CAT | General
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Techpowerup review the Sapphire Edge-HD Mini PC
No comments · Posted by James Thorburn in General
Small Atom based Nettops are two a penny these days, but few are as sleek and stylish as the new Sapphire Edge-HD Mini PC.
Techpowerup have a full review on their site.
Many people have contacted me to let me know that Media Center Studio, which we had previously previously produced an article and video guide for, no longer worked after a Windows Update made by Microsoft.
Fortunately the enterprising users of The Green Button Forum were able to track down the problem and produce a fix, which you can find in the forum thread here.
To ensure Media Center Studio continues to work even with future updates it is a good idea to place a shortcut to the application in your system start-up, ensuring the fix is carried out each time your system is started before Media Center loads.
fix · media center studio · patch · Update
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techPowerUp take on the HIS Radeon HD 5450
No comments · Posted by James Thorburn in General
techPowerUp have taken a look at the HIS Radeon HD 5450, younger brother to the Radeon HD 5570 we reviewed recently.
While the 5450 may be lacking in gaming performance in some cases less is more.
“Power consumption is about as low as it can get. Not much to say here, other than that it’s amazing and shows how much AMD’s GPU design team has done to achieve low power. HIS has done their part with the PCB design, too, which seems to be highly efficient as well.”AMD · ATI · Radeon · Review · techPowerUp
The Tech Report have taken a look at four small H55 motherboards, including the Zotac H55 ITX.
Some interesting information in it, particularly in terms of power consumption.
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Asus Xonar DX and the Dolby Digital dilemma…. Our solution
No comments · Posted by James Thorburn in General
When we took a look at the Sapphire Radeon HD 5570 recently we also mulled over the usage of the Home Theatre as a gaming platform in general. One area which we didn’t touch upon in that piece which has proved a weakness for some – audio.
For most gamers this isn’t a big issue, surround sound devices are connected by multiple stereo audio jacks or in the case of some headphones, USB. But with a Home Theatre set up there’s a good chance you’ll want to connect your system to a separate receiver over TOSLINK or Coaxial S/PDIF – this is where problems can arise.
So today we’ve taken a look at the ASUS Xonar DX, how it deals with surround sound gaming over S/PDIF connections, the problems its approach cause, and our very own makeshift solution. Read on to find out more…..
ASUS · Dolby Digital · Dolby Digital Live · DTS · Gaming · MCE · Xonar DX
Aria have a couple interesting offers today.
First up is the Compro VideoMate S350 PCI Digital Satellite TV Tuner, a DVB-S Freesat tuner, for £23.49. Perfect for the Windows 7 Media Center user with a satellite dish but no Sky subscription.
Next is the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4550, the predecessor to the Radeon HD 5570 we looked at recently. Again this is just £23.49.
MSI have released a new microATX board based on the 890GX chipset, the 890GXM-G65.
The 890GXM-G65 supports processors based around AMD’s AM3 socket, with the Radeon HD 4290 graphics core and support for both USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps. It’s not cheap mind, with sites currently listing it around £130, twice the price of the H55 based ASRock H55M we reviewed yesterday.
890GX · 890GXM0-G65 · AM3 · AMD · mATX · microATX · Motherboard · MSI
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ASRock’s H55M reviewed here at MCE-Pro – H55 on a budget
No comments · Posted by James Thorburn in General
Our latest article is now online, taking a look at the ASRock H55M, a low price microATX motherboard. But what does it offer for the HTPC builder?
Read our review to find out…
ASRock · Core i3 · Core i5 · Core i7 · H55 · H55M · HTPC · mATX · microATX · Motherboard · Review
The Tech Report has taken a look at the AMD 890GX chipset for Socket AM3 processors, along with a pair of motherboards from ASUS and Gigabyte.
The 890GX includes AMD’s new SB850 southbridge, and is the first chipset to natively support SATA3. Combined with a low power Athlon or Phenom II and an SSD could this chipset be the foundation of a quick and quiet HTPC set up?
CeBIT coverage this year seems to have been surprisingly thin on the ground, but BCCHardware have been there and have several articles on the site looking at the various exhibitors.
Our favourite has to be the Silverstone stand, which featured not only their traditional HTPC cases but also an ITX chassis that can take full length graphics cards – including the mighty Radeon HD 5870!
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