There is a number of ways, at least for linux, I don;t know anything about windows. I had a soyo motherboard that would do it from the bios. There is a number of discussions about doing this in linux, search for the hdparm use. You can just turn it off by hand anytime you want using this. I also saw...

I don't know if there is a typo on their site, but on the consumer notes, it states that a better power supply can change the eff. in the ac-dc from 60-70% up to over 80%, and states some kWh numbers per year after that. But then it says this is a savings of $25-$30 over the lifetime of the computer...

WD40 is made to run in engines under high temps and pressures, it would probably gum up your fan. You might try the teflon stuff, you find at various places. Bike shops have it for bike chains. But not sure that would help that much, and for the same cost almost you could get a new fan. If you think...

This isn't much of a topic for discussion, but I thought it was a little funny, so here you go... My computer was down to pretty darn quiet, and nice and stable for many months, and I leave it on -all- the time. So I get a little complacent, and last week it crashed out on me. And then again two day...

Are you still using the stock AMD heat sick for a t-bird? Those are really loud and not good. I replaced it with a ThermalRight 800A and a Panaflo, which worked very well, and I have now re-used this for an athlon xp 2500, and it still works well. I added a zalman fanmate, and turned down the fan sp...

I bought one of these 200GB drives a few weeks ago at Fry's. The deal you have there doesn't sound so good, considering Fry's has it on ethe shelf for $189. A few weeks ago it was $149 on sale, and had $80 in rebates, so I got it for $70 (once I get the $80 back). I think it still has the $40 rebate...

Just to add my 2 cents, here is a vote for badblocks on linux. This way you can get a report on which part of the drive might have problems before selling it also. I was going to try to sell a collection of 8MB smartmedia cards I have, and used this on each card to blank them, and then formated each...

Oy, no, and can't any more, either sold the old stuff, or gave it away. Starting out on this, before I found this site, I had bought two Vantec Stealth fans, they were cheap enough, and they said "stealth" on them. I used one, and found it not very stealthy, and the other one never made it out of th...

Well, the deal at Fry's got better, so I just went and did it. The 200GB Seagate went on a 1 day sale from $200 to $150, and it had $80 in rebates, making it a $70 deal on the 200GB drive. So I just bought it. The idle noise is great, since it is just not there, the drive is silent on idle, less noi...

Well, to add my 2 cents, I highly recommend the Enermax noisetaker line. I had Seasonic Tornado 400W, which was great as a power supply, but the fan would either pulse full on to off every 5 mins, or stay on pretty high and noisy. But now I have a Enermax 420W supply, and its great, quiet, cool, ple...

I was at Fry's today, and they have a huge pile of Seagate 120GB ATA/100 drives with 8MB cache. They are selling them for $140, but they come with a $60 rebate, making it an $80 120GB drive, which is a pretty good deal. (of course it will be a long time before you see that $60.) How do these compare...

Oh, ah, the 120mm case fan right next to the 120mm psu fan meant the psu was never getting enough air really. Hmm... still don't know about this, wouldn't the psu fan compensate by just spinning faster, why the pulse to full speed, and then down to quiet and back? I don't like the idea of having the...

I don't if this warrants a new topic, but I hadn't seen this discussed previously about the Seasonic Tornado power supplies. And there has been a lot of discussion. But I bought one of these awhile ago, and really didn't have much problems with it, it was about the same amount of noise as a panaflo ...

Just to add my 2cents on the questions, I just built a computer with the 3700BQE case last night, and it is a nice case. I used a soyo KT400 dragon MB, which is kinda large, and it just dropped in easily into the case. I have had other cases where you needed to kinda tilt and wedge the mother board ...

gimp can do a screen capture, either whole screen or one window. Then you can edit this capture and save as what ever image format you want. I believe other smaller graphics programs can do screen captures, like KSnapshot. But I usually use gimp, since I use gimp for all graphics editting (everyone ...

