One thing to consider...is that the ideal place for the power supply fan might actually be in the "original" location. Assuming the bulk of the air-flow is coming from the lower front of the case, having the power supply fan "behind" the CPU might put the air flow path more directly over the CPU hea...

I'm thinking of backing away.....slowly.....

It's hard for me to tell at the moment, because my Radeon 9800 stock fan drowns it out. I'll report back once I receive the VGA silencer and get it installed.

Nah, choosing a case is easy , choosing a PSU is a bitch! :) Lol...if only I didn't think the BQE was butt ugly...and get rid of the drive door. 8) Having said that, I am seriously considering (as recommended by you) some of the OEM versions of the case upon which the BQE is built. Oh...and I alrea...

In my review of the P160 I noted that I can definitely hear more of the internal case noise from the P160 then I can when the exact same hardware is setup in my 3700BQE. That includes the Barracuda IV. Seeks, while still quiet are much more obvious from the P160 then the BQE. Thanks, Ralf. I did re...

I'm not sure what specific Radeon model you were trying to mount the VGA cooler on, but my understanding is that on some of the Radeon boards, there's a shim around the GPU that's just a bit too high to allow proper contact between the cooler and the chip. (The cooler rests on the shim, leaving a ga...

Somebody needs to start up a thread about how great their SS400 is or run a poll of aye or nay, just to balance the negatives. Though, I dunno how many bad PSUs are typical of a batch of PSUs. It does seem like there are a lot of bad Seasonics... I currently have a SS Tornado 400 in my P3 1.4 rig. ...

Subjectively, whereas I could hear fan noise easily from 6 feet or more before, I now have to strain to hear any fan noise from 4 feet. This PC will be in a quiet bedroom, so the low noise is especially important. Thanks for the info. In your purely subjective opinion, is the P160 with acoustic tre...

If you want real performance don't be suckered into getting a 2.4c or 2.6c and ocing it. I bought a retail 3.0c and have it had it stable at 3.5 ghz for two weeks. I'm definitely going the 3.0 route with probably PC 3500 low latency memory. Any overclocking I get while keeping reasonably silent wil...

My Powerleap PL-iP3/T came with a small copper heatsink that looks exactly like that Dynatron. The default 60mm fan was too loud, so I got a 60->80mm fan adapter and added a Panaflo L on a fanmate Thanks for the tip! Unfortunately, I don't think have the clearance for something like that. (My RAM g...

52°C under load? For how long? Heh...only a minute because it still seemed to be going up....I would have waited but it was about 2 AM and I needed to get to bed! :) That's a perfectly fine temp to run at, although it seems like you could be happy right now with the fans running at 5V and keep your...

As it turns out, my MSI BX-Master in one of my PCs has software controllable fans. Found Speed Fan , and I'm able to use it to control my CPU fan. (Of course, in the 4 years or so since I've owned this motherboard, I don't think I ever installed MSI's own utility from the installation CD. :oops: ) S...

A while ago, I upgraded two 440BX (Slot-1) machines in my house with slockets+PIII/Celerons @ 1.4 GHz. Not considering noise at all (/kick self), I chose this hsf to cool them both. Dynatron DC1206 Yes, those suckers are pretty loud. (Definitely the loudest elements in both cases.) I need the low pr...

I don't know if the board allows you to manually undervolt, and by how much. Probably worth looking into though. Just a quick follow-up...I found another review at HardOCP , and at least in the BIOS, it doesn't appear that CPU undervolting is possible. Snapshot of lower end of voltage range. It's p...

Here's a new one from ABIT (and a reviews.) Abit AI7 Hexus Review Supports Raid 0/1 (2 SATA drives) via Intel ICH5R southbridge, and is extremely tweakable. However, I do not specifically know about undervolting support. The review above mentions this: Almost every imaginable voltage rail is covered...

here 's SPCR review of them. They are supposedly quiet for performance drives, but I've never heard them. Heh, it depends a good bit on the individual as to whether you'd notice the high pitched wine. Actually, the Hitachi drives reviewed here back in May are not the 7K250's that I'm talking about....

You may want to consider the Asus P4P800-D instead. Passive NB cooling but ?? Prescot support. Finally got around to actually looking at that MoBo, and it too claims Prescott support, and is otherwise a great feature match for my needs. Given the passive cooling on the northbridge, I may indeed mak...

I dunno how noisy the rest of the computer will be, but would a Hitachi be noticeable in a P4 3.0 setup? They aren't as quiet as the Spinpoints, but offer superior performance, right? The Hitachi 7K250s seem to be the best performing 7200 RPM drives around. Here's a review from Storagereview. I can...

1) plastic face - I don't get why I'd want an aluminum case with a plastic front. Silver painted plastic front, scratches easily, poor quality, squeaks horribly when pressed Damn... Now I'm really going to have to see one of these in person before considering buying one.... Any new thoughts on this...

A very stange arrangement of the CPU vs CPU-sockel on that board. I can't help to wonder why... Perhaps just to look different? Not sure myself... speculation is that the CPU orientation (traces to the CPU in this orientation) help with power stability...specifically in anticipation of Prescott pow...

-Just a little preview of my P160 review: the front vent slots have a direct path into the case with nothing but a perforated metal grill and a mesh air filter inbetween. This allows a lot of interior case noise (read: fans) to escape out the front of the case... Yeah, the design looks great for ai...

Thanks everyone for your comments so far. Exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking for. Some general follow-ups to points made: Hard Drives. Doh! How did I miss the SpinPoints? Looks like I will definitely be going with at least one SpinPoint (160 GB SATA, likely) for my data drive. I may also go with ...

Greetings all, Within the next month or two, I'll be buying all the components for my next PC. My first priority is actually performance (non overclocked though) and stability, followed closely by silence. I've been lurking here for a little while (great resource, btw...forums and site content), and...