http://www.advansus.com.tw/product/detail.asp?pid=183 This would be an ITX-Board supporting Core 2 Quad. The problem is, that it doesn't have standard socket 775 cooler mounting holes. So you'd be limited to some obscure tiny cooler with probably not more than a 40mm fan on it. 40mm :shock: My ears...

Whats the black piece of plastic by the two large fans for? Looks like it would just mess up the airflow. That's a retractable baffle to make sure that any air reaching the fans has passed through the heatsink. Possibly important with a Ninja-style cooler. I'm pretty sure Mike has commented on this...

Slightly off-topic...

What's the highest practical throughput of current SSDs? i.e. would you really benefit from using RAID with SSDs, or are they fast enough that it wouldn't really make a difference?

Honestly, I don't even understand how you're supposed to get a hdd cable up through the hole if you leave the psu area fan in place - won't you have to route the cable through the fan? Definitely route around the mobo tray! Nope, there are two holes, one behind the fan and one in front. The two tin...

That's a MIKAEL, current price £39...

New socket, "low" 550g weight limit...

They really haven't been paying much attention to the heatsink market recently, have they?

Indeed, it's probably easier to replace them all with two large SATA drives. eBay the old ones and you might break even!

As a student, my term-time job is in the entertainments department of our Students' Union (in charge of sound, lights, power, stage builds etc).

To me, Gaffer = Duct. It's a shiny plastic tape with fabric in it so it tears easily. The glue is sticky and often leaves a grey residue.

Motherboard Any Fatal1ty board will be overpriced, since you're funding someone's lifestyle. They are intended for marketing-victim gamers. You should be able to find a cheaper board which satisfies your requirements. Processor Not sure what everyone else thinks, but for the next few months, I'd st...

Um...

As far as I knew, [Gaffer = Duct = Elephant] tape.

Anyone care to explain the difference?

The calculator I usually use is

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

Which said <300W for your 5 drive setup...

Ok, no Nano, but would a VIA C7 @ 2.0GHz be good enough?
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=34#j7f2

About half the price of a Nano.

You could fit a cluster of nano-itx nodes in a P182...

imho Folding@Home is more likely to produce medically useful knowledge than rosetta...

At least you weren't planning on running SETI!

I've was considering the E-MU 0404 for this PC, but I ran out of budget; Can't remember what the specs are, but for £80 at the time it would have been awesome quality.

Will you be wanting high-quality input, or just output?

Hmmm...

This board + AMD64 X2 @ 2.2GHz + RAM = my first spare machine when I revamp my main machine?

That CPU apparently has a TDP of 89W, so it'll do nicely

So what advantages do Matrox cards have over a similarly priced ATI card?

I get that they're not meant for gaming, and are good for quiet workstations, but so are some of ATI's lower specced fanless cards...

in the time it takes to boil If you're using boiled water for your coffee, you're barred from commenting on good coffee of any kind... :P I drink whatever the machine makes at work. When I'm at home, I don't care about waiting ten minutes for the cafetiere to finish brewing. Seriously, can't you pr...

I've been using Rivatuner for a while; By default, it shows graphs of whatever measurements you want (I usually have this open on my second screen), but you can also get it to overlay some of these numbers onto your game display: When my X1950 was dying, I had my GPU temp overlayed in the top left c...

You could try using Dynamat to dampen the panels, then get a better CPU Heatsink + Fan; An Athlon 1300 shouldn't have that big a TDP, so a small-ish modern heatsink should be capable. As far as I know, socket AM2 coolers have Socket-A compatible clips (i.e. the the plastic part of the socket didn't ...

AGP or PCI-E?

I had one of these before I started playing FPS:

ATI Radeon 9250 Passive (fanless) on AGP
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/112762
£23



Which operating system? Vista may require a decent GPU even for desktop stuff...

frenchie wrote:I don't think many cases have room for 2.5'' drives.

That only applies if you're hard-mounting them, which isn't really the done thing round here, eh?

Also, I have an MO drive in one 3.5" bay, and a ZIP drive in a 5.25" bay... heheh

I bought a HD501LJ each for my brother and I last month, and in his P182, it's pretty hard to make out (stock fans on low, Corsair/Seasonic PSU, Ninja with PWM fan on slowwwww).

only about £40 in the UK, so well priced I think.

2.5" drives: More expensive per GB Easier to suspend due to smaller size and lower weight May have louder seek noise Draw fewer watts. Both are mountable in normal desktop cases. You'd usually need to sacrifice a 5.25" bay (CD drive size) to suspend a 3.5" drive, but you can suspend a 2.5" drive in ...

Maybe email them and ask if it's a significant metric before RMAing... they may be able to tell you what it actually means.

for when I need the occasional bit of utility computing capability from this machine.

What do you class as "utility"?

The slower you go on the CPU, the less wattage you'll need to dissipate with fans.

Judging from other people's experiences with the layout inside the Sonata, I'd switch to a P182 if you can afford it. Also, consider ATi graphics cards: from what I could see when I was shopping around in May, a HD3850 or 3870 was the best GPU in the pricerange at the time. Probably even cheaper now...

My board (Gigabyte I think) has an option in the "hardware monitoring" section of the BIOS where I can set the CPU fan warning to various speeds; unfortunately, my akasa CPU fan uses a "volume control" knob on the rear panel, taking its power from the PSU, so the BIOS sees 0rpm! [edit]Got confused w...

Would it work if you copied the contents of C:\Documents and Settings\ to the second partition/drive, then set the mount point for that partition to be "C:\Documents and Settings\"? Might involve safemode...