Best of the Best As of June 2005
This month, we switched from our long-time favorite case—the Silverstone Nimiz
TJ03—to Thermal Take’s Armor VA8000BWS case. The Armor doesn’t have the
sexy aluminum finish of the Nimiz, but it does feature liquid-cooling support,
an optional BTX back plate, and a 120mm fan at the rear (the Nimiz sports dual
80mm). We’re still in limbo on Pentium 4/Pentium D boards until we see more
mobos with Intel’s 955X chipset or nVidia’s nForce4 Intel Edition. Finally, we have
to point out that while the Radeon X850 PE is our top pick for a PCI-E card, that’s
just for systems that can’t run SLI. Those with an eye toward dual videocards
should consider nVidia’s GeForce 6800 Ultras for top performance.Our current gaming favorites : Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Counter Strike Source,
Psychonauts, World of Warcraft
Disc-It!
The days of having a desktop lit-
tered with piles of optical discs are
finally over, thanks to an incredibly high-tech
disc-retention device known as Disc-it!
Here’s how it works: Your optical discs slip
onto a plastic pointy thing that holds them
in place. It’s ahead of it’s time, we know, but
at least it’s compatible with traditional CD-R/RW,
CD-ROM, DVD-R, and DVD+R media. And it of
course supports modern dual-layer discs! It
may even be compatible with next-gen for-
mats—HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, watch
out! You can store up to eight discs
per Disc-it, and the thingamajiggy
is available in a wide variety of
colors. It even has a non-skid bot-
tom. But the best thing about the
Disc-it is seeing people’s expressions
when you tell them it’s one of your girlfriend’s pasties.
$5, http://www.mydiscit.comJUNE 2005 MAXIMUMPC
Benchmark Your
Funny Bone!
Think you’re funny, wiseguy? Do you have what it takes to
challenge the formidable wit of Team Maximum PC? Now’s
your chance to find out! Here are three of the funniest pan-
els from the Photo Funny archives. Add your own captions
to each photo (make sure you keep them in order!) to tell
a funny story, and e-mail your entry to input@maximumpc.
com with “Photo Funny” in the subject line. The deadline
is June 1. The best knee-slapper of them all will run in the
August issue. Good luck!PCI Express videocard:
ATI Radeon X850 XT
Platinum Edition
High-end AGP videocard:
nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra
Budget videocard:
GeForce 6600 GT
Soundcard:
Sound Blaster Audigy
2 ZS Platinum
10,000rpm SATA:
Western Digital 740GD
Raptor
7,200rpm SATA:
Maxtor DiamondMax 10
300GBExternal backup drive:
Western Digital Dual-
Option Media Center 250GB
Portable USB drive:
Seagate Portable External
Hard Drive 100GB
DVD burner:
Plextor PX-716A
Widescreen LCD monitor:
Hewlett-Packard f2304
Desktop LCD monitor:
Dell 2001FP
Desktop CRT monitor:
NEC FE2111 SB
Socket 939 Athlon 64 mobo:
ASUS A8N-SLI DeluxePortable MP3 player:
Apple iPod 40GB
Photo printer:
Canon i9900
PDA:
Dell Axim X50v
5.1 speakers:
Logitech Z-5500 Digital2.1 speakers:
Klipsch GMX A2.1Mid-tower case:
Chenbro Gaming Bomb IIFull-size tower case:
Thermal Take Armor
VA8000BWSfinally over, thanks to an incredibly high-tech
disc-retention device known as Disc-it!
Here’s how it works: Your optical discs slip
onto a plastic pointy thing that holds them
in place. It’s ahead of it’s time, we know, but
at least it’s compatible with traditional CD-R/RW,&CD-ROM, DVD-R, and DVD+R media. And it of
course supports modern dual-layer discs! It
may even be compatible with next-gen for-
mats—HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, watch1
2
3