All drives can be spun down. Some 2.5" HDDs do it on their own apparently but most spin until the OS says otherwise. The WD Greens do the head park thing which some think are annoying but the WD Red don't do that. Both models can be told by the OS to spin down though. In my server I have four Reds,...

My Samsung HD204UI is giving up the ghost, so I'm looking for a 2TB or 3TB replacement. 3TB seems to be the best price point at the moment but if they're a lot noisier or less reliable than the 2TB drives, I'd probably go for the latter. I've currently got a 2TB WD Green and a Samsung Evo 256GB SSD....

Check the article, it's only at the 12dB level that the CM performance collapse: otherwise the difference is around 3°C (in my quick shoot-out I had a difference of 5°C with the fan under 700rpm). Well with the two different stock fans maybe but with the same reference fan, at 12v (17dBA), 9v (14 d...

Damn thing just gave me "WHEA Uncorrectable Error" again, whilst at 4.4Ghz@1.25v. Surely I don't need to increase the voltage even higher for this basic overclock? I was running DCS World at the time. Played ArmA3 for several hours the other day at these settings, which was what triggered the same e...

Turned out the Noiseblocker box actually had the Yate Loon 140mm in it with a small two-pin connector (too small for a motherboard header) and an adapter to convert it to Molex. I could probably wire up a suitable connector to it sometime but for now I've just put the Scythe 120mm SY1225SL12M in the...

I just got round to building my i5-4670k system with the Kotetsu yesterday. I'm running at a fixed 3.8 Ghz at the moment, as I found that it caused latency problems when there was network activity if I let it change clock speed, so I'm using Windows High Performance mode. For some reason, the BIOS h...

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Wow, the Mugen Max is a big ol' beasty! 145 x 86 x 161 mm but surprisingly only 720g (both without fan) compared to the Kotetsu's 130 x 58 x 160 mm and 480g. Weight and height aren't really an issue for me, as I'm using a CoolerMaster HAF XB EVO case but I will have ...

I've just done a build for my Dad with a i5 4670k and Hyper 212 EVO and that's running at 4.4Ghz@1.225v at reasonable temps and quite quietly. I replaced the original fan with a quieter one and then put the original one on the back as a pull but it didn't make much difference to the temps or noise, ...

You could use a horizontal case like the Coolermaster HAF XB EVO, which I bought partly to avoid this problem of having heavy heatsinks and graphic cards hanging off my motherboard
http://www.coolermaster.com/case/lan-bo ... af-xb-evo/

I'm also happy to report that I got another eVGA G2 (from Scan instead of Amazon, just in case they had a bad batch and it was only £2 more) and it's working fine in ECO mode and not spinning up at all when under low load (browsing, etc), so clearly I was just unlucky enough to get a faulty one befo...

so I could mount 2*120mm to that if it's worth it. I imagine a Scythe PWM might be the best to use on there. Sorry, I forgot about your questions, and I'm afraid it's too late for your dad birthday: anyway, IMO/IME it doesn't worth a push-pull on the 212. Then I can put a 140mm at the front of each...

I tried setting the 'C-State' Package setting to C7 (or C7s I'm not sure) but then I got a corrupted screen and locked-up PC when I next woke the monitor (PC wasn't in standby) so I've put that back to Auto. In fact, I reset the BIOS to default settings and like that, with no overclock, the VID and ...

SpeedStep, Turbo Mode and CPU C-States are enabled (C-States was on Auto, so I've changed it to Enabled but it hasn't made any difference). It has a setting 'Package C-States Support' which is set to Auto and has various options (Enabled, C0/C1 - C7, C7s), so maybe that needs to be set to something ...

My current main system is a Phenom II X4 955 and with that, at idle the CPU will generally stay at 800Mhz whilst the CPU is below 25% and even then very brief spikes won't cause it to increase. I've just built a Asus Z97-A/i5 4670k system (OC'd to 4.4Ghz@1.225v) and with this, cores 2&3 seem to spen...

So I dug through my boxes and found I have: 1*Nexus 120mm D12SL-12 1*Scythe 120mm SY1225SL12M 2*Scythe 120mm SY1225SL12LM-P (PWM) 1*Yate Loon 140mm D14SL-12 1*NB BlackSilentPro 140mm So I'm wondering how best to divide these between my HAF XB EVO and my Dad's NZXT Source 530 (both running overclocke...

