If there is a motherboard PWM fan (4 pin) header you could alternatively run all the PWM fans off that using for example the Akasa PWM splitter - smart fan cable (AK-CB002). This has the advantage as well of drawing power from the PSU via a molex connector and not through the motherboard.

I think 430W is perfectly adequate for that system. Intel don't. The Core i7 spec that they have issued says: 1. The PSU must have two (2) 12 V rails. 2. The PSU must be capable of a continuous current flow of 16 A at 12 V. 3. The PSU must be capable of a peak current flow of 19 A on the second 12 ...

Unless someone else has experienced exactly the same problem and has a ready solution it looks like you have no choice but to try and isolate components that might be the source of the problem. You can obviously unplug any case fans to eliminate those. There are PSU testers which would enable you to...

Aris You might try reading the Intel web site, from which you will find that Intel do not give a thermal threshold for the Core i7 CPU. What they do say is that it varies from chip to chip, there is also a detailed description of what happens when the thermal threshold is reached, and a strong reco...

Inno3D have a GTX 260 which has the Accelero heatsink fitted as standard, see
http://www.inno3d.com/products/GRAPHIC_ ... ro_xxx.htm

My local PC hardware store here in England has the 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 for sale at £98 inclusive of VAT, around €114 but the 2TB models start at around double that price so a similar situation to yours. This particular 1.5TB drive has been reviewed by SPCR see http://www.silentpcrevie...

There is no prospect IMO of running a card of the power of the GTX 285 passively. The GTX 285 I have just fitted into a new Core i7 build is admittedly one of the factory-overclocked units running at 702, but flat-out that is showing a temperature of 80 degrees centigrade at 50% fan. It is quiet eno...

The northbridge on the X58 motherboards is adjacent to the CPU socket, and on most boards not only has its own substantial heatsink but is often connected by a heatpipe to another hefty heatsink. This is the case with the motherboard I used for the only i7 system that I have built so far, the Asus P...

I've just built an i7 system. The motherboard is the Asus P6T SE, and the memory Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC3-12800. To be frank the main reason for buying this particular memory was that it was on special offer at around £50 for 3Gb which here in the UK is a fairly reasonable price. As you have obviously...

You are likely to find that no model of gtx 260 will be as quiet as you would like it to be. Palit produce a model with a dual fan cooler which ought to produce less noise at idle, but manages to produce more due to the level at which the fans are set. This could be modified using software but it mi...

When the Inquirer asked Nvidia for a response it was that "...There are no known problems with G92s. They do use the same material set, but as I stated before, and will state again, they are not defective. They are NOT subject to the same thermal designs and usage patterns that our other parts have ...

So the idea would be to make an adapter in order to slow down the fan of a Sapphire 4870 Vapor-X video card I appreciate you view that software control is not delivering enough of a reduction in fan speed, but you are using a graphics card with what can be a very hot running chip. Any hardware modi...

According to http://extreme.outervision.com/articles/psu/corsair/tx650/corsair_tx_650_4.jsp "....I received a few emails from our readers that suggest the TX650 built by Seasonic. However, the official confirmation from Corsair representative states that this unit built by Channel Well Technology...."

My local hardware supplier still has this PSU in stock http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/625W-Enermax-MODU82plus-EMD625AWT-Modular-Quad-PCI-E-Rail-ATX12v-23-88-Eff-AirGuard-SafeGuard However, the price has dropped to £83.36 from around £100 so this might be a pointer to it being discontinued. On the ...

The performance of nVidia 9xxx series cards has been significantly boosted by the recently released 180 driver. I note from the 3DMark06 graph that the 9600gt was the best performing card, so with the new driver it should be even better. There is at last one passively cooled version of this card ava...

I don't know where the idea comes from that the 9500gt is hardly better than the 7600gt, although it does seem to crop up quite regularly on the internet. To quote an actual user's experience from one of the nVidia forums "...well i went ahead and got the 9500GT... it is a HUGE improvement over the ...

If you stay with nVidia then in order to meet your target of 3Dmark06 overall score higher than 4000 you need to look at the 9500gt upwards. There are silent versions of the 9500gt, although they seem fairly hard to find and you will need to check that they have HDMI support. Here in the UK the only...

My local hardware dealer has this in stock

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Thermalr ... thout-Fan)

The price is as astronomic as the weight.

These fans can be far from silent,
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YNX-aBNra4M

Provided you really have a need for such high capacity units the only issue it seems to me is price. These are going to be amongst the most expensive PSUs on the market. No price is given by AnandTech for the 850 watt model, but I would expect it to be a bit more than the current Enermax 850 Galaxy....

If I understand correctly, for you to be running 1:1 synchronous you would need to up your FSB to 533mhz (and therefore lower the CPU multiplier since I really doubt your system will POST at 2x stock frequency (and probably increase the voltage too)) Both AMD and Intel have used double and quad-pum...

One UK store you might consider (no connection other than being a customer) is Overclockers http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ As a USA customer you will not of course pay the UK VAT (value added tax, a sales tax) but they list all their prices as ex VAT in any case. The current £/dollar conversion rat...

It has a couple of drawbacks. No on/off switch. And due to the heatpipe cooling it is at 21cm/8.25 inches somewhat longer than other PSUs. That said, the price is good, but I have the Enermax 625W MODU82+ which is $10 more from the same supplier. No issues with the fan or anything else, just an extr...

Gigabyte, as one would expect, do not list any QVL memory for the GA-G31M-S2L faster than 800 speed. However, if you take for example Kingston HyperX 2GB (1x2GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C5 800MHz which is on the list, this costs around £26. You could of course overclock this and hope it works, or you could bu...

You first port of call should be to the web site of the mainboard manufacturer, where you should find a Memory QVL (Qualified Vendors List). This is a list of memory at various speeds which has been tested to work with your mainboard. I run DDR2 memory at 1:1, it is Kingston HyperX running at 1066 (...

I have a Gainward 9600gt and it came with EXPERTool software which can be used to control fan speed. You can download it from any Gainward web site, in my case from http://www.gainward.de/support/support_uk.html . There are both nVidia and ATI versions now. I have used it successfully with another n...

Googles real world data on 100s of thousands of drives show higher temps do not cause failures, lower temps actually increase failure rate. The report you reference does say that, nor does the data it contains suggest that. There is some evidence from the study that undercooling hard drives leads t...

MadShrimps have a preview, see
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=879

The MSI silent cards are much easier to find here in the UK, and their 9400gt/9500gt models have an HDMI port which is a bonus.

For some user comment see
http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/produc ... 0gt-md512h

Various web reviews report the system power consumption under load for the 4870 1GB as in the range of 325 - 345 watts. they must be using the most power-sucking Phenom to get those numbers, as a non-OCed 4870 only takes 130w max: http://archive.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354&p=0 sad to...