PowerColor Devil HD 7870 Review
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Gas Cloud Spaghettified at the Milky Way's Core
At the center of our galaxy, and possibly all galaxies, is a supermassive black hole. Weighing in at roughly four million solar masses, Sagittarius A star (Sgr A*), our supermassive black hole, has a wide reach and is currently grasping at a massive gas cloud. Astronomers have recently used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to observe and measure the cloud's speed as it just barely escapes the black hole.
As dangerous as black holes may seem, they like all massive bodies in the Universe, can only reach so far, and anything outside of that reach is relatively safe. In this case 'relatively safe' means the gas is not going to fall into the black hole, but it is being stretched out a great deal; over 160 billion kilometers. With such length, it will be passing Sgr A* for at least a year, even as parts of it travel at 10 million kilometers per hour, or approximately one percent the speed of light.
The origins of the cloud are still unknown, but the astronomers suspect it came from the solar winds of stars orbiting Sgr A*. The astronomers will be studying it closely to see how it behaves as it escapes the black hole's gravity and suffers hydrodynamic turbulence.
Source: ESO
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Hardware Roundup: Friday Edition
There's plenty to look at today for those thinking of upgrading some key components with your PC, or starting a new build. We have a review on the ASRock Z87E-ITX motherboard, which could be at the heart of your new HTPC or even LAN rig. There's a look at the Gigabyte GTX 770 WindForce OC 2GB video card that features a massive cooling system to keep things from getting too hot, be it from the factory overclock or your own. For your CPU cooling needs, there's a reivew on the SilverStone AR01 and AR02 heat sinks that are aimed for those on a budget but still desire more cooling than the stock heat sink.
Video Cards
Gigabyte GTX 770 WindForce OC 2GB @ Madshrimps
Motherboards
ASRock Z87E-ITX @ Benchmark Reviews
CPU Cooling
SilverStone AR01 & AR02 CPU Air Cooled Heatsink @ [H]ardOCP
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ECS to Sponsor Complexity Gaming
Complexity Gaming has been a force in competitive gaming for years, with teams in popular games like Counter-Strike, StarCraft II, and Dota 2. The most recent win for the team came at the Major League Gaming Spring Championships last month when the Call of Duty team won the top prize and $20,000. The team now has a new sponsor as well in the form of ECS L337. The L337 Gaming Motherboard Series was introduced by ECS at Computex.
Source: ECS
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Galaxy Launches GeForce GTX 780 GC Edition
The GeForce GTX 780 GC Edition from Galaxy stands out from the reference design with a large two fan cooling system that helps it to provide improved performance over the stock version of the card. The cards heatsink is built using a hybrid design of copper and aluminum and EBR Fluid bearings help to ensure long life for the fans while providing near silent operation. A custom PCB design goes with a core clock of 1019MHz and 3GB of GDDR5. The card also has support for NVIDIA GPU Boost 2.0, PhysX, 3D Vision, and Adaptive Vsync.
Source: Press Release
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Intel Retiring Sandy Bridge Processors
Since the launch of Haswell, Intel has been retiring older processors to make way for the new generation, and to ensure that consumers buy the latest generation of processors. This time around Intel will been retiring twelve Core i5 processors and three Core i7 processors from the 2nd Generation Core processors. The Core i5 processors going into retirement are: the Core i5 2550K, 2500K, 2500, 2500S, 2500T, 2450K, 2400S, 2380P, 2390T, 2310, and the 2405S. The Core i7 processors going into retirement are: the Core i7 2700K, 2600K, and the 2600S. So if you want an Intel processor that can reach very high clock speeds without needing LN2 cooling, now is the time to buy one before the stores run out.
Two Ivy Bridge processors will also retire to make way for some new Haswell processors. The two Ivy Bridge processors are the Core i5 3450 and the Core i5 3450S. They should make way for the Core i5 4670, 4570S, and 4570, as well as the 4430S.
Despite all these chips getting retired, there is no need to be alarmed. This happens all the time, and it is how Intel makes sure you buy the newest processors. And again, why would you not? The new Haswell processors will have a much better iGPU, improved architecture, support for PCI-Express 3.0, and much more.
