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The mystery of the rusty chokes

New boards come with rusty choke bonus

SOME OF YOU might not be old enough to remember the farce about a decade ago about blown capacitors on motherboards. It was a huge issue and came down to the matter of poor choice of components as the motherboard makers tried to save some cost. Although we’re not the first to unearth this, it now appears that a certain manufacturer has ended up with at least some board models that come with pre-rusted chokes.
Update: Asrock responds
Update2: More information in part 2
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Supermicro goes small with three new Pine View boards

Tiny server boards with some unusual features

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a tiny, power efficient server motherboard, then the new range of Pine View based mini-ITX server boards from Supermicro might just be what you’re looking for. The company has launched three boards going under the X7SPA moniker that offer slight variations in the feature set from each other.
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Intel leaks next gen MacBook Pro

Core i5 inside

TRADITIONALLY APPLE HAS been pretty good at keeping a tight lid on things when it comes to leaks about upcoming products, with the odd slip here and there. That doesn’t stop its fans from coming up with some wild speculations as to what Apple is going to launch next as soon as Apple announces that it is about to host an event. The next such event is on January 27th and the interweb has been full of speculations about what Apple is going to announce.
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Zotac really likes tiny computers

Working on AMD and Intel versions

THERE’S NO SECRET that Zotac has become something of a favourite among the HTPC crowd, but the new range of tiny PCs that the company was showing off at CES should have an even broader appeal. What’s interesting here is that unlike everyone else, Zotac has decided that not all of us want Atom based tiny computers and as such is readying AMD and Intel CULV models.
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AMD is hoping for 15 percent of the notebook market

With a little help from Congo

AMD SEEMS TO BE EXCITED about its potential in the notebook market this year, as the company is expecting to steal away some market share from Intel. AMD is expecting to hit in excess of 10 percent market share by the middle of this year and to reach 15 percent by the end of the year. It might not sound like much, but considering how tiny AMD’s share of the notebook market is, this would be a huge improvement.
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Shuttle’s notebook strategy unveiled

SPA, short for Shuttle PCB Assembly

SHUTTLE SHOWED OFF a range of notebook products at CES, but you can’t have one. Well, at least not directly from Shuttle for the time being as the company is looking for smaller notebook vendors to join the Shuttle Notebook Ecosystem and they will then in turn offer the notebooks for sale to end users.
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China saves the desktop PC, for now

If you believe ‘industry insiders’ and the NYT

EVERY COUPLE OF years the death of the desktop PC is announced and we’re told that notebooks are set to replace the humble desktop as not only are they getting faster but they look so much better, use less power and of course they’re much more desirable than a desktop PC. However, the New York Times Bits blog talked to a few technology companies at CES about the desktop PC and according to them, it’ll still be around, for now.
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Asus to launch two more Atom ION boards

Giving Zotac some competition

ALTHOUGH ASUS ALREADY has an Atom Ion mini-ITX board on the market it looks like the company is getting ready for round two with its upcoming AT3IONT-I and AT3IONT-I Deluxe boards. We don’t have a lot of details on these boards, but from what we can tell from the single picture that has surfaced so far, it looks like Asus is getting ready to take on Zotac.
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DisplayPort 1.2 gets announced, no one notices

Adds USB 2.0 and Ethernet connectivity

VESA HAS ANNOUNCED the latest iteration of the DisplayPort standard called 1.2 and the new version adds a couple of handy features and some that are more marketing spiel than actual features at the moment. However, with the announcement coinciding with CES, no one seems to have taken any notice of it.
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