So when looking at specs, do I add up all the 12 V rails? No. If there are multiple 12 V rails their sum is generally larger than the total power it can handle, you can't load all the rails to the max at the same time. The total 12V power is a separate specification. E.g. the example I linked (the ...

Yeah, you're good. In general, there's one more thing to check: Power supplies may have multiple 12 V 'rails', say one for the mobo/CPU, one for a GPU, and one for molex/SATA power. Here's an arbitrary example from a 550W unit ( source ). Although it can deliver 550W in total, it's limited to 22 A *...

... So where are the other 115 watts coming from then? Approximately: 22 W lost in the PSU at 90% efficiency (Gold) maybe 40 W for the motherboard (variable, 20-40W isn't uncommon, this includes conversion losses for powering the CPU. Higher-end mobos tend to use more power, partly due to having mo...

I'm in a similar situation, planning a similar build and debating liquid vs air. I don't have all the answers. I have some thoughts, and a few links. * According to SPCR measurements of pump noise it should be possible to make custom watercooling just as quiet as air cooling. It takes a quiet, decou...

So under full load you should be at about 350W at stock speeds, 500W with max overclock on both CPU and GPU. I assume you plan on overclocking? And the computer is frequently under heavy load? If so, I agree: You need an ATX power supply from a noise perspective. IMO that rules out the Nano S, since...

What type of components do you have in mind? The Corsair SF600 is silent up to 120W and quiet (sub-20dB) up to 360W according to Corsair . It's very noisy at full load, but that will only matter if you draw that much power. At idle or with standard desktop tasks (mail, documents, internet, watching ...

Yes: Up to 2x120mm fans for intake from the bottom, exhaust in the rear and through the opposite side panel. In-Win illustration . The PSU is at the top, and also contributes to the exhaust. (At the cost of being cooled with pre-heated air, unlike most other modern cases. But with 90+% PSU efficienc...

Yes, I have one. It fits 120mm mount holes, but it's still a 140mm fan. If you can mount a 120mm fan and still have around 10mm extra space on each side, it should be fine.

The fan is quite noisy at full speed (1200 RPM), but barely audible when you use the supplied Ultra Low Noise adapter (750 RPM).

bit-tech has tested how cooling varies with the number and location of case fans:
The Big Air Cooling Investigation

Some interesting results, e.g. with only one fan the side mount gave the best cooling.

Thanks for your feedback. For my second question, how much radiator does it take to cool X watts, I found an interesting graph at skinneelabs : http://skinneelabs.com/assets/images/Radiators/XSPC/RX360v2/RX360-v2_HeatLoadChart.png A 3x120mm radiator with 3x120mm fans at 600 RPM can handle 550 W with...

As far as I know, every CPU on the market can be cooled more quietly with air than with water. The same goes for any single graphics card up to and including GTX 580 (by using an aftermarket cooler). But if we keep adding graphics cards - dual, triple or quad GTX 580 - there will presumably be a poi...

I'm not even sure if the primary purpose of the Extreme models is to actually be sold to someone.

I imagine it's mostly there for marketing purposes: To throw glory at its lesser siblings, and to make the rest of the lineup seem cheap in comparison.

The Mini Skeleton has enough room for the cooler for a 35 W CPU, you don't really need anything bigger. The Silverstone SG05 would give you the option to use a more powerful processor, up to and including the Core i5/i7 models. I would still get a fan controller, and perhaps look into swapping the 1...

Sounds good. Add any 2.5" drive and two sticks of RAM, and you're good to go. You might consider a Fan Mate or similar fan controller as well, the case fans may not run as quiet as you would like at stock speeds. You will still need a heat sink for the CPU, but may be able to skip the CPU fan. 35 W ...

Tom's Hardware tested Core i5 and i7, those are high-end desktop processors with a 95W TDP (Thermal Design Power, loosely speaking the peak power consumption). A 95W processor won't work with a 90W power supply, no. You can see some power consumption numbers for the lower end here: http://www.xbitla...

