In this eight-part video series, Loyd shows you everything on building your PC from start to finish. What tools do you need? What components work with other components? And just how do you assemble the computer? All of these are answered in the following videos.

extremetech

Ah, summer. It's a time of long days, relaxing evenings, and Country Time Lemonade. For these few, halcyon moments, it's possible to rely on the 15,000 cicadas parked just outside the window to drown out the sounds of your drunken neighbors punching each other in the head over the last Pabst Blue Ribbon, instead of feeding a steady addiction to prescription drugs.

It's also the other season where electricity consumption can become a major issue. Winter, and the associated cost of heating oil, gets most of the press on this topic, but anyone who has ever owned a home or apartment with central air knows just how much the monthly power bill can spike when you flick the thermostat to "Cool." With gasoline at $4.00+ per gallon, saving every possible watt counts more than ever, and we here at the Orbiting HQ feel your pain. Since digging a deep basement for all of your Nerd-Caves isn't possible, we've put together a quick-and-easy guide to reducing your computer's power consumption. Every penny you can shave off your electrical bill is, after all, another penny you can spend on fuel to drive you back and forth from the job you hate with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.

arstechnica

ATI has a definite winner here as the card comes close to the GTX280 in one situation and beats the previous generation HD3870 throughout the tests. Apparently the HD4870 comes close to the performance of a GTX260 in almost every case, but for $100 less making it a real winner. Competition has been lacking in the graphics market since the launch of the 8800GTX two years ago, but ATI is back with a vengeance offering lower power draw, great performance and features for a lower price point than the competition at the same performance segment. The big gun of the ATI lineup, the HD4870X2 is due in August and should outperform any GTX280 across the board for lower prices.

motherboards.org

"Well, by some divine intervention of some sort, I managed to get into the South Korean Huxley beta, so here's a batch of high quality images from the first quest, if you have any questions about the game, ask away."

Reviewstash.com

Just a few short years ago, home theater PCs were pretty cutting-edge. You pretty much had to be an enthusiast to even know such a thing was possible, and setting up a suitable system wasn't cheap—especially if you wanted to make the most of a high-definition TV. But as is often the case in this industry, cutting edge features and capabilities quickly trickle down to the mainstream. Even today's run-of-the-mill home theater PCs are leagues ahead of the once-impressive media rig that I assembled several years ago and still use today.

Several factors have conspired to make home theater PCs so capable and popular. Microsoft deserves some credit for bringing a 10-foot GUI to Windows, making it easier for folks to control their PCs from the couch without having to mess with additional software. The industry trend toward lower power consumption has helped, too, delivering scores of cool-running chips that can get by with the kind of near-silent cooling you want in your living room. Integrated graphics chipsets have also stepped up in a big way, offering credible gaming chops and an arsenal of advanced video decoding tricks.

For a few months now, AMD's 780G has reigned as the only integrated graphics chipset capable of handling high-definition video decoding. Now it has company in the form of Nvidia's new GeForce 8300. This single-chip core logic package features a graphics core derived from the GeForce 8400 GS, full Blu-ray decode acceleration, a HyperTransport 3.0 processor link prime for Phenom processors, PCI Express 2.0 connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet, loads of SATA RAID, and an even dozen USB ports. Impressive specs, no doubt, but can the GeForce 8300 unseat the 780G as our integrated graphics chipset of choice? Read on to find out.

The Tech Report

Performance on the QX9770 was exemplary, easily the fastest CPU or system I have ever tested with the exception being the dual QX9775 SkullTrail system which is faster, but of course that is with two CPUs that are virtually identical to the single QX9770 here. The QX9770 easily beats the Phenom X4 9850 CPU, but the two CPUs are in completely different price leagues and not a fair comparison as the person wanting a QX9770 will not likely look at an AMD CPU for their high-end computer. The extra L2 cache really shines in applications and games. As our main video gaming test CPU, the QX9770 when combined with a high end dual card like the 9800GX2 or HD3870X2.

motherboards.org

"For most of us, the 20th was the first day of summer, and to celebrate the start of summer, reviewstash is giving away two fresh 80 gigabyte Zunes as showcased in our earlier review. To keep this place sane however, we've got a few simple guidelines for you all to follow, so whether you need these Zunes to take the boredom off of getting in shape this summer,
or you just plan on selling these (you terrible person you ), you won't be eligible unless you adhere to the rules."

Reviewstash.com

I have shown you a few DirectX 10 video cards in the past few months. These cards have all been nVidia’s cards. ATI has some DirectX 10 video cards too. And though they came out later than nVidia’s cards, they are still out here and are plentiful. Today we are going to take a look at the ATI HD 2600 Pro. This should prove interesting compared to what nVidia has to offer. With no further ado, let’s begin.

