Also used in Cyprus, as it happens …
Security researchers have discovered a strain of malware that targets the QUIK stockbroking application.…
Review: Gelid Black Edition
Another month, another humongous CPU cooler. Gelid’s Black Edition is certainly impressive in stature, but thankfully for something this size it’s more than matched by the build quality. To give you an idea of how big this tower cooler is, it comes with two 120mm cooling fans and will support another… you know, if for some reason two just aren’t adequate.
It weighs almost a kilo too, so it needs exceptional build quality and a decent mounting solution. It supports an impressive array of sockets, including Intel LGA2011, 1366, 1156, 1155 and even the ancient 775, as well as AMD’s AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1 and FM2.
Although it’s a biggie, the mounting plates allow the cooler to be mounted in one of four horizontal planes so you can keep it away from any heatsink-heavy RAM. The design of the Black Edition sees the cooling array split into two towers, enabling you to fit a fan between the two fin-stack arrays. This design also has the added benefit of giving the cooler a wider contact footprint.
The cooler isn’t a direct contact design – that is to say, the heatpipes pass through the contact plate, not underneath it. The contact plate itself is copper-covered and the seven heat pipes (three 8mm and four 6mm) are nickel-plated copper.
The way these pipes are arranged is rather unusual. Traditionally, heatpipes are soldered in a row, which is fine when there are five pipes or fewer, but above that number the outer pipes become less efficient at handling heat dispersal than the inner ones. Gelid has got around this by stacking two of the 6mm pipes on the 8mm ones so all seven pipes are working efficiently.
Benchmarks
Intel Core i7 3770K at standard clocks
CPU Idle: Degrees centigrade: Lower is better
GELID BLACK EDITION: 26
ENERMAX ELC 240: 30
COOLER MASTER SEIDON: 29
Intel Core i7 3770K at standard clocks
Full CPU load: Degrees centigrade: Lower is better
GELID BLACK EDITION: 59
ENERMAX ELC 240: 44
COOLER MASTER SEIDON: 45
Intel Core i7 3770K overclocked to 4.5GHz
Full CPU load: Degrees centigrade: Lower is better
GELID BLACK EDITION: 80
ENERMAX ELC 240: 58
COOLER MASTER SEIDON: 58
Gelid supplies two of its own 120mm fans with the cooler. Both are PWM designs, but the two are slightly different. The front fan is a Gelid Slim unit that spins between 750 and 1,500rpm (quoted at 25.5dBA), while a silent model sits between the two cooling arrays and spins between 750 and 1,600rpm with a maximum quoted noise level of 25.4dBA.
Fiddly fitting
Fitting the Black Edition is relatively straightforward. The backplate is attached to the rear of the motherboard by four screws. These are held in place by tool-free locking standoffs, with the pair of cooler mounts fixed on top.
When it comes to fitting the cooler itself to these mounting plates, it becomes a tad fiddly. You’ll need fingers like Nosferatu to get to the pair of screws set between the two fin-stacks and connect it to the cooling mounts.
The stacked heatpipe design makes for an impressive cooler, and means all seven of the pipes run more efficiently than the traditional heatpipe lineup. Despite the vast size of the cooler, it’s this compact heatpipe design that stops it getting prohibitively big.
The only real bugbear about the cooler is the fiddly way you have to mount the cooler to the base plate – narrow fingers really do help. A real bonus, however, is Gelid’s decision to bundle the excellent GCExtreme thermal compound in the box.
Review: Razer Black Widow Ultimate
Over the years we’ve had rather a love/hate relationship with Razer peripherals. We’ve always struggled with the Cult of Razer’s gaming mice, either the way they bent our fingers out of shape or demanded obscene amounts of cash for a wireless mouse with an extravagant box design.
But their keyboards are really starting to bring us around to the Cult’s way of thinking – that said, the Black Widow Ultimate is sitting somewhere between love and hate.
Last month we got all giddy over the DeathStalker Ultimate, a beautifully-built keyboard with an excellent little trackpad/touchscreen in place of the numpad. It was a little buggy, but was so technically pleasing we couldn’t help but fall in love with it a bit.
Still, the price was daunting and it was using some rather dead-feeling membrane switch key technology instead of the mechanical switch tech we prefer.
The Black Widow Ultimate should be a bit more up our street then, coming in at half the price of the DeathStalker and packing some swanky mechanical switch keys to boot.
