My first attempt at a Windows Home Server used Atom... I bought the ECS 945GCT-D because it had a PCIe x1 slot, and bought a 4-port Highpoint RocketRAID card for a total of six SATA ports. I was satisfied with the Atom 230's performance (although it spent a long time indexing). However, the SATA car...

I bought the 2150RPM 92mm Gentle Typhoon from Newegg, at 5V (on a Fanmate) it runs at exactly 1000RPM and is silent to my ears. Doesn't seem to move much air, though, but good enough to cool hard drives.

That "Or...?" is to wait for the ATI 4770, I think. 90% of a 4850's performance for significantly lower power consumption, probably. We'll see soon.

Well the Accelero S1 probably won't fit. I think it will overhang the port end of the card.

A thought just crossed my mind: The GPU is to the left of the PCB. It's not in the middle or to the right. Will 3rd-party passive coolers even fit on that thing? The HIS cooler is to the left, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. None of those ATI slides shows the back of the card. Edit: you...

Any word on a 4750 or similar? Like Matija put it "80W and a power connector... Bleh." I would like 4670 performance or perhaps a little better with stock passive cooling and below 5W idle. Don't think 4770 is for me. I've heard that although the 4750 will draw under 75W load, it will still have th...

newguy wrote:I was wondering if there would be any problem if i didn't plug in all the cables
into the power supply (corsair hx520), since my comp only uses the pci-e and sata cables

Nope. Kind of defeats the purpose of going modular if you have plug all of the cables into it

fyleow wrote:I'd love to see SPCR review the new iMac since they swapped the 2.5" drive for a 3.5" drive. I wonder how the noise levels are affected since the 3.5" should have much higher vibration.

The iMac has always used a 3.5" hard drive.

owbert wrote:wouldnt 1600rpms be loud?

Yes (well, "loud" isn't exactly the word, but they are not silent). One needn't run them at full speed, however. They undervolt nicely.

If you don't really need two 92 mm fans (maybe one fan is enough to blow on the HDDs), you could try the 100 mm Scythe Kaze-Jyu 1,000 rpm. It comes with holes for 92 mm mounting too. I bought two from this e-tailer, but haven't yet swapped the 92 mm Nexus in front of my P150 (I'm lazy, I know...): ...

I'm looking forward to this card, too.

Fudzilla says the desktop cards have been delayed until May. Apparently ATI wants all of the first RV740 chips to go to the mobile version. Which is great for laptop buyers, I guess, but not for me- I want it!

Unless you are playing games on high resolutions, you probably wont see much of a difference. Length wise, I've never had a Solo but I had an old (read: longer) EVGA 9800GTX+ in a Sonata III because the power connectors were on the side instead of the back. A 9800GTX+ will not fit in a Solo without...

TDP is not the exact power consumption / heat output of the processor. It's more like it defines a maximum range, and with binning of better parts, I have no trouble understanding how Intel could classify a Nehalem CPU as 60W.

If you plan on replacing the board before the processor, check the board's CPU support list. Depending on the VRMs it may not support the voltages used by old Netburst processors. Some new Intel mobos don't.

I have two of the Scythe Kama Flex 92mm fans (these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835185066). They are pretty good.

Intel's Core i7 processors support triple channel. You will need three or six sticks of DDR3 to use triple channel. Of course, you don't have to use triple channel, and some LGA1366 motherboards have four slots. They do that to save space vs. six slots, and you'll see a negligible decrease in perfor...

1) The P182 is a big case, but it doesn't exactly have the most hard drive bays. For maximum driveage, you'd want something that is all 5.25" bays down the front, that could hold four of those 4-in-3 drive carriers. 2) Don't underestimate the power supply needs. It's true that a fileserver won't bre...

I bought a B-stock (aka scratch and dent) Sonata from Antec's online store. $30+$20 shipping and it arrived without a scratch or a dent on it (YMMV). Going to turn it into a new home fileserver. Of course, I needed four drive bays.

Look at all those bent fins! Regardless of price, it looks cheap.

You could find a much quieter PSU if you wanted, a Seasonic (or Corsair-brand Seasonic) or FSP with a single 12V rail and 120mm fan. 750W is overkill anyway.

1GB of memory on a card with a 128-bit bus is purely a marketing gimmick. I agree with other posters, get a 4830 instead or wait a month for the 4700-series cards to come out.

I have it, too. In operation the processor heatsink barely gets warm, but the northbridge will burn your finger after a while. The board may be fanless, but it needs air circulation in the case.

Or just cut a square hole out of the duct, in-line with the PSU fan. This won't hurt CPU cooling much, that's not a hot processor.

I know that the power supply is one area we want no one to skimp on, but you could spend a lot less. If you aren't wedded to the idea of modular cables, the Corsair CX400 is $50, quiet, and should be more than enough power for your system.

m1k30rz wrote:I want to run it passive in my NSK2480 (same as antec fusion) with probably a scythe mini ninja, as the two 120mm fans right beside it will take the air away.

That should be able to cool any 45nm Core 2 Duo, even the top E8600.

danielG wrote:I'm about ready to give up here. I can't find a motherboard that doesn't suck.

That Intel board might be fine with a tower heatsink. They're probably being conservative in the tech manual.

I will be buying a Core 2 Quad in about a month and I'll be needing a new motherboard. After months of indecision, I settled on buying an Intel DP43TF motherboard. I have two nagging questions before I make the final decision: 1) It's got lots of coils. Will I have problems with coil whine? I brows...

I think I'd find a 9600GT with a quiet dual-slot cooler for that case. EVGA makes one.

Yeah, that calculator says my system should use over 500W, when in reality it is ~300W max, including two LCD monitors- a 24" and a 19". Those monitors are at least 100W on their own.

I have one in a USB enclosure that has been running for several months now. I can't imagine why it would have a problem. "RAID Edition" drives are a waste of money even if you do use RAID.