SSDs prices gradually dropping to below the $1/GB mark

It seems that just in the last month or so we’re started to see SSD vendors drop their prices a little. Manufacturers like OCZ, Kingston, ADATA, Crucial and others that compete in the mainstream consumer space, have started to drop prices on many of their products to the point where the milestone $1/GB point is starting to become reality.

Here is a chart that caught my attention on Anandtech which shows the prices on NewEgg for a range of SSD products from various vendors at the three most common capacity points; 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB:

This chart doesn’t cover all SSD vendors, but it does illustrate the gradual drop in prices that we’re seeing at the moment. There are plenty of places on the chart that flirt quite closely with the $1/GB price point, and even some that are just under. Several other SSD manufacturers like Kingston, Corsair, Samsung, MemoRight, Plextor and Transcend also have drives float around these price points.

Check out this chart that shows the price per GB of several featured 128GB capacity drives - for me the ideal capacity for an Win 7 install:

This is great news for DIY PC builders. Sure the absolute fastest SSDs on the market will cost you more, but the important point for me is that there are many millions of systems out in the wild that are still running off traditional 7,200rpm drives. These PCs could all enjoy a fairly inexpensive, yet exponential performance leap by upgrading an SSD. Intel Smart Response is will remain an attractive option for folks on SSD capacities below 64GB, but with these new prices, the attraction to opt for a full OS install on SSD has never been stronger.

The charts in this blog can be found on an interesting SSD review article here on Anandtech.com

GIGABYTE Extreme OC Workshop (New Zealand) in pics!

PC World NZ came over to Playech.co.nz this weekend to check out GIGABYTE’s latest instalment of the popular Extreme OC Workshop being help in the Auckland PC store’s gaming room. Playtech hosted a wonderful night of overclocking for the 100+ crowd that gathered at the start.

TeamAU’s deanzo, dinos22 and youngpro were there to teach the crowd about LN2 overclocking and then capped off the night with a friendly overclocking competition between the two teams with a fixed frequency of 6GHz in 32M SuperPi cacluations. Efficiency and memory tuning came into play and we could not separate the contestants from their PCs after the sirens went off as it proved to be a very addictive way to be introduced into overclocking!

I’m still feeling a little angry at my team mate youngpro (coach for the Australian team we named “Wallabies” after our Rugby Union side) because he allowed the “All Blacks” team to win, strangely coincidental to be named after NZ world champion rugby team. Luckily we had our own [traitor hehe] team mate, deanzo, coach this team. Rivalry between Australians and New Zealanders was in full swing particularly when the announcement was made that All Blacks triumphed, followed by the loudest geek cheers you will ever hear, in the overclocking challenge as well!

Congratulations All Blacks, you have beaten us in overclocking now as well!

I’ll put a couple of shots but for the full (fun) article you’re one more mouse click away (at this website).

P.S. Playtech have also put up lots of photos from the night at their facebook page here.

Evening started innocently freezing flowers etc

All Blacks (New Zealand) team captain leading the way with precise temperature control. Teams decided to not push temps to max to prevent condensation from forming early into the challenge.

Wallabies (Australian) team captain showing everyone how it’s done. It was great having some girls genuinely interested in overclocking and participate through the day, very dedicated! It’s cool being a geek girl :)!

Then someone lost a finger (strangely the captain of the AllBlacks team found it humorous)! Dissing it’s own team mate, what is going on with these people heheheh?!?

Wait what?!? OK maybe he didn't lose a finger as we saw him benching with all ten fingers later on in the evening. Hmmmm, New Zealanders have a strange sense of humour heheheh! (wait i can’t see neither one of the 10 fingers EEK!)

Note from Cpt. Obvious: No fingers were hurts during the making of this show! hehe.

Bust-a-rhyme competition going off at OCAU!

Here are a couple of recent youtube videos bustin’ rhymes to win a GIGABYTE Z77X-UD3H.

You fancy yourself as a bit of a bust-a-rhyme star, join in the fun at OCAU! Language warning!

Trans am from XtremeSystems rappin’ with the sounds of AC/DC, awesome!

UncleFester from OCAU bustin’ a rhyme.

Aristidis from Greece breaks a single card world record at HWBOX 1st OMG Event 2012

Greek overclockers and modders had their first big event this year called “HWBOX 1st OMG Event 2012”. One of the standout OC results was Aristidis breaking the single GPU world record in 3DMARK03. He used the GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H!

Congrats guys!

GIGABYTE extreme workshop now, watch it live!

We just kicked off our GIGABYTE Extreme Overclocking Workshop in Auckland, New Zealand. We’re about to have a live stream at justin.tv so make sure you tune in and watch the action at this link. Live stream will rotate 4 different video feeds throughout the day, hope you like it!

 

Coin operated PCs at Internet café’s in the Philippines

A very enjoyable part of my job is to travel from city to city after a new product announcement evangelizing our new tech. So I’m in the Philippines now and we just saw some cases for sale that have a coin slot where the DVD ROM should be. They are for Internet cafes where 1 Philippine Peso (2-3 US cents or less than 1NT$) will get you 3-5 minutes of time on the PC.

 

The coin slot device has a little daughter board with a timer on it that cuts power to the keyboard, monitor and mouse when time runs out. So the PC keeps running, you just can’t see or change anything without putting in more money. My first thought was that it must be a waste of time because who could possibly make money at those ridiculously low rates, but then it started to make sense to me because if it was more expensive only vacationers would use the service. With a population of around 95 million people, 1 Peso for 3 minutes means that a vast majority of the population can afford to access the Internet. It’s brilliant!

These coin operated PCs can be found in Internet cafes as well as convenience stores where the shop owner benefits from profit sharing. So if you’re ever in the Philippines and see one of these strange looking systems, toss in a coin because you’d be driving small business that allows under privileged young people to access and experience the wonders of the Internet.

GIGABYTE ‘Hidden Gems’ competition kicks off: Show us your classic GIGABYTE rig and win prizes

 

In honor of our illustrious history as one of the world’s foremost motherboard manufacturers, today we’re kicking off the GIGABYTE Hidden Gems competition. The idea is simple; post a video or photo of your old GIGABYTE motherboard (preferably still running) and you could win yourself a new GIGABYTE 7 series motherboard.

And if you don’t have any photos or youtube videos to share, don’t worry, you can still take part by perusing the entrees and voting for the one that tingles your nostalgia glands the most. Feel free to stoke debate by adding your comments too.

To take part, simply head on over to the Hidden Gems competition page.

Bust-a-rhyme competition under way at OCAU, check out what hilarious Aussies are rhyming about!!!

OCAU (Overclockers Australia) is putting on a show with a serious(ly funny) bust-a-rhymes competition as TeamAU prepares to tour New Zealand and then Melbourne with their highly popular GIGABYTE Extreme OC Workshop.

The real fun started already with forum members bustin’ some serious rhymes to win a motherboard. This is going to be a corker so make sure you visit the thread every day for new posts! I hear some videos will also appear later tonight.

TeamAU is a group of killer overclockers from Austral-Asian region travelling the Australia and New Zealand and sharing their wealth of experience in LN2 benching. This time round they are making two stops with GIGABYTE. First stop is Auckland, New Zealand. Playtech is the host of this show. Monash University in Melbourne’s host. For more details follow this LINK.

Hardware of choice is GIGABYTE’s record breaking Z77 range and Intel 3770K Ivy Bridge CPUs.

This year we are looking at livestreams as well and some interesting competitions to spice things up a bit during the workshop. I will update the blog when the first event kicks off!. In the meantime keep an eye on one of the funniest threads you will read http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1036929.

Don’t miss it!

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 wins Tom’s Hardware ‘Best of Computex 2012’ Award

Here at GIGABYTE, our motherboards are frequently singled out for awards, be it for best value, performance, features or pure overclocking prowess. However, it is with particular satisfaction and prestige that we accept this ‘Best of Computex 2012’ award from Tom’s Hardware for our recently announced Ultra Durable 5 technology.

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 and our forthcoming ‘UP’ series of motherboards will be pretty revolutionary in terms of motherboard design, pulling together new 60A rated Powerstage ICs from IR, pairing them with high current capable chokes and a 2x copper PCB. This all means that the motherboard can deliver blistering performance without creating as much unwanted heat, greatly aiding stability, longevity and overall performance capability. It’s also a technology that lends itself perfectly to overclocked water cooled systems that don’t always have great airflow in the PWM area. 

We’re really pleased too that arguably the most respected PC hardware site out there has recognized our efforts to innovate. Here a what Tom’s had to say:

“Gigabyte is promising that the PowIRstage IR3550, found on all motherboards with Ultra Durable 5 technology (UD5), increases efficiency and improves stability. Naturally, this is particularly important in overclocked systems, where UD5 could benefit systems employing liquid cooling, since they have a tendency to not receive as much airflow through voltage regulation circuitry.

Ultra Durable 5 is a marketing umbrella that covers several different components, such as the IR3550 PowIRstage, additional copper in the PCB, and 60 A high-capacity ferrite core chokes. We plan to test Gigabyte's claims in an upcoming article.”

You can find the ‘Best of Computex’ award page here on Tom’s Hardware.

CNET renames Z77X-UD3H to “Sergio” and calls it a perfect all-rounder motherboard!

Craig Simms from CNET Australia recently had a play with one of GIGABYTE’s more popular motherboards, Z77X-UD3H.

I met Craig many years as I made my debut on ABC (Australian national TV) in 2007 featuring overclocking in which Craig was one of the original Atomic magazine writers appearing as a guest commentator in the final episode. Check it out here (cut all the OC segments featured over a few shows)! He knows his stuff and didn’t take him long to get his teeth stuck into some new Z77 gear from GIGABYTE.

Craig had a lot to say about the board but what caught my interest was his take on the naming scheme and subsequent renaming of the board. He calls it “Sergio”. LOL

The UD3H is the perfect all-rounder. It ticks the boxes for gamers, the mainstream, overclockers and with its mSATA slot, maybe even the low-profile crowd or those who need caching drives.

Jump over to CNET Australia and read the full review. Craig is a great writer and looks at motherboards in a slightly different light.

GIGABYTE goes to NZ to spread the love of LN2 & all things extreme overclocking!

I’m proud to announce GIGABYTE’s first big extreme overclocking event across the pond with TeamAU and PlaytechNZ.

TeamAU crew (youngpro, dinos22 and deanzo) are heading over to Auckland (New Zealand) to put on “High on Ivy” GIGABYTE EXTREME OVERCLOCKING WORKSHOP. We are calling all New Zealanders and anyone in the region who is keen to come to join us and our lovely hosts PLAYTECH NZ for an afternoon of LN2 overclocking on Intel Ivy Bridge platform using GIGABYTE Z77 series of motherboards.

For registrations hit up Playtech’s facebook page!

There will be some livestreams as well. We’ll announce that when we find out more!

New Ivy Bridge world record @ 7089.33MHz

Last week there was a few scores going around based on 3770K CPUs clocking past the magic 7GHz mark with one to silence them all by hicookie using the GIGABYTE Z77X-UD3H board. Cookie reached 7089.33MHz with the 3770K. Results were posted a week ago on HWBOT.ORG.

GIGABYTE Z77X-UD3H board has some “-OC board” genes but slightly adapted to general audience as well [including the name itself ;-)].

If you guys look for the new extreme OC board, this one should do alright. Here is an extreme OC bios for you as well (download link). It has some tweaks that help with extreme cold. We’ve also added a 3DMARK01 boost option (i wonder what it does hehe).

By the way, bench with 105MHz+ bclock as it will help with cold bug. I would also force Gen2 PCIe in this bios option when benching subzero 3D! For more subzero benching tips you can watch my Z77 overclocking video guide with Ivy Bridge 3770K (warning, movie size long! heheh)

HKEPC crew takes out memory world record

We’ve reported about Christian Ney’s memory frequency world record domination recently with the GIGABYTE A75-UD4H and it seems he isn’t too fussed about giving some pointers to his competitors. J.Lin from HKEPC crew reported last night that he’s taken the RAM world record to Hong Kong using the GIGABYTE board in question of course!

Congrats and keep pushing! You can click on images to take you to the submission validation on HWBOT.ORG

TeamAU hits record highs at GSkill booth (Computex)

Youngpro and dinos22 had a successful overclocking show at G.Skill booth hitting insane CPU frequencies in 32M SuperPi runs during live GIGABYTE overclocking show day. Hardware used was GIGABYTE Z77X-UD3H, Intel 3770K CPU and G.Skill RAM.

G.Skill facebook page has some videos and photos (more here) of the event you can have a look at!

G.Skill Booth (babes)

Youngpro pouring LN2 over people while dinos22 running SuperPi wazza tweak in the background

Here is a time we did during GIGABYTE day with GIGABYTE Z77X-UD3H and 3770K running at 6836MHz. Pretty crazy, 4m47.8s. It was the fastest time in the world validated on HWBOT that day, passed by fredyama-san from Japan the next day. I remember when we used to do 25 minute 32M SuperPi times in Athlon days. Crazy how fast the new CPUs are!!!

Video: Tom’s Hardware check out GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 at Computex 2012

Colin was on hand to give Tom’s Hardware an introduction to our Ultra Durable 5 technology that we’ve been debuting at Computex this week. Announced just a few days ago, Ultra Durable 5 features new power delivery components including high current capable PowerStages and chokes that are rated to handle up to 60A (amps). It’s also interesting to see Deepak Savadatti from International Rectifier, the company who developed the PowerStage components, talk about these new and exciting technologies.

You can find out more about the Ultra Durable 5 announcement including the press release itself, here on our website.

A trip down (overclocking) memory lane at ABC!

I recently spoke to Nick Ross from ABC in Australia who wanted to tell his audience about Ivy Bridge and general recent brief history of overclocking and how different platforms shone over the years and were hailed by geeks as the next best thing and their rise or fall from grace. I hope it’s an interesting read for some of the older geeks out there who were into all the different platforms mentioned. Nick gives the article an introduction in the preface (for full story visit this link):

Overclocking is when you alter computer settings to make processors run faster. At a basic level this can mean boosting a computer's performance for free. At an extreme level, this can mean using liquid nitrogen to obtain speeds that perform set tasks in world record times and doing this has become a globally-competitive 'sport'. Through establishing which components most-easily break in their quest to push performance boundaries, overclockers have helped make consumer-level computers become faster and more stable. These guys are the Formula 1 of computing. So when Intel formally launched a new processor last night, these guys with their push-to-the-limit benchmarking techniques, were the people to answer the question, "is it any good?"

Sniper M3 is a pure gamers’ board says Atomic Magazine, how about Sniper3?

John G from Atomic put together an interested read recently about GIGABYTE G1 series of products. Big John, his nickname in Taiwan, is a well versed journalists and has a good eye for detail. He writes for one of premiere gaming mags in this region and has noticed some differences in GIGABYTE’s gaming series of boards.

Big John is a fan of the Sniper M3, the size, features and price provide a perfect cocktail for a decent gamers’ board which you can’t argue against.

The G1.Sniper M3 is a markedly different board (and in our minds more suitable for gamers) than the more expensive ASUS ROG Maximus V Gene, which combines gaming and overclocking features in one package.

G1 Sniper is moving towards overclocking somewhat more with Z77 range and John’s of the opinion it should be purely for gamers. What are your thoughts guys, should we include OC features or leave it to the OC boards instead?

I felt during my feedback on what to improve was to give a couple of useful features to the board (readout points, power/reset) as Ivy Bridge brings back the extreme OC platform into light again. The reason was obvious to incorporate it into design for those crazy extreme OC guys or high end PC builders looking at 4WAY SLI or Xfire. I do however think gaming and OC boards should serve different purposes and totally different groups of buyers generally and for real heavy OC features like OC Touch and others, “OC style” boards are still the way to go when it comes to ultimate OC powerhouse boards.

I’d love to hear from you guys and your thoughts on GIGABYTE’s G1 series and what works for you as well as OC range, do you want to see a powerhouse OC board back?!?

GIGABYTE G1. Sniper M3 takes Gold at Vortez.net

Vortez main man Dave Michelson just published his review of our G1. Sniper M3, the first G1. Killer gaming series board designed in the more compact Micro-ATX form factor. The idea of course, is that are some serious gamers out there that prefer to build themselves a more portable Micro-ATX system that they can take to their buddy’s house, LAN parties or where the competitive action is. So as with all of our G1.Killer series boards, you’re getting real discrete-quality audio from the onboard Creative Sound Core3D audio processor and a slick Intel Gigabit network controller, but wrapped in a more compact board that still handles SLI and CrossfireX VGA configurations.

We’re really pleased to see the G1.Sniper M3 is proving to be a hit with reviewers, and it’s especially great to see Dave give it the the Gold award. Here’s a taste of what he had to say:

“There is no doubting that Sniper M3 looks the business. …Looks are one thing but how does this motherboard perform? Well, let me tell you Sniper M3 topped most of our benchmarks and even beat the much revered ASUS Maximus V GENE. The Sniper M3 excelled in this department and showed that for its size it can still pack a punch.

Priced at approx. £139.99, Sniper M3 is a great pick for those wanting a slice of Z77 under MATX form factor. Many will compare this motherboard to the ASUS Maximus V GENE and whilst it does lack the functionality of onboard power/reset buttons, LED debug and a few other features it’s the performance that delivers the trade-off. If you don’t need some of these features then it’s a no brainer.”

To catch the review and peruse the benchmarks in full, head on over to Vortez.net

More details about the G1.Sniper M3 can found on our site here.