible with Windows Vista and the aero shell interface and the supported Shader Model version is 4.1. Like any other card from the 3800 family, this one is compatible with the ATI CrossFireX™ technology which allows to use two video cards into the same PC, with 2 video card PCI-Express slots, and a CrossFire compatible motherboard chipset. The price ranges around $200 and the card should be available already in all the big PC stores.

The latest RAM module produced by OCZ that goes in the line of CrossFire is the Reaper HPC CrossFire Certified Edition. The specs are DDR2, PC2-8500, 1066MHz and it comes in dual-channel kits of 2GB (2x1024). This memory was designed under AMD's certification program and it can bring the best of a PC if used within a Crossfire system. The latest top notch video cards from the AMD line, the radeon 3870 were the first to support the DirectX 10.1 standard. So what about that interesting heatspreader? The official description says: "These unique DDR2-1066 modules feature the patent-pending Reaper HPC (Heat Pipe Conduit) heatspreader which is engineered to deliver superior silent heat dissipation over traditional heatspreaders. The Reaper HPC is an innovative cooling solution developed by OCZ to effectively minimize heat produced by high-speed memory. As heat rises into the thermo-conductive copper heat pipe conduit, it is dissipated through a compact aluminum fin array. By strategically guiding performance-robbing heat away from key memory components, the unique Reaper HPC design maximizes passive cooling to improve longevity and stability of the modules." The timings are 5-5-5 which should be pretty good for the category in which these modules can be classified and if I were to build a CrossFire, these modules would come in handy.

The gamers and all the other computer enthusiasts would be very interested into this PC setup by HP: BlackBird 002 - a very powerful water-cooled PC. Obviously, you will get to have a very good gaming experience without any system noise. The system case is the HP Custom "Blackbird" ATX model - a very sleek overall design which also looks similar to a server computer unit. As motherboard there's the ASUS Striker Supreme, and the CPU is Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 Overclocked (Quad-core 11x333MHz 3.67 GHz 2x4MB shared L2 cache).

The heat-prevention system is made up of Asetek LLC Liquid Cooling for CPU/GPUs - Factory Sealed, 1 x 120mm front case fan and 2 x 120mm top case fans (for radiator). In terms of system memory, this system hits the 2GB barrier: 2x1024MB Corsair Dominator PC2-8500(CM2X1024-8500C5D) - to be noted - more RAM can be added - up to 4 GB (4x 1GB RAM modules) but those 4GB of RAM will be fully used only under Windows Vista 64 (nobody likes Windows XP 64 bit for a lot of objective reasons!). As video cards, HP selected AMD Radeon HD X2900 XT 1GB x 2 (CrossFire Capability) because of the increased compatibility of the CrossFire system with more games than the "usual" "SLI" setup from Nvidia. The hard drives are 1x160GB Raptor 16MB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s (WD1600ADFS), 1x750GB Seagate 16MB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s (ST3750640AS), while the optical drives is slot-loaded with a special unit: DVDR with LightScribe (TS-T632L), Blu-ray Rewriter/HD-DVD Reader (HL-DT-ST BD-RE GGW-H10N). The PSU is 1.1 kWcapable and has a modular cable design. The rest of the set-up is pretty standard for the PCs of today, with lots of USB ports and card reader. The operating system that comes with it is Windows Vista 32 bit - which goes to prove what I said above about RAM - 2GB will be enough (maybe 3GB as top full) for the 32bit version of any Windows version. More details can be found here.