Recently we were invited to a special event in the Grange Holborn in London by MSI, where we got to see a whole host of new products coming to the retail channel involving Intel’s newest chipset and range of processors. Part of this was their gaming range of notebooks, so we stopped to have a chat with Steve from MSI and Gavin from Fnatic about what makes an important notebook in MSI’s gaming range of products.

MSI have worked with pro gaming team Fnatic to provide the best feedback on what a true gamer is looking for in a gaming product, which is incorporated on the component and notebook side of MSI products. This ranges from the Bigfoot network to reduce latency and lag when gaming and making the difference between life and death in a game, and possibly getting that vital kill that wins you the game, and in a pro team situation; a lot of money.

Other key features include having a 1920×1080 true HD anti-glare screen with a crisp picture and a SteelSeries keypad to provide gamers with the most responsive touch and vision throughout the game. Audio is another key highlight and all together, this makes the MSI gaming notebooks one of the best on the market with true gamers in mind.

Check out our interview with Steve Clark from MSI and Gavin from Fnatic about what makes a gaming product and why it’s important to have all of these features to allow you to be the very best gamer that you can be.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Image courtesy of MSI

The post MSI Gaming Notebook Event Interview With Steve Clark appeared first on eTeknix.

The board of directors at Yahoo have been given the go ahead for the acquisition of microblogging platform and social networking website; Tumblr.

The Wall Street Journal reports a $1.1 Billion cash deal for the company and will see the site continuing to operate as an independant business, though no word has been seen that Tumblr’s board of directors have accepted the deal, but we can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t.

Initial rumours about the buyout started to surface just before the weekend, stating that the weekend was a prime opportunity for major discussions about the acquisition headed up by fairly new president and CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer. With Mayer in charge of the company, many other startup companies have been involved in deals with Yahoo since her appointment including Stamped and Summly and word on the street is that the companies have been acquired to increase Yahoo’s talent in the hope of securing a larger user base and new advertisers alike.

No official statements have been made by either Tumblr or Yahoo as of yet, but at the time of writing this, we are still very much at the heart of the weekend, and we could maybe expect something official to the press and general public at the start of the working week, especially as Yahoo are planning to hold a large press conference in New York.

What we know so far is that if the acquisition does go ahead, the Tumblr will continue, even with backing from Yahoo as promised by CEO Marissa Mayer in a initial hands off approach to the company.

Stay tuned to eTeknix as this story develops.

Image courtesy of eTeknix composite

The post Yahoo Gets Approval for $1.1 Billion Deal for Tumblr appeared first on eTeknix.

We’ve all been in a vehicle and found ourselves cursing at other drivers due to their negligent driver skills, or lack of, right? Whether it be the forgetfulness of having indicators to tell other drivers which direction they are turning or the lack of not reading road signs appropriately; mainly STOP signs.

Now imagine if these particular drivers were confronted with a huge image of a STOP sign that they simply couldn’t ignore. A lighting show company Laservision have developed a technology which consists of laser-projecting a STOP sign onto makeshift waterfall and have been experimenting with the technology since 2007 in Australia.

The technology comes to light after a truck driver ignored warning signs and almost wedged his vehicle in the Sydney Harbour Tunnel reports 10 news. Described as a water curtain, the Australian government are hoping to stop tall vehicles such as trucks from attempting to pass under tunnels which simply aren’t tall enough.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Image courtesy of 10 News (YouTube)

The post Giant STOP Sign Projected Onto A Makeshift Waterfall appeared first on eTeknix.

It’s that time again when we need to announce some winners on one of our amazing competitions. This time we’re announcing our 50 winners of The ShowDown Effect game codes for Steam.

The winners are as follows:

ahhlok
altovaxx
anx87
Ben Emery
BlazeGhost
bryan
caveman31
chickendrumstik
cmptek
cuda
DarKSeeD
David Beale
denis
dragun400
Drake
feiyang999
ferret40
Fire.Ace
fireblade
Flynn Greenberg
gary1968
Haysleyez
Herkraftz
indio380
jamieM
Javi2300
Jerry Lafferty
Joka232
Keiz Cee
khekyy
kidzroxx
Kyle939
Lee Woodward
lindat4683
marc harding
Marc Whitehall
Max
mesleepyone
nataliemay30
nKwoel
NyzK
RmaxLV
rob73
Robert J Shale
smilingassassin
tallpaul02
Thechtu
tony marshall
trut_bar
Vialli M Faijar

All winner(s) have been contacted asking for their acknowledgement before we send them out their Steam code.

