Cooler Master CM 690

Cooler Master's latest chassis attempts to give enthusiasts what they want with a solid emphasis on cooling and ventilation. A meshed exterior design allows ambient air to pass unrestricted into the chassis while enthusiasts with a fetish for fans can install up to seven system fans in this chassis. Although we can probably imagine how much of a din that many fans will make, Cooler Master clearly believes that there is a market for such an extreme air-cooled design.



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SanDisk's Flash-Based Hard Drives

The SSD 5000 by SanDisk currently is the fastest SATA drive in a 2.5" form factor, offering a constant 68 MB/s read throughput and 40-50 MB/s sequential write performance. Also, its 0.1 ms access time is virtually nonexistent and the time required to boot Windows XP or Vista is amazingly short. No other drive in a 2.5" form factor offers higher transfer rates, better minimum transfer rates or quicker access time. In addition, flash-based drives will contribute to extending battery run times on notebooks, as their power requirements are 30-400% below the energy consumption of traditional 2.5" hard drives. The time saved when launching applications such as Windows is reason enough for me to purchase one of these drives for my notebook soon. Indeed, real enthusiasts have no option but to invest in a SSD, because the performance is noticeably better than with any other hardware upgrade.

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Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R (Intel P35)

CPU Support

• Supports all 90nm/65nm Intel LGA775 processors
• 45nm ready (Wolfdale & Yorkfield)
• Quad-Core Optimized

Chipset

Northbridge: Intel P35

• 533 / 800 / 1066 / 1333MHz front side bus
• PCI Express x16 for graphics

Southbridge: Intel ICH9R

• Intel High Definition Audio
• Supports six PCI Express x1 lanes
• Supports up to twelve USB 2.0 ports
• Supports six SATA 3.0Gbps ports (with Matrix Storage Technology)
• Integrated 10/100/1000Mbps MAC

Memory

• Four unbuffered DIMM of 1.8 Volt DDR2 SDRAM
• Supports 533-1066MHz dual channel DDR2 memory architecture, 8GB max
• Two unbuffered DIMM of 1.5 Volt DDR3 SDRAM
• Supports 800-1333MHz dual channel DDR3 memory architecture, 4GB max

Storage

Intel ICH9R Southbridge

• 6 x SATA 3.0Gbps interface
• Intel Matrix Storage Technology
• Supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5, RAID 10

Gigabyte SATA2 (JMicron JMB363)

• 1 x Ultra ATA 33/66/100/133 (data transfer rate up to 133MB/sec.)
• 2 x SATA 3.0Gbps interface (eSATA)
• SATA RAID 0, RAID1 and JBOD

Audio

• Intel High Definition Audio (Azalia)
• Realtek ALC889A HD Audio CODEC
• Protected path content encryption/decryption (Microsoft WLP 3.0 compliant)
• Optical and coaxial S/PDIF

Networking

• Realtek RTL8111B PCIe Gigabit Ethernet

I/O Interface

• 1 x Floppy connector
• 1 x Ultra ATA IDE connectors
• 8 x SATA connectors
• 12 x USB 2.0 ports (4 x rear, 8 x header)
• 1 x RJ45 LAN port
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF Output
• 1 x Coaxial S/PDIF Output
• 8-Channel Audio I/O ports
• 1 x COM port (header)
• 1 x mini-DIN-6 PS/2 keyboard port

Expansion Slots

• 1 x PCIe x16 slots, PCI Express Bus specification v1.1 compliant
• 3 x PCIe x1 slots, PCI Express Bus specification v1.1 compliant
• 3 x 32-bit PCI slots, PCI 2.3 compliant

Special Features

• Gigabyte Ultra Durable 2
• 100% Solid Capacitors
• Low RDS(on) MOSFETs
• Ferrite Core chokes
• PCB
• ATX Form Factor, 12"x 9.6"(30.5cm x 24.4cm)

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