OCZ Technology
DDR3 PC3-12800 Platinum Dual-Channel 2GB Kit: $589
www.ocztechnology.com

READY FOR SOMETHING HOT AND NEW? INTEL’S NEW P35 Express chipset introduces official support for DDR3 system memory at speeds of up to 1066 MHz. Any DDR2 kit running faster than 800 MHz is technically overclocked since that’s where the JEDEC spec stops, so resellers looking to get their enthusiast boxes reined back into the bounds of a specification should check out motherboards based on the P35 and make the jump to DDR3.

OCZ is one of the first vendors out of the gate with DDR3 memory running at 1066 MHz, ready for Intel’s P35. The PC3-12800 kit, which you can buy in a 2x1GB configuration, offers a couple of notable benefits over the DDR2 kits already popular with enthusiasts. The first is scalability. DDR3 was made to go fast. OCZ calls this kit its “sweet spot” in today’s market and adds that the modules will run at 1600 MHz with no latency settings changes. More performance at the same latency? We’ll take it. Timings top out at 7-6-6—higher than DDR2—but the extra frequency should easily compensate. The second bonus is lower power consumption. DDR3 memory chips are manufactured at 90nm, pulling power draw down by about 16 percent.

In classic OCZ style, the Platinum kit is topped with metallic silver XTC heat spreaders and protected by a lifetime warranty against failure. And as always, OCZ’s tech folks are a valuable resource in case you need configuration help.

LG
GSA-T10N Slim Super-Multi DVD Drive: $50
us.lge.com

SOME WHITEBOOKS COME WITH optical drives. They’re usually CD burners or DVD readers. Other notebooks ship with vacant optical bays ready to be filled. In either case, you can add a lot of value by offering LG’s GSA-T10N Slim Super-Multi DVD Drive. In addition to writing CDs at up to 24x, the Super-Multi can crank out DVD+R and –R at 8x speeds, dual-layer DVD+R DL and –R DL at 4x, and DVD-RAM at 5x.

Connect the GSA-T10N using the ATAPI bus found on pretty much any notebook and enjoy compatibility with Windows 2000 and XP. The GSA-T10N supports pretty much every format out there aside from the newest blue laser technologies and is a great universal burner play.

Shuttle
SD30G2B Small Form Factor Barebones: $229
www.shuttle.com

SHUTTLE IS KNOWN FOR ITS COMPACT SYSTEMS THAT MANAGE to cram in all of the features your customer could want from a desktop workstation. The company’s newest creation, called the SD30G2B, is really a self-contained powerhouse. Add a processor, some memory, a hard drive, and a DVD burner. The rest comes integrated – but not in the traditional, middle-of-the-road sense of the word. Instead, the SD30G2B boasts Intel’s 945GC chipset with GMA 950 graphics, audio supplied by Realtek, a Marvell Gigabit Ethernet controller, and VIA’s FireWire chip.

According to Shuttle, you can use several different processors with the system, from Intel’s Core 2 Duo E4000-series to the Pentium D, Pentium 4, or Celeron D. The real value is in the Core 2 Duo E4000 family, comprised of inexpensive Allendale cores running at up to 2.2 GHz, wielding 2MB of unified cache, and sub-$150 price tags. Fill each of the barebones’ two DDR2 memory slots with a 1GB module and you’re looking at a multi-core machine with lots of Windows Vista potential. Yes, that Intel integrated graphics engine is able to accelerate Microsoft’s Aero interface.

The SD30G2B is driven by a 250W power supply. Add up everything the box can do and you’re looking at quite a play on energy efficiency. And there’s still room for expansion. One PCI and one PCI Express slot pave the way for wireless networking and a graphics upgrade down the road. Configured minimally or fully decked out, Shuttle’s SD30G2B is a solid little SFF platform.

HighPoint
RocketRAID 2304 SATA HBA: $169
www.highpoint-tech.com

MORE THAN HALF OF THE hard drives installed employ the SATA interface, so it’s almost a certainty that every system you sell now incorporates an internal SATA controller. But external storage—the stuff your customers use to back up important files on a nightly basis—is still predominantly USB- and FireWire-based. Both standards work well, and there’s almost no way to saturate either interface with a single drive. Nevertheless, eSATA is quickly becoming a flashier alternative.

Unfortunately, eSATA is a much less common interface on the I/O panels of today’s motherboards, which is why you should be upselling affordable HBAs like HighPoint’s RocketRAID 2304. The card drops right into an available PCI Express x1 port, offering 3 Gbps of bandwidth to each of four external ports. The HBA is based on a software RAID stack, meaning you don’t get hardware acceleration. Nevertheless, it supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, and JBOD configurations.

All four external ports give you the same performance and features you’d find on an internal controller, including NCQ, staggered spin-up, support for port multipliers, and hot-swapping. The card also supports external multi-drive enclosures. HighPoint supports a standard complement of desktop operating systems in addition to Windows Server 2003, FreeBSD, and Linux, for those higher-end workstations.