Luke Ponio ("Tech" on the old forums) was one of the four admins who opened InsaneTek in June 2004 and has been here ever since. Current projects, both tools for network and OT security work: SegAudit, which audits IT/OT firewall segmentation and proposes fixes, and NetDiagrams, field guides and a free open-source tool for drawing secure network diagrams.
The Radeon 9700 Pro, the X800 Pro, CrossFire and the master card dongle. ATI fought NVIDIA to a draw for years, then AMD bought it and retired the name. Here's what happened.
A $90 Athlon XP with a big cache that turned into a 3200+ if you set the bus to 200MHz. Plus the mobile Barton, the unlocked chip everyone wanted, and the heater core from a '67 Chevelle.
Corsair sold us memory with blinking LEDs and a water cooling kit in 2005. Twenty years later it's a public company that owns Elgato. Here's how the memory maker that survived did it.
The memory chip that ran 2-2-2 at speeds nothing else could, as long as you fed it 3.3 volts or more. TwinMOS hunts, $450 Mushkin, the DDR Booster and the UTT comeback.
SoftMenu, the BP6, the KT7, the NF7-S and the IP35 Pro. Abit built some of the best overclocking boards ever made, then went under in 2008. Here's how.
From the ashes of OCAddiction to the top 20,000 sites on the web, a near-death in 2006 and a comeback in 2026. A look back at twenty-two years of InsaneTek.
OCZ sent us more review samples than anyone. Then it quit memory, bet everything on SSDs, went bankrupt and ended up inside Toshiba. Here's what happened to the orange box.
A lot more game specific fixes and improvements have been added in this second Catalyst 11.5 hotfix. If you plan to play Dirt 3, Witcher 2, or Brink on an AMD card you will want to grab the new driver right away.
Every browser now has a 'Private Browsing' feature. What does it do? Private browsing will stop any data from being stored on your computer by websites that you visit.
Dell is trying hard to remain relevant in the ever-changing mobile world. Their latest product, the Insprion Duo, combines the familiar 10.1" netbook form factor which converts to a tablet with a unique swivel mechanism.
It was announced today that Valve will deliver ATI Catalyst driver updates via Steam. If an update to your driver is released and Steam is running on your machine then you will be notified and asked if you would like to update.
Remember back in the day when you strapped 80mm or bigger fans to your video card with zip ties just for that extra performance and to stop you from going crazy with that whiny 60mm fan droning in your ears all day?
According to Digitimes and their anonymous source, Nvidia has recently been developing an Intel chipset that combines the GPU and southbridge. Their goal is to reduce costs for PC manufacturers and to reduce size.
According to Hardware Canucks, customers of BFG products are starting to receive RMA denial letters. The letter is very short and doesn't even look real. There is a plain logo in the top left and address in the top right.
The latest CPU cooler from Glacialtech, the Siberia, reminds me of the old Thermalright XP-120, and XP-90. The big difference is that the Siberia uses two fans, one 140mm fan on top and one 92mm on the bottom.
Corsair used to rebrand Swiftech watercooling kits under the COOL brand name but since the release of the closed loop H50 CPU cooler they have gotten out of the full-blown watercooling kit market.
Starcraft 2:Wings of Liberty doesn't have the mass appeal or console port to crush sales records of games like Modern Warfare 2, but SC2 is selling faster than any PC game since 2008's Wrath of the Lich King WoW expansion according to Games…
Firefox 4 Beta 2 is now available for download. The beta update includes some of these new features from the previous Beta 1: Firefox 4 Beta 2 is available in 24 languages.
Scythe's latest towering heatsink has been put to the test at InsaneTek. It has a different design than its predecessor with more fins and heatpipes. Will it be enough to improve over its older brother? Read more to find out.
Arctic Cooling has launched a bunch of products over the past few months but it has been quite a while since they launched a product related to computer cooling. That has changed with the introduction of two new cooling products.
There was a huge amount of reviews released this week. Unfortunately I couldn't do a daily post but here they all are in one giant package. Click read more to see them all.
ADATA is the first to launch a Solid State Drive based on the JMicron JMF616 controller. The S596 Turbo SSD has a SATA II and mini-usb interface for flexibility and can be used as portable storage or as a main system drive.
Remember that Xbox Live project where Windows Live PC gamers could play with their console friends and everyone could happily frag each other in a Microsoft gaming utopia?
