BitFenix Introduces Phenom

(BitFenix Design Lab, September 26, 2013) – Today,BitFenix is proud to officially announce Phenom, the newest creation from the BitFenix Design Lab. Featuring clean, uncluttered styling and tremendous build flexibility, Phenom represents the perfect marriage of advanced functionality with next-level SFF design for a case that's sure to be an instant classic.


Engineered to be a sleek modern cube design that suits any environment, fans of clean and elegant chassis are going to feel right at home with Phenom. The mesh accents along the sides of the case perfectly complement the smooth surfaces of the SofTouch-coated top and front panels. In the center is a highly-polished BitFenix logo that contrasts the subtle matte contours perfectly, creating a design that is ideal for any modern décor. And because different systems have different requirements, Phenom comes in both mini-ITX and micro-ATX variants to meet the needs of an even larger group of users.  Both BitFenix Phenom Mini-ITX and Phenom Micro-ATX will be available on store shelves in October. Both BitFenix Phenom Mini-ITX and Phenom Micro-ATX will be available on store shelves in October.

         

Phenom Mini-ITX: Superior Water Cooling and Massive Storage

                         
Compatible with mini-ITX motherboards, Phenom Mini-ITX is a case that's ideal for both water cooling enthusiasts and storage mavens. The top intake easily accommodates thick radiators up to 240mm in length. The easy-to-use FlexCage™ can store up to five 3.5" hard disks or SSDs, or removed entirely to accommodate long graphics cards up to 330mm in length, or additional water cooling on the front panel. Along with the included 5.25" drive adapter and additional mounts on the side panel and PSU cage, Phenom can support up to six 3.5" hard disks, or an incredible 11 SSDs. Five fan locations and room for tower CPU coolers up to 175mm in height make Phenom Mini-ITX ideal for air coolers. If either extreme cooling or maximum storage in minimal space is on the SFF wish list, Phenom Mini-ITX is a perfect choice.

Phenom Micro-ATX: Micro ATX Compatible and Dual Graphics Ready

With full support for micro-ATX motherboards, Phenom Micro-ATX brings with it five PCI slots for enhanced expansion capabilities. For an intense gaming rig, install dual graphics cards such as SLI or Crossfire for tremendous graphics performance. The removable hard drive rack accommodates up to two 3.5" hard drives or three 3.5" SSDs. The bottom panel can either be equipped with exhaust fans, or up to two additional 3.5" hard disks. Should you opt to install hard disks on the bottom of the case, the included magnetic heat shield prevents warm exhaust from the PSU from re-entering the case, and with its uniquely micro-textured surface, looks great doing it. With a single graphics card installed, the top panel can even fit slim radiators, such as the increasingly popular all-in-one water coolers up to 240mm in length. For air coolers, five fan locations and support for CPU coolers up to 160mm in height ensure a frosty system. Have added expansion cards? Then the Phenom Micro-ATX is for you.

For more information on the Phenom Series, please click below:
Phenom Mini-ITX
Phenom Micro-ATX

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Next Gen Radeons incoming!

AMDs line up of next gen radeons are in the house, well sort of as they aren't available for purchase just yet. But we now know that the names that have leaked over the past few days are official! So what we will be getting is the Radeon R9 290X, that will go head to head with Nvidias GTX TITAN, the Radeon R9 280X that will compete with the GTX 780 and the Radeon R9 270X will compete with the GTX 770. The R7 Series will represent the mid-range and will feature the R7 250 and R7 260X.

The R9 290X is based on second generation GCN2(Graphics Core Next) architecture while the 280X is simply a rebadged Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. I wouldn’t expect anything drastically different in the case of the 280X maybe a slightly higher clock speed and a new cooler slapped on top, but from what I see so far it’s just a HD 7970 with a new track suit. The 290X on the other hand is shaping up to be a titan slayer (get it TITAN slayer.........…...never mind). The 290X sports a whopping 6 billion transistors and has a bandwidth of 300GB per second pumping out 4 billion triangles per second. The 290X will sport 4GB of GDDR5 memory and also signals the return of a 512bit memory interface, reminds me of the 512 bit monsters of the past. The 290X is also the first card to support Direct X 11.2. Unfortunately no info is available on exact stream processor counts but from what I hear it’s somewhere in the range of 3,000.

The R7 250 will be priced at US $89. The R7 260X will come in at US$ 139. The R9 270X and 280X will be priced at US$ 199 and US$299 respectively. Unfortunately no prices have been announced for the 290X as of yet. 

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New era has begun! Watch AMD live stream Now.

AMD is launching its new line of GPUs Watch the Live stream here

amdlivestream on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

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Nintendo Pioneer Hiroshi Yamauchi Dead at 85

To anyone outside the gaming circle this may not mean a thing to you but to us gamers especially the 80s and 90s babies who grew up playing super Mario Bros. and the Legend of Zelda, it hits a little closer to home. Ex Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi died this morning of Pneumonia at a hospital in Japan.

Yamauchi was at Nintendo's helm when they single handedly resurrected what was a dead video games industry after the video game crash of 1977. In fact, If it wasn't for him the Nintendo we know and love today probably would not exist! He took over the then 60 year old playing card company (yes, Nintendo is old………real old) from his grandfather in the late 1940s and set out on his mission to modernize and diversify the company. This led to many different ventures, a Taxi company, a food company (selling instant rice) , a TV network and; get this, a “love hotel” yea you read that right! Eventually all these ventures failed and in 1966 Yamauchi moved Nintendo into the toy industry launching a number of successful products designed by Gupei Yokoi who would go on to invent the Game Boy.