DevHardware

Getting the bad out of the way first, there's no escaping the price tag of the Cooler Master case. For those with a faint of heart the Cooler Master CSX Limited Edition Custom Painted Warfare Stacker 830 case is not for you as the price tag of $999 is just too much for all but the craziest enthusiast. The custom paint job is head and shoulders above anything you can buy pre-made without a doubt. The Warfare case is a collector's item in some respects as only 200 have been made and each is different from the other. If you have 1000 bucks to spend on a case this is definitely one for you as the case comes with everything you could possibly need in a case and more. There are several models in the Custom painted Stacker 830 line including the Warfare case reviewed here. CSX also does custom jobs that you have to special order from their website. CSX says that they will try their best to fulfill an order, but certain things like trademarks, licensed images may be rejected.

motherboards.org

Western Digital hatched its latest Raptor back in April, revealing a unique departure from more traditional designs. This leaner, meaner VelociRaptor VR150 is actually a 2.5" drive sitting inside a heatsink that slides nicely into standard 3.5" bays. But don't think you can take this most recent Raptor lightly just because it's gone on a diet. Despite a smaller form factor, the VelociRaptor still offers 300GB of capacity—twice that of its 3.5" forebear. The VR150 is also the first Raptor with a 300MB/s Serial ATA interface, and its trademark 10K-RPM spindle speed hasn't skipped a beat.

Like its predecessors in their prime, the VelociRaptor proved to be the all-around fastest SATA hard drive on the market—and a surprisingly quiet and power-efficient one, at that. However, the drive we used in our initial look at the VR150 was an engineering sample with pre-production firmware. Final, production drives have now made their way onto the market, and we've managed to score a retail sample that should be representative of the drives you can buy today.

Naturally, we've run this tuned-up VelociRaptor through the wringer to see if it can live up to the Editor's Choice distinction we awarded the VR150 after our first encounter. Read on to see whether finished firmware reels in the VelociRaptor's propensity to outrun the competition or if Western Digital has managed to wring even more performance from its radical Raptor redesign.

The Tech Report

Wow, there is fast and then there is faster and then there's the fastest. The new EVGA GTX208 FTW Edition VGA card is the fastest single card solution we have ever had to grace our labs period; it's as fast as an entry level 9800GX2 and faster than dual 9800GTX's running in an SLI configuration. Usually with a release that comes so soon after a previous release you see just slight improvements in performance over its predecessor, but the GTX280 release brings over double the power of the 9800GTX. EVGA has also taken an already fast chipset and pumped up the volume by way of their FTW overclocked Edition, which just blazes a trail of pixel pumped framerates. And with EVGAs new overclocking tool called Precision you can push that little old GTX card just a wee-bit further lads.

motherboards.org

The battle between AMD and Nvidia for the hearts, minds, and disposable income of PC enthusiasts is starting to get scrappy. First, AMD scheduled a press event to distract folks from Nvidia's GeForce GTX 200 series launch, which Nvidia subsequently pulled forward. Perhaps in retaliation, the green team then divulged plans to unleash a faster version of its GeForce 9800 GTX. This GeForce 9800 GTX+ will sell for only $229, dropping the vanilla 9800 to $199—conveniently stepping on the price point of AMD's next-gen Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. Lest it be outmaneuvered, and because cards are actually available for sale already, AMD has decided to lift the curtains on the 4850 a little early. Keep reading for our first look at AMD's new mid-range Radeon.

The Tech Report

Earlier this year, AMD CEO Hector Ruis boldly pledged to return the company to profitability in the second half of 2008. A recent iSuppli report indicates that this may be an even harder task than originally projected, as AMD actually lost market share in the first quarter of 2008 compared to the fourth quarter of 2007.

In the first quarter, Intel earned 79.7 percent of the revenue in the global microprocessor market, compared to just 13 percent for AMD. For Intel, those first quarter results reflected a net gain of 1.2 percentage points, while AMD's 13 percent revenue share was 1.1 percent lower than what the company netted in Q4 2007. The good news, however, is that AMD's market share rose 2.2 percent in the first quarter of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007.

Additional market share is a good thing, but revenue is quite valuable in its own right, especially for a company as cash-strapped as AMD. The company's second quarter results should be available in the not-too-distant future, and are likely to be a far more accurate bellwether of AMD's likely performance through the end of 2008. AMD launched a number of new products or product revisions since the last few weeks of Q1, including the 780G chipset, Phenom's B3 revision, triple-core CPUs, and just recently, the ATI 4850 and 4870 video cards. These last launched too late to have more than a minimal impact on the company's second quarter financials, but the combined impact of all these launches put together might have shifted AMD's revenue in a more positive direction.

ARSTechnica

The latest firmware 2.40 put out just Tuesday for the Sony Playstation 3 was apparently pulled shortly after its release due to multiple reported problems caused by the update. If you’ve already gotten the update and things are working fine you are one of the lucky ones, otherwise if you seem to be faced with a bricked console you’ll need to be getting in touch with Sony support or possibly trying to fix it yourself.

