Antec Introduces GX700 Case

Antec introduced the GX700, which it touts as a "rugged" case, which could be explained by the generous use of steel in the front-panel, such as 5.25-inch bay doors (not spacers), and fan intake. The ATX mid-tower may not feature detachable drive cages, but claims sufficient room (29.5 cm or 11.5-inch) room for graphics cards. It features four 5.25-inch bays, which are covered with individual bay doors, and five 3.5-inch bays that can each hold 2.5-inch drives. Its motherboard tray features cutouts at the right spots. Cooling includes two 140 mm top exhaust fans (which can be swapped for a 240 mm-long radiator), two 120 mm front intakes (optional), a 120 mm rear exhaust, and provision for two 120 mm side intakes. Measuring 500 mm (H) x 200 mm (W) x 450 mm (D), it weighs about 6.3 kg. Its front-panel includes two each of USB 3.0 and USB 2.0/1.1 ports.

Source

Olympic London 2012, Malaysia's Badminton Shuttler, Dato Lee Chong Wei gets Silver Medal.

Malaysia's Badminton shuttler, world number 2, Dato Lee Chong Wei gets silver medal after defeated by world's number 1, Lin Dan, 21-15, 10-21, 19-21. Our dear Dato Lee, he gave his best in the match and we all will always be proud of his spirit and determination in the game. You are the best, Dato Lee.

Lee is returning the shuttle

Swedish Retailers Begin Listing ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II

Several Swedish online retailers have begun listing ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti DirectCU II graphics card ahead of its worldwide launch. The card is listed at roughly 3,350 to 3,551 Swedish Kronor (US $492 to $521), including local taxes. The lowest price before taxes is 2,679 Kronor ($393.5). Looking at these prices, we expect US pricing to be in the $380-$420 range, before taxes. None of the retailers detailed the card, let alone post pictures of it. Based on the 28 nm GK104 silicon, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti is expected to feature 1,344 CUDA cores, and 2 GB of memory across a 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface.

Source: VideoCardz

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 WindForce 2X Graphics Card Pictured

Here are some of the first pictures of Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 WindForce 2X graphics card, which was released towards the end of July, without much fuss. The pictures reveal what is a combination of a non-reference design compact PCB design by Gigabyte, making use of its Ultra Durable VGA component selection (2 oz copper PCB, Japanese solid-state capacitors, binned memory chips, ferrite core chokes, low RDS (on) MOSFETs), and its WindForce 2X cooler. The PCB uses a 4+2 phase VRM to power the GK104 GPU. It draws power from two 6-pin PCIe power connectors.

The card ships in two variants, one that sticks to NVIDIA-reference clock speeds, and an OC variant (941 MHz core, 1019 MHz GPU Boost, 6.00 GHz memory). The cooler uses a compound heatsink. Its design consists of a main central aluminum heatsink which draws heat from the GPU, while two satellite aluminum fin heatsinks draw heat from the GPU through two 8 mm-thick copper heat pipes. The heatsink is ventilated by a pair of 100 mm fans, which spin at low speeds and claim low noise levels. Gigabyte's WindForce 2X graphics card is expected to cost less than its flagship WindForce 3X. Find a review at the source.

Source: Expreview

COUGAR Introduces the Challenger Gaming Case

COUGAR, leading German PC case and power supply brand, officially announces their latest high-end PC gaming case, the COUGAR Challenger. The CHALLENGER mid-tower case is particularly targeting gamers demanding for huge upgradeability capacity, best airflow and optimized ventilation characteristics.

COUGAR's specific black and orange color combination paired with the large metal-mesh front bezel lend it an aggressive yet stylish appearance. But the ultimate design high-light is to be found right on the top of the case: to power up your computer you first have to lift a cover lid just like a pilot unlocks the missile button to fire. A safety feature to prevent accidental touch, which at the same time makes you feel in gaming mode right away. To play even most advanced games, the COUGAR CHALLENGER offers sufficient space for powerful graphics cards of up to 410 mm length.

Play as long as you want
To play even most advanced games, the COUGAR CHALLANGER offers sufficient space for powerful graphics cards of up to 410 mm length. This is achieved by a unique 3-Mode drive cage concept. In standard mode there is 300 mm of space, by using a special HDD track mechanism you can relocate the drive cage to you gain another 30 mm, and when removing it entirely you get the maximum of 410 mm.

Ventilation meets convenience
It's already a given for COUGAR to provide for vented PCIe slots at the back, and have advanced ventilation options on the front bezel. But now the German brand goes one step further. Innovative air filters on the bottom PSU cover and the side panel prevent dust from entering the inside and piling up there, BUT on top of things, COUGAR made things much more effective and convenient. These filters are now attached on the outside with a magnetic mechanism, allowing for easiest assembly and disassembly. This way it is incredibly easy to take the dust filters off at any given time, without the need to open the case, and simply clean them under your water standpipe for a minute, dry them and put them back on. Deal done, and your ventilation has been re-optimized within minutes a not efforts at all. A large 20 cm intake LED-fan in the front and an 12 cm rear Turbine exhaust fan come pre-installed and therefore provide for excellent ventilation characteristics right out of the box.

