a t o m i c
Maximum Power Computing
RRP: $5.95 AU / $8.95 NZ 
http://www.atomicmpc.com.au

This 100% Australian computer magazine released its first issue in January 2001 for the wonderfully low price of $5.95 AU, a price that has remained constant despite the growing popularity of the mag.

Content:  
atomic covers a broad range of computing issues, with their four key- topics being computer;
Performance / Building / Upgrading / Gaming

This range has brought some unique articles, such as the methods of case modification, an extensive article/tutorial on case cooling, and thorough and interesting editorials and tutorials on BIOS tweaking, Overclocking, DVD v VCD v DivX, Setting up RAID and many other subjects.

As well as this, they also review hardware and software, including the latest games, graphics cards, motherboards, CPU's and RAM options.

Not only do they review the items they get in, but, in testing, push them to their limits, which resulted in atomic taking the highest 3DMark2001 score, and holding it for a week in May.


Appearance:  
The quality of this magazine is such that  even a drop in presentation or content standards would be both acceptable and understandable. However,  the acceptability or otherwise of this are irrelevant, as the presentation is flawless.

High gloss paper, full colour pictures and a beautiful layout make the actual reading of each article easier than the haphazard layout of many other magazines (Who hasn't been reading a article which trails off into an advertisement, and never re-appears?)

Take the front covers for example: in issue four, an X-ray picture of the latest GeForce3 graphics card tied in to their article about the same card. While issue two, in which the main story and tutorial  were about case cooling, the cover illustration was an aluminium case surrounded by a block of ice. It is details such as these that make for a truly quality magazine at approximately 1/3 the price of others.

CD:  
There is no CD attached to the front cover of this magazine. Whether this is an attempt to lower costs or not, the CD is not missed, as this magazine is really about the articles, and not about giving the latest version of MS IE or Netscape.

Size:  
Thus far, each issue has been 106 pages in total, including a number of pages of advertisements. There is nowhere near as many ads per issue or per page of content as you would find in say, Australian Personal Computer.
The magazine is A4 sized.

Atomic is up to their 21st issue as of this post. They were born on 17th January, 2000.

Their full name is Atomic: Maximum Powered Computing.

They recently have a four issue article on creating an uber-pc, the Atomic Hotbox (Water Cooled, top'o'the line hardware, neons, windows, ect)

Also known as at0mic.

Atomic Magazine has a world-class Forum, which is located at

http://www.atomicmpc.com/forum.asp

The denizens of the forum (also known an Atomicans or at0micans) are a wacky bunch, and conversation ranges from jokes, to Jesus, and whether females have porn collections.

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