Abit KV8 Pro, OCing the Athlon64 3200+, A Sweet SilverStone Case and Much More!

Hey folks!  Happy Friday to ya!  I'm pretty psyched for this weekend a little more than most.  We have a good friend stopping in from out of town that we haven't seen in a while.  I certainly look forward to catching up.  Saturday, my wife has mustered up the courage to attempt selling some of her photography.  Being an aspiring photographer can be tough.  People can be very critical about your work, which is very personal.  I admire her determination, I don't think I would have the courage to do it.  Sadly, it's an outside venue and rain is in the forecast.  Looks like Murphy's Law is in full effect!  Good thing we have a tent.  Enough babble from me, here is your morning shot of news :)

Crucial Ballistix PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 Memory @ Bjorn3d.com:

"Earlier this year, Crucial introduced an enthusiast line called 'Ballistix,' which is obviously intended to grab gamers' attention. The Ballistix DDR has grabbed plenty of positive attention and feedback from users and reviewers alike. Crucial sent us some DDR2 from the Ballistix family, so we'll get to see firsthand if Crucial truly can deliver what enthusiasts want."

ATI Radeon Xpress 200 @ t-break:

"In our opinion, its much harder to compete in the chipset market for the Intel platform as Intel itself dominates this market with their excellent chipsets. However, AMD doesn't push their own chipsets and with the recent news of AMD outselling Intel CPUs in the retail segment, it makes a lot more sense to design chipsets for the AMD platform. That is exactly what ATI did by releasing two chipsets for the Athlon64- the Radeon Xpress 200 and the Radeon Xpress 200P."

Overclockers Online has posted their Cooler Master Cavalier 1 CAV-T01 review:

"There are many cases to choose from, as most of you know. The great difficulty in choosing a case however is finding one that suits your functional needs as well as your personal tastes. Cooler Master, supplier of the case we look at today, has built a reputation for making some of the sleekest and most high quality of cases."

High-End Buyer's Guide @ TheTechLounge:

"The goal of this guide is to outline an entire high-end computer system for around $3000. This includes the internal hardware, input devices, monitor and speakers (everything but an OS). With this $3000, we want to outline the best all-around system with the highest quality components available. While $3000 may seem like a lot, it can disappear quickly considering all the options. Depending on your individual needs, you may prefer to swap out different components in order to focus more on gaming, multimedia or multitasking. While we will recommend specific components throughout the article, keep in mind that this is just an outline and your idea of a high-end computer may differ from ours."

Silverstone TJ05-ST Reviewed @ 2CPU.com:

"By glancing at the picture you might make the assumption that the TJ05-ST is 100% aluminum. That would be incorrect. The front panel and door consists of aluminum but the rest of the chassis is solid steel. Weighing in at around 30lbs really isn't that bad for a case of this size, especially when you compare it to a couple of servers that I'm currently testing which each tip the scales at 65lbs and up. Height-wise, the TJ05-ST is only slightly taller than your typical Antec SX1000-series housing, so it should be able to slide under most desks without too much trouble."

ABIT KV8 Pro-3rd Eye @ Viper Lair:

"Overclocking went very well, and the board was very stable once we settled on our desired overclock. While it wasn't looking good for the KV8 Pro at first in our synthetic benchmarks, once the real world benchmarks started, the KV8 Pro pulled ahead. This was especially apparent in gaming, and given the price of the board, you should have a bit of money to put towards a decent video card."

OCing the Athlon64 3200+ 90nm @ HardOCP:

"...you can look at the benchmarks and see that the overclocked Athlon 64 3200+ processor easily closes the performance gap between it and the Athlon 64 3800+ on the same motherboard."

OK gang, that's all for now, but I know we'll be back with more later, so stick around!