Easy and Tidy Upgrade
As PC enthusiast and gamers are constantly working on improving and upgrading their systems, it is of utmost importance to always have easy and clean access to the entire system. Therefore the COUGAR Challenger comes with a huge cutout on the motherboard backplate, allowing for spacious room to install or exchange CPU coolers. In addition, the newly designed cable management keeps cables away from the setup and tunnels them in a way so users can easily keep track of their hardwares' lifelines and change them conveniently at will. As a matter of course, this also is precondition for optimized ventilation characteristics of the overall setup.

Ready for the real liquid cooling
As liquid cooling is strongly coming back these days, COUGAR is taking these needs fully in account, giving users the thumbs up for highly advanced cooling solutions. A total of three liquid cooling hose holes on the rear panel allows for a maximum of accessibility. By default, COUGAR implements rubber protection of these holes, so users don't need to worry about potentially sharp edges cutting into the hoses by un-careful handling.

Source

Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti Specifications Detailed

A little earlier this week, specifications of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 650 graphics processor were reported. An even newer report by DonanimHaber details its sibling, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti, designed for the sub-$250 market. The new GPU is based on the NVIDIA's newest GK106 silicon, while the GTX 650 sticks to the GK107, and is essentially a beefed-up GeForce GT 640. These are the specifications of the GeForce GTX 650 Ti we're looking at:

• 28 nm GK106 silicon
• 960 CUDA cores
• 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface
• 1 GB and 2 GB memory options
• Q4-2012 launch

Source: DonanimHaber

Assassin's Creed 3 to take place during the American Revolution

After much speculation it has been confirmed that Assassin's Creed 3 will take place during the American revolution. Images with hints of this have been floating around the internet for a few days now but Ubisoft has released the official box-art for Assassin's Creed 3, which confirms that the game will indeed take place during the American Revolution. Prior to this several images were seen on Kotaku, Game Informer, and Shacknews leading to this speculation. No word yet on a release date or if the game will use the intrusive DRM that previous titles did.

Source: Shacknews

AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series Specs. Table Leaked

Japanese media has got a hold of the specifications table of AMD's Radeon HD 7800 series products, the HD 7870 and HD 7850. Hermitage Akihabara has not cited a source as such, so we assume it vouches for the accuracy of this table. The table reveals Radeon HD 7870 as having 1280 stream processors, a 256-bit wide memory bus width (derived from the memory bandwidth and clock speeds figures provided in the table), 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and clock speeds of 1.00 GHz core, with 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective) memory. This SKU has a typical board power of 175W.

The slide details the HD 7850 as having 1024 stream processors, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, the same 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface, with the same memory clock speed as the HD 7870, but with a lower core clock speed of 860 MHz. the board power for the HD 7850 is mentioned to be under 130W. Interestingly, 2 GB is standard memory amount for both cards. The Japanese site mentions the official launch date of HD 7800 series as being March 8, but also goes on to add that market availability (we're assuming they mean the Japanese market), is only expected on/after March 19.

Sources: Hermitage Akihabara, VR-Zone, and 456,000+ search results for "AMD Radeon HD 7800 Specifications" on Google

Borderlands 2 PC uses Steamworks

More and more publishers seem to be seeing Steamworks as the best viable DRM on the market and 2K Games is no exception. All PC editions of Borderlands 2 will use Valve's Steamworks suite as their DRM. Steamworks supports snazzy features beyond simple copy protection, Gearbox's shooter-RPG will also use it for multiplayer matchmaking, Steam Cloud storage, achievements, auto-updating, downloadable content, "and more." How Steamworks... works is that if you buy a boxed edition of Borderlands 2, you'll need to register the game with a Steam account, and launch it through Steam. The box will still contain a disc to install the game from, but you'll have the option to download it directly through Steam whenever you please. Digital distributors other than Steam will simply sell you a product key to activate on Steam. Steamworks was to be expected, really, as 2K Games has used it for PC editions of games it's published since Mafia II in 2010. It briefly dabbled in Games for Windows Live before then but, thankfully, that was a short-lived experiment.

Borderlands 2 is coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on September 18. As ever, a selection of shiny things are on offer as pre-order bonuses.

Source: Shacknews

Cougar Officially Launches the Evolution BO and Evolution Galaxy PC Cases

German feline-loving firm Cougar has now rolled out two more Evolution Series full tower PC cases, the Evolution BO (which we mentioned back in January) and the Evolution Galaxy. These models feature similar specs but come with their own color theme - black and orange for the EBO and black and white for the EG.

Seen below, Cougar's cases measure 223 (W) x 523 (D) x 514 (H) mm, and have a steel 'skeleton', an I/O panel with two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, a top-mounted 3.5-inch/2.5-inch SATA drive dock, a built-in fan controller, six external 5.25-inch bays (with tool-free mounting systems), four internal 3.5-inch trays, and eight PCI slots. The Evolution BO also packs a 120 mm Vortex HDB rear fan.

Both the Evolution BO and Evolution Galaxy have a recommended price tag of $94.99.

Source