Storage Solutions...

We found Hitachi’s latest 7K100 100GB 7200RPM 2.5” Laptop PATA hard drive at Storage studio. Priced at $ 399, it’s definitely a premium price, but consider the fact that one can only fit a single hard drive into a laptop, it’s actually reasonably to pay for such a capacity. The 120GB version was also available but was sold out when we made our rounds around SLS last Saturday.

We spotted the Western Digital 4000KD giant at Storage Studio too. Priced wayyy over a buck per GB, WD 4000KD features a 16MB Cache, spinning at 7200rpm on a SATA-II interface.

The 3.5” Hitachi 7K500 SATAII 7200RPM 16MB cache 500GB drive was also available at Storage Studio. Priced at about $ 650, this is the first Hitachi SATA drive to be using 16MB cache. Currently the fastest drive in the market, I am sure many will be aching to know what this drive can do when you have a pair of these on RAID 0.

This device is excellent for those of you who want to expand your storage capacity. Normally these devices are popular via a LAN connection but somehow the transfer rate is usually limited by the LAN bandwidth for NAS. With this device you can hook up to 5 SATA hard disks and connected via a SCSI interface. SCSI is still the preferred interface for high-speed data transfer (other than Fibre Optics which belongs to another genre altogether). A mini operating system is available in this device and you can partition and do whatever you want with the hard drive via a LAN connection. Users can set the device to automatically notify them in times of hard drive failure. It’s priced at about $ 1600 without any hard drives included.

Casing and VoIP Phone

We spotted this clean looking 'Zest' Casing at DAT. Priced at 50bucks, this casing can be found at DAT and it comes with a 400watt generic power supply. To my surprise, this casing comes with thumb screws uses thumbscrews to secure the side panel.

VoIP(Voice Over IP) is so popular these days that more and more gadgets are made available in the market solely for VoIP applications. The InnoAX Net Phone USB is yet another VoIP product; it uses a pair of earphones along with a ear piece for VoIP applications over the USB interface. Priced at about 60 bucks, it’s a good price considering the amount of money you will save on international calls when you’re using VoIP applications online such as Skype.

Iwill Dual Opteron SLI capable SFF

Next, we take a look at the Dual Opteron Small Form Factor Offering from Iwill. This little monster, based on the Nvidia Nforce 4 Professional SLI chipset, is able to run a pair of Opteron Processors and 2 Nvidia Graphics Card on SLI mode, now that’s what I call a mini workstation that packs a punch. Users will love the compact look of this Iwill SFF along with the power it delivers for your industrial applications.

PSU sticking out from the case, allowing heat dissipated from the power supply to stay out of the casing.

 

CMOS reset on the back

The Iwill emblem on top of the heatsink

Very dense copper fins with 6 heatpipes. This heatsink is used to cool both the Opteron Processors.

Big Heat-sink and a small fan for Chipset and MOSFETs

4 x SATA ports (but there just isn't space for 4 SATA hard drives

Only Single slot cards are accepted in this SFF

2 x RAM slots accepting only DDR ECC Registered RAM

Wireless LAN is available onboard, an antenna is to be attached to the link in the picture above

The small SLi link that comes with the SFF

Bests Bytes Computers and Maxtor Store Decoration Contest

Presenting to you a new shop in SLS, Best Bytes PTE LTD! Replacing the old Gigabyte Show Room on the 5th floor, this shop is dedicated to bring you the best price in SLS!

Maxtor held a Best Decorated Shop contest for the month of September and Media Mart Computers came in first. Let’s take a look at their winning decorations.

By the way, I just got news that there will be another Decorating event coming up real soon. And there will be prizes for both the shop and the consumer who guess the correct winner ! Stay tuned soon! in VR-ZONE of-course!!!!