Dustin at Anandtech is trying out the SilverStone Temjin TJ04-E case. Most SilverStone cases cost an arm and a leg, and Dustin thinks this one is a bit overpriced. Hopefully you’ll find its features redeeming.

Whether you’re flying solo or having a bash online with your best mates on Modern Warfare or Battlefield 3, you just know sound is a big deal for gaming.  Tom’s Hardware did a roundup of several 5.1- and 7.1-channel gaming headsets.

Guru 3D takes a look at the Cooler Master CM 690 II Advanced Black & White case is a special edition of the ‘standard’ CM 690 II Advanced. It has some unique features and isn’t too expensive, which Guru  3D recommends heartily.

OCaholic tests an MSI Big Bang Xpower II X79 motherboard. The XL-ATX sized motherboard will fit a total of seven full-sized PCIe cards for extreme graphics setups and still cater to overclocking fanatics. Marc is seems pretty happy about it.

Legion Hardware explores the finer details of Sandy Bridge-E memory performance. Sandy Bridge-E brought with it quad-channel memory controllers, but are they really worth the effort/cost? Steve says “no”, and surprisingly a single-channel setup did the job almost as well as a quad-channel. To add insult to injury, low-latency memory (the pricier kind) didn’t do much to improve the situation.

Asrock’s X79 Extreme9 motherboard is the very highest-end of motherboards the company has on offer. HardOCP gave it a test run and a rather sceptical Daniel remains unconverted to the Asrock flock. Kyle, on the other hand, thinks it’s a tough little mobo that sucks a little too much power for his liking.

Liquid cooling is now a very common cooling solution and Legit Reviews has one of them on the bench: Swiftech’s H20-220 Edge HD cooling kit. It isn’t DIY simple, because it requires some user setup, but the results are quite good. A bit pricier than your usual out-of-the-box Corsair kit, but it’s upgradable, which justifies the cost.

CPU cooling goes hand-in-hand with stability and overclocking. Bjorn3D tested the Silenx EFZ-120HA5 CPU cooler, a brand that isn’t known for its enthusiast-grade kit. However, Silenx has managed to squeeze great performance from an almost-silent cooler.

If you’re a datacentre administrator and need a final nod on your purchase order for new Opterons, you might want to take a look at Anandtech’s Opteron 6276 tests. Against past present and competitor solutions there’s a lot to be read about it.

Hot Hardware tested NEC’s EA273WM-BK MultiSync monitor, a largish 27-inch screen with a rather plain spec sheet where only one main feature really shines through: the weight. Literally weighing in at 16lbs / 7Kg, it’s one of the lightest panels around.

Corsair is better known for PC cases, power supplies and memory. Keyboards… not so much. Guru 3D has a Corsair Vengeance K60 gaming keyboard in the house and seems to be pleased with the keyboard specs. Wrist rest, WASD identification caps, anti-ghosting tech and the likes seem to give it some unique features.

Techspot is calling it the people’s Sandy Bridge-E, the Core i7 3820, which comes in at a sub-$300 price tag, yet with all the bells and whistles of its much pricier brothers. It repeatedly beat the i7-2600K so it’s got to be doing something right.

Hardware Secrets has Asrock’s secret weapon on their test bench, the X79 Extreme 6/GB. It’s a Sandy Bridge-E motherboard with SLI and CrossFireX capability, two PCIe 3.0  x16 slots and a single PCIe 3.0 x8 slot. The list of features goes on a bit, but you’re buying something of a high-end board for $280.

Antec’s Eleven Hundred case was reviewed by Hardware Heaven. Stuart says it’s an impressive case, but with room for some minor tweaks. No front fan, for one, and the length of the fan wiring limits the use of add-on fan controllers. You can squeeze extralarge graphics cards into the case, as its XL-ATX sized.

Diablotek makes a mean SSD to USB 3.0 SATA adapter kit, you can see it on Techware Labs’ review. It isn’t an ideal solution for everyday use, but it gets the job done. Of course you’re limiting performance on the SSD drive by hooking it up to the USB port, even a 3.0 for that matter, but if you need to copy stuff around for a fresh install or somesuch… this’ll do it.

Legit Reviews has a very high-end specced Gigabyte GA-X79-UD7 motherboard. For $370 you’d expect nothing short of gold plating and platinum wiring, and according to Legit, it’s worth it. Unfortunately it is a limited run that is very hard to find. Read all about it.

While Intel is launching its Intel 520 SSD, based on SandForce  2281 SoC, OCZ is pushing the envelope with its Octane 512GB SSD and a new v1.13 Performance Firmware (with an Indilinx controller). It doesn’t size up to the expectations Chris had.

