Lian Li’s Tyr PC-X2000 case is a jewel

THERE’S A TEST OF THE Lian Li Tyr PC-X2000 HTPC/gaming case at Tech PowerUp. You’d think HTPC and gaming don’t really go hand-in-hand, and you're right. It isn’t… it’s huge (as TechPowerUp puts it) and nowhere close to an HTPC-type case.

The PC-X2000, however, will do the rounds with gamers as it sports three 140mm fans (with washable filters) at the front, two 80mm fans at the bottom/back and a single 140mm fan just below the PSU (top/back)… it also has a fan controller to keep noise under control. It also has a bunch of wild connectivity features and storage space galore. Look at it right here.

PC Watch in the Land of the Rising Sun, has cracked open a Willcom D4 – which is essentially an Atom-based MID – just to look at what makes it tick. Much like that Iphone 3G dissection we showed you a while back, this one has photos of the PCB with all the components identified. It’s originally in Japanese, but we Googlenglished it for your amusement. Read it here.

Gary at Anandtechies has a follow-up article to that preview of the SB750. AMD recovered some chipset competitiveness since last year when they launched the “Spider” platform. Before that, it was really a Nvidia and Intel dance. Now the SB750 carries the hopes of the struggling chipmaker to snatch some additional market share from the competition and maybe give Intel a run for its money in some classes of CPUs. Gary points out, right from the top, that the SB750 is bringing stabler and higher OCs to the AMD desktop. AMD Overdrive is doing an altogether better job, it seems. Read the fine print here.

Hilbert is exercising his graphics obsession with a couple of 9800GTXpluses, today. That’s two unmarked helicopters, sorry, GTXpluses hovering in his system in SLI mode. Hilbert has pretty much mucked about with all the new graphics cards on the market today, and when he says that any mainstream card is a sure bet, whether its ATI or Nvidia, then it’s likely to be the reality. Oh, in case you’re a numbers freak, the GTXplus goes toe to toe with the 4850 in Crossfire, although the higher the res gets, the worse it fares against ATI. Still, it’s $400 for a powerful SLI combo. Read it here.

Mike at TweakTown is powering up his rig with a brand new Rosewill RX630 S B Xtreme, 630W PSU. There’s nothing really extreme going on there, but there’s more to it than specs. Non-modular, good looking and with a price tag that seems pretty affordable for a quality product: $80 at some online etailers, although the Rosewill site will list it at $189.99! Read Mike’s review.

Paul Thurrott, the master of all things Windows, has been trying out a new Lenovo ThinkCentre A61E. It’s a mini-PC with loads of green power under the hood (it’s all AMD, you see?), so it doesn’t generate much heat nor does it spin fans like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a great office computer, thinks Paul, even though you’d need to upgrade the memory to run Vista decently. It’s not part of the Netdesk marchitecture or anything close to it, either. Small. Low-cost. Cool. Read on. µ