Sony confirmed Wednesday that they had official pulled the available update within an hour after its release due to the reported problems, which they say were experienced by a “limited” number of PS3 gamers. The most common problem appears to be that the console gets “stuck” when booting and doesn’t get past that “wave” background display, never reaching the XMB. Some argue that formatting the PS3 hard disk will fix the problem which you can attempt, but at your own risk.

SlipperyBrick

Outdated and unpatched browsers are putting 40 percent of Web surfers at risk, according to a recent study by Google, IBM and Switzerland's Communications Systems Group. Most of the surfers at risk are using outdated Internet Explorer versions.

If the food industry ran its business like the Internet browsing software industry, then consumers would be hurling lawsuits like bad tomatoes at the companies that give us Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

The comparison is existent in a wide-ranging new study showing that approximately 40 percent of the Internet surfing public -- 576 million users -- browsed the Web using outdated and/or unpatched software, putting themselves and the computing public at risk.

TechNewsWorld

Is the federal government using people's own cell phones to track their movements? It's a question two privacy groups want answered, and they've filed a lawsuit seeking to force the U.S. Department of Justice to cough it up.

Two legal groups have filed a lawsuit to get more information on whether the U.S. government may be using Americans' cell phones to pinpoint their locations -- sometimes without any warrant or court oversight.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation Latest News about Electronic Frontier Foundation filed their suit on Tuesday urging a federal court to order the Department of Justice to turn over records related to the government's use of people's cell phones as tracking devices.

"This is a critical opportunity to shed much-needed light on possibly unconstitutional government surveillance techniques," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU and lead attorney on the case. "Signing up for cell phone services should not be synonymous with signing up to be spied on and tracked by the government."

TechNewsWorld

Linksys announced its latest router today, the WRT610N, and it might just be the first router that offers everything you would want and then some.

First off, it's a true dual-band wireless router. This is important because I've run into not-so-true dual-band wireless routers before, like the D-Link DGL-4500 or the Netgear WNDR3300. The D-Link can only work in either 2.4Ghz frequency or 5ghz frequency at a time making it not so much of a dual-band router. The Netgear, on the other hand, can work in both frequencies at time, however, in dual-band mode only its 5Ghz frequency access point offers Draft N 2.0 performance, while the 2.4Ghz access point works at the old school 802.11g speed (maxed out at 54 Mbps). The Linksys WRT610N is the first I've got my hands on that offers simultaneous Draft N 2.0 dual-band. It has two separate Wireless-N access points, one uses the 2.4Ghz frequency while the other uses the 5Ghz frequency, and both can be set to operate at the same time.

Crave

No moving parts, shock resistant, and incredibly short seek time are some of many benefits you get from a solid-state hard drive. However, for now, the price for a SSD is so incredibly high that calling "insanely priced" might not be an over statement. It's hard to justify (or to afford for that matter) spending about $1,000 for only 64GB when you can pay about 10 percent of that cost for a regular 200GB laptop hard drive.

So how about making our own SSD?

Sans Digital just released the CR2T CompactFlash card enclosure that might make this possible. The enclosure has the same form factor and works the same as a regular 2.5-inch SATA hard drive. It can hold two CF cards and can even configure them in either RAID 1 (mirroring) or nRAID (spanning), where the two CF cards are combined into one.

Crave

Another entrant in the race to produce a ducted-fan-propelled, vertical-take-off-and-landing UAV, the planned "humvee of the air" will morph to different missions and reach targets three times faster than helicopters, according to the manufacturer.

The official name of the vehicle is VTOL-Swift Tactical Aerial Resource, or V-STAR. With a cruising speed of 288 knots, a 650-mile range and a 400-pound payload, the V-STAR promises to be a "breakthrough solution for frontline military logistics," according to Broomfield, Colo.-based Frontline Aerospace. The aircraft would use a Rolls-Royce gas turbine with counter-rotating blades and "diamond-box-wing" design that transitions to forward flight when needed.

Crave

The Mozilla Foundation has officially set a previously non-existent Guinness World Record for the largest number of software downloads in a day.

Firefox 3 clocked 8,002,530 downloads on the popular web browser’s launch day (18 June), according to GWR judges who confirmed the figure yesterday. It tallied up the numbers after auditing and checking Mozilla servers to ensure duplicate and unfinished downloads were dismissed.

"As the arbiter and recorder of the world's amazing facts, Guinness World Records is pleased to add Mozilla's achievement to our archives," confirmed Guinness World Records manager Gareth Deaves in a statement.

However, the record attempt nearly fell flat on its face, with the official launch turning into something of a PR fiasco as servers buckled under the strain of demand. For almost two hours after it was supposed to kick off, Mozilla’s websites were either unavailable or publishing html error messages.

The open source organisation, which had claimed 8.3 million downloads for the 24-hour period, finally allowed the clock to start ticking when the servers returned to life and – eventually – the publicity stunt paid off.

TheRegister

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