As I said, return it to Amazon (and give a call to eVGA Customer Support to complain about), and also please accept my apologies for my advice. Thanks Luca but I don't blame you at all. You can only go by the available information and either I've got a faulty unit or the reviews were wrong and with...

Can't say I'm very impressed with the eVGA G2 so far I'm afraid. Whilst it's essentially silent in Quiet mode, it randomly ramps up for no apparent reason (browsing, CPU at 5%) and it's very intrusive like that and stays there for a few minutes before going off again. It's does the same when running...

No, I was meaning that the very same Lambdatek sold the G2 at much more money than they sold the L8, and that was a reasonable clue that the first one was better than the latter. Ah gotcha, makes sense now :) I hope that it will thoroughly satisfy you: as an addes bonus, if anything shouldn't be th...

750W PSU for a non gaming PC sounds weird. Lower wattage PSUs work better for non gaming PCs as the PSU has to be substantially loaded to get optimum efficiency. I think you should use it for yourself and get a low wattage one for your dad along with a fractal design entry level cabinet. My Dad's P...

The Thermalright Macho 120 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/thermalright-macho-120-rev-a-heatsink-and-fan-cooler-intel-775-1150-1155-1156-1366-2011-amd-am2-am2p might be a slight more expensive alternative to the Hyper 212 EVO http://www.scan.co.uk/products/cooler-master-hyper-212-evo-4-heat-pipes-dir...

Perhaps are you somehow short-sighted? What I mean is I asked about the L8 from Lambatek at £72 and you asked if I'd seen how much they sell the G2 for, £108 vs £81 with Amazon. So you seemed to be answering a question about whether the L8 might be a good choice by telling me that the G2 is more ex...

Did you check at how much LambaTek sells that EVGA G2? IIRC it's priced at more than £108 (excluding shipping, vs £81 shipping included @ Amazon). I just checked and it's £85.91 inc. VAT but plus shipping, which brings it to £91.85. I don't see what that has to do with whether it would be good valu...

CPU power is proportional to f*(V^2), where f is clock frequency and V is CPU core voltage. So, if you overclock with stock voltage, then a 20% overclock -> 20% more power. So, instead of ~84W max load, it's ~100W. If you overvolt, then it gets more exciting. Figure ~1.1V core voltage for stock. If...

As I wrote: « http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00J01K3E8 is more probably that not the most affordable option ». If you want a PSU which is not noisier than your current CP850, those are the candidates I'm aware of. Yeah, fair enough. The eVGA G2 from Amazon is probably the best option. It just annoys m...

Thanks for finding all those for me but ouch! They're all more expensive than the EVGA SuperNOVA 750W you posted, even those that are lower wattage. The closest in price is the Corsair RM750. If the RM series are good, maybe the 650W would be an option? It's not much cheaper than the RM750 or the EV...

I really need to get something quieter for myself. Do you think that a 650W will be enough to allow for 2*250W GPUs (possibly, although I'll probably only have one GPU I want to allow for the possibility), an OC'd 4670k, 16GB DDR3, 2*3.5" HDD and 2*SSD, one ODD and 4 120mm fans? Or should I get a 7...

I should have known it was too good to be true. I thought I'd found my dream case in the HAF XB EVO but until I unpacked it just now, I'd forgotten that my Antec CP-850 PSU http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/global/product.php?Type=MQ==&id=NzIw is oversized and so it won't fit It looks like it would pr...

Pappnaas wrote:You're right, but it's sooo cute

lol. If only we could just choose a case based on how 'cute' it looked.

Unfortunately, it fails to meet my most basic requirement of taking an ATX board and can't even take a single GPU longer than 255mm without sacrificing the single 5.25" bay

A pair of Accelero Extreme for a build where a Corsair CX is more than enough quiet? Wouldn't it be somehow unreasonable, dude? Anyway, I know that Source 530, and IMO it is an overall good case: it has not so quiet 120mm fans, but I don't think they are much worse than the Corsair PSU one, so even...

I haven't found or chosen a suitable case yet. What about this one (look at the first quote)? Thanks. It's a nice case and might be suitable with the upper drive cage removed (290mm clearance with the cage, 430mm without) but it looks like the lower cage would definitely block slot 7 and possibly s...