In general, when you go that small you sacrifice user flexibility. (Just look at the Mac mini, there's very little a user can replace without a soldering iron.) For the Fit-PC2, their FAQ says that you can't swap RAM since it's soldered in place. Replacing the hard drive should be possible, though, ...

I've also heard that some LGA2011 boards may have problems with large air coolers . It's hard to tell just from pictures, but some of those boards look like they should have room for an Archon, at least. (The Archon would probably eat a PCI-E slot, but not interfere with RAM.) If it were me, I would...

A six-core Sandy Bridge-E should use less power than a six-core 980X at the same frequency, true. But it's still 50% more cores than the likes of 2600K, and 4.5 GHz is a sizable overclock from a 3.2 GHz base, so I would expect power consumption to be closer to the 980X than the 2600K. But I guess we...

Stock graphics cards are rarely quiet even at idle. If you are certain that you want gaming-level graphics, your best bet is probably to go for an aftermarket cooler. See for example the recent Build the Perfect Workstation here at SPCR, where they use a Thermalright Shaman. If the stock heatsink of...

Here's a list of SSD power consumption from Tom's Hardware. And a list from Anandtech , providing more detail. The winner depends on whether the SSD is mostly idle (Kingston SSD Now 128 GB), writing sequentially (Corsair F40) or writing randomly (Corsair Nova 128 GB). I expect that there are other a...

They look very similar judging from pictures, so I guess it's the same mounting mechanism.

You just loosen the screws. Finding the last screw took me a while: The red stripes in the middle of the casing, between the two fans, is a piece of metal foil that is glued on. The last screw is under it.

Two 120mm fans and a manual fan controller is what I did with my DirectCUII (an HD6950), it works very well: No noise and about the same temps as with the stock fans. Here'a picture . I used a few pieces of string to tie the 120mm fans to the case, hammock-style. (I was a bit concerned about the add...

-So I guess any Radeon with 6 display ports (HDMI/DVI/etc..) will work with 6 displays? I think so, with two caveats: * There can be at most two monitors on the DVI/VGA/HDMI outputs, the rest must use DisplayPort. * You need Windows 7 (or possibly Vista); Eyefinity support for Linux and Win XP is p...

I expect that with the fan controller on minimum you probably won't hear the stock case fans over the rest of the system? At low voltages the stock fans are very quiet according to the SPCR review . If you remove the side panel and listen to the system while it's running, which components make the m...

A quick update on queting the graphics card: Modding the card BIOS to lower the idle fan speeds seems unlikely to work, simply because the stock fans probably can't run any slower. The ~1200 RPM minimum speed is ~30% of the maximum speed, and checking the specs for a few PWM fans it appears that ver...

I was just thinking, wouldn't a thicker fluid like maybe some good old 10w30 be able to absorb more heat and thus not need to circulate as fast as your typical water-based setup? Quite the reverse, I think - oil has only half the heat capacity of water . According to wikipedia water has the second ...

Thanks doveman. Yes, it's v0.5.3; and no, there's no Vreg temp at the bottom (or elsewhere in the "sensors" tab) - the bottommost five fields are the three GPU temps, a "VDDC Offset" voltage and a "Current OCP" percentage. Is it possible that there's no VRM sensor in this card? On the VGA cooler: Is...

There's no VRM label in GPU-Z for my card (Asus HD 6950 DirectCU II), but there's "GPU #1", "GPU #2" and "GPU #3" with a couple of degrees between them, like 49 C, 50 C, 53 C.

Is it likely that one of them is the VRM temp? Can't see any other temperatures.

You should have plenty of power: 35 W processor + 65 W graphics + 20 W for mobo and RAM + up to 20 W for a HDD (max startup power for a 3.5" HDD) => not more than 150 W. One issue I've seen occasionally is that the BIOS screen doesn't show up over the HDMI output - I get just a blank screen until th...

Asus HD6950 2GB DirectCU II I picked Radeon for triple-monitor support, the HD 6950 since it seemed a reasonable price/performance tradeoff (and the most I'm willing to spend on graphics), and this particular model since it was at the bottom of the noise chart in a Tweaktown review: Where the model...