Source: Fudzilla
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Social Networking Impacting Parental Relationships
Social networking has become an integral part of many people's lives, as they rely on it to communicate with friends, coworkers, and family. What kind of impact might this new connection have on relationships, especially those between teen and parent? That is the question researchers at Brigham Young University sought to answer in a recent study.
The study consisted of almost 500 families and, overall, the researchers found that parent and teen had a stronger connection when both were on the social networking site. Also the more interaction between them, the stronger the connection they have. However there are two key points to keep in mind. First is that moderation is important, as posting embarrassing pictures of a child can disrupt the positive effect of the additional communication channel. Second is that social networking is not going to be a cure for a poor parental relationship. Parents who may not be tech savvy but are already well connected to their children will join a social networking site specifically to continue that connection in another medium.
The researchers also found an interesting correlation between the use of social networking and certain negative effects, independent of parent use. Those teenagers who were using social networking sites a great deal, such as some in the study who would log in for eight hours a day, reported greater depression and aggression than others.
Source: Brigham Young University
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XFX Releases Two New Radeon HD 7730 Models
If
you are looking for a discrete GPU for, say, your home theater PC, then
XFX might have what you need. XFX has just released its newest addition
to its portfolio, the XFX Radeon HD 7730. The new XFX Radeon HD 7730 is
based on AMD's 28 nm Carpe Verde silicon, and will come in two
versions; one with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory and one with 2 GB of DDR3
memory. The 1 GB version will sport a 800 MHz core clock and a 4.5 GHz
memory clock, while the 2 GB version will have a 800 MHz core clock and a
1.3 GHz memory clock. Both cards will have Dual-Link DVI-D, HDMI and
VGA connections.
The cooling used on the
cards is an XFX Patented Duratec IP-5X dust free fan and XFX Ghost
Thermal technology that allows for low profile cooling, which should
please most HTPC builders, who often opt for mini-ITX cases that have
little internal space.
The cards are expected to cost between $70-75, and should hit the market soon.
Source: Fudzilla
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Hardware for Securing Cloud Memory
Hackers can be incredibly creative people as they attempt to harvest data from the cloud. While some people may think that encrypted data is safe on a server, by carefully watching memory use it is possible to learn what the data is. Researchers at MIT though have designed a piece of hardware to thwart this, without increasing computational overhead greatly.
Encrypting data on a server will protect it from being read if someone steals the data, but it turns out that information about the data can be gathered without ever touching it. This is accomplished by studying memory access patterns, such as how frequently specific memory addresses are accessed. To defeat such an attack the server can access multiple memory address at the same time, obfuscating the interesting data. What the MIT researchers have done is designed hardware to accomplish this very efficiently by way of trees. The hardware arranges memory addresses in a tree, similar to a family tree, where each node can connect to several below, but only one above. When one address is needed, the entire path from top to bottom is accessed, and afterward the address is swapped with a different node in the tree.
The hardware also protects the data from attacks that measure the time between computations, by pulling data at regular intervals, whether it is needed or not. Impressively the proposed design would only increase overhead by a factor of three or four, instead of by one hundred, as some would expect.
Source: MIT
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Hardware Roundup: Thursday Edition
Our items today cover a nice range of parts, with the ASUS SABERTOOTH Z87 motherboard leading the way. This newest entry into ASUS' TUF Series comes with every type of upgrade possible to help deliver stable results, reliability, and durability with whatever you throw at it. Moving on to another component we have a review on the Seagate 600 Pro 400GB SSD, which is perfect for servers, data centers, and other enterprises. For anyone running an NVIDIA GTX Titan and wanting to get it under water, there's a look at the TITAN Full Cover Block Kit from EK Water Blocks to see if it's the perfect part. Rounding out our selection for the day is the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11S laptop, which packs Windows 8 and an impressive $750 price into an 11.6-inch chassis.
Motherboards
ASUS SABERTOOTH Z87 @ Benchmark Reviews
Storage/Hard Drives
Seagate 600 Pro SSD 400GB @ Bjorn3D
Laptops/Tablets
Lenovo IdeaPad 11S @ TechSpot
VGA Cooling
EK Water Blocks TITAN Full Cover Block Kit @ Madshrimps
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