Nobody is suggesting using 5M+ cables. Those that can use this method presumably have a bathroom and a hallway in their house. Sure, but the hallway is for walking through, not for tripping over a computer. A bathroom? Besides being far away (next to the bedrooms), they aren't good for putting comp...

So does anybody here live in a one room house? If not, then you all have another room to put the PC in. I live in a multi-room house, but each room with a door is either a bedroom or a bathroom. Bedrooms are not where you'd want to concentrate noise, and bathrooms are inherently unsuitable environm...

There's also the issue of not being able to drill holes just anywhere, which can be a problem even if you're not renting. And there's also the matter of being able to move your computers around easily. And there's a question of convenience when using a DVD drive or burner. Sure, you could use USB op...

I'm ambivalent about my two Fortron 120mm PSUs (one 300w and one 350w). They're certainly quiet enough for me--even though they act as sole air mover at the hot tail end of negative pressure case designs. However, they aren't silent by any stretch of the imagination. I haven't seen any quieter PSUs ...

I don't know enough to answer most of your questions, but I do know that my Fortron 120mm fan PSUs DO have small holes in the "front" side. No doubt this recirculates some air into the case, but I'm sure those holes are there specifically to help cool nearby components. Thus, I'd recommend not compl...

Oh--I almost forgot, this keyboard must surely be even WORSE than previous keyboards. How does it detect when a key is pressed? It obviously can't rely on pressure, so it must be using some sort of scanning to detect when a finger is physically located on the surface where a key is. In other words, ...

Noiseless? Yes. Usable? No. You can't feel where the keys are and you don't get any tactile feedback that you've depressed a key. This has been the problem with flat keyboards ever since the ZX-80, Atari 400, and Oddessey II videogame system.

My policy is one drive per computer, partitioned into separate OS and data partitions (and swap, if applicable). Before that, I used separate drives for performance reasons. Using a single drive with multiple partitions WILL adversely affect performance to some degree. Operations involving large amo...

I guess I could see it working for a 3.5" drive, but they're heavy so you'd at least have to clamp the IDE cable to something to hold up the weight. At that point, the IDE cable would be relatively taught, so it would transmit vibrations. In contrast, a 2.5" drive is so lightweight that you don't ha...

I finally got around to putting a notebook drive in my workstation. The drive is so featherlight, that the stiffness and weight of the IDE cable represented far more bulk than the drive itself. Thus, the only "suspension" I used was to fold the IDE cable around to loosely hang the drive vertically i...

I didn't clean up my desktop--I did the opposite. I tend to not run much at once, so I had to "spice things up" with a horde of anime mascots and a couple extra windows compared to what I normally use.

The Zalman VGA heatpipe coolers will work just fine with the case laid down sideways--IF the motherboard is on the bottom (i.e. "right-side-up" instead of "upside-down"). This way, the VGA card is upright with the slot at the bottom. The geometry of Zalman's heatpipe is designed to be used that way,...

Yeah, there was once a time when you had to be a rebel or an independent spirit to be using Linux (on the desktop). Now, a lot of people use it just to save money. It's not just "the Redmond tax", but the cost of the applications. I didn't want to pay for Photoshop, so I chose the GIMP instead. I di...

Better late than never, I suppose:

http://www.geocities.com/mechdan/snaps.html

My desktop normally has only ONE cute anime mascot window sitter, but here I decided to put a bunch onscreen at once.

I don't know the time frame, but I think pretty much every socket 478 motherboard with a CPU/heatsink installed has a deformed PCB. When I installed my Scythe Heatlane Zen, I let the motherboard "rest" heatsink-less for a day before installing it, just to let it flatten back out. I'm sure it's curve...

Doesn't he test with the motherboard lying flat as in a horizontal case layout?

I recall seeing that