The problem was captured on video by the guys at SweClockers, and is apparently a result of the card drawing more power when overclocked or overvolted than its power circuitry can handle.

However, the problem can only occur if you overclock or overvolt the card, and only if you use an older driver. The GeForce 267.52 driver that was originally given out to the press, and which might be available from some websites, does not activate a safety mechanism that prevents damage to the card’s power components. However, Nvidia’s latest driver does feature overcurrent protection.

In a statement, Nvidia explained that ‘in the web release driver of GeForce GTX 590, we have added some important enhancements to our overcurrent protection for overclocking. We recommend anyone doing overclocking or running stress apps to always use the latest web driver to get the fullest protection for your hardware.’

The company also stressed that the card is completely safe, saying that customers could ‘rest assured that the GTX 590 operates reliably at default voltages.‘ You can see a video of the GTX 590 3GB failing below, although Nvidia claims that the damage was caused by a user overvolting the card’s GPUs by as much as 1.2V; a huge increase over the default voltage of 0.91 to 0.96V.

However, Nvidia still recommends that overclockers play it safe with the voltage, even if they’re using water-cooling. ‘Nvidia has worked with several water-cooling companies to develop waterblocks for GTX 590,’ says the company, ‘and these solutions will help provide additional margin for overclocking, but even in this case we recommend enthusiasts stay within 12.5-25mV of the default voltage in order to minimise risk.’

The company also reminded us that any overclocking or overvolting can void a manufacturer’s product warranty.

So it’s perhaps not the most original moniker that Apple and Intel could have chosen, but it’s here just the same. After years of waiting Apple has launched its implementation of Intel’s Light Peak standard and it’s called Thunderbolt. It’s making its appearance on new MacBook Pro models and it’s promising 10Gb/second transfer rates. That’s dual-channel, too so you’ll get 10Gb/sec both to and from your devices. Apple suggests this will be useful for external RAID arrays, Gigabit Ethernet adapters, and also mentions support for “FireWire and USB consumer devices” along with HDMI, DVI, and VGA over DisplayPort. Apple expects that Thunderbolt will be “widely adopted as a new standard for high performance I/O,” but we think the USB 3.0 crew might have a thing or two to say about that.

iFixit’s teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S 4G doesn’t exactly contain a ton of surprises — until the very end, that is. Apparently, there’s been some talk that Samsung used magnesium instead of aluminum for some of the components, and the best way iFixit could find to test that was to file some dust off the frame and set it ablaze (magnesium’s reaction is noticeably different than aluminum). Spoiler alert: it’s magnesium. Hit up the link below for the full blow-by-blow account.

iFixit

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Rick Darge directed “Home”, the latest music video by LCD Soundsystem.

R2-VAC2 by Agent-Spiff

Homemade steampunk walkthrough: Fangoria 2010

This 1936 Henderson motorcycle was given a superb Art Deco mod by Frank Westfall of Syracuse, NY and displayed at last summer’s Rhinebeck Grand National Meet. The Knucklebuster blog got to see and photograph it in person there, and has a thrilling account of its performance: “The bike is a fantastic piece of history, the craftsmanship is absolutely stunning and it’s surely more of a museum piece than a daily rider. Frank has obviously spent an incredible amount of time meticulously restoring and rebuilding the bike to its current gorgeous state.”

1930 Art Deco Henderson (Thanks, Littledragon!)