I use a S-12 430, and I am extremely happy with it. Unless you want to go passive, I don't think that you will find anything much better. Corsair showed new and cheaper power supplies at Computex (450 and 550W). These are probably also based on Seasonic, so you might want to wait for these if modula...

If you OC the E6420 to 2.4GHz (as the E6600) without upping the core voltage, the power consumption and heat dissipation should be the same for the CPU. While there is no guarantee that you can reach a certain frequency without overvolting, I would assume that you can OC the E6420 to at least 2.4GHz...

I am going to use TDP as comparison. I know that TDP does not equal power consumption, but it is a good indicator. I would recommend that you buy a CPU with EIST, as your file server is probably going to be idle a lot of time. Celerons have TDP down to 65W (Celeron D 360-365), but does not include E...

I would wait for the 8600.

Unfortunately, most passive models are launched some time after the launch of active cooled cards. I wouldn't be surprised if we do not see any passive cards in the first couple of months.

Yes, memory overheating is certainly a possibility. To use a passive card like this, you will need good airflow in the case, and in particular around the GFX card. This might be overkill, but I would consider making a duct around the card and use a low RPM, low noise 80mm fan. I know that you bought...

MEMS storage http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/MEMS/index.html has been in the works for quite a long time (at least since 1998), however it seems that it is still far from production.

Solutions bases on MEMS would be even better for most scenarios, but there seems to be little progress.

As far as I can tell, the Ninja is better for passive, and the Ultra 120 is better with a fan. The heatsink fins are closer to each other on the Ultra 120, which will hamper convection, however when using a fan the more fins will help heat dissipation. Notice that the Ultra 120 can only be mounted i...

I don't think there is much difference between the normal and mobile GPUs. Finding a good sample of a standard 7900 GS and downvolting/downclocking this to 375 Mhz would probably give a somewhat similar TDP. According to x-bit labs, the standard 7900 GT uses approximately 48W at full load. What we r...

It will probably be a homemade wooden case.

I consider buying either the XFX 7950GT or passive MSI 7900GT. I don't really trust the passive cooling, and I certainly don't want my GPU heating up the rest of the system, so I plan to make a duct/shroud and use a low-RPM 80mm fan to cool the card (fan placed inside the cabinet and using positive ...

I do not agree on point #2. If a certain CFM is needed to cool the system, it will almost always be more silent with two slow fans instead of one fast.

I am thinking of buying the passive MSI card and adding a 80 mm low noise fan with a shroud leading out of the cabinet. This should be plenty of cooling, and you can get 80 mm fans which are fairly silent and definetely much more silent than any VGA fans I have ever heard.

Any thoughts on this?

The Asus P5LD2-VM/DH has a BIOS update for core 2 duo. The board is reasonably prices, passively cooled and has all the needed accessories (for me anyway). Looks like a nice mATX board, Intel 945G chipset means that it only support DDR2 667 though. Make sure that you get a version with the latest BI...

all of these are going to be the new 940 socket? or are some going to be 939 and 754? It would be nice to build a new computer around the new socket if it isnt too expense, then you get the best of both worlds, cheap and upgradeable. No luck. :( The new Turion X2s will be socket S1. All AMD CPUs wi...

I am considering something like that myself. TechReport found some problems with warm-rebooting the motherboard and AHCI. The AHCI problem should be solved with a BIOS upgrade, and the issues with warm-rebooting is probably not a problem for most people. I don't know how silent the included heat sin...