Last November Nvidia 'shattered' the IT market with its Maximus platform. Currently, the company is officially presenting the second generation of the platform – Maximus 2. The new platform is based on the advanced GPUs which employ Kepler architecture. The major task assigned to the Maximus 2 is to provide an unmatched performance and efficiency in quite different spheres of enterprise, starting from computer graphics and finishing with oil industry. Besides, it has got improved facilities of virtualization and analyzing activities.



According to the data claimed by the manufacturer, workstations developed on Maximus 2 platform will be put into sale already this December. It is already known that there are a number of companies that will employ Nvidia Maximus 2 in their product lines. Hence, such companies as Dell, HP, Lenovo, Supermicro, and BOXX technologies will introduce their workstations based on this platform.


It should be stated that the second generation of …

The emergence of a new GPU architecture does not only make records in the performance of high-end graphics cards, but often changes the idea of what to expect from an inexpensive card with a low TDP. Let see what can offer GT 640 — associate member of the family Kepler



The lower segment of the GeForce 600 is already fully staffed. In retail, there are cards GT 610, GT 620, GT 630 and GT 640, and in the OEM- channels additionally supplied GeForce 605. But among all of them, only GT 640 can be called a fully new model, since it is based on the architecture of Kepler, and the remaining cards are a familiar model series GeForce 400 and GeForce 500 Architecture (Fermi) with certain minor modifications.


GeForce 640 is based on the GK107 chip, which previously debuted in accelerators GeForce 640M. The performance of the last was comprehensively studied on the laptop Acer Aspire M3-581TG: compared to the GeForce 540M new chip provides a very nice speed boost. GK107 contains one …

Scythe has replenished the line of its products by a new water-cooling system Apsalus III 120. This enclosed cooler is considered to be self-contained and compatible with all contemporary CPUs from Intel and AMD. It should be mentioned that this time Scythe has joined its technological forces with the other cooler supplier. Thus, Apsalus III 120 is a modified version of one of the CPU water-cooling platforms (Gen4) developed by Asetek Inc.



The framework of Apsalus III 120 consists of a copper water block with an integrated pump, two opaque connecting tubes, a heatsink of 119x150x27 mm dimensions, and a single 120 mm fan (Scythe GlideStream 120). The latter is known to have a fixed speed of 1200 RPM; nevertheless, the noise level never exceeds the margin of 24 dB.


This water-cooling system supports the following CPU sockets: Intel (Socket LGA1155, 1156, 1366, 2011) and AMD (Socket FM2, FM1, AM2/(+), AM3/(+). The most beneficial peculiarity pertained to the new model is …