Microsoft has released official prices for their newest Kinect product and a new Xbox 360 model with 4GB of storage. The Kinect will be bundled with "Kinect Adventures" and sell for $149.
Lian Li has announced a new USB 3.0 2.5" hdd enclosure. The EX-10Q is made of aluminum and comes in red, silver, black, or blue colors. It is compatible with both SATA I and II drives with no external AC adapter needed.
Super Talent Technology has announced 4 new DDR3 kits rated at DDR3-2000. All 4 kits have SPD timings of 9-10-9-28. You can get them in individual 4GB sticks, 2x4GB dual-channel, or 3x4GB triple-channel kits.
Apple announced a remedy to the iPhone 4 antenna debacle today at an iPhone 4 press conference. Everyone who orders or has already ordered an iPhone 4 can get a free iPhone 4 bumper until September 30.
Arctic has been branching out into a variety of computer and electronics accessories. The Arctic Sound S111 is a USB powered portable speaker system. It has a 3.5mm stereo jack to connect to any audio source.
Tuniq, a division of Sunbeamtech, has branched out from PC cooling to consumer electronics with the HD-Box Full HD Network Media Player. The HD-Box is a set-top box for playing 1080p HD PAL or NTSC video on your TV.
GlacialTech has launched their latest CPU cooler called the Igloo Alaska. It is compatible with multiple platforms including Intel LGA775, 1156, 1366 and AMD AM2, AM3.
The Bluetooth 3 spec was adopted in April of last year. Basically all Bluetooth 3 did was allow device pairing and discovery to use the Bluetooth radio and any large amount of data to be sent through 802.11.
What happens when you die....in Guild Wars 2? Normally in MMORPG's when you die you have to run back to your corpse from a graveyard or be resurrected by a healer class. Sometimes you lose experience, currency, or equipment.
You may not have noticed but hard drive prices have been falling quite a bit. Digitimes reports that hard drive quotes in Taiwan have dropped 10-20% since the beginning of Q2 2010.
It felt like Battle.net was down for months but it is finally back online as of an hour or two ago. If you downloaded the 500MB-ish patch earlier today you can log in whenever you want.
ADATA has released its first USB 3.0 3.5" external hard drive. The Nobility NH03 drive includes 256-bit AES encryption and HDDtoGO file synchronization software.
In a decision that will have large implications on future Blizzard forum activity, Blizzard has announced that they will require anyone posting or replying on an official Blizzard forum to use their Real ID (first and last name) with an opt…
Firefox 4 Beta 1 is now available for download. The beta includes some of these new features New Add-Ons Manager: gives you more space to manage your Add-Ons, Themes and Plugins. Customizing your browser has never been easier!
It seems like everyone is fascinated by touchscreens. Touchscreen countertops, touchscreen phones, touchscreen monitors, touchscreen refrigerators, and now, thanks to NZXT, we have touchscreen fan controllers.
Today Corsair announced new Dominator GT GTX6 DDR3. The GTX6 is the fastest memory Corsair offers and is rated at PC3-21000 for a single 1GB DIMM. They are designed for benchmarking and record attempts.
MSI launched two new motherboards today, the P55A Fuzion and 870A Fuzion. Both feature Lucidlogix's Lucid LT22102 chip and exclusive Fuzion Technology which is like SLI or CrossFire but let's you use any combination of brands together.
I'm a big fan of Bad Company 2. I never got into the arcade style Modern Warfare multiplayer but Bad Company satisfies me with team-oriented vehicle and infantry warfare.
GeIL has launched their new DDR3 EVO TWO Gaming Series Memory. It is available in 2GB or 4GB Dual Channel kits and is Intel P55 rated at 2000Mhz CL6-9-6-24 or 2500Mhz CL9-11-9-27.
Streaming Netflix is great on my Xbox 360 but I always come back to Hulu for current shows that aren't on DVD yet. With Hulu's new Hulu Plus subscription service you will be able to access Hulu's content on more than just your PC.
Cooler Master's new CPU cooler is making the rounds. Where's mine? :( Cooler Master V6GT @ Legit Reviews @ OCC @ PureOverclock @ Neoseeker @ Ninjalane @ Tweaktown @ ProClockers Read more for more reviews...
Crucial has added a 64GB SSD to their Crucial RealSSD C300 lineup. The drive supports SATA 6Gb/s (backwards compatible with 3Gb/s) and provides speeds of up to 355MB/s read and 75MB/s write.
