This computer has seen some changes since I originally posted it back in Oct. 2007 (wow!), so I thought I'd post them. The pictures below link to larger versions. After passing along my old desktop to my mom, I ended up with an extra Thermalright XP-120 heatsink and a 120mm Panaflow L1A fan (swapped...

I took some time off from SPCR and missed all the replies, sorry about that. It may be a little late for my reply, but I'll go ahead anyway. From what I can tell, the low read/write speeds are due to encryption and appear to be CPU bound. I haven't had the time or inclination to try overclocking to ...

I've had my XFX GTX 285 card for about three days and haven't experienced any squealing to this point, at least nothing that's made itself known over game sounds. It's housed in an Antec Solo case and powered by a Seasonic M12 600W PSU (installed the same time as the video card). EDIT: I only skimme...

I put a 330 W Seasonic in my system, which is overkill in my server based on the power draw I've measured so far (very similar setup to yours, check out the RAID server in my signature). I was going to suggest the 380 W Seasonic S12 II that Scan carries, but that only gets you into the 80 Plus rated...

I noticed that myself a few days ago. However, even when they did carry them, you were pretty much guaranteed to never find anything in stock. I think the last Thermalright product I was able to purchase from Newegg was back in 2005. Since then, I've had to go to some of the smaller places like SVC ...

Dell 2407WFP: Completely silent even at a brightness setting as low as 3% (color calibrated using an X-Rite Eye-One Display 2). Before color calibration, I never ran the brightness any higher than 20%. No noise there either.

Wow, nice workaround. I don't know if I would have been brave enough to try that myself, especially on a new board. Have you considered removing the backplane's fan and rear housing and ducting the rear of the backplane directly to the PSU's intake? That might be worth trying if the drives inside th...

First off, thanks to everyone who posts their systems in the gallery. Second, sorry for the novel. I think I've spent too much time writing engineering test reports. :D Make sure to click on the pictures for larger versions. I decided to build this machine for two reasons: First, so that I'd have a ...

I just put together a file server using the GA-MA74GM-S2, a 4450e, 2 GB DDR2 800 RAM, a 5400 RPM Seagate 120 GB laptop drive (for OS), two Western Digital GP 500 GB drives (in RAID 1) in a SATA hot-swap backplane, and an S12-II 330 W PSU. I've seen idle power consumption as low as 40 W when it was r...

Until yesterday, I was quite happy with their cool and quiet operation. And then I found this thread . It's from the Linux Kernel Mailing List; you can find many archived versions by searching for "Western Digital GreenPower drives and Linux". Perfect timing on this subject. I'm building a Linux fi...

Check with SVC to see if they'll accept international orders. I just ordered an XP-120 from them a few weeks ago (I'm in the US).

It's currently listed at $49.99 after $30 mail-in rebate with FREE shipping. The rebate looks to be good until Feb 14.

This case is, is now at least, $19.00 not $9.00 with the rebate ...has it changed before the cut off date - today?? Newegg.com right? It did go up. I posted with the new price, but thanks to whoever edited the thread subject to bring it up to date. There's a direct link to the case in the first post.

It works the other way around. Display devices don't require HDCP (which is an optional part of the HDMI spec -- normal HDMI connections are unencrypted). It's the software side that desires the ability to say "I don't want my fancy content to display on a device that doesn't promise to accept the ...

Clalor, thank you for posting your killawatt numbers. 120w at full-load is pretty decent! Thank you for before-and-after the 7200. No problem. My HD tuner card showed up today (AVerMedia A180), so I may be reporting back in a few weeks with more numbers once I'm able to start playing with HD conten...

I hope you purchased already if you were planning to. They're now showing it as $79.99 before the $50 rebate, which still isn't a bad deal.

NeilBlanchard wrote:I ordered mine yesterday -- and it is getting delivered today!

Jeez, and here I thought I was doing pretty good with 2-day from their California warehouse. No matter, mine shows up tomorrow, with the Earthwatts 380 PSU showing up the next day.

The only reason you would ever want to buy it is if you were somehow locked into a software stack that refused to work without HDCP. Or, for a more general example, if you bought a nice, expensive HDTV and planned on using an HDMI port not knowing that the port requires HDCP. That may or may not be...

BugFix wrote:What conceivable use would one have for this (mis)feature on a MythTV box?

Most likely none. However, it's a good thing to know what it supports and what it doesn't.

In general, I'd recommend staying away from the 8-series cards for Linux & MythTV since the drivers aren't very mature right now. Based on what I've read and have experienced from my 8500GT, the 8-series cards: Don't support XvMC yet and it's low on their priority list (requires a complete rewrite) ...

I didn't see a limit on either the PSU or the case, but you'll only be able to claim one rebate for each.

It's currently listed as $59.99 before the $50 rebate. Even if you don't send in the rebate, which is valid between 11/26 and 11/30, it's still a good deal. It was listed at $79.99 (before rebate) this morning. Good thing I waited. :D Antec Solo at Newegg Be warned, their site is running pretty slow...

Why Gigabyte continues to use a plastic backplate is something I just don't understand. Tracking down a metal backplate can be a pain.

Have you tried using MediaPortal for TV yet?

The lack of VxMC support from nVidia for the 8-series might be a problem (MythTV?) and the GeForce 7-series looks plenty powerful enough for my needs. There might be additional benefits to using a 7-series card other than just XvMC. I started off with an 8500GT card in my MythTV computer and found ...

If XvMC support is one of your requirements, be aware that the GeForce 8-series Linux drivers don't support XvMC yet and it appears to be low on their list of priorities. Although, with the hardware you're looking at it might not be that big of a deal.

Thanks. I used to be a test engineer, so when I get a weird result I usually like to figure out why. :) My recommendation on software would most likely be determined by who I was making the recommendation to. MythTV is very cool, and it's what I have the most experience with, but in my opinion it wi...

There was something about that last set of power consumption figures that didn't sit right with me. If the new video card uses 4 W less during normal activities (i.e. not stressing the video card), then it should use 4 W less during the dual Prime95 load test as well. If that was true, that test sho...

One thing you might want to try is to mount the CPU fan on the side of the heat sink closest to the RAM and then duct that air out of the two fan holes on the back of the case. If your CPU is running that hot, sending its hot air into the PSU can't be helping the situation.

Ouch! That case has air flow issues even with the stock fan setup.

I cut the intake holes using a rotary tool similar to a Dremel and a cutoff wheel. Actually, I used quite a few cutoff wheels. They only last so long.

Have you tried the RAM in different slots? I went through a few sticks of Crucial memory on an older computer before I realized that the first slot on the motherboard was causing the issue. Moving the RAM to the next available slot solved the problem.