I get this too, everytime there's any ethernet or USB activity (like loading a webpage or moving the mouse). It's fairly quiet but quite annoying nonetheless. I'd put it down to the motherboard being the cheapest one I could find (Biostar). I'm thinking of upgrading to an Asus. My PSU is a Seasonic ...

If you go for a 9600GT and a GeForce 8200/8300 motherboard presumably you'd also be able to take advantage of the Hybrid Power feature, right?

That's definitely not oversized. Anything over 20% of the PSUs capacity is fine. Your PSU would be oversized only if you spent most of your time below that 20%, so if it idles at over 86W you have nothing to worry about. My own PC idles at just under 40W, but oh the difficulty of finding a decent 20...

We're running an Acer Travelmate. Pentium M 1000MHz, fanless. Draws 10W at idle.

No, really.

I've got a Scythe Ninja Rev B on a socket AM2 Athlon LE-1620, and that defnitely does the trick. It'll idle at about 33 C without the fan on, although at the moment I'm running it at ~500rpm which is inaudible and keeps things barely above ambient. Current output from LM-Sensors: Core0 Temp: 24 C fa...

I recently built a system using an Inno3D 9600GT, and that clicks like crazy during graphics operations. However, interestingly, I discovered that the noise is actually coming from the PSU, apparently from the large induction coil you can see just behind the fan (it's the Antec Earthwatts 380W that ...