Do you mean one of the small transparent plastic rings? It wouldn't say they're vital at all. I've used worse things. You should be able to find a suitable substitute yourself somewhere surely.

QuietOC wrote:The impedance of a ribbon cable is constant regardless of length.

I would have thought that the impedence would be proportional to the length as it is the resistivity which affects impedence and this is proportionally inverse of the length. What else affects it?

what about the idea of just using the two closer together plugs on a 3 plug (2 drive 1 mobo) cable? could that cause any damage? That worked fine for me. Just cut off the extra cable with something sharp so it's a tidy end. I've actually seen a few cables in pre-built systems that seem to have been...

Liquids can conduct heat very well but won't conduct vibrations much at all. Anyone want to try dunking a hard disk in a vat of distilled water sometime? Come on, it's all low voltage and moving parts are sealed in. It's already been done with a complete system with oil so a hard disk on it's own mi...

No Vista. What exactly does it accomplish that Windows 2000 couldn't?

It's such a large change from 2k/XP with little gained that a shift to Linux would be a much better idea.

Hard drive enclosures are no longer that expensive. If you're looking at 500Gb+ capacity, a SATA enclosure and a SATA driver may be cheaper that replacing an existing PATA disk.

The one I have can measure down to 1W. It will be unavailable to you though as it's for a UK plug. It's a Prodigit 2000MU which also measures energy usage, voltage, VA, frequency and power factor.

I've had results between 1W and 8W for systems in a soft-off state.

whiic wrote:Nothing above 500GB is available, right?

Seagate ST3750640A is 750Gb. That's the only one I know of.

From this I conclude I would need 600-850W if I want it to run quiet, efficient and for a long time. You've taken a few assumptions there that aren't correct and overestimated the power you require. All three things you've quoted (quietness, efficiency and longevity) are down to heat. A higher rate...

dhanson865 wrote:Your only other real option is to get a PCI or PCIe drive controller and go SATA.

This may even be a lot cheaper. I came across some recently for £10 which makes anything over 250Gb cheaper as SATA with the PCI card rather than just a native PATA drive.

Just about any modern card can run passive with an Accelero S1/2. Unless you get a card with a lot of coil whine, it'll be nearly silent. My 9600GT with an S1 stays nice and cool too.

lb_felipe wrote:Reducing the weight of the heatsink can cause an increase in the rotation of the fan making it loud?

It's not that it causes it. They've reduced the size of the HS to save cost and used a faster spinning fan, that's all. Worse for noise level by default but replaceable.

considering that the BIOS isn't terribly old (1999) i wouldn't think there would be an issue. Actually at that age there will most likely be a problem if you were running them off the motherboard rather than your RAID controller. You would be able to use a 160Gb disk but only with 128Gb available f...

It would be nice to know, even if the stock cooler is the same, if the fan control is the same, i.e., f the fan doesn't ramp up sooner than the reference video card. If you download all of the GTX260 BIOSes on Mvktech and look at them with NiBiTor it will show you the fans settings for each card. Y...

I'll have to dig up the old thread about my rig to show the changes it's had... This one? http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=39793&highlight= It's very nice. Lot more powerful than mine but I guess a bit louder too. What OS are you running on yours? Currently it has a dual boot of...

Yes, I undervolt all the time and run the CPU at 780 Mhz most of the time. That CPU is probably running at under 10W so it may well be able to run passively with the current heatsink. but I didn't know if they'd be as quiet as PATAs. Let's put it this way, I can hear and feel the difference between...

Pics are now working for me. Yeah the CPU fan is not the quietest, but the case fan, even at its lowest setting is the noisier of the two. When I put the system together I bought another CPU fan (quieter) but I decided to go with the mb's native fan for a couple of reasons. First, it was fitting on ...

wrong, wrong, wrong. I can see we're just going to get on great here. The resolution is not "strange" (whatever you mean by that...), I played lots of games on that resolution (The Witcher, Mass Effect, Crysis...) and everything works like a charm. The resolution is unusual and therefore strange. I...

Thanks for the comments. Have you tried blocking the fangrill below the PSU? Not yet. It's one of 5 real intake areas in this system. I need to try different configurations with blocking grills and also with some foam. And removing the PCI cover just below the GFX-card? The cover has been replaced w...

This is a very hacked together Pentium 3 system with only one fan. http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/8650/p1010232ke4.th.jpg Pentium 3 550MHz passive cooled 448Mb RAM Supermicro P6SBU motherboard Geforce FX5600 + Accelero S2 and ramsinks Seagate Barracuda IV 60Gb Liteon DVD/CDRW 3.5" floppy Soundbl...

A 24" one. :wink: 22" will give you 1680x1050 which you could also get on a 20" display. I'd go for the 20" given the choice of those two. The trouble then is that 1680x1050 is a strange resolution and is poorly supported in a lot of games, this is why I'd go for a 24" at 1920x1200. I have a Samsung...

Pics not working here.

It is unlikely there is any difference in the fans of these cards. However, different manufacturers may have applied their heatsinks better than others, some may run minisculely different voltages due to different power circuitry and different cards may have different fan speed settings in the video...

I've measured the clearance from the top of the PCI-Express port to to highest point in the case, to be 13,6 cm. Do you think it'll fit? From the manufacturer specs, the S1 heatsink is 13.8 cm tall. Watch out with this measurement. The cooler may not mount at the same point on different cards, bein...

Are you running any front fans in the Solo? I run an S1 on a 9600GT with a 120mm at 800rpm in front of it which helps massively. If you were to use an S1 on the X1950 then you might find a set of front fans at 5V would make a big difference to graphics card cooling over no fans. Yes, the programs we...

The P12's are suppsedly better with resistance, but they're not that great. They are aimed at shifting more air under a higher back pressure, nothing to do with noise level. They are louder than the S12's and always will be. Just because it is an exhaust fan doesn't mean it will have little resista...

According to the SPCR review of the Seasonic, the Modu82+ is still quieter and the Antec is likely to be made by Seasonic, so the Modu82+ may still be the quieter but it is in a different power bracket.

You may be able to do a video BIOS mod to change the fan speeds. I have not done this with an ATi card but using RaBit you can do this for some ATi cards. There are threads on BIOS modding for the X1950: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=25301&page=57 Unsurprisingly many of them have a ...

Once you install the driver for the 9600GT, it's pretty much silent. I disagree with you there. For me it has a horrid tonality to it. Search my posts, but it wouldn't do you any good. Simply turning off the fans completely has PROVEN the Noctua fans ARE the source of my noise. I was actually askin...

If you do need 850W, the new Enermax Revolution 85+ is the big brother of the Modu 82+ and is still pretty quiet. You may nto be able to find one yet though.