Now that Ivy Bridge has established its presence in notebooks from Acer to Samsung, Intel is unveiling the third generation of its Core vPro processor platform. In its announcement today, the chip maker said this technology will be available on Ultrabooks, laptops, desktops, workstation and all-in-ones. Though the Intel Core vPro platform will work across many PC categories, it clearly has a business bent, with features such as the company’s branded Identity Protection Technology for adding a second layer of user authentication and Active Management Technology for remotely managing PC activities and fixing glitches. Along with adding extra protection, the third-gen vPros offer support for up to three external displays and enable HD video conferencing.

Intel had already promised that it would avoid using conflict minerals, and now it’s giving itself a more concrete timetable for that to happen. It wants to have at least one processor that’s proven completely conflict-free across four key minerals — gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten — by the end of 2013. Lest you think Intel’s not taking swift enough action, it wants to reach the tantalum goal by the end of this year. The effort’s part of a wider array of goals that should cut back on the energy use, power and water use by 2020. Sooner rather than later, though, you’ll be buying a late-generation Haswell- or Broadwell-based PC knowing that the chip inside was made under nobler conditions.

What’s 2.5-inches wide, 7mm tall and silent as a whisper? Well, hopefully it’s HGST’s new CinemaStar hard drives. We know for certain that these platters of polarized bits will fit in your standard 2.5-inch drive bay, we’ll just have to take this Western Digital subsidiary at its word (for now) on the silent bit. Three new families of disks just hit the market, the Z7K500, Z5K500 and budget-friendly C5K1000. The first two options are 7mm high, allowing them to slide nicely into small form factor PCs, DVRs and even laptops. Both top out at 500GB, but the Z7K ekes out better performance by whipping its platters around at 7,200 RPM, while the Z5Ks save energy and noise by ratcheting back to 5,400 RPM. The C5K comes in a slightly bulkier 9.5mm height, but this 5,400 RPM drive does reach the lofty storage size of 1TB. For now the drives are available in limited quantities to OEMs, but hopefully that will change soon enough.

Following Netgear’s 802.11ac entry into the networking market back in April, Austin, Texas-based Buffalo Technology is now announcing the release of two 802.11ac products of its own: the the AirStation WZR-D1800H wireless router and the WLI-H4-D1300 wireless media bridge. Both are based on Broadcom’s 5G Wi-Fi chips, offering speeds up to three times faster than the 802.11n standard. Buffalo is actually claiming first to market, as Netgear’s solution doesn’t arrive until sometime during this half of May.

“Operating in the 5 GHz spectrum, 802.11ac offers transfer speeds up to 1300 Mbps, ideal for uninterrupted HD video streaming and concurrent Internet access,” Buffalo said on Monday. “Along with gigabit speeds, Buffalo’s 802.11ac products with improved radios will feature improved reliability and produce better in-home coverage for ultra-portable devices such as tablets and smart phones. As 5G WiFi proliferates into phones and tablets, the WZR-D1800H will enable even better coverage as well as incredibly fast download times, improving the battery life of clients.”

Buffalo said the router integrates a class leading 2.4 GHz 3×3 802.11n radio providing backward compatibility and offering speeds up to 450 Mbps. Add that to the speeds coughed up on the 5 GHz spectrum, and users have a total aggregate wireless throughput up to 1750 Mbps. This should be ideal for family members who typically fight over bandwidth for streaming seamless video from Netflix or Hulu.

For the uninitiated, a wireless media bridge serves as a huge dual-band Wi-Fi dongle, allowing users to connect up to four Gigabit Ethernet-based devices like Blu-ray players and gaming consoles. Like the router, it features 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz radios, the former providing theoretical speeds up to 1300 Mbps. This is the ideal spectrum if the connected devices are bandwidth hogs.

Even more, Windows 7 customers could attach a Windows 7-based PC to the media bridge, install Connectify, and use that PC as a network extension for wireless devices. The only drawback is that media bridges typically create a mini-network for all connected devices, and sends/receives network requests to the router via one set IP address. This makes transferring files between the two groups a little weird. Media bridges also don’t connect directly to the Internet, meaning users still need the router.

Buffalo said that both products are backed by a limited three-year warranty that includes toll-free U.S.-based technical support available 24/7. The WZR-D1800H and WLI-H4-D1300 are available now at Fry’s, Frys.com and NewEgg.com at estimated street prices of $179.99 each.

In the growing trend of all-in-one liquid cooling systems, such as the Corsair H80 or Antec Kühler H₂O 620, end-users are looking for the “easy” route to a liquid cooling setup and the cooling benefit a LCS can offer. To join the trend, Thermaltake has introduced its own all-in-one LCS series called Water 2.0. The series comes with a standard full copper base plate for better heat conductivity. It includes a powerful pump, within the waterblock, for rapid water circulation. Dual 12cm high airflow fans provide faster heat dissipation and two low evaporation tubes effectively decrease the loss of coolant. The high-tech sealed circulation system helps prevent any leaking issue.

