HTPC AND MOTHERBOARDS – again – we know it’s been a launch-fest of motherboards these last few weeks. But that isn’t at all surprising considering Nvidia, AMD and Intel are fighting it out like World War I, neither part willing to give up an inch of their market share and each deeply entrenched. We’re sorry, but we’re gonna lay on another motherboard review on you (and it won’t be the last!). Sapphire’s PURE Hybrid Crossfire 780G Innovation is a micro-ATX design with 4+1 power phases – unlike other manufacturers – which means this board will support high-end 125W Phenoms. According to the author, pairing a Phenom with this board has many more advantages than meets the eye. Good one...

For those of you who thought graphics was a 2 horse race, then think again, TweakTown has tested S3’s latest and greatest, the Chrome 430GT. Performance on these cards is pretty reasonable for a mainstream card – and it even surprised Shane. The card, however, succumbs to S3’s old Achilles’ Heel, the driver support. Maybe it’s time for S3 to invest in some development, ‘cos “merel” matching the other players in performance won’t throw the company into the limelight anytime soon – impressive as this may be. Read on.

Tom’s Hardware has been looking at the green side of AMD CPUs and published a massive roundup of 35 of their CPUs. AMD’s chips have a bumpy power consumption, like the Phenom’s leaky standby mode while it delivers better savings under full load. Not surprisingly, the more mature Athlon X2 4850e, low power chip delivers the best savings, whilst the Phenoms are sucky as always. If you want to know how they affect your power bill, read this article right here.

Building an HTPC is more than just finding silent, powerful components to playback and game on your big-screen LCD TV. Successfully interfacing with your rig is an essential part of the experience. That’s why Tweaknews.net is reviewing VL System’s M-Play Blast LCD Case Display and Remote. M-Play is a 5.25-inch console that allows you to take remote control of your PC- anything from Media Center (or Revo, which comes with the kit) to powering the machine on/off. You can program the remote, which gives it some extra oomph in the features department. Read all about it here.

Visiontek’s Radeon 3870 X2 OC Edition is promising to take the battle to Nvidia’s doorstep. With a pre-overclocked setting of 840MHz/960MHz, there’s very little headroom for further overclocking, unfortunately, but the “stock” settings on this one deal plenty of power... enough to overtake the green goblin’s 9800GTX. It’s poorest result was a tie with the 9800GTX in Crysis, it’s best... well... you better visit the page right there.

Traditional HD manufacturers are trailing the DRAM crowd when it comes to SSD, and OCZ is betting hard on this tech. It’s got a new 64GB SATA II SSD on review at Thrusted Reviews, and as far as we can garner, they’ve got the right stuff. Sure you can buy a whole new computer for the price of this SSD (£703), but nothing quite compares to the delightful “snappiness” you get when using this kind of drive. Zoom over here.