You know Asus has a wide variety of products. Well, I decided to buy a Silent Knight II CPU cooler last year and from what I have seen thus far, the cooler is only slightly better than the stock one, even though it comes with an impressive design. Now Asus is updating the cooler lineup with the Royal Knight.

The Royal Knight cooler retains the all-copper buildup of its predecessor and integrates 6 heat pipes. It doesn’t look that massive anymore, as this time, Asus wanted to give it a British Chevalier allure. To fit the new medieval style, Asus included a motif comprised of a crown, an eagle and a coat of arms.
The cooler also includes a 120mm LED fan (22 dBA noise) with a top-flow design and PWM function. The massive corona fin design of the previous cooler is replaced with a twin wing-shaped copper fin design that expands the heat exchange area for improved thermal performance.

Here is some additional info:
- CPU support:
Intel Core 2 Extreme (LGA 775)
Intel Core 2 Quad / Core 2 Duo (LGA 775)
Intel Pentium processor family (LGA775)
AMD Phenom FX/X3/X4 (Socket 1207/AM2+)
AMD Athlon 64 FX/X2 (Socket AM2/AM2+)
AMD Athlon X2 (Socket AM2/AM2+)
- Cooler dimension / Net Weight 131mm(W) x 140mm(L) x 138mm(H) / 790g
- Connector: 4 pin
- Fan dimension 120 x 120 x 25 (mm)
- Fan speed 800 ~ 1,300 rpm ±10%

No availability and price details for now.

Microsoft has been teasing us lately with an ad that boldly encourages us to “say Goodbye to Laser.” Not laser sabers, guns, Blu-rays or terahertz beams. No, Microsoft is ready to launch a new type of mouse sensors next month and claims that those laser sensors currently considered the best have nothing on their new technology. The new mouse will officially be launched on September 9.

Since Microsoft is not that good at keeping secrets and most of the time we get to catch a glimpse of their soon-to be-launched products way before the official announcement, Engadget went ahead and came up with some pics and additional info on the new mouse technology. Engadget found something on that German Amazon site, which seems to be allowed to post pictures and info sooner than official sources. It seems that Microsoft preps a new Explorer Mini Mouse for notebooks with "Blue Track" technology.

Apparently, the technology doesn’t use any fancy optics, just a blue LED in combination with a wide-angle lens. Rumor has it that this new combination will alow mice to provide smoother reactions on even more surfaces. The Blue Track stuff should be extended to all the other mice, including the gaming-grade ones.

So LEDs are making a comeback. I was expecting something more sophisticated, but I guess Microsoft knows better and we’ll get to see just how well this new technology performs in the weeks to come.

Are gamers really requesting more improved PC chasses since AMD/ATI introduced the Radeon HD 4870X2 graphics cards? I don’t know, but it looks like NZXT has done some market studies and came to the conclusion that there is a great demand for efficient PC chasses. Not that they don’t have a wide array of chasses already, but NZXT already announces another addition to their high-end lineup.

Fudzilla informs that the new NZXT Whisper comes in a full tower case design. The case is specifically built for those of you who like to keep things quiet and cool at the same time. In this sense, the case is equipped with 10mm noise dampening foam pads pre-fitted to the case sides and top panel, as well as rubber grommets for the HDDs and a padded PSU holder. I’d say this setup should be enough to reduce noise under 40 db.

On the cooling side, we find out that the new Whisper case integrates four fans: one 120mm blue LED intake, one 120mm rear exhaust and two 80mm rear exhaust fans.

Since the Whisper is a full tower case, you’ll find enough room to connect up to nine hard drives, plus you get a total of six 5.25 inch bays. NZXT didn’t forget about the air flow issues and provided a cable management system consisting of holes that can be use to hide most of the cables. In case you are planning to transform you rig into a LAN party system, do note that the Whisper is made from steel and it has a plastic door on the front, so you might have to work out a bit more to move the chassis around.

This time we know the Whisper comes in September and should retail for $139.99.

While 2 GB seem to suffice even for the infamous Windows Vista, PC games are likely to require more and more RAM coupled with a powerful GPU and CPU combo in the years to come. Take for example Crysis Warhead which requires more than 2 GB of ram to run at relatively smooth framerates. Sure, that might point to the fact that some game developers are unable to optimize their software, but the need for more memory isn’t limited to games and video encoding. The server sector is another important RAM devourer.

Taking all these things into consideration, Hynix Semiconductor, one of the major memory chip manufacturers, announced that it will soon launch MetaRAM's new DDR3 technology in its next generation R-DIMMs. This will bring the world's first 16GB 2-rank DIMM (HMT32GR7AER4C-GD) to the masses. The new modules have already been demoed at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco last week.

According to Digit-Life, DDR3 MetaRAM is similar to the previous generation of DDR2 technology that enables significantly more memory in a server. However, Hynix had to find a way for the DDR3 MetaRAM technology to enable larger memory capacity without negatively impacting the operating frequency of the DDR3 memory channel. The system on display at IDF had 24GB of DDR3 SDRAM and was capable of 1066 million transactions per-second (MT/s). Since Nehalem CPUs enable triple channel configurations, users may include up to 96 GB running at 1066 MT/s.

Hynix also announced 8 GB modules but the press release discloses no info on availability and price.

The audio card market is clearly dominated by Creative, but this supremacy doesn’t always seem to prove beneficial to end-users. Sure, there still are Realtek, Terratec and M-Audio, which target specific groups like professional musicians or budget users. However, multimedia and game support has been with Creative ever since Aureal died. Creative seems pretty happy with X-Fi and, because there’s no real threat coming from other companies, no new technologies got previewed as of lately, except for some diversified products based on X-Fi. The latest addition to the X-Fi lineup is the X-Fi Go!

The product is quite ambiguous to say in the least. It integrates 1GB of flash memory which Creative says is meant to be using for storing save games, game profiles and just about anything else. Fudzilla reports that Creative managed to squeeze support for Alchemy, to make it backwards compatible with older games, plus the newer CMSS-3D and EAX Advanced HD. The USB dongle has a headphone and mic connector and it includes all the drivers you need. I’m trying to figure out the actual use for such a device. Maybe it’s meant for people who want quality sounds on their office PCs.

X-Fi Go! Is set to cost S$79, but it will be available only in Singapore for the time being.