The word is motherboard . That gender-neutral BS gets old... ...talk about irritable..... This is hardly worth commenting on. Nevertheless, "mainboard" more accurately describes that piece of equipment than does "motherboard". Below is an example where it makes linguistic sense: A mothership is a v...

I'm afraid you'll just have to put my heretical opinions down to my amateur and junior status in the world of computing (and, yes, my XX chromosomes) :) Within reason, I always go for form over function (that is, I won't go for a duff product, but I would choose a second placed product over the top...

That's really a terribly unimaginative and bland name for something that's going to take over the world.

They could have made something up, or maybe even called it "Wista" after the venerable city in central Massachusetts that doesn't get a lot of attention.

I gave this quite a bit of thought back in April, coming to the conclusion that the light bulb in this situation is unneeded and counterproductive. Having a heat source in a chimney will create a low pressure zone and cause more air intake at the bottom and then upwards. In a computer the heat sourc...

Sounds wonderful! I'm inclined to think that whether or not it's inherently safe it could be made safe to use near circuit boards, (although, as I understand it, electrostatic discharge is the very reason for precautions such as a wrist strap.) I'm posting this mainly to keep the thread on the "fron...

what the hell do you mean your CRT is buzzing? maybe it's about to explode or something? my CRT is silent How old are you, perplex? If you're in your twenties and you can't hear your CRT whine, then it's intriguing. If you are much older than that, then it's not, since after a certain age you can't...

I've found that the elastic from the "Hanes Super Comfort French Style Briefs", in size 32-34, color red, works the best. I've also tried the same thing in blue, but I've noticed a bit of a low-band resonance, somewhere around 100-200Hz that is quite noticeable. I've had the same problem with the b...

'Have to wonder whether the tiny die size might create some problems. http://www.via.com.tw/en/images/products/processors/c7/comparison_align_buttom_L.jpg If the proportions in the above image are correct, then the C7 die would have approximately 1/3 the surface area of the C3 die, which means that ...

I can get excited about best performance per watt.

I can also get excited about the lower speed versions. The 1.8 GHz is 15 watts max, which sounds like fanless probably, and the 1.5 GHz is 12 watts max, which sounds like fanless almost certainly.

Is there any information about availability?

Tibors, There's so much lawyering going on here in the U.S. that people make jokes about it and sometimes it's difficult to tell whether they're kidding or whether they're serious. I think the gentlemen here were just bantering. If there isn't as much of the above going on where you are.....well...f...

I think you could be on to something, Green Shoes. I'd like to see a case in the shape of a tetrahedron, the form that natural structures take for the most strength and economy. It would involve modifying drive cages necessary to hold drives at the proper attitude. The case would be very stable, and...

In a thread not long ago MikeC mentioned BenQ DD DW1620 as a notably quiet drive. The Asus QuieTracks are also well thought of for quiet. Here are some other recommendations I've picked up in various Forum threads (the NEC is apparently discontinued, as perhaps are some of the others): Plextor PX-71...

One thing I've noticed about the reviews at SPCR is that very few of them are unreservedly praiseful of a product, but almost all of them point out distinctive features of a product that are innovative and applicable to quiet computing, even when the product overall does not meet the site's criteria...

I'd be curious to learn what the acoustic properties of the S12-330 and 380 are.

Might they not be quieter than the 430, and would they not be useful for many systems?

I'm not a mathematician or a statistician, but I'm inclined to question the analysis of kesv in the first reply of the thread that the MTBF of the fans would be divided by the number of fans to get the frequency of failure. If that were the case then one out of every 45 hard drives (with a MTBF of 4...

It looks like an architect's drawing (a bad architect's drawing) of the Ritz-Carlton in Podunk.

Really couldn't think of a better illustration of the absurd state of processor heat.

This is from the "Don't leave any stone possibly unturned" department. This laptop http://www.dynamism.com/x505/main.shtml , available only in Japan or from specialty importers, has a carbon fiber case which apparently eliminates the need for a fan because the carbon fiber dissipates the heat from t...

My first (and only) computer build, a two year old C3 system with a Barracuda IV and a Nexus PSU, has, in the past few days, acquired a hum. It appears to be an electrical (rather than a mechanical) hum, but I can't be 100% sure; and it appears to be intermittent rather than constant, but since ther...

tylerbcrawford, perhaps you should consider finding an old PC, say from the mid-90s, with a 4x or 8x CD-ROM. I remember those drives as being innocuously quiet (although the computers they were a part of were unsilenced). If all you want to do with the drive is play CDs they are perfectly adequate. ...

A magnet doesn't transfer energy to the object it lifts. When, say, the iron filings rise from the surface of the desk onto a magnet, the have not been imbued with any additional energy. What has happened is this: The kinetic energy expressed by the atoms that comprise the filings had been 'random' ...

I've seen offerred a Flex-ATX Socket 370 motherboard/CPU combo with a Transmeta 1GigaPro processor. This appears to be a notebook CPU that's been configured to a desktop system. The 1GigaPro has a clock speed of 650 MHz and is claimed to have the processing power of a 1Ghz Intel chip. It is claimed ...

It is with timidity that I venture forth into the SPCR forums, as I have only been using computers for a few years, and did built my one C3 system about a year ago with no small inspiration from SPCR. Since prior to the C3 I'd only used old computers, I found it unpleasant to discover how noisy my 5...