I replaced the annoyingly noisy when idle Toshiba drive from my LG P300 to a WD3200BEVT and to my surprise and dismay, the WD3200BEVT proved to be rather noisy as well when idle. I wonder if I got a fluke or do all WD3200BEVT have this fan-turbulence -like spinning sound? Got a Samsung X420 that has...

I tried CoreAVC but I couldn't get it to work the way I wanted. Had problems with subtitles IIRC and performance wasn't that much better than with the ffdshow. I watch mostly h.264 material. I did re-check the CPU usage though with 1080p material and the CPU was at around 80% when using MPC. I norma...

Have you checked the CPU usage when playing HD video? Your CPU might be too slow. The Sempron LE 1200 (2.1 GHz) in my HTPC barely has the power to play 720p video, so it skips frames every now and then. It's peaking at around 50% or so, haven't really checked in some while though. It's not really s...

I'm thinking of rebuilding my HTPC. Currently it has a pair of RAID1 500GB WD GPs encased in Scythe Quiet Drives. There have been some performance issues when watching HD materials, but I'm not sure if that could be caused by the slow-ish WDs. It's running an AMD BE-2350 on an Asus M2A-VM HDMI with ...

I recently purchased a HD4870 and a Twin Turbo. At first things looked really good. It was easy to install and build quality was decent for a sink that's rather low cost. Then I looked at it closer. First I noticed that the sink wasn't properly aligned. The sink wasn't flush on the GPU die and that ...

I've set up a light server running XP Pro with two WD5000AACS discs in a RAID1 config. The server is very quiet, but the HDDs grind excessively and it's starting to get extremely annoying. Is this normal for RAID1s? Is there some way to minimize the grinding? I'm also running a VM on the machine wit...

I recently purchased a Seagate 7200.11 500GB and while the idle and seek noises are very quiet indeed, the disc does click very loudly when idling. This clicking does not appear when the disc is being read. It reminds me of the day of the IBM Deathstars and the ever-dreadful Click of Doom that brick...

It does say in the specs:

"1 Audio jack (5-in-1), coaxial/fiber SPDIF out"

Yeah and noticed that the price difference isn't actually worth it. What about this motherboard: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K9N6SGM-V It's rather cheap and looks ok spec-wise. Slap on it a single core Athlon or a Sempron, with 1GB of RAM and an HD2400Pro card with some Seaga...

but plenty on the Solo. Enough so that I would not buy one ever again,. Care to explain why you wouldn't buy a Solo again? Been thinking of getting one of these for a while now. Would really appreciate your comments. Incidentally I've been having this same conversation in another thread: http://www...

Gah, well that certainly was a major disappointment. But on the other hand I can probably get some IGP-free VIA -chipped AM2 mATX board pretty cheap so getting a low-end, HD capable, discrete graphics card shouldn't go over my budget. Will have to look into it in more detail. With the separate graph...

@Acolyte: Is the P150 (and by extension the Designer 500) that much of a hassle? What I'm looking for in a case is clean, simple lines, relatively compact size and decent acoustics, which is why I decided on the P150 in the first place. No overclocking is planned and I was considering going with th...

I would say the NSK3480. I like the idea of having the PSU in its own chamber. You'd basically be installing one HDD at the bottom of the case while the other would reside in the PSU-tunnel under the ODD. Replacing the unused 5.25" bay cover with a meshed one and blocking the vents on top of the PSU...

I would also need to be hard-pressed to buy another P150 or it's derivatives. My current one is an utter pain to maintain. I don't mind the filter cleaning, and it doesn't gather nearly as much dust inside anymore as I blocked the rear exhaust near the PCI-slots, but the limited clearance inside the...

Any idea how far that Nvidia chipset will take if the CPU is a puny Sempron? Just had a look at the prices of the mATX motherboards sporting the 7050PV, it would still keep the price well within the range. Atleast if I can make-do with the Sempron, or a single core Athlon 64. Or should I just ditch ...

I wonder which would make more sense: To invest in a better CPU or a separate graphics card? The price is about the same but does that have an impact on the power consumption and heat production?

I'm planning on building the following PC for media purposes: AMD Sempron 3600+ (or the LE1100) Asus M2A-VM HDMI mobo 1GB Kingston kit (533MHz CL4 512MB x 2) Seagate 7200.10 160GB Antec NSK-3480 Possibly a Scythe Ninja Rev.B as a cooler Will this be enough to be able to play HD video? Is the Scythe ...

Ok my ducting plan has grounded to a halt. I just finished installing the Kamabay and the Ninja. Also changed the only ribbon cable to a rounded one. The noise of the case dropped somewhat in pitch but now it's producing an irritating low hum resonance and I cannot find out where it is originating f...

Well that wouldn't do good for the warranty now would it? You'd have to open it and to do that you'd need to break the seal and void warranty.

Thanks for the comments! I'll definitelly try it out and report back here. Going to take me a while though. RAFH, you have to remember that the while the graphics area in theory would have a higher airflow than the CPU area, the 4HDDs combined with the filter and the rather restricted front bezel wi...

Let's start with the specs: - C2D e6300 with the 775 Katana (will probably be changed to the Ninja) - Asus P5B - 2GB DDR800 (Corsair) - 7900GS with Zalman VF-900Cu (at lowest voltage) - 4 Seagates (250G 7200.10, 2x 200GB and a 160G 7200.9s) - P150 with the standard NeoHE430(EC) Case Fans: 2x 92mm An...

Well chances are pretty much 50-50. Though from all the bad things I've heard from the NeoHE I have to say coil buzz has not been a frequent complaint. Mostly people have been complaining that the PSU simply just won't start :( I have the p150 and the NeoHE430 PSU (EC model though). I can't hear any...

The NeoHE 430 should easily be able to handle that amount of load, so I'm fairly confident that it's not running out of juice. It can be two things (that I can think of from the top of my head). The bearings on the fan have failed or are failing, or coil buzz. Both of these could indeed come apparen...

I've had a NeoHE psu (EC model) for almost a year now. Came with the P150 case I purchased last autumn. My first PC configuration (P4 2.6GHz Northwood, 1GB DDR 400, Radeon 9800Pro) I had no problems with. Now when I updated my computer to a C2D e6300 with 2GB RAM DDR800 and a 7900GS, I've ran into a...

Ah quite right.

And just to make my day super great, the bearing on the 120mm rear fan died. And here I was under the impression that Antec fans were of good quality. First fan that had died on me after being used less than a year.

I've had a P150 case for about 4 months now. I've been very happy with it up until today. First I noticed that the rear 120mm fan was sounding weird so I opened the case to inspect what might be causing it. I found no real cause for the noise so I decided to also check the fron 92mm fans if they wer...