Acer Predator gets big screen surprise

ACER, A COUPLE OF MONTHS BACK, flipped its lid and put out what looked like a pretty decent gaming PC (and gaming laptop too…) dubbed The Predator. Now there’s an LCD to live by its legacy, the G24, a 24-incher that has the same look and feel of the Predator. Jeremy thinks it lives up to the concept, but it all rests on whether or not you’re willing to pay £350 for the LCD (and share the same space as a 24-inch orange-red frame). Get it here.

If you’re a fan (or even if you’re not) of the DFI LAN Party series motherboards, you’ll want to click this way to look at their latest product, the DK P45-T2RS PLUS. Hardware Zone has it. This motherboard tries to simplify your overclocking with its Auto Boost feature, even if you know nothing of oveclocking. However, it seems that enthusiasts will be more than satisfied with the manual overclocking bells and whistles. It’s not expensive either (about USD $165), so it seems like something worth looking into.

XS Reviews has the new Zalman CNPS9300 AT CPU cooler. It promises a lot – great cooling and low noise – so XS got it tested. The Zalman cooler faces off with that much-lauded SunbeamTech Core Contact cooler, performing quite well under load, but whining a bit more than the average fan. Someone said “Under PWM control this thing sounds like a motorbike”. Go here.

If you like BDSM-themed mice - not that there are many around - then this one’s for you. Techpowerup is testing the 2000dpi OCZ Dominatrix gaming mouse. It comes tricked out with all the standard high-end gaming features like custom weights (7) that fit in the underbelly, on-the-fly DPI adjustment, profiles, macros. Some of you might think the 2000dpi sensor is a little shy of the 3200dpi usually seen in these mice, but TPU gave it a big thumbs-up. Also, consider it costs less than $40… quite a bargain.

Thrusting Reviews has an Asus U6V in the office. The U6 series, if you remember, is a compact 12.1-inch series really targeting the business user. Apart from the high-specs, it comes with Draft N Wi-Fi, BT 2.0 and … best of all… HSDPA (+SIM slot). Yes, this has to be a mobile exec’s dream lappie. As things stand, only the most demanding of users will drop over £1,300 for a laptop, but Ardjuna gave it top marks. See? It even features bovine upholstery.

You want a no-nonsense compact computing peripheral, Digital Trends has something of interest. Logitech has built the V550 Nano, a compact wireless laser mouse that clips on to your laptop, dismissing any cabling in the process. The mouse even switches off as soon as it snaps on to the lappie, saving battery in the process. The receiver itself is a minute USB plug which just gets “out of the way” and lets you get on with it. Cool stuff.

TweakTown is reviewing a Zotac 9500 GT Zone Edition graphics card. “Zone” means it’s overclocked (550MHz/800MHz) and has a good cooler strapped on. In fact the cooler does a great job of being quiet while cooling the card. Performance, as you might guess, is nowhere near the top dogs, but it’s more than enough for an HTPC rig (and yes, it has a DVI-HDMI adapter with the audio pass-through on the card PCB). Read about it.

Hardware OC in Austria picked up an Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 and put it through a barrage of tests. The E8600 is about the fastest thing on 2 cores that’s out there, but you’re paying a hefty premium over its sibling E8500 (some €70 extra) for just the extra 133MHz. The CPU reached 5GHz once the FSB was raised to 500MHz, but they were using some pretty good cooling systems in thar system. Here in German, or here in Googlenglish. µ