What is the perfect compliment to a case with a black interior? A black heatsink! Who cares if it looks like the black plastic cover for a modern car engine; that's what it is supposed to look like.
Arctic Cooling has branched out into the input device market with their latest ARCTIC K381 keyboard and M551 and M571 gaming mice. The keyboard sports a low profile and clean design.
Intel updated their notebook CPUs on June 20th with a couple new models and prices. XM is the Extreme Edition. QM is the normal quadcore. UM is ultra mobile. Plain M is dual.
If you haven't read an issue of The Overclocker yet, you are missing out. It is a free electronic magazine made for hardcore overclockers. The production value and art is very high quality.
I'm a proponent of function over form but the new line of Apollish Vegas fans from Enermax just plain looks cool. Most LED fans use 4 LEDS spread out on the corners to give an acceptable but predictable style.
The new ATI Catalyst 10.6 drivers for AMD GPUs came out Wednesday with a bunch of improvements related to Flash H.264 GPU acceleration and Linux 2D performance improvements.
One thing that is attractive about the Nintendo Wiimote design is that you can sit on your couch and pretend like you are being active while playing games the same way you would if you were standing up.
People are demanding a few too many six-core chips according to Digitimes. This short supply is also impacting motherboard sales and southbridge roadmap.
Office 2010 is now available worldwide to consumers. Microsoft has some new delivery options for those people who don't want to go to their nearest software store or wait for shipping.
With every console manufacturer releasing motion controller devices by the end of this year, which one will end up being the cheapest and is Sony pricing themselves out of the market?
This is one of the coolest things I have seen lately. A printer made from Legos that uses a felt tip marker as the printer head. This sure makes the spaceships I made with my Legos look elementary.
As a huge fan of the original GPU lifetime warranty, I'm sad that BFG will no longer be offering graphics card products. Their warranty has been the best I've experienced.
I've been using Hotmail for over 10 years. Actually, I should say I've had a registered Hotmail account for over 10 years since it has been relegated to a spam address after I got a Gmail invite in 2004.
AMD's Fusion product line is aiming to combine the CPU and GPU in modern computers into a single package called an APU. This technology is a result of the merger between AMD and ATI in 2006.
I've been playing SC2 beta for over a month now and I've been really enjoying it. It makes me sad to find out that the beta will be going down for a few weeks while Blizzard does some testing.
I finished switching web hosts this weekend. Hopefully no one noticed anything but faster response times and faster loading pages. No more shared hosting! If you find a problem PM me on the forums or AIM me at shift780.
I'm a huge Blizzard fan and I've been waiting for Starcraft 2 since Starcraft came out 12 years ago. I can't believe it has really been that long but the wait is almost over.
The Cryo-Z has been out for a year and a half and has never been updated for compatibility with the latest Intel sockets so OCZ's reseller Frozen CPU designed custom mounting hardware to finally add compatibility for 1156/1366 sockets.
G.Skill announced new 8GB (2GBx4) and 12GB (2GBx6) memory kits today. The 8GB capacity will be available for their entire product line and the 12GB capacity will be available on their PI product line.
Here are 7 easy steps to safely test Chromium OS on your netbook using a 3GB+ USB flash drive: Download the pre-built .img file from here. Download Image Writer for Windows here.
One week ago on November 19th, the source code to Google’s Chrome OS was released. The open source version of the OS was released under the name Chromium OS.
Arctic Cooling used to be a VGA cooler company and that was pretty much it. Their VGA coolers can be seen on a large number graphics card manufacturer's products like ASUS, Club3D, HIS, PowerColor, Sapphire, and many more.
Well it was only a matter of time. MSI and Rivatuner teamed up a couple months back on a piece of MSI branded software called MSI Afterburner which allows overclocking of video cards while inside Windows.
Complete with a futuristic name, the Matrix V2000 offers a tool-less case design and a mesh front. Is this latest offering from Thermaltake worth your cash?
Have a Windows Live ID (or MSN, Hotmail, Microsoft Passport)? If you do, you can now get a free Windows Vista RC1 key from Microsoft. The key is able to be installed on up to 10 PC's. Finally my Hotmail account comes in handy.
Intel's latest roadmap has been unveiled. The "Kentsfield" quad core chip, starting at 2.66Ghz, is scheduled to be released before the end of this year. Kentsfield is basically a Core 2 Duo E6700 with 4 cores instead of 2.