Thanks to all those who entered and remember we have a lot more competitions currently running here.

The post The Showdown Effect Winners Announced appeared first on eTeknix.

It’s taken us a while but we have finally managed to go through all of the entries for our PC Specialist gaming PC giveaway that was run last month here.

Now we have to firstly admit, that there was some simply amazing entries and a lot of thought and effort went into each and every post. We did find a lot of “my grandmother’s dog is dying, so having this computer will cheer me up” posts, which we can only “sympathise” with but we wanted something that stood out, and the entries certainly weren’t short of that.

Some that really stood out for us were the guy who put his computer in his bed, and brushed his teeth with it, as well as the entry that was completely in Binary, which when translated gave a simple entry, but the method of execution was simply amazing, so kudos to you.

The one that stood out the most however was from member Roley Martin, purely because he made a rap video with an old style 8-bit backing track.

The video can be seen below and his entry, though it didn’t say a lot, the video pretty much did all of the talking.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Link to the forum entry can be found here.

At first it seemed as though it was a generic entry, but as the video went on, we heard the eTeknix name and really got into the song and was simply blown away.

Congratulations Roley Martin, and we can only apologise that there can only be one winner, as we appreciate everyones efforts in this competition, but remember we have a lot more competitions currently open here.

All winner(s) have been contacted requesting address details for your prize(s) to be shipped out directly.

The post PC Specialist £1000 Gaming PC Giveaway Winner Announced appeared first on eTeknix.

Today sees NZXT unveiling their latest product; the H630 Ultra-Tower chassis. Being at the forefront of technology, we made sure to team up with leading manufacturer NZXT to give one lucky reader the chance to win this new addition to their product lineup.

The new H630 has been designed to provide users with high-performing systems while keeping audio levels to a minimum due to the high-density sound dampening design that doesn’t affect its cooling performance. Check out our recent news article for full details here.

To enter this competition, we have broken things down into four steps to make it easier than ever:

• Step 1 – Like the eTeknix Facebook page
• Step 2 – Like the NZXT Facebook page
  
• Step 3 – Share this post here
• Step 4 - Tell us on our forums that you’ve done all steps by clicking on the button below

So that we get bigger and better competitions each time, why not also share this competition page on your own social media (Facebook, Twitter etc…)

Rules and regulations:

• The competition is open WORLDWIDE!
• The competition ends at midnight GMT on 3rd June 2013 and winners will be notified within 7 days of the closing date
• In the event of a dispute, eTeknix staff hold the final say and no discussions will be entered into
• Delivery is not in the hands of eTeknix and can take some time to arrive
• In the event that the prize is unavailable, eTeknix reserve the right to offer an alternative of equal or greater value
• By entering this competition, you adhere to the above rules and regulations
• Winner(s) will be announced on our competition winners page

The post Win A NZXT H630 Ultra-Tower Chassis appeared first on eTeknix.

All we’ve been hearing about lately is Google Glass, but a guy from down under has invented his own clone; codenamed Flass. The name derives from the two words “fake” and “glass” making Flass, and is powered by a Samsung Galaxy S i9000 with TV out capabilities. Also is a Bluetooth keyboard and earpiece giving the user complete control over the functions of flass.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Since its initial idea, it has moved on with production from Flass 1.0 to 4.0, changing from different models of phone and different frames, but we believe this is a low-cost option for those not wanting to fork out the hefty price tag for the official Google Glass.

Now we know that if this was Apple, then the creator would most likely be in court right now fighting patent laws, but as its Google we can see them embracing his creativity and most likely offering him a job. It’s not the first time it’s happened with Google.

Jokes aside, we think that Ash Williams is on to something here, and fully embrace what he’s done.