The latest figures are showing that PC sales in the UK are falling fast. This is partly due to economic woes and partly because no one wants to buy a PC if they will have to upgrade at the end of the year.

According to Gartner, UK PC sales dropped 20 percent in the final quarter of 2011, with only Apple and Lenovo increasing sales. Last year, UK PC sales dropped 15.9 percent, or 2 million units.

The market seems to be contracting so much that while Apple's sales are not growing by much, they are now sitting at 10 percent of the market, up from just four percent a few years ago.

But other brands really suffered. Acer lost nearly half of its market, while HP nearly 16 percent, and Dell nine percent. Only Lenovo increased by 14 percent.

Part of the problem is that netbook sales have collapsed and this has held up unit sales since 2009. This may not be a bad thing. They did take sales from more profitable laptops.

Meanwhile, the industry is waiting for Intel's pricier Ultrabook portables to make an impact, but we do not expect this to happen until Ivy Bridge arrives -which should also coincide with Windows 8.

It seems that the channel, then, is holding its breath until that is happening. It could be a long 2012 as suppliers hope that it will be the old Wintel alliance that will bail it out. 

A significant jump in efficiency has been made that could see a 25 percent increase in energy transferred .

According to researchers at Cambridge University, the use of organic semiconductor materials in the production of solar cells has allowed more energy from the sun to be transferred into electricity than before.

By absorbing more of the light spectrum they believe the maximum possible efficiency rates could jump to 44 percent, up from 34 percent. In reality this could prove trickier as current solar cells are a long way from maximum efficiency levels.

But the method used by researchers has certainly opened up the door to significant increases in energy output.

This is because they have managed to harness the energy from blue photons that emanate as light from the sun.   Up until now, the blue photons have been lost to heat as sun rays hit solar panel rather than feeding in to lower your 'leccy bill, with red photons more easily captured.

The addition of an organic semiconductor material called pentacene means that blue photons can be picked up, with two electrons produced for every blue photon that hits the solar cell.

Using the thin film, cells would have a number of advantages over bulky silicon based cells, though the main problem has been that they are unable to match efficiency levels.

But if it is possible to push up efficiency then it will mean that having to shell out for expensive silicon photovoltaic panels will not be necessary. Neither too would a feed in tariffs from DECC with the ability to save cash quickly increased.

One of the report authors, Dr. Akshay Rao, said the announcement was a “step towards a new generation of solar cells”.

Another of the scientists involved in the research, Bruno Ehrler, told TechEye that it will be a while still before the groundbreaking new cells are adorning our houses: “The hybrid solar cells we have made are in an early stage, in fact these are the first of their kind,” he told us. “So it is very difficult to estimate which way they take into commercialisation.”

Eight19, a production company spin off from Cambridge University, has agreed to manufacture the cells if they are found to be commercially viable.

“However," Ehrler said, "in order to assess that we need to investigate the devices further. This might take 2-3 years.

“The route of commercialisation might also be a different one, e.g. augmenting conventional silicon solar cells with our organic material, pentacene, to harvest more of the energy of the blue photons.”

It is in thin film cells that the team are hoping to see development.

“Our materials can be dissolved and used as in ink in a roll-to-roll printing,” Ehrler says. “This allows for large scale production as well as for a variety of shapes and sizes and the production of flexible solar cells. The size and shape of a conventional silicon solar cell is pretty much fixed.”

Having succesfully managed to limbo under the initial target of $1,000, the first devices released under Intel’s Ultrabook banner are set to drop even further – and without a cheque from Intel this time round.

According to Digitimes, retail channel sources have indicated that vendors are clearing the way for current stock to make way for the upcoming Ivy Bridge processors.   But with the new, faster and fitter version on its way, who would want to stump up all that money for what's about to be considered old hat?

With a move to a 22 nanometre process on the chips, you can expect even better performance from the lightweight laptops, and increases on the seven odd hours of battery life that many are currently shipping with.

Windows 8 is also on its way, so it is likely that Ultrabooks could really start to come into their own this year – even if Intel’s wildly optimistic claims of owning 40 percent of the laptop are likely to remain a marketing department fantasy.

In fact it seems that with such a step up in performance about to hit the Ultrabooks, picking one of the current generation - even at the expected knock down prices - seems a bit crazy.

Even AMD is shaping up to offer some competition with its own version of the MacBook Air, and is hoping to gets its prices around the $800 mark without a reduced sticker in sight.

So if vendors are gleefully slashing prices on expensive gear it was shouting at you to buy a few weeks ago, there is likely to be a reason.