This is our first review since the site was relaunched. It is also the first from our newest addition to the team, Scott Byers (known as Switch in the forums). He did a fantastic job on this review.
Rumors are like rollercoasters, one second they are at the top and the next they come crashing down to earth. The rumor that I posted yesterday regarding ATI's brand name was proven false today.
CustomPC is reporting that, after the takeover is completed, AMD will discontinue the ATi name. CustomPC cites a named source from AMD as the one who made the statement.
Rumors have been circulating about Dell offering AMD chips in their consumer lines ever since Dell announced that they would use AMD chips in their four-way servers back in May. The first confirmation of these rumors has come.
There are currently 50.2 million broadband subscriptions in the US. According to the latest report., broadband adoption jumped 33% last year. What is interesting is that DSL was more popular than cable.
Digitimes reports that on October 23rd, AMD will slash prices on Socket S1 Turion 64 X2 and S1/754 Sempron CPU's. Price cuts will be from 16-35%. The mobile price cuts would follow a series of desktop price cuts on the 24th of this month.
ATI shares were up 8% in after-hours trading today amidst a report saying AMD may be planning a takeover of the Ontario, Canada based graphics chipset manufacturer.
ECS shipped 2.5 million motherboards in July, but that isn't good enough for them. For the fourth quarter of 2006, ECS is targetting 3 million motherboards a month.
Up until now, Nvidia's Quad SLI technology has only been accessible to those who don't mind shelling out for a PC manufactured by a big OEM. Nvidia has released a beta Quad SLI driver to the public.
Microsoft said Tuesday that it filed 26 lawsuits against companies that were allegedly selling pirated copies of Microsoft Windows XP. This is part of a crack down on people profiting from piracy.
Have you ever felt like Mario needed to run faster? Well now he can, thanks to some crazy Japanase modder. The Nintendo DS Lite 1.7x speed improvement not only speeds up the video of the game, but also the audio.
The "Cell" processor, the brains of Sony's yet-to-be-released PS3, is having some yield problems. It seems yields are as low as 10-20%. The new production methods for the complex chip still need some refining.
Although Microsoft is touting Vista as their most secure OS ever, Symantec examined the new Vista networking technology and determined that it had plenty of bugs just waiting to be exploited.
Rumors have been spreading in the past couple months about a technology called "reverse-Hyper-Threading". A site called X86-secret first mentioned the technology on April 9th.
If you haven't heard of the Optimus, it is a keyboard that has an OLED screen in each key. This allows the user to have custom static images and even animated images.
Welcome to the new site! As you can see, there are some changes. The biggest thing you will probably notice is the lack of reviews in the review section. We will be updating reviews gradually.
Corsair Strikes Partnership with ASUSTek and Announces the World’s Highest Performing “Asus-Ready” 1GB Module for the AMD Platform -- Jointly developed with ASUS for its new A8N32-SLI Deluxe/WiFi motherboards, the new 1GB XMS-3500LL PRO mem…
Sunnyvale, CA September 26, 2005 OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, is excited to announce the release of OCZ DDR PC-4000 Platinum Enhanced Bandwidth Edition 1GB modul…
Jetart has been in business since 1989. They started out doing product design, but have recently started manufacturing and exporting. Their product line ranges from air and liquid cooling to computer case mods.
Since 2003, SilverStone has been a company devoted to quality computer cases. Some of their products look similar to Cooler Master, which makes sense, because SilverStone used to be Cooler Master's ATC case division.
Mushkin has been making RAM for a long time. Their fame comes from their BH-5 series memory. After Winbond discontinued BH-5, Mushkin faded into the background while other manufacturers scrambled to find a replacement.
Swiftech is one of the first companies that comes to my mind when I think of cooling products. They started out with Celeron heatsinks way back in 1998 and have provided overclockers with quality products ever since.
Alpha Novatech has been providing the enthusiast crowd with cooling products for years. They were one of the first manufacturers to use pins to increase the surface area of heatsinks.
The most noticeable aspect of your computer isn't that latest graphics card or high-end CPU, but the chassis it is housed in. A new case can give your computer a whole new feel of satisfaction. Silverstone has been around since 2003.
Heatpipes have been the recent trend among heatsinks and Thermalright is no exception. The popular SP-94 and SP-97 both use heatpipe technology and have been top performers in their respective classes for a while now.
The first thing people think about when upgrading cooling inside of their case is usually the CPU heatsink. The CPU does give off a lot of heat and needs to be cooled, but so do other components.
