Finally, a piece that makes my case finally look like something useful has arrived. It came in a brown box which in the beginning made me ask myself if I had order a Blendtec Industrial Blender or an EVGA mobo. In the end it was indeed a mobo, and a kick-arse one if I might add. Performance specs:

• NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI chipset, the best on the market up to now
• 1333 FSB support (Which I will use with my e6750 which runs only at 1333)
• 4 RAM DIMMs, of which two are in use by my Corsair XMS2 sticks, in dual channel configuration
• HUGE chipset heatsink, with an optional fan that I will use.
• 3 PCI-E slots, and from what I read these are all 16x. I might be totally illiterate, but the PCB below clearly indicates that. Triple SLI?
• A wide array of USB connections, and even bare pins inside for further extension through the case or whatnot. I <3 USB.
• Dual RJ gigabit connections, which allows for splitting a full duplex connection over two ethernet lines. Yes, you understood right: a dedicated up line, and a dedicated down line. 1 gigabit per second on each side.
• Constructed purposely for the overclocking of the Core 2 Duo line of processors. Of which I am buying the second best, the e6750. Ha. 3.4 ghz on air cooling anyone?
• It even has the power and reset buttons built in on the board, which is very useful.

In addition to be really, really hot performance wise, or at least theoretically, it is also very visually appealing. I was expecting the slick black PCB and all, which in itself is very cool, but there was more, much more. The motherboard is fitted with 3-4 tiny LEDs, one which indicates that power reaches the board, and the others indicating POST error messages, very useful for overclocking, since there is no speaker pinning on the board for a case speaker to broadcast POST messages through. Also very neat is the onboard digital display, which according to me will give the system temperature once I get a processor mounted in there.

I was expecting my motherboard before my RAM, but just yesterday, I have received the Corsair memory modules that I have order almost exactly 2 weeks ago.

When it comes to keeping safe sensible or important data, many people, too many for that matter, think that their computer’s hard drive is the safest and most reliable place to keep their files. Think about it: where are YOUR financial documents, income tax declarations, private business emails, or even those precious pictures and videos, memories that you would give anything to protect? On your computer hard drive? It takes only one failure to erase it all, and that isn’t considering the threat of viruses and malicious software. On a CD or DVD? I’ve seen countless scratched backup disks, and even more lost ones. Backups are useless if they cannot be found. On some random webspace that you got for free? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t post my income reports of the web without some serious encryption… but that’s just me.

Printing.

This policy is valid from 27 August 2007