Other people probably have more opinions, but the silencer on average seems to be quieter than the tornado, esp. in the 400W version. I built a computer with the 400W tornado, and it is very quiet, when it is quiet, and not when it is not. Most of the time it is silent, and the 12v panaflo on the cp...

Check your mother board bios, it might be able to spin down hard drives which are in-active after a certain amount of time. Since it is scsi you might have to check the scsi card bios, if it is a card. That works on my machine for the data drive. But the system drive has the swap partition, and this...

Well, in my library recently I saw the cover for the latest MacWorld, and there was a comparison between new dual G5's and other computers. I was interested in the ability of the new G5 chip and to see how it compares to other new chips. You should look it up, in the end it looked like the hottest c...

Just to add a little more data to this discussion. I dug out the power supply I had problems with, on a 1.9Ghz cpu and a Geforce 4 MX card, and two hard drives. The system was just unstable with long time use, and this was a 300W power supply. Now looking at the details it states it has a limit of 1...

As far as I knew the fan speed was a function of the psu heat sink temp. Where the temp of the psu would increase under load, and the fan speed would increase also. Also if the cpu heats up, this increases the case temp, and the psu temp, and the fan speeds up also.

Well, in both my computers now I have only one case fan blowing out the rear, which is a 80mm Panaflo L1, and powered at 5V. In my smaller 1GHz machine I have a Fortron 300W psu, and in the 1.9GHz machine I have a Seasonic Tornado 400W, both have a downward facing 120mm temp controlled fan. In both ...

Well, to add my two bits here. I have moved both my computers over to psu's with a 120mm fan facing down. This was quite helpful in cooling the case, by adding volume to evacuate the hot air. I was then able to put the case fan on 5v so it is silent now, and the psu fan is on a temp. control, so it ...

I feel like being a little glib here, but yes that is what I trying to say. It is a 80mm L1 Panaflo at 12v, not the M or H Panaflo. But yes the cpu fan is at 12v, so it is not really silent, although fairly quiet. The Super Torado might be silent, but I can't tell because of the 12v fan. It is silen...

Thats a comparison between a Seasonic 400w Super Tornado, and a 12v Panaflo on a SLK800A ThermalRight heat sink. So there is a little extra "wooshing" noise from that air going through the heat sink. Oh, also under normal load, I haven't tested much with high load and the case open.

You might be right about the 18A on the 12v, but I would make sure you know that is the case. I have heard that the 9800 card pulls quite a bit of power, combined with a 2.8GHz cpu, I would worry with a 300W supply. I had problems on a system with a 2GHz cpu, and a Geforce 4 MX at 4x agp, which draw...

I have one, and I don't know if would be that difference from the view of looks or build quality compared to a sonata. The looks are about the same, or I would say the sonata looks better. I would say the build quality would be the same. I thing the 1000 series case would be better for cooling, but ...

Well, I decided to waste $7 bucks and give the Artic Silver 5 termal paste a try. I cleaned off all of the "Alumina" paste I had on the heat sink and cpu, and let the alcohol dry off. I applied a thin layer of the new Artic Silver 5 paste, scraping off the extra with a credit card. Put the heat sink...

Well, the rest of stuff is ok, and not pushing any limits. There is a Geforce 2 MX with no fan, a 1900+ athlon XP, and kt400 base mother board. I am going talk him into getting a bunch of panaflo fans, so it mostly be ready to get quiet. But the problem is the hard drive, it is a 40GB WD drive which...

I don't know if that is the best way to put this question, but... I have a friend who can have a small collection of hand-me-down components, and with a case and power supply can put together a reasonable computer. He wanted my suggestions since I have been poking around looking for quiet stable stu...

Well, I thought I knew, but maybe I don't. But I look the thermal diodes in my system, and there seem to be three that show up in the sensor program: SYS temp, CPU temp and SBr temp. The SYS has increased by the 6 deg. You put a northbridge heat sink on a GF2 video card? Is there room for that? Or y...