G.Skill Ares Review

A few weeks ago I came to realize that I needed some more RAM. 4 GB just wasn't enough to play some Battlefield 3 at the end of the day. So here the easy solution would be to just purchase some extra RAM for my tower and stop complaining. Well the actual solution was a little different. My Thermaltake Frio cooler covered the two DIMMs closest to the processor. I needed to find some RAM that would just fit under it. That is where the new G. Skill Ares came in to play.

I saw these mentioned on a blog somewhere so I hopped onto Newegg and ordered an 8GB orange kit. Installing them was simple, just like any other RAM. I just had to remove one of the fans on the heat sync temporarily while I installed the RAM. Once installed I had about half a centimeter of clearance!

Here are some pictures of the great stuff!

Once installed I had just a narrow gap between the top of the modules and the bottom of the Thermaltake fan. 

 Below is a screen shot form CPU-Z.

 Ohh and this little sticker made the deal all so much better!

Overall this stiff is great and my computer has been running wonderfully. If you want a little more in depth review of this new series of RAM check out the review on Overclock3D!

Thermaltake Frio Instalation - Temps & Review

For the past year I have been running the stock AMD Phenom x6 cooler and that thing was horrible. It was load under load and wouldn't do a great job keeping my rig cool. I would peak around 50C under full load with that old thing. Recently one of my friends went water cooled and he sold me his frio. Now that I have it installed I was able to overclock and still achieve lower temps on full load than I did with the stock cooler.

Virgin Mobile Phone Replacement Finally Arrived.

If you haven't heard yet from my previous blog posts I have had some difficulty with my new LG Optimus V smart phone from Virgin Mobile since the fist day that I got it. It for some reason just would not charge properly. i would plug it in at night and the next morning the battery would be completely dead. It just would not charge properly.

Review of the AMD Phenom II x6 1055T 2.86GHz

Today I have a hex-core 2.86 GHz CPU review from AMD. I recently bought this for my new computer build. The chip has six real cores built into it which in turn gives me a lot of power. I am currently using the stock heat sink and to be honest, it cools but its way to loud. I never have temperatures above 42*C on full load with Prime95. The only problem is that on full load the CPU fan runs extremely hot. I believe that eventually I will have to get another heat sink.

AMD Phenom II x6 1055T 2.86GHz

Now I have a few friends that were able to get an entire 1GHz over clock with this chip, but obviously they had a better heat sink.

Pros

• Fast and Powerful.
• Fairly prices. I bought mine off of Newegg for about $175.
• Runs cool.
• Can be over clocked.

Cons

• Loud stock heat sync.

In conclusion it's a solid processor. I enjoy having all of the power under the hood. Even though I seldom have to run all the cores at full load unless I am rendering video, I still like having some overhead.

Cisco Drops The Flip Camera

Just this past week Cisco announced that they were going to discontinue their popular Flip Video Camcorder. There were no large reasons for this other then Cisco was plowing focus on what they were good at, Networking.

I think that this was a wise choice. First of all, The flip camera sucks. It's about $200 and doesn't even record stills. It also features a very awkward usage method. Also, nowadays all of out phones most likely record HD video. If you want better quality video then that of a cell phone camera you aren't going to be getting a Flip, you be getting a professional video camera that will probably cost not much more the the flip camera actually does.

Cisco was begging to veer away from what they were good at. Cisco is a well known Business Networking corporation. Every time you log onto the Internet there is a very good chance that you are lawsuit though a Cisco networking device at some point.

So all in all this was a good move on Cisco's behalf. I hope that they continue to ex-ell in their production of Networking products. The Flip is done for.