Lunar Festival
A few changes were made to Lunar Festival this year, with two faction specific pets being added and new Elders for you to visit in the Cataclysm zones. You can find a list of the Elder's locations on Wowpedia.
The new Lunar Lantern and Festival Lantern are new rewards from the Lunar Festival. The new Lunar Lantern would be the Alliance version and the Festival Lantern the Horde one. Each costs Coin of Ancestry x 50 from the vendor.
Computers - Setup of the Month (by chaud)
Each month or every 2 months, depending on the hardware evolutions, the lovely chaud will work on a couple of hardware setups for those of you who are thinking of upgrading their computer!
This month
Hard drives remain expensive, so now is still a good time to buy a SSD, as the next generation is a while away and the current prices are fairly flat, with sales bringing the cost very close to $1 per gigabyte.
AMD's Bulldozer arrived to negative reviews, citing excessive power usage and heat output and very poor single threaded performance. The previously mentioned patches for Windows are now available and give a few percent performance increase. (Patch 1, Patch 2)
New CPUs from Intel should be arriving in early April if you aren't in a hurry to build, bringing increased performance and lower power consumption.
The new 7970 GPU from AMD has been released and can be had for ~$550 if you can find it in stock. The 7950 will be here in a matter of weeks somewhere in the low ~$400 price range. More GPUs will likely be released next month. New GPUs from Nvidia likely won't be here before early March.
Make sure to keep your AMD and Nvidia drivers up to date.
Don't hesitate to post any feedback in the comments of that news post, and don't forget to visit the Computer Forum for any extra questions! If you are interested in Folding@home, take a look in our team's thread.
Peripherals/Monitors
Component Puppy Dolphin Monitor ASUS VW224U 22-Inch Widescreen - $149 ASUS VW246H 24-Inch Widescreen - $200 Keyboard Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard 3000 - $21 Cyborg V.5 - $47 Mouse Logitech G400 - $37 Razer Deathadder - $48 Speakers Logitech S220 2.1 Speaker System - $30 Logitech Z313 Speaker System - $40 Component Narwhal Unicorn Monitor ASUS VE276Q 27-Inch - $279 HP ZR24w 24-inch (IPS Panel) - $375 Keyboard Logitech G110 - $70 Razer BlackWidow (Backlit)- $74 ($130) Mouse Logitech G500 - $58 Razer Naga (Buttons on the Side) - $68 Speakers Creative Inspire T3130 2.1 Speaker System - $45 Logitech Speaker System Z523 - $79
Puppy and Dolphin
Overclocked Puppy will outperform Dolphin when multiple threads are in use (Not WoW) and come close in most other cases.
Mix and match anything but the CPU/Motherboard combo between Puppy and Dolphin. Mix and match anything between Dolphin and Narwhal.
Component Puppy Dolphin Case NZXT GAMMA Classic - $40 NZXT GAMMA Classic - $40 Power Supply Corsair CX500 V2 - $58 Corsair CX600 V2 - $70 CPU AMD Phenom II X4 960T Black Edition- $115 Intel i3-2100 - $125 Heatsink Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus - $27 Corsair Air Series A70 - $38 Motherboard ASUS M5A97 AM3+ 970 - $116 Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 - $123 Memory 4GB PNY Optima DDR3 10600 - $25 4GB G.Skill Ripjaws F3 12800 DDR3 - $40 Graphics Card XFX 6770 - $95 MSI 6850 or EVGA GTX 560 - $174 / $175 Hard Drive Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB - $120 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - $157 DVD Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23 Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23 Total $619 $791
Narwhal and Unicorn
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn. SSDs are always optional.
Component Narwhal Unicorn Case Cooler Master HAF 912 - $66 Cooler Master HAF932 - $143 Power Supply Corsair 650TX V2 - $90 Corsair 750HX (7 Year Warranty) - $144 CPU Intel i5-2500k - $230 Intel i7-2600k - $320 Heatsink Thermaltake Frio - $55 Noctua 6 NH-D14 - $88 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 - $160 ASUS Z68 P8Z68-V PRO - $205 Memory 4GB G.Skill Ripjaws F3 12800 DDR3 - $40 8GB G.Skill DDR3 12800 - $54 Graphics Card XFX 6950 1GB OR EVGA GTX 560 Ti- $220/ $230 XFX 6970 2GB OR EVGA GTX 570 - $325 / $360 Hard Drive Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $157 Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black - $157 SSD Crucial 128 GB m4 (Review) - $180
OR
Corsair Force Series GT 120 GB - $180Intel 510 Series 120 GB (Review) - $275
OR
OCZ 120 GB Vertex 3 (Review) - $165DVD Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23 Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW - $23 Total $1041 - $1231 $1624 - $1769
Trading Card Game Art Gallery Update
The Trading Card game art gallery has been updated with ten new pieces.