A lot more can be found over on Overclockers.com.au forums, so be sure to check it out here.

The post Forget Google Glass – You Need Flass appeared first on eTeknix.

Asus are one of the only brands in the market at the moment who really have the facility to delve into multiple areas and different product segments. It seems that every time they venture into another market, they seem to come up trumps with a fantastic reception from customers. With this in mind, they have been developing monitors for a fair few years now and even now, they are regarded as some of the highest-end, best monitors money can buy without going into the realms of the Dell UltraSharp series or Apple monitors.

Stemming from this success, they have created this beast of a monitor that we’re taking a quick look at today which is part of their ProArt series of monitors, featuring an pre-calibrated AH-IPS panel, 99% AdobeRGB colour representation and aimed at a specific market of designers and artists alike. With it’s 16:10 1920×1200 resolution it gives extra desktop estate when needed and is LED-backlit to give a crisp, clear picture.

It’s also packed full of connectivity options with native DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI and D-SUB VGA giving the user multiple choices and a big highlight of USB 3.0 functionality for those needing speed when using the likes of photoshop and large RAW image files.

The specifications from a first glance certainly seem impressive with some very nice viewing angles, PiP support and plenty of connectivity options, so lets take a quick overview of the monitor itself.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Great first impressions from this monitor, and some really nice features for the budding artists in the market. A personal highlight for me comes with the USB 3.0 connectivity options, as USB 2.0 really is a bit of a dying breed now, especially with files getting much larger in size which Asus have clearly thought about, as this monitor is aimed at consumers and professionals who will obviously be dealing with large images such as RAW photos taken on a DSLR. I’m also very excited to see the ruler etched into the monitor frame, giving print professionals a nice guide to use when using the likes of Adobe Illustrator.

Overall, a very nice monitor from the initial unboxing and overview, and in the next coming weeks, we will be playing with its functionality to see if its the perfect device for the task its aimed at. Without expensive monitor calibration equipment, it’s hard to fully test a monitor, but with a subjective mind, we can hopefully show who this type of product is aimed at, and why it is suited perfectly for that job and task at hand.

Have Asus managed to make another award-winning product, in yet another product segment? If so, we can only assume good things for Asus to come in the near future, as they already have the motherboard and VGA component market pretty much sewn up which some elite products already in the market. Monitors and phones are just another stepping stone for them, and who knows; maybe world domination is next? Of course I kid, but we can only see more good things to come if this initial overview is anything to go by.

The post Asus PA249Q ProArt 24″ IPS Monitor Overview Preview appeared first on eTeknix.

We hosted a competition in conjunction with Tt eSPORTS which as expected saw thousands of entries, but sadly there can only be one winner per prize and we have three amazing prizes to give away. You can find the giveaway here.

After checking through all of the entries, we have picked our winners, but as we’re mean, we will be announcing them throughout stages of today, just to keep you all on your toes.

1st prize winner – MEKA G-UNIT – Mad_Bull

2nd prize winner – Shock Battle Edition – ArkangeL

3rd prize winner – Dasher mousepad signed by White-Ra – caveney-hayes

Winners will be contacted requesting address details for your prize to be shipped out directly.

Sadly not everyone can be a winner, but we have a lot more competitions you can enter here.

The post Tt eSPORTS Gaming Gear Winners Announced appeared first on eTeknix.

With us producing more videos than ever, we want to give back to our loyal YouTube subscribers by teaming up with BitFenix to give one lucky viewer the chance to win 5 fans of their choice. To find out more, we invite you to watch the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

All you need to do is:

1 – Subscribe to eTeknix
2 – Comment below to tell us you’ve subscribed

• Step 1 – Subscribe to the eTeknix YouTube channel
• Step 2 – Comment on this video to say that you’ve subscribed
  

So that we get bigger and better competitions each time, why not also share this competition page on your own social media (Facebook, Twitter etc… using the buttons below)

Rules and regulations:

• The competition is open WORLDWIDE!
• The competition ends at midnight GMT on 20th May 2013 and winners will be notified within 7 days of the closing date
• In the event of a dispute, eTeknix staff hold the final say and no discussions will be entered into
• Delivery is not in the hands of eTeknix and can take some time to arrive
• In the event that the prize is unavailable, eTeknix reserve the right to offer an alternative of equal or greater value
• By entering this competition, you adhere to the above rules and regulations
• Winner(s) will be announced on our competition winners page

The post BitFenix 5K YouTube Subscriber Giveaway! appeared first on eTeknix.