The stage was now set as Yamauchi led Nintendo into the arcade industry releasing a number of light gun shooter games. This eventually led to Nintendo securing the rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey video game console in japan. Nintendo would eventually manufacture their own hardware, known as simply the Colour TV Game. All this led to the NES/Famicom and the rest is history! The Nintendo we all know and love was born.

Yamauchi left Nintendo in 2002 and reportedly did not accept his retirement pension worth something in the area of $14 million, stating that Nintendo could put the money to better use. Yamauchi’s net worth is estimated at around $2.1 billion and was ranked the 13^th richest man in japan.

Yamauchi is survived by his wife and 3 kids.

Now if you will excuse me, I shall go forth and stomp as many Koopa Troopas in his honor!

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Cyanogen Mod is now Cyanogen Inc.

Yup that’s right, Cyanogen mod has gone commercial! Cyanogen mod has been powering devices all the way back to the original G1 and continues to breathe life into devices both old and new the world over! Hell Cyanogen Mod is the force that keeps my aging Nexus S ticking over every morning. I know what many of you are thinking, they have gone commercial, and so that obviously means they sold out to the corporate machine, gone over to the dark side! Well founder Steve Kondik has made it clear that not much will change as the Cyanogen team will still be as committed to the community as always. 

So far Cyanogen Inc. has received some $7 million in funding and the benefits have slowly been trickling down to the end users in the form of the new professional grade camera app and remote device management features. There is even talk of a Cyanogen Mod installer that will provide a bullet proof method of installing the Custom OS on a variety of devices.  This should be available on the play store in a few weeks so stay tuned. I for one can’t wait to see what else the team at Cyanogen Mod…..I mean Inc. has to offer to the community so until then, good luck to team Cyanogen going forward, I expect great things in the future! To the rest of the community, keep calm, flash Cyanogen mod nightlies!

More details can be found here.

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Space X Falcon 9 v1.1 fires its engines for the first time.

Falcon 9v1.1 Roll out.

SpaceX has conducted their first hot fire test of the Falcon 9v1.1 a.k.a Falcon 9 Reusable (F9-R). During a hot fire or static fire test all crucial systems are enabled and the rocket is fully fueled and fully prepared for launch, sort of a dress rehearsal if you will. Engines are fired and throttled to full power for a few seconds before an abort command is issued to shut them down. All this while the rocket remains firmly bolted to the pad. By doing this, engineers can collect performance data on all the rockets vital systems to determine whether or not the rocket is ready for its mission. This is all in preparation for the launch of the CASSIOPE satellite, the first passenger to ride the F9-R to orbit. The launch which was scheduled for September 15^th has slipped unfortunately and SpaceX has yet to confirm a new launch date.

Business end of the F9-R

The F9-R sports a stretched first stage that will eventually become the core stage of the Falcon Heavy and as the name suggests, is the first steps towards creating a fully reusable rocket. Future incarnations of the F9-R will sport landing legs and will have the ability to return safely to earth after each launch. SpaceX is already hard at work on this endeavor. The first stage is powered by 9 upgraded merlin 1D engines arranged in an octagonal pattern (octaweb) with a single centrally mounted engine. The Merlin 1D engines are a significant step above the older Merlin 1C. Not only are they more powerful providing 147,000 lbf when compared to 94,000 lbf of the 1C, the Merlin 1D also has the highest thrust to weight ratio ever achieved by a rocket engine. The manufacturing process has also been optimized meaning lower manufacturing costs in the long run. The first flight of F9-R will also see the introduction of a payload fairing. A payload fairing is simply a shell made of composite materials that protect payloads whether it be a satellite or a space probe during the accent through the densest part of the earth’s atmosphere after which the fairing is jettisoned so that the payload can be released into orbit. Since all previous launches took the Dragon capsule to orbit, no fairing was needed. A fairing however will be crucial as it is needed to protect the delicate instruments on the CASSIOPE satellite during the climb to orbit.

SpaceX has a lot riding on the F9-R as this may be potentially the most challenging launch in the company’s history. The F9-R incorporates the most technological changes since the introduction of the block 1 Falcon 9 back in 2010. When you have so many new modifications all debuting at the same time, the risk of failure is significantly higher! However the Falcon 9 has proven itself to be a very reliable booster thus far, even surviving an engine failure at launch during the CRS-1 ISS resupply mission. Falcon 9 is designed to make it to orbit even after losing two of its 9 Merlin engines, thankfully it hasn’t had to make use of that feature. Let’s hope it never has to.

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Voyager 1 Now In Interstellar Space!

Its official! Vaoyager 1 is now in interstellar space! The most distant object that man has ever sent into space has finally crossed over into a region where the sun no longer has any influence!  Actually, scientists believe that voyager 1 may have crossed this boundary some time last year. Voyager was launched back in 1977 atop a Titan 3E Rocket as part of NASA’s “grand tour”, an ambitious plan that would see the twin voyager probes visiting the outer planets of the solar system. This venture would only be possible by taking advantage of the alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in the late 1970s. Scientists jumped at the opportunity as this unique alignment would not recur for another 175 years. Although Voyager 2 was launched a week before Voyager 1, Voyager 1 was able to overtake her sister craft and get to both Jupiter and Saturn sooner using a shorter trajectory.

 

Both Voyager 1 and 2 completed their prime missions studying the outer gas giants in 1980 and have been darting towards the edge of the solar system collecting a wealth of data ever since. Voyager 1 is currently traveling at a speed of 38,120mph relative to the sun at a distance of 125 AU. Sounds pretty fast huh? The thing is even at that speed it would still take voyager thousands of years (73,775 years to be exact) to get to the nearest star Proxima Centauri ! Voyager will continue to send back data until 2025 when all its remaining instruments will be shut down.

Approximate location of Voyager 1 as of 2013

Launch of Voyager 1

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