Water Extreme 2.0

The Extreme has a specially designed 240mm large surface radiator and the support of two more 12cm fans for additional heat dissipation. It comes with a Windows-based software to monitor and customize a wide range of parameters, including pump speed, coolant temperature and fan speed.

Water 2.0 Pro

The Pro has a standard radiator, which is twice as thick as others. The increased size of the radiator allows for a larger cooling area and still only takes up the space of a single 120mm fan slot. This gives users increased cooling performance when they don’t have the chassis space to install a dual-radiator setup.

Water 2.0 Performer

The Performer uses a standard size 120mm radiator that will work with most users cases. It is geared toward first-timer users of LCS or those who want liquid cooling but aren’t ready to make the jump to traditional LCS setups.

SOURCE via Thermaltake

Both quad-core CPUs use the 45 nm Clarksfield core of the Nehalem micro architecture, and were originally launched in June of 2010.

According to a product change notification, the processors have a last order date of November 9, 2012 and will ship until supplies are depleted. Both mobile CPUs use the Socket G1, are rated at 45 watts TDP and support DDR3-1333 memory. The 740QM runs at 1.73 GHz and the 840QM at 1.87 GHz.

To make room for Ivy Bridge, Intel had removed both processors some time ago from the official pricing sheet, which does not list any 45 nm notebook desktop and notebook processors anymore, aside from Atom chips and the Celeron T3500.

SOURCE via Intel

NVIDIA has just unveiled the GeForce GTX 670 graphics card. The company aims to bring Kepler to gamers who don’t have off-shore bank accounts, with a price tag of $399 (or £329 in the UK, and €329 in Europe). What sacrifices will be made to reach that bracket, compared to the flagship GTX 680? A loss of 192 CUDA cores, for starters, plus a slightly slower 915MHz base clock speed, which will no doubt have an impact on benchmarks.

Nevertheless, you’ll still get the same 28nm chip architecture and 2GB of DDR5 RAM, along with NVIDIA’s GPU Boost technology that autonomously overclocks the processor to make use of available headroom. In terms of official performance claims, NVIDIA has chosen to compare its benchmarks to AMD’s high-end Radeon HD 7950 and boasts that the GTX 670 comes out on top every time by a margin of 18 to 49 percent. Read more…

Those of you looking for a fresh, Ivy Bridge-powered gaming rig may want to look ASUS’ way. The Taiwanese outfit just welcomed a trifecta of new ROG TYTAN machines to its lineup, which include the CG8580, CG8270 and CM6870 — all sporting similar aesthetics as that CG8490 we showed you a while back. For starters, the higher-end CG8580 packs a quad-core, 4.6GHz Core i7-3770k CPU alongside a single-touch Turbo Gear button for overclocking, a twin 128GB SSD and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX680 graphics card. As for the CG8270 and CM6870, you can choose between Intel’s third-gen Core i5 or i7 for processing power, up to 16GB of RAM and, of course, a DVD or Blu-ray player. ASUS hasn’t given official pricing yet, but we’re sure that’s going to depend heavily on how souped-up you want your future gaming beast to be.

SOURCE via Asus

JEDEC is still finalizing the standards for DDR4, but that doesn’t mean component manufacturers are holding back on developing the tech now. Samsung announced the first DDR4 DRAM module last year, and now Micron has announced that it’s developed a working part of its own. Using its 30-nanometer technology, the 4GB x8 part is just the first of many products in the company’s DDR4 portfolio — it will expand to include x16 and x32 parts with initial speeds of 2400 MT/s and eventually the JEDEC’s targeted of 3200 MT/s. So when will DDR3 seem like a distant relic? Well, Micron is already sending around samples to clients, and it hopes to begin full-scale production by the end of the year.

SOURCE via Micron

Fitting a truly quick solid-state drive into a small space isn’t easy, and for that reason RunCore’s new Mini DOM (Disk On Module) stands out from the crowd. It’s billed as the first single-chip SSD to use a SATA interface (SATA II, to be exact), giving it that much more bandwidth than the pokey IDE and PATA DOMs of old while remaining under half the size of a regular mSATA drive. RunCore’s own tests show it hitting about 113MB/s sequential reads and 47MB/s writes. Neither figure will knock the socks off even a mainstream budget SSD like Intel’s SSD 330, but they’re more than brisk enough for embedded gear. The drives can survive brutal conditions, too: an Industrial Grade trim level can survive temperatures as chilly as -40F and as scorching as 185F. So, the next time you pry open some military equipment and see one of these sitting inside, in three different formats and capacities from 8GB to 64GB, you’ll know exactly what you’re looking at.