Excluding Apple, Dell seems to be just about the best for silence. I've seen quite a few screamers from HP, Compaq, e-machines, and Power Spec. I don't have a firm opinion on Sony, as I've seen a few that are nice and quiet and then I'll find a screamer sitting in someone's room.

You should never let your cat do that to your computer. Never mind the hair, think of the static electricity!

I had been running an 8500 fanless for about a year with no ill effects. During the summer months when I was experiencing CPU heat problems, I added a 5v L1A that pointed generally over the card to help with case air flow, but that's it. BTW, anyone near Boston want an old fanless 8500? I would like...

Not including about 40 panaflo's, there are about 30 fans floating about this room, varying from surprisingly silent 120mm Antec fans to bloody loud little whiners pulled off of northbridge chipsets to a long-running 60mm stealth to some nasty tip-driven drivel. It was a long road, but I'm happy to ...

I hear a lot of noise about the uses of thermal adhesive (thermal glue, thermal bonding, etc) and thermal tape, but very little information on places that actually carry them. Where, besides the internet, does one go to get a thermal adhesive for GPU (or other) heatsink mounting? Any experience on p...

I also have a (sapphire) 8500. Without any fan it runs too hot for comfort, though without any artifacts. I have a 5v panaflo L1A aimed at it, and am getting ready to replace the stock HS with one ripped form an old Voodoo 3 (beefy, but narrow enough to not take up another card slot). As it is, the ...

You can move a lot of air with 4 L1A's at 7v, and yet never hear it above background. 4L1A's at 5v will move enough air for most systems if carefully placed, and are basically inaudible. You need a fan to target your CPU, a fan to target your graphics card, a fan for your HDD, and a fan for your PSU...

Without driving into the territory of Libel, I was deeply disappointed in the volume of noise from tip-driven fans. It was true they lacked quite a bit of the air-turbulance noise of similar fans, but they also vibrated like a rave toy due to having the weight distributed along the edge, causing muc...

aristide1 wrote:When I can't see spending much more than $200 for a quieter pc, especially when my teenage neighbor with the $2000 wheels and the $2000 stereo in a $500 Civic drive buy and make all the windows rattle.

How about getting a $39 restraining order?

Life always gets in the way of modding. I'm sorry people, I bought my first car this week. Well, the first car I've officially owned in the state of Massachusetts. Long story short, It's been really busy and I haven't had time to do a writeup. Still, my previous assessment stands: if you want the ul...

I had been thinking of trying to make a convection tunnel from two HDDs, up over a 750 mhz C3, and up through a sideways-imposed 150W PSU. Am I being extremely Naieve in assuming the airflow from such a setup will be enough to cool the PSU to the necessary degree, or should I just give up and throw ...

My 380W Antec Sonata PSU (It's up now! Yay!) is thermally controlling an L1A without ever spinning above 5v equivalent. But, I am running a cool system and it's 5 degrees outside. Whether or not your powersupply will work with a low-flo fan is entirely dependent upon the temperature of the air it ta...

I have been shocked 4 times in my life from an outlet. Twice due to faulty lawn equipment, once to faulty lighting, and once last weekend because like a dolt I forgot to unplug a PSU before working on it. It doesn't hurt so much as make your arm sore, but otherwise outlets are basically safe for foo...

What about "I buy all of my stuff through the hot deals section?"

Hi everyone! The verdict is in, and the elastomer mounts had a *slight* edge (about 1db) over the earplug-based mounts. My theory: the earplug mounts simply held the fan too far away from the case, and the edge effect started to be an issue. Also of note is the fact that neither of the types of moun...

Tom's hardware ran a review of PSU's, and in the course determined the maximum draw. I believe 4 out of the 20 burned out, several more simply made the system unstable, and several shut down elegantly. So it depends :), but the worst you are going to do realistically is damage the PSU... It is also ...

Just an update...

The grommets from Silicon Acoustics haven't arrived yet, so no review today. That is all.

It's possible, in theory, if you had a high-powered cooling fan to suck air away from the CPU cooler fast enough to get it below ambient air temperature. It's not useful in practice, however, because you would need a rather noisy fan and a rather obstructionless case. On the other hand, moving fluid...

I responded $100 dollars because that is about as much as it would cost to get to that silence level on a budget, less if you are building your own system. 4 L1A's - 20 dollars 1 Molex Y adapter - 4 dollars 1 80mm CPU cooler - 10 dollars 1 Verax 300w PSU W fanspeed control - 30 dollars 1 sheet of sh...

Hmm... That suspiciously resembles those 80mm PVC elbow joints sold at hardware stores for pipes...

If you're in the other window ordering mounts from SA, I guess there's no sense in me supplying you ;) .. but let me know if you still need them! Also, I wasn't able to see what model # + material the mounts at SA are. I'm assuming they are the F-344 ... although they may be the F-345 which has a s...

I'd be happy to send them to anybody that would have the means to adaquately test them. A lot has been said on the subjet.. but no formal reviews that I know of. Brice Hi. I have a dB reader that drops to 30, but in an apartment that is bloody loud (50 dB base cpu room, 40 dB kitchen). It's not as ...

Rusty actually accidently picked up a few 24vers. His tribulations can be found here In short, they don't behave as well at 12v as the 12v fans do at 5v. I also tried undervolting them: At 5v they don't start, at 7v they run, but with a very noticable "click" from the IC, and at 12v they produce a c...

Get a 5, 7, 9, or 12 volt wall wart (7 or 9v recommended for a L1a panaflo... you are using panaflos, right?). A wall wart is thoses bumpy external DC power thingies most electronics use. Unplug it, strip the wires, and attach to the bare leads of the fan (make sure the fan spins in the right direct...

Yes, the thermal grease fills in imperfections in the surface of the materials. You should only need to use a very little bit, as surface imperfections are slight. Squirt on a drop of grease, and scrape it across the chip with an old credit card like a squeegee. And yes, the brand matters. Arctic Si...

Hmm... Don't know of any retailers in North Carolina that might carry them. Your best bet is online or at large computer swap meets. But really, save your time, ship Priority.

Large heatsinks don't really have a place at hardware stores, as they have no real use besides industry. You're best off diving at a local dump (if you have a weekend and would find such a thing to be "fun"), or scouring clearance electronics sites for parts stripped from industrial applications. th...

Don't bother with the rounded cables. If you feel compelled to have them, zip-tie the things into a circle, or double-sided tape them down to the side of your case. They're more money than they are worth, if you are on a budget. Save a few bucks for spare parts on a hard drive case... that WD is goi...

This machine uses a non-bootable CDRW drive as the primary optical drive. The backup CD drive, which can't read CDR disks, is no longer bootable either. If you are stuck in the same situation, you can go to Microsoft's website and download the six floppies required to boot a recovery OS that can run...

It sounds like the koolance is using the fan speed monitoring line to regulate speeds. If you plug in another fan, that monitoring line should be getting some sort of feedback. However, if your panaflo has no designation in the serial number after the 12L1A part, you will have no feedback at all. Th...