So, no one on this forum has ever had any kind of closed ear headphones and has never thought about anything like this? I do have some very good closed headphones. But they aren't noise-cancelling (only passively isolated), and, as I only use them for listening to music, I don't need a mic (they do...

The difference would be pretty negligible but two fans are louder than one. At the same airflow. The DCU-II has a larger heatsink and more fan "area", because of this it very likely that it will need less airflow and thus be quieter. Actually, for the same airflow, two fans can easily be quieter th...

A small correction: in the article, you write about "DVI Dual Link (DVI-D)", like if the "D" in DVI-D meant "Dual Link"; but DVI-D only means that it's digital, not that it supports dual link. To sum up : - DVI-A: analog connection, compatible with VGA; - DVI-D: digital connection; - DVB-I: supports...

wrl wrote:CPU cooler: Thermaltake HR-02 Macho

Actually, it's Thermalright. Only a few different letters, but it makes one hell of a difference - for instance, you can actually be happy with your computer!

Well, what matters is that it got the job done!

SSD are to expensive and small to even be taking seriously. I don't buy into the hype about how wonderful they are. When they cost the same and provide that same capacity as traditional harddrives then I'll take them seriously. There just not worth it. SSDs may not be what you want for your use cas...

Those look like spanner screws. They are one of the common types of security screws, you should be able to get a screwdriver without too much trouble, on-line or in a hardware store (there are several sizes though, so be careful to buy the right one). Alternatively iFixit sells a huge kit of securit...

I you used +12V and -5V lines, you'd get 17V. You need to use the +12V and +5V lines (yellow and red wire respectively).

edit: Here's a link to an old SCR article on the subject.

edit again: There are also plenty of posts on the forum - search for "7V trick" for instance.

Luca for future reference.... how would you have me refer to what I called PWM current. Is "PWM electricity" acceptable? I kinda feel like being a bit pedantic on the subject, so... Here we go. :wink: PWM refers to a signal . Also, those PWM fans with a 4-pins connector don't actually run off the P...

I guess the main point is that it doesn't make any kind of sense that there's a 6 pin connector rated for 75 W and an 8 pin one rated for 150 W (the pins being the same)... There should really have been, say, a 4p connector (75 W) and an 8p one (150 W), with the ability to plug two 4p plugs into a 8...

frupoli, why do you want to go fanless on the CPU heatsink if you'll have 4 case fans anyway? If your CPU fan is at least as quiet as the case fans, and since its noise is a bit more dampened too (by being inside the case rather than on a case panel), it won't really add any noise...

Anyway, modern graphics card at least tend to do a decent job at reducing their power consumption when idling, so I guess it probably won't really be worth using I mode on a desktop PC... Unless you have 2 monitors and then your gpu card will idle at 17-90W , depending on the brand and model. I mod...

@ publicENEMY: With the 3 big 180 mm fans in the bottom, can't you just remove the top 120 mm fan if it's too noisy? I may be wrong, but I doubt that it would make such a big difference in cooling - it's probably worth testing at least.

@ NeilBlanchard: There have been a lot of double-blind studies conducted to show that 44 KHz sampling is audibly transparent (and it can only perfectly reproduce frequencies up to 22 KHz - in practice, that means cutting all frequencies higher than around 20 KHz with a filter). IOW, people can't rel...

I still chuckle when I see headphones (my primary source of listening these days) that advertise playback capabilities well beyond the 20Hz-20kHz range (I'm talking 5Hz on the low end, and 30kHz on the high) - you're not going to hear those frequencies, and yet somehow they matter? It's surely some...

You know that there's a huge international community of hifi enthusiasts -- both subjectivists and objectivists -- who will rise up to argue with you about the audibility of cables, so I won't. :wink: Actually, only delu... I mean, subjectivists really will. Objectivists will just mention a quick r...

What actually I was trying to find out that why there is such a big gap between the combined powers ie 504 vs 576. The second psu (corsair) delivers almost what it says on the label whereas in the first one (high power), the power drops down almost one-sixth of the total power stated on the label. ...

Secondly, the gpu i installed requires a psu with at least 500W power. Your GPU doesn't actually require a 500 W PSU, it's just a very misleading recommendation from the GPU manufacturer. They recommend that you use a much higher powered PSU than is usually necessary, because they don't know what y...

Thanks for the clarification. I just did some research and it appears that you can actually use quick sync in D mode (which is nice), so all you would really be missing is the power down of the 3D card from I mode (however, given reports about poor (?) Intel IGP image quality this may be one of tho...

(i) Small Issue. As mentioned in the review, nothing but an HDMI video output so besides not allowing multi-monitor with the IGP it is also a no go when using Lucid Virtu (if it eventually turns out to be something useful) on any monitor with a resolution above 1920x1200. Not likely to be a deal br...

Commentators say they will continue to become increasingly popular, so this may be a relevant topic. I believe those commentators were referring to tablets (like the iPad), not tablet PCs. Tablet PCs simply never took off, except for some niche uses. Tablets use hardware that derives from smartphon...

Drivers for the chipset or what drivers do you mean? Product family Chipsets Product line Embedded Chipsets Product name Intel® NM10 Express Chipset Operating System Windows 7 (64-bit)*(5) http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=20775&ProdId=3304&lang=eng&OSVersion=Windows%20...

There's a small mistake on page two : "LGX AG150 back panel: Two ethernet antennae ports" => it should certainly read "two WiFi antennae ports".

@ Merlinen : The 64 bits issue is with Intel's Windows drivers, not with the CPU itself.

I want to learn how to rip BD disks to MK4 format to either an internal or external hard disk. I take it that I need a BD writer. Correct? You need a BD reader - whether you also want to be able to write BDs is unrelated (though the price difference isn't that big - around $20 or so, I think, betwe...

The original ATX Chassis was designed so that the PS fan would cool the CPU heat sink via a duct and many systems with low wattage CPU's are still built this way. I know, but even cases like the new Solo II have a CPU on top. The solo II has a vent above the PSU, so you can have it draw air from th...

Toan wrote:I had briefly considered the Antec Solo - it worked well for my current PC... except when I had to replace the PSU. That damned bar at the top made a 5-10 minute task into a freaking ordeal. The Antec Solo II unfortunately kept that evil bar.

FYI, the PSU support bar is removable in the Solo II.

Actually, I was complaining about the cables being too short... But that's in a full ATX case (though not a very big one), and largely because of the way I'd like to route the cables.

Why not simply check on the manufacturer's website?

Antec wrote:Compatible Motherboards: Mini-ITX, microATX, Standard ATX

Generally, air is easier and more efficiently moved by lowering the pressure. Neil, please explain further what you mean. All fans work by lowering the pressure on one side and increasing it on the other. What he means is that, in practice, when you want to move air through something restrictive, i...

Wow, way to bump up an old thread... :mrgreen: In that case, I'm going to add my two cents about this: Water cooling as it is done in a PC is actually quite the same as air cooling. A copper block (predominantly) takes the heat off the chip, transfers it to a conductor (heatpipes or water) which is ...