Apple already unveiled its 12-core Mac Pro machine a month ago, but up until now, you haven't been able to purchase one. Now you can, assuming you have a spare $5,000 bill bouncing around in your pants pocket and aren't put off by the so-called "Apple tax."

That five grand nets you two Intel Xeon "Westmere" 6-core processors clocked at 2.66GHz, with a $1,200 upgrade option bumping you up to two 2.93GHz Westmere parts. The upgraded Mac Pro comes standard with 6GB of DDR3 ECC memory, 1TB hard drive, ATI Radeon HD 5770 videocard, and an 18X DVD burner.

For kicks and giggles, we configured a fully decked out Mac Pro with two of the faster Xeon chips, 32GB of memory, a dedicated RAID card, four 512GB SSDs, a pair of Radeon HD 5770 cards, two optical drives, two 30-inch displays, tons of software, and everything else that was available, bringing the final tally to $24,603.85.

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Oil immersion cooling isn't anything new, and long-time Maximum PC readers will recall our experience with Hardcore PC's oil-cooled Reactor back in December, 2008. Puget Systems, one of the few remaining boutique PC vendors to avoid being bought out by a bulk OEM, also sells a DIY oil-cooled kit, and it's just been updated.

The new Aquarium PC Version 3 is larger than any previous version and can now accommodate full E-ATX motherboards. But that isn't the only change.

"The biggest improvement is that it allows the power supply to be mounted on the motherboard tray, making it much easier to maintain the PC, as you don't have to worry about the power supply sitting on the bottom of the tank as you pull the motherboard tray out of the aquarium," Puget explains. "It also has more than twice the cooler power!"

To prove it, Puget dunked "the most extreme hardware available" into the revamped Aquarium, which consisted of an Intel S5520SC workstation board, two Intel Xeon X5677 processors clocked at 3.46GHz, 12GB of Kingston DDR3-1600 memory, a 30GB Kingston SSDNow V Series SSD, two ATI Radeon HD 5870 videocards, and a Corsair HX1000W PSU. You can catch the YouTube video right here.

The Aquarium and Cooling Module V3 is available now for around $670 and includes all the parts you need to send your PC swimming in mineral oil.

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Hot on the heels of Nvidia's announcement that it would soon begin shipping its Fermi-based Quadro workstation cards, HP has come out and said it will cram the new Quadro 5000M into its EliteBook 8740w mobile workstations.

The 8740w is a 17-inch notebook that comes to the mobile party looking sharp and dressed in a gunmetal anodized-aluminum finish. It's HP's most powerful laptop to date starting with a range of Intel chips to choose from, including the Core i7 Extreme Edition. The 8740w comes capable of housing up to 16GB of RAM, and according to HP, it's been "engineered to meet rigid MIL-STD 810G military-standard tests for vibration, dust, humidity, altitude, and high and low temperatures, and is also free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC)."

In other words, the EliteBook 8740w is purportedly one tough cookie, but it's the Quadro 5000M that's the real treat here. This mobile Fermi part comes with 320 cores and 2GB of memory, and is a slightly a trimmed down version of the desktop part with 352 cores and 2.5GB of memory.

Pricing will start at $2,676.

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Acer, the second biggest PC vendor on the planet, is taking its aggressively styled Predator gaming PC line north of the border with the introduction of the AG7750-E2112.

"Designed to conquer and destroy, the Aspire Predator boasts a rugged, intimidating chassis as well as super power and speed," said Susan Hu, retail desktop product management for Acer Canada. "It's a smoking hot gaming rig delivering eye-popping graphics and dynamic audio for a jaw dropping experience that will fire up even hard core gamers. Plus, plenty of room for future upgrades will assist gamers in their quest to reign supreme in the new world order."

Settle down Hu, we build Dream Machines, remember? But we will admit that Acer's latest Predator barges into Canada with plenty of power, albeit for a fist full of moosebucks. Starting at $1,800 CAD (about $1,750 USD), the AG7750-E2112 comes armed with an Intel Core i7 920 processor, 9GB of DDR3 memory, Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 videocard, and a 1TB hard drive. Supplementary ammo comes in the form of 11 USB 2.0 ports, a pair of eSATA ports, two Ethernet ports, two DVI ports, HDMI, multi-card reader, lighting effects, and other odds and ends.

Interestingly, the U.S. version packs a slightly bigger punch with an Intel Core i7 930 chip and 1.5TB of hot-swappable storage. It also costs a little bit more with a starting price tag of $2,000.

The AG7750-E2112 is available now at "technology and electronics retailers" in both the U.S. and Canada.

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