[H]ardNews 5th Edition

AMD’s New Chairman:

AMD’s CEO, Hector Ruiz, has been appointed chairman of the board at AMD’s annual stockholders meeting, replacing Jerry Sanders. Sanders is retiring from the board of directors after 30 years.

"On behalf of the board, we would like to express our thanks to Jerry for his leadership in managing the company from its inception through the transition to Hector as chief executive officer and today, chairman of AMD," said Robert Palmer, lead independent director. "We are pleased with Hector's performance and confident in the future of AMD."

Asetek KT03A-L30 Review:

Mod The Box has the Asetek KT03A-L30 WaterChill in house for a little hands on review action. This updated kit features a single inlet/dual outlet water block design that looks a lot like the Danger Den RBX or the Little River White Water blocks that have become so popular.

The Asetek KT03A-L30/115V WaterChill CPU Cooling Kit is based upon the newly released Antarctica water block. The kit is designed to cool a variety of CPUs based upon Intel P4 S478, AMD Socket A, and AMD S754/S940 platforms.

Mainboard Profits Down:

It looks like two of the biggest mainboard makers are reporting huge 1Q losses. Profits at ECS were down over 90% this latest quarter with MSI doing slightly better posting disappointing profits that were down 66%. Other mainboard makers are expected to post their results soon, but the outlook so far isn’t good.

Two leading Taiwanese motherboard makers – Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) and Micro-Star International (MSI) – stunned investors yesterday with the release of their much less-than-expected first-quarter results.