Cheers Jamie! Looks like neither card is available in W.A. unfortunately, so I may have to order it separately from the rest of the PC. It's a shame the range of passively cooled cards is so small in general. I guess it's a pretty small niche, mainly for home enthusiast types. Seems like a lot of SP...

Hi all. I need to put together a PC for our draftsperson who runs CAD applications which require a reasonable 3D card. I am out of the loop on graphics cards lately. Last time I did the research (about a year ago), a Sapphire 3850 was the best passively cooled card I could find. What can you suggest...

Um. Sorry folks. Can't seem to delete the duplicate posts either.

Near wire-speed throughput is achievable if your disks are up to it. I have measured almost 2 gigabit per second, full duplex, using a pair of HP PCI Express dual-port Ethernet adapters. This was measured with a standard disk benchmarking tool under Windows XP. The "disk" was a 6 Gigabyte RAM disk o...

Near wire-speed throughput is achievable if your disks are up to it. I have measured almost 2 gigabit per second, full duplex, using a pair of HP PCI Express dual-port Ethernet adapters. This was measured with a standard disk benchmarking tool under Windows XP. The "disk" was a 6 Gigabyte RAM disk o...

Near wire-speed throughput is achievable if your disks are up to it. I have measured almost 2 gigabit per second, full duplex, using a pair of HP PCI Express dual-port Ethernet adapters. This was measured with a standard disk benchmarking tool under Windows XP. The "disk" was a 6 Gigabyte RAM disk o...

Near wire-speed throughput is achievable if your disks are up to it. I have measured almost 2 gigabit per second, full duplex, using a pair of HP PCI Express dual-port Ethernet adapters. This was measured with a standard disk benchmarking tool under Windows XP. The "disk" was a 6 Gigabyte RAM disk o...

Near wire-speed throughput is achievable if your disks are up to it. I have measured almost 2 gigabit per second, full duplex, using a pair of HP PCI Express dual-port Ethernet adapters. This was measured with a standard disk benchmarking tool under Windows XP. The "disk" was a 6 Gigabyte RAM disk o...

More than likely your disks and the inefficiencies of Windows file sharing.

At my office, someone bought a bunch of those Epox 8 series boards (before I arrived here). They *all* died with oozing caps.

The production guys (we manufacture PCBs) soldered on new caps and the boards lived for another year or so to give us time to buy new PCs.

Very nice, I'm looking forward to seeing these. Twice as much L2 cache, HT speed doubled, and slightly higher clock speed with less power consumption versus my 4800+ would be a nice little upgrade. I wonder what voltage they will run at. Just got to wait for a BIOS update for CPU support from Gigaby...

Thanks for the tip Nighthog, I didn't know about CrystalCPUid

Actually I first set it down to 1.00V (for no reason other than it is a round number). Windows booted, but Prime95 showed an error straight away, so I bumped it up two increments to 1.05V.

Cool and quiet just won't work for me under 64 bit Vista. Besides, it probably wouldn't help with my main issue (high temperatures and fan speeds at high CPU load). I previously underclocked my machine to reduce power consumption, with unsatisfying results. I didn't realise that power consumption is...

Well, sounds like you've met your objectives. Keep us posted if you change anything else.

Good job indeed. What's the next loudest component now, PSU fan or CPU fan?

Nice list Shamgar! These days, I never buy anything unless the retailer has it in stock. If it needs to be ordered in, you never know when (or even if!) it will arrive. I have only made one order with MiniBox, a couple of years ago. It took months (and several emails - couldn't get through on the ph...

Looks very nice, I'm jealous! What kind of games you playing? Have you done a load test with high CPU usage over a number of hours?

You could set up an 802.11 capture application and see if he is on your network and what he is doing.

Either way, definitely get a router that supports WPA and turn it on

From the description of the problem, my first thought was graphics card, but it's not working without the graphics card either is it (I assume you are using onboard graphics from the motherboard)?

Regis, I just had a look but due to the angles it is very difficult to see which setting I have the clips on without removing them, sorry. My suggestion to you would be to try it out and see how your temperatures go. As for max temps, the thermal sensor in my CPU is boned (known problem with this ch...

Now that you mention it, I think I may have one on the lowest and one on the middle setting. I will check when I get home tonight and let you know.

I've got this heatsink on my AM2+ CPU. Did you know that you can adjust the position of those clips up and down a little? Each clip has three height settings. You have to pull them off, then you can slot them back on again, have a look and you will figure it out. I think I use the middle setting on ...

I'd say try it, and let us know Just keep an eye on your temperatures. The machine will shut itself down automatically if it gets too hot anyway.

My guess is you will probably get away with it at idle, but you will probably need a fan blowing on it at load.

Thanks for the info Broadleaf! Given the info there, I'm feeling confident to run two fans off the CPU header. I will try your suggested experiment. Initially I'll wire the 2 front fans up to straight 12V because I don't have a cable to split the CPU fan header yet. You suspect there is not enough a...

OK, so I tested the pins with a scope and here is what I found (only tested the first three pins on each header, my fans only have three wires): CPU: pin 1 - GND pin 2 - Analogue voltage control (approx 6V for me at idle) pin 3 - RPM sense (12V/0V pulses) System fan: pin 1 - GND pin 2 - Analogue vol...

Hey everyone. I'm thinking of upgrading my Brisbane 4800+ and the Phenom II X3 (705e, 710, 720) CPUs look like a reasonably priced upgrade. I see that the 720 comes in a black edition with an "unlocked multiplier". What exactly does this mean, and does it imply that the multiplier cannot be adjusted...

Very nice, a lot of DIY spirit in this one! Any plans to paint it now that you're done?

I agree with BillTodd - try going fanless and see what your temps are like!

Nice little trance tune! I listened to it quite a few times on repeat. This kind of music works well as background music for me, no lyrics to make it too distracting. It's raining today in Perth too, so quite appropriate. Only suggestion is to get rid of the little bit after the fade out. Just fade ...

Thanks for the follow up xen. Let us know what you find out from them.

As soon as I remember to take an oscilloscope home, I'll probe the pins and find out exactly what the mobo does.