While prices haven't substantially dropped in the UK, the US is seeing some more action. Acer’s S3 , somewhat of an oddity with a hard disk drive, has seen price drops to $799, while Lenovo and HP have lowered prices by as much as 25 percent and 21 percent.

It is expected that eventually the majority of the current crop of Ultrabooks will be lowered not so carefully into the bin marked ‘bargain’, and offloaded for as little as $699.

As prices drop and a new wave of next generation Ultrabooks looms just over the horizon, it seems that Intel may be able to silence some of its doubters and finally begin to claw in the sales it has so energetically talked up.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing, who invented the computer and saved Blighty from the Germans. However, after the war the homosexual Turing was convicted of gross indecency because he was a homosexual and underwent chemical castration before he killed himself. Before he died his security clearance was then withdrawn and he was unable to  continue his work for GCHQ, Britain's intelligence agency.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has formally apologised to Turing's ghost for the way the British treated him while he was alive.

However moves to get a full pardon for Turing have failed because being a homosexuality was still a crime during the 1950s.

According to iProgrammer,  Lord McNally stated that a posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence.

That is not to say that McNally was unsympathetic. He added that it was tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd-particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort.

"At the time the law required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times," McNally wrote. 

Thunderbolt was mostly developed by Chipzilla with a little bit of help from Jobs mob. But it seems that Apple's reality distortion field does not allow for others to have invented anything.

It rushed to trademark the Thunderbolt name in the US, which must have given Chipzilla a bit of a heart attack.

However after a few words were shared between the two, Apple apparently agreed to shift all their IP for Thunderbolt to Intel.

Intel's Senior Manager of Communications, Dave Salvator, supposedly told Bright Side News on May 19, 2011 that Jobs Mob did some of the initial trademark filings" for Thunderbolt but that they have full rights to the trademark.

Well it seems that Intel might want to rethink its friendship with Apple after Patently Apple  found that Apple is continuing its quest to own Thunderbolt.

The outfit was having a snuffle around the files at the US Patent and Trademark Office and found that Apple's lawyers are still vigorously working their trademark application for Thunderbolt through the system.

Nowhere on the trademark application is any mention of Intel and the date it was filed shows that Apple's "current owner" is Jobs' Mob.

It looks like Apple cannot keep itself out of the Patent Courts and that Intel will have to take it to the cleaners to remind the outfit that, reality distortion field aside, it did not invent everything.

Chipzilla must be thinking that with a business partner like Apple, who needs competitors? 

Apparently not. According to Chinese website Mic Gadget, Foxconn wants to increase its workforce in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou and despite the stories of suicides, explosions, over zealous security guards and roof top protests over broken promises, people are still interested in working there.

The site shows thousands of aspirants are lining up for jobs in Foxconn "not a sweatshop" style factories. They all lined up outside a labour office in Zhengzhou, the largest city of Henan province in North central China.

It is possible that they got the message all wrong and they thought they were fanboys queuing up to buy an iPhone 4S, but this is unlikely as some of them had job applications in their hands.

Foxconn, whose CEO famously said that he needed to take tips on managing his staff from the local zoo, wants to hire an additional 100,000 employees as it is aiming at augmenting its iPhone production.

According to advertisements the pay package at Foxconn starts at $261 and it is likely to reach somewhere around $379 after an appraisal. The company is also providing food and lodging facilities. 

The leak was on HP's website which provides some basic details of single- and dual-socket BL, ML and DL Gen8 servers. The servers will use Intel's upcoming Xeon E5 processors. The details have since vanished from the site but not before they were spotted by the eagle eyed hacks at PC World .

One of the servers, the imaginatively titled single-socket ProLiant BL460c, will be a small-form-factor server based on Intel's E5-2650L.

They will ship with HP's last ideas about networking, I/O, storage and management capabilities.

We expect HP to provide a few more details about the server range later this month.

There is an invite being passed around where HP threatens to share news about "ground-breaking, new enterprise technology and services that redefine customer data centre experiences and economics".

Dave Donatelli, executive vice president and general manager of HP Enterprise Servers, Storage, Networking and Technology Services, is expected to speak at the event so that more or less makes the announcement certain.

What we know is that the Gen8 servers will eventually replace the Proliant G7 family, which was introduced in March 2010 and is based on x86 processors.

It looks like HP wants to drop AMD from the equation to make it easier to tightly integrate components and software in its servers to make deployment and management easier.

It follows a general trend in the server market to make hardware that is specialised for particular uses rather than taking a swiss army knife approach.

G7s are targeted at virtualised environments and it can be expected that the G8s will head there too.

After the G8s, HP will start ramping up interest for its server designs based on low-power microprocessors from ARM. These are expected to be out for testing by the middle of the year.