We ran a competition after we got back from Insomnia i48 involving some of the Enermax products we had used over that very weekend.

We had a lot of entries and over the last week, myself and the team sat down to choose all of the worthy candidates to win these amazing prizes. You can find the original competition page here.

After picking the successful and worth entries, we randomly picked two and are announcing those winners as Kyle Fraser and Meganium25.

Please join us in congratulating the winners and thanks to all of you who entered our competition.

All winner(s) have been contacted requesting address details for your prizes to be shipped out to you directly.

The post Enermax Goodies from Insomnia i48 Winners Announced appeared first on eTeknix.

Generally we give away hardware, but what fun is that if you don’t have anything to do with it, like play games? Luckily our good friends over at Multiplay have provided us with some Steam game codes for the latest game from Paradox Interactive; The Showdown Effect”. We currently have over 50 of these codes to giveaway  so with us being so generous and all, we want to give them to our loyal eTeknix readers.

To find out more information on this game, check out the official website here.

Competition Closed: Winners Announced Here.

To enter this competition, we have broken things down into four steps to make it easier than ever:

• Step 1 – Like the eTeknix Facebook page
• Step 2 – Like this post here
  
• Step 3 – Share this post here
• Step 4 - Tell us on our forums that you’ve done all steps by clicking on the button below

So that we get bigger and better competitions each time, why not also share this competition page on your own social media (Facebook, Twitter etc…)

Rules and regulations:

• The competition is open WORLDWIDE!
• The competition ends at midnight GMT on 3rd May 2013 and winners will be notified within 7 days of the closing date
• In the event of a dispute, eTeknix staff hold the final say and no discussions will be entered into
• Delivery is not in the hands of eTeknix and can take some time to arrive
• In the event that the prize is unavailable, eTeknix reserve the right to offer an alternative of equal or greater value
• By entering this competition, you adhere to the above rules and regulations
• Winner(s) will be announced on our competition winners page

The post Win ‘The Showdown Effect’ Game Codes appeared first on eTeknix.

With mobile and lifestyle products changing the market as we currently know it, a lot of brands are keen to produce products that cater for this area. With this in mind, we’ve teamed up with Antec and their Antec Mobile Products department to give away some amazing prizes. We have  five lots of fantastic prizes up for grabs in this awesome competition.

1st Prize: SP1 Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker + PowerUp 3000 Portable Charger

2nd Prize: SP1 Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker

3rd Prize: SP1 Portable Wireless Bluetooth Speaker

4th Prize: Gain Bluetooth Receiver + dBs In-Ear Headphones

5th Prize: iso Active Noise Canceling Wireless Bluetooth Headphones

To enter this competition, we have broken things down into four steps to make it easier than ever:

• Step 1 – Like the eTeknix Facebook page
• Step 2 – Like the Antec UK Facebook page
  
• Step 3 – Share this post here
• Step 4 - Tell us on our forums that you’ve done all steps by clicking on the button below

So that we get bigger and better competitions each time, why not also share this competition page on your own social media (Facebook, Twitter etc…)

Rules and regulations:

• The competition is open WORLDWIDE!
• The competition ends at midnight GMT on 13th May 2013 and winners will be notified within 7 days of the closing date
• In the event of a dispute, eTeknix staff hold the final say and no discussions will be entered into
• Delivery is not in the hands of eTeknix and can take some time to arrive
• In the event that the prize is unavailable, eTeknix reserve the right to offer an alternative of equal or greater value
• By entering this competition, you adhere to the above rules and regulations
• Winner(s) will be announced on our competition winners page

The post Win One of Five Antec Mobile Product Bundles appeared first on eTeknix.

