Hardware

Those crazy engineers over at Intel are at it again. They have officially launched the followup to Sandy Bridge, the Sandy Bridge-E, along with the new X79 chipset to support it. Sandy Bridge-E looks set to bring some nice performance increases, at least at the high end. Of course, these new Sandy Bridge-E processors aren't likely to make their way into the average person's HTPC in the immediate future. That's what Ivy Bridge will be for. Platform launches are always exciting, even when the codename isn't, and even though Sandy Bridge-E is intended for enthusiast and enterprise users it is only a matter of time before some of its more interesting features such as the quad-channel memory controller and PCIe 3.0 support work they way down to the mainstream.

For the LGA2011 platform, Intel is introducing three new chips: The top-end Core 7-3960X at $990—yup, that’s $9 cheaper than the existing Core i7-990X chip (gee thanks, Intel!) that this Extreme chip is meant to replace. Intel is also introducing two other chips. The mid-tier 3.2GHz Core i7-3930K will sell for $555. Besides the lower stock clock, the chip will shed some of the L3 cache, for a total of 12MB. For the budget enthusiast, Intel has plans to release a quad-core, Hyper-Threaded Sandy Bridge-E with 10MB of L3 cache early next year. 

MaximumPC

Here's a nifty little board from the gang at Zotac, full of features including wireless, maybe your next HTPC board?

Today sees us still keeping our focus on small form factor in general but taking a look at a slightly different product, that shares the same market. The Zotac H67-ITX WiFi is still aimed at the HTPC market but differs somewhat in its design compared to the boards we've looked at recently. We say that as instead of having a built-in style processor or APU, we see a conventional socket able to take Intel's 2nd generation of processors which we all know as Sandybridge. Whilst we love the potential behind the i5 2500k and i7 2600k, this board would be better suited with a low-powered i3 CPU leaving it to be a perfect board to sit snuggly in a nice looking HTPC chassis below your Plasma TV.

eTeknix

The quest for a great HTPC keyboard is always a challenge, especially with more of us cutting the cord to watch various streaming options which require a keyboard and mouse. Here's one from Enermax that aims to fit the bill. A bit big for my liking, but looks like it does the job. I do like that it has a trackball.

The Aurora mini is surprisingly fully featured for one that is about 2/3 of the length of an average keyboard. Its got arrow keys, a full size backspace, oversized enter/return, media keys, mouse ball, scroll wheel etc. The only thing missing is the number pad. Enermax saved some space by making the Home, End, Page up/down etc keys as functions of the arrows.

XSReviews

I'm not sure how I feel about this case...it's somewhat different that's for sure!

The Sentey SS1-2421 case is part of Sentey’s Slim Series lineup and comes with a 450W SFX12V power supply. The Sentey SS1-2421 can house a micro-ATX or ITX motherboard, and up to four low profile PCI devices, as an HTPC or an office computer. The front panel LCD on the Sentey SS1-2421 slim tower case features an automatic fan controller, temperature monitor and HDD activity display. The Sentey SS1-2421 has a dark high-quality glossy finish and maintains aesthetic uniformity at the front through the use of a built-in, flip-down optical drive bezel. Designed to be slim and compact, the Sentey SS1-2421 is ideal as an office computer or an HTPC.

HighTechLegion