Bit-Tech and a couple other places suggest that the Swiftech H2O-220 Apex Ultima is the best water cooling solution. Does anyone here have any experience regarding this system in regards to noise levels? It seems like the Zalman Resterator gets most of the attention on this forum.

You were correct. I installed RightMark Memory Analyzer and I see the core speed adjust between 1.6 GHz and 2.66 GHz. Thank you.

I set up a new Core 2 Duo system with an Asus P5W DH motherboard and Windows XP. Do I need to do anything to enable SpeedStep? It is turned on in the bios, but my processor speed is pegged at 2.66GHz. With AMD, there was a whole procedure I needed to go through to enable Cool'n'Quiet, but I can't fi...

The fan has open corners and 0.5 cm holes. I went to try the lubricant solution. I first tried saliva, but that didn't help. Next I just tried out a few other rubber fan mounts and discovered that they weren't all a consistent size. I have a whole bunch of these in the EAR kit and I found four that ...

I just bought a couple 92 Nexus fans for an Antec Solo case. The fans didn't come with any screws, but I have these rubber fan mount thingies from a dampening kit. I am not sure how to use these. I push extremely hard, but the tapered part doesn't fit through the fan holes. If the hole was a millime...

I have had good luck using Asus motherboards with SpeedFan. The Q-Fan technology in the Asus motherboards isn't anything special IMHO.

I installed a new WD5000KS into my file server, and the noise level is decent, but it does run much hotter than my other drives. This 500 GB drive is just used for backups, so it should be idle most of the time. My Samsung 120GB P80 is the primary drive. The typical temperatures, according to SpeedF...

I had been contemplating either the DiamondMax 10 300GB or the WD3200JD 320GB drives for a while now. If you read the reviews, they are both decent drives. Maxtor is a little faster, but it has less capacity and a worse track record. WD drives are slower, but they are cheaper and have a good reliabi...

I tried all four fan connectors on the mobo, and none of them allow me to control the fan speed. I have received numerous blue screens of death with an assortment of error messages. My recovery software also can't find my hard drive half the time. It may be a RAM problem, which is odd since the syst...

I installed and set up SpeedFan using this motherboard, but SpeedFan cannot seem to actually control the fan speeds. It just reports the fan speeds. Is there any trick to being able to lower the fan speeds on this motherboard, or am I out of luck? Thank you. FYI, if I had to do this over again, I wo...

If anyone is interested, the Sapphire Toxic Radeon X700 Pro got a 4 out of 10 score by Maximum PC. They said that a poor-performing graphics card should not take up three PCI slots. In that price range, the 6600GT is much better card.

I just came across this article at Tom's Hardware How much Graphics Power Does a PC Really Need? (March 2, 2005) The article basically states what other people have already said in that 3D gaming cards offer essentially no benefit outside of games. One issue that the article does not address is supp...

I looked around for a fan controller for this system and I did not find any that I thought were great. I was hoping that they would automatically adjust the fan speeds according to temperature and have audible alarms when the case got too hot, but they just seem to be able to set a fixed fan speed a...

Tephras wrote: I think you should take a look at the GeForce 6600 card and perhaps the plain X700.

I was only looking at passively cooled cards, which is why those are not on my list.

I don't feel too strongly either way about Super Silencer vs. Super Tornado. From what I have read in the forums, the Tornado should be quieter unless you want to modify the Silencer. I am currently researching the best fan controller and media card reader. The reviews of fan controllers seem so mi...

Wedge wrote:For what it's worth, I have no heat issues with my 9800, but then again I use the Arctic VGA Silencer.

Is that a 9800 or a 9800Pro?

What do people think about this system: Processor AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (Socket 939, Winchester, 2.2 GHz); Motherboard SOLTEK SL-K8TPro-939 AGP Case Antec SLK3000B Power Supply Super Tornado 400 or Super Tornado 350 CPU Cooler Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu Hard drive Samsung 160GB SP1614C SATA Video Card Sapp...

I've read this thread with great interest. Would be further interesting to see how power hungry each of those cards are. The power hungryness should be related to how hot the card run, which is of great interest when trying to keep things quiet. Anybody know about how much power those cards mention...

So here is where I stand: The Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Ultimate is ruled out because it is power hungry and runs very hot, possibly requiring a supplemental fan. The Gigabyte 6600GT GV-NX66T128VP is ruled out because it is too hard to buy. I did not find any reputable store that had this in stock. O...

This might be some interesting reading for you. Thank you for the link which shows that a Matrox card may be capable of the higher resolutions. However I remain skeptical. If their card was intended to perform at these higher resolutions, why don't they advertise that? There must be some reason. An...

SometimesWarrior wrote:It would probably be a good idea, too, to get the Radeon card manufactured by ATI, and not by another company that could skimp on the 2D display elements.

I read somewhere, perhaps Tom's Hardware, that Sapphire makes the ATI cards that are sold under the ATI brand name.

And I beg to differ on the 6800 vs the 6600GT. I think the 6800 will outperform the 6600GT if you turn on AA and AF. I'm basing that off a review I read a while back. Otherwise, the 6600GT does outperform the 6800 in certain games (new games). I sorted the performance rankings based on this fairly ...

I remember reading when the Apple 30 inch monitor came out that you needed the highest end card to power this beast. Can a 9600 power a 24inch LCD over a DVI connection? How about two 20 inch monitors (one LCD and one VGA)

A 9600 card would cost around $90, compared to the 9600XT which costs $178. I could save a lot of money if there really is no noticeable performance difference between these cards outside of games.

Most of the reviews and comparisons I have read show that, while these cards are targeted at gamers, they also offer faster 2d performance as well. Am I wrong in thinking this? Wouldn't Photoshop benefit from a faster card even if that card was targeted at gamers? I really don't know the answer to t...

The reviews I have read suggest that the Seagates are disappointing.
Maxtor has a history of poor quality, but they are fast.
So of the three I would lean towards the WD unless the Maxtors can be found cheaply.

I am personally going to wait for the new Samsungs to be released.

Which of these midrange passively-cooled cards is the best for my computer? The computer is used for Photoshop, not so much for games. I need to power a 21 or a 24 inch LCD, plus a second CRT monitor. Sapphire Radeon 9600XT Ultimate (128) $178 AGP Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro Ultimate (128) $224 AGP Gig...

The press release mentions that Samsung has created a 400GB drive "Samsung has succeeded in producing the 400 Gigabytes hard disk drive, constructed from three 133 Gigabytes per platter disks."
But there is no further mention of this 400GB drive in the press release or on their Web site. Strange...

OK. So WD FDB Caviars are another option. However, if I remember correctly, another thread indicated that the Caviars are silent up to 160GB, which is the same capacity as the Spinpoints. If I were to choose a 160GB drive it would almost certainly be a Spinpoint due to their established track record...

The two top contenders seem to be Samsung Spinpoints and Maxtor DiamondMax 10s. The Seagate 7200.8s seem disappointing. If I am correct, how do the SP1614C (160 GB SATA) and the 300 GB DiamondMax 10s compare? The Maxtors obviously have more capacity, which would be nice. They are also seemingly much...