Tried suspending them yesterday with fishing line... BAD idea. Looked ugly but even worse with noise, it sounded like a strummed bass chord.

Thanks for the ideas. I'll try suspending first, but if it will resemble the crap job I did before, I'll get something pre-made.

Hi Folks, Just got my 2 Velociraptors. Now I need advice with how to mount them without using the ice pack. The SPCR was dead on about the ice pack adding to noise of the drives. To be more specific, what I'm looking for is something I can buy fro a 2.5" drive that will kill noise and vibration, all...

Parts list is looking good. I cant tell you for 100% if your mobo will play nicely with your ram, but Corsair is usually the most supported brand of memory. As far as 2gb vs 4gb. Remember with Vista 32bit, you'll get about 3.25gb. If you use a lot of programs, you'll see the difference as they will ...

Well I think OP is in the same position as I was about 3 years ago. I just bout a P4 Northwood with a low-mid end mobo. Six months later, socket 478 was replaced with socket 775, DDR with DDR2, AGP with PCI-e, and PATA with SATA. So I had a fast PC (at the time) but that I couldnt upgrade. People AR...

Questions: 1a) I’ve read some reviews that say the 9600GT runs fairly hot, does the Solo case have enough airflow to keep this from being an issue for the card and for the case temp in general? The fan on the GPU will still ramp up when playing games. However will slow down fairly quickly when yo...

Welcome to SPCR. Components choice is great. The Ninja or suggested HSFs will do a good job at cooling and give you headroom to overclock. I have the accelero on my 7800GTX... make sure you take your time with the installation, its a bit tricky but worth it! I do suggest getting a new case with all ...

Nice pic, but what about the HDD cables on the other side of the fan, and if someone uses the 38mm version? That should not be a concern for the PSU maker. If HDD cables were hard to route, then it is the fault of CASE maker. Why should someone NOT knock a product based on pics? Are you telling me ...

Why are people making assumptions on products they haven’t actually touched? Especially NEW products where few people have actual experience with them? The guys at Anandtech are good. Sure, the acoustics tests are not as complicated as SPCR but they're not just arbitrary numbers. How about we give...

If I'm not mistaken, SATA hard drives are hot swappable. But it sounds like your 80gb is old and is probably PATA. In that case, your computer would probably crash.

In the US, the new WD3200AAKS is $75. Its one platter, 16mb cache, runs fast and cool.

As a Phatom 500 owner of almost 3 years, I vote for a sticky! I'm curious of what will happen. Thanks and welcome!

Overclocking explained , its from early 2007, so it doesnt address quad cores, but applies to all CPU overclocking in general. Overclocking dual cores vs quad cores Your CPU's speed is derived from the actual FSB speed times the CPU's multiplier. A Q9300 has FSB 1333. The actual bus speed is 1/4 of...

If you're looking for the absolute fastest hard drive, then get a raptor. Its 150 gb which is plenty for a system disk. When people say that there's 1tb and 750gb drives that beat the raptor, that is only true in transfer rates, as the raptor is SATA150, while others are SATA300. These are just benc...

The Q9300 is much for expensive about $500 AUS!!! Not really, here's an Australian site: www.skycomp.com.au Q6600 at $311 AU vs Q9300 at $403 AU I'm from New York City, so dont know about this site but a quick check on Google Australia seems to give similar prices. Now going from Q9300 to Q9450 rea...

Hello and welcome. Nice setup. Either coolers will work fine, Thermalright will keep the chip a bit cooler and allow more overclocking. Your choice of CPU depends on your own use and how long you plan to keep the computer. The Q9450 will help only if you use video/graphics editors and converters a l...

pbecker wrote:I have a Ninja mounted in an Antec NSK3400 (replaced by the 3480), and the Ninja *will* fit inside the case!

Thanks for clearing it up. Ignore my previous concerns.

Hello and welcome. I was just looking up the dimensions of your components. I am worried that the ninja and the NSK3480 might be a tight fit. The case is 7.8 inches (198mm) and the heatsink is 150mm. This leaves 48mm or 1.8 inches of space. Keep in mind the folowing: 1. The mobo will not be flat aga...

Wow I cant believe nobody from spcr forum hasnt mentioned anything about a PSU yet.

Your HTPC should be silent and I'm not sure how quiet or even how dependable your PSU will be. Go for seasonic's 300 watt offerings.

Depending on if you need the system right now, or can wait for a month, I'd advise you to wait for the Q9xxx series for your CPU. The new 45nm will run cooler, take less power, faster in terms of operations/cycle, and be more overclockable, at a cost of about $100 more than what the Q6600 goes for n...

Very nice indeed. Those pics make me feel guilty about my own build. So you use 2 sound devices without any errors? Never needed to do that myself but I always thought either bios or windows wouldnt like that.

Dont forget that the slim horizontal cases being used by major OEMs like Dell and HP dont use all standard ATX parts. A big example of that is the power supplies. Though there are replacements, they're not the quiet Corsairs and Seasonics we love on this site. So your wife might have to settle for s...

Floris has a point you should consider. The AMD 780G chipset has proved itself capable of playing any HD format with very weak CPUs. The motherboards available come with HDMI and DVI outputs which will eliminate your need for a video card; cutting cost, system heat, and power consumption. AMD system...

I dont think you'll be able to run a Q6700 fanless if you're going to run CPU intensive apps. Especially when gaming, that 8800GT will warm up the air in your case quite nicely. Wont hurt to try though, make sure you get a CPU stressing program that can stress all 4 cores and then keep track of your...

I dont know when exactly or the name but you can surely bet that they will. The reason they come out with highest end CPUs first is because they're the most profitable. The lowest end and highest end CPUs all start out the same and are only made different in the very last stages of production, so th...

Yeah I agree w/ Deiz's measurements. I own an Antec 2400 (the oriogional case), and can tell you for sure that the ninja will NOT fit. Check out for some blow down HSF solutions from thermalright, this will aslo help cool your mosfets. I dont think you'll be overclocking this system, so it should be...

Yes, most fans have standard mounting holes, so your replacement should fit. However, keep in mind that the main way to quiet a fan is to slow its rate of spin. This will also cut down on the amount of air exhausted out of the case, which will increase your temperatures. this is why SPCR recommends ...

I'm a daily reader of Tom's. Usually they do a great job with their articles, IMO. However this has got to be one of the worse articles they've written. Am I to believe that a Ninja got 70 C?? Well what did an intel stock fan get then? I'm very curious. Oh an one more observation on that stupid quot...

ZipZoomFly is great. Used it many times.

ChiefValue is newegg's sister site, try that if you find a better deal; not sure about the location of their warehouses though.

So your current case splits the mobo from the PSU/HDDs and is thin. I couldnt see from the pictures whether you have an exhaust in the lower mobo chamber. That would be pretty important, since it only looks like you have an intake fan at the bottom. You might consider replacing the intake fan with s...

Yep, thats the one. I have the Ninja in my P180 case, mounted on a 775 socket mobo (Asus P5WD2). It wasnt hard to install for me. I dont mean to cast doubt on other people's opinions, its just that to my knowledge, socket 775 heatsinks have standard mounting holes. So to upgrade, yes its a pain in t...