No frills
Sadly this is much more of a standard keyboard, so no fancy touchscreen shenanigans here. All you get as gaming extras are the five macro keys, individual LED backlighting and the ability to shut off the [Windows] key.
It does, however, feel much more sturdily built than the relatively lightweight DeathStalker. There is no flex to the keyboard’s chassis, built as it is from plastic thicker than a professional footballer.
Despite the rather garish Razer-green backlight (it can be dialled back to a low level using the function keys), the actual design of the Black Widow is relatively subtle and clean. The way the indicator lights appear, as if from nowhere, above the numpad is particularly neat.
But we’re not entirely taken with the mechanical switch keys Razer has used on the Black Widow Ultimate. Most of the other mech-switch boards we’ve used over the last six months have been of a similar ilk, but this almost feels like the micro-switched joysticks we used to plug into our Amigas. It’s far louder than any other board we’ve used, which would be annoying if we weren’t using a headset – they also feel a little strange in the key action too.
That said they are very responsive and survived our particularly rigorous Trials 2 testing methodology, though our review sample had a particular issue when we were typing which doubled up my [N] key on occasion.
When you’re spending £120 on a keyboard you don’t want it to annoy you, and that’s one of my problems with the Black Widow Ultimate. We actually like its simple design, and if Razer had used different switches on the keys we probably would be weighing it up rather more favourably compared with the still-excellent Gigabyte Aivia Osmium.
But as it is the Black Widow Ultimate can’t compete with the cheaper, more fully-featured and functional Gigabyte keyboard. So while it’s a very solid and responsive keyboard, it’s not one we could recommend, especially not for well over £100.
Black Tuesday patchfest: A lot of digits plug security dykes
Adobe joins Redmond in game of vuln Twister
Microsoft carried out a fairly comprehensive spring cleaning of vulnerabilities on Tuesday, fixing 20 vulnerabilities with seven bulletins, four of which are rated critical.…
Black hat greed reducing software vulnerability report rate
Zero-day market temptation: Cash out or collaborate?
RSA 2013 HP has kicked off the round of reports that accompany each RSA conference with its analysis of security vulnerabilities, and has revealed that although the overall trend is positive, the growing market for zero-day flaws is reducing the number of the most serious problems that are disclosed.…
Download: Call of duty black ops 2 skidrow crashing on start up?
Question by Qaiser: Call of duty black ops 2 skidrow crashing on start up?
I have recently downloaded COD BO 2 skidrow. I installed it pasted the crack,disabled the firewall , uninstalled the antivirus,changed the time zone and changed the date to 1412 but when i start the game a blank screen appears with the waiting circle of windows and after some time it gives a message that call of duty black ops 2 has stopped working. I am using windows 8 32 bit
CPU: Intel pentium dual core E5200 @2.50 ghz
MOBO: DG31PR
RAM: 3gb
GPU: gtx 550 ti
Some help would be appreciated.
Best answer:
Answer by Sebber
How about you freakin’ buy it?
Give your answer to this question below!
2013: No sign of flying cars, but Orange mobes will get black ice
Sci-fi got a lot less interesting really, didn’t it
Orange will install freebie mobile security suite Lookout on every Android handset it sells and bundle premium access with selected tariffs.…
Hacking, the card game, debuts at Black Hat
Control-Alt-Hack is a new card game created by computer security professionals to teach high school and college students that white hat hacking can be fun and accessible.
Q&A: Do racists use Norton Anti-Virus software? Do they know that Peter Norton has a black wife?
Question by Pam: Do racists use Norton Anti-Virus software? Do they know that Peter Norton has a black wife?
Billionaire Peter Norton is the creator of a very famous software called Norton Anti-Virus. He is also married to a black woman with whom he has 5 kids by.
Dazzle: That’s good. I hope that you continue to use it. It’s the best on the market.
Best answer:
Answer by japchae
Maybe ^_^
What do you think? Answer below!
Spyware Help: I do not have an anti spy ware symbol on my toolbar. I have a yellow dot with black lines?
Question by Fran R: I do not have an anti spy ware symbol on my toolbar. I have a yellow dot with black lines?
When I click the yellow dot it says “Get your free Norton spy ware
scan. I want my anti spy wware symbol back
Best answer:
Answer by eferrell01
The icon on the new toolbar is Norton Internet Security. The Norton Spyware program is updated regularly, while the Yahoo version hasn’t been updated since sometime in 2005.
If you use Mozilla Firefox browser,it still has the Yahoo! antispy.
Give your answer to this question below!