Month: April 2006

The ePower Tiger 550: Hot & Quiet

Despite having well designed detachable cables, low noise at high power levels, and lots of glitz, the ePower Tiger fails to deliver when it counts. Electronically it’s no more than an ordinary Tomcat, and it’s cooled about as well as a polar bear in the Sahara. Sometimes, noise isn’t all that counts…

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Seasonic S12-330 PSU, new sleeved version

The Seasonic S12 power supplies need no introduction. It’s been a favorite on SPCR since its introduction a year ago. Now, it has been updated with longer, sleeved cables and lower capacity models boast a PCI Express connector. This time around we look at the baby of the bunch.

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Quiet DIY OC’ed Pentium D 830 System, Part Two

Chris Thomson returns to SPCR with Round Two of his Pentium D silencing saga. As before, Chris does a great job with systematic documentation, and this time, he incorporates the feedback on his original DIY article from many forum members. By identifying names, their comments, and the way these comments were used for further improvements,

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17″ Apple iMac – The Official SPCR Review

Not long ago, an enthusiastic SPCR reader submitted a User Review of an Apple iMac. Readers enjoyed his review, but clamoured for official SPCR noise testing. Well, we’ve delivered. Our official SPCR review of a 17″ Core Duo-based iMac confirms what Randy Harris knew all along: The iMac is quiet, energy efficient, and excellent value

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Fanless PCIe Graphics Cards from Asus and Aopen

A review of two more fanless video cards: The Asus Radeon EAX1600XT Silent/TVD/256M and the low profile AOpen Aeolus PCX6600-DV128LP. Both employ heatpipes to expand the cooling surface area onto the trace side of the video card for improved cooling. Are they suitable for dedicated silencers who want more than budget vidcard performance?

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Antec SU380 power supply (in NSK2400 case)

This power supply comes installed in the Antec NSK2400 media desktop case. At the time of writing, the SU380 can only be found in the NSK2400, and Antec appears to have no plans to make it available as a separately packaged retail product. It’s quite a good PSU on all counts, but a bit noisier

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Antec NSK2400 / Fusion Media PC Case

The NSK2400 is described by Antec as a desktop case, which suggests a throwback to an earlier era. The cosmetics and styling leave no doubt that this case is designed to blend well into modern audio/video equipment racks. The NSK2400 was designed expressly with both low noise and effective cooling in mind. It is, in

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Gigabyte GV-N66256DP Fanless Graphics Card

Not many manufacturers offer a good performance AGP card with fanless cooling. The upgrade market still consists mostly of AGP-based systems, and the GeForce 6600 represents close to the high water mark for AGP performance. This is why Gigabyte’s fanless GeForce 6600 is still worth a close look with our new graphics card testing methodology.

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Desktop CPU Power Survey, April 2006

It began as a follow-up to Turion 64 on the Desktop article, posted in mid-February. But then, the piece ballooned into something more ambitious, into an attempt to answer the question, “What is the best power efficiency achievable with current AMD and Intel processors that can be used on a desktop PC?” In the process,

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Silentmaxx Fanless 400W MX460-PFL01 power supply

Another addition to the fanless ranks looks very familiar. In fact, it’s well nigh identical in appearance to the fanless Fortron Zen 300W PSU we reviewed last year. This one is branded with a different name and rated a hundred watts higher, with a bigger price tag. Is it still silent, and efficient enough to

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