We’ve been focussing on storage a lot as of late, and for a very good reason as files are getting larger, especially when you look at the size of a good quality image, HD video footage or just a multi-page document. Together these all add up and cause the need for expandable storage, but that comes at a cost, especially when you want speed in conjunction with it too. Taking a step back from the plethora of USB 3.0 SuperSpeed flash drives on the market, you can never go wrong for something small and discrete but with a large capacity, and of course having a price point that doesn’t hurt your bank balance.

The DashDrive UD310 is a rugged USB drive that is aimed at everyone, especially if you like a bit of bling in your life. It comes in a variety of sizes with the smallest 8GB model, mid-range 16GB and the one we have today; the 32GB. Branded under the DashDrive Durable branding, the device is catered to be ultra small and ultra convenient, and when we say it’s tiny, we really mean it. It comes as expected with a lifetime warranty and due to the advanced COB manufacturing process, it also has protection against impact resistance and water damage.

The Design

The overall design is a unique one to say the least with a “jewel like” design as ADATA brand it currently. It comes in two flavours; red or black and today we happen to have the black version with us.

It’s branded as “jewel like” due to the shape of the top part which has a jewel/crystal style. For the most part, it is made from plastic with the only metal part being the USB connector itself.

When plugged into a computer/laptop, the flash drive sits snug and doesn’t obscure in any way due to its low-profile design and sits discretely out of the way.

The Performance

With most USB 3.0 products, a big part of the marketing is the rated speeds, but with this USB 2.0 device, ADATA don’t quote any speeds on the packaging or on any of their marketing material, including the website. There is a very good reason as to why, and it mainly comes down to the times that we’re in. USB 2.0 isn’t trying to be the fastest thing out there, and with this product, it’s trying to be affordable and to give the user exactly what they want. With that in mind, we still have to see how it fairs when looking at performance, and so we fired up CrystalDiskMark to start things up.

To see how performance lays across the board, we also booted into ATTO to see if the results were consistent.

With no rated speeds direct from ADATA, we have nothing to compare to, but was glad to see the results consistent across both CrystalDiskMark and ATTO at 21MB/s read and 8MB/s write.

The Price

We mentioned that a device of this nature is aiming itself at the value segment, by offering a large capacity for a small price and that’s exactly where it ends up. We had the 32GB model with us, and while availability isn’t fantastic in the UK, you’ll still find the UD310 priced at around £17 making it stand out at a whopping 53 pence per GB.

Other models in the range include the 16GB UD310 at £9.50 and the 8GB model at £5.60, all giving extremely good value for money.

Is It Worth It?

If we look at this product from a performance point of view, you won’t be rivalling anyone as it doesn’t offer blistering speeds, but it wasn’t made to offer that in the first place. This is a value product, aimed at the value segment of the market, but value doesn’t mean cheap as this clearly isn’t a cheap, flimsy product. It offers a small footprint that will be hard to damage and is water-resistant too.

Looking at it head-on, it’s definitely worth the money, and we could see ADATA using something like this in the OEM sector, for branding and promotion for other businesses. As we know, ADATA have no problem working as an OEM partner, as they do with many DRAM modules currently on the market under different brands. With this in mind, I honestly feel that OEM may be a way to go with this product, where they could be sold in their hundreds, maybe with some eTeknix branding on in the future?

The simple fact is, it offers fantastic value for money and is pretty much unbeatable considering what it offers for that small outlay, and if you are after an all-year-round stocking filler, then the UD310 32GB will not disappoint, and you’ll still have some change left in your pocket at the end of the day. What more could you want? For us, we’re happy to award it with our bang for buck award, but a word of advice may be to go for the red one, as throughout writing this review; we lost the black one 3 or 4 times. Ooops!

The post ADATA DashDrive Durable UD310 32GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive Review appeared first on eTeknix.

Just last week we started a competition to win a Kingston 25 year Anniversary 8GB Flash Drive and upon all of the entries we had, it’s now time to announce the winner and sadly there can only be one.

After checking through all of the winners, we’ve picked the winner as Dylan Ellis.

All winner(s) have been contacted requesting address details for your prize to be shipped out directly.

The post Kingston 25 Year Anniversary 8GB Flash Drive Winner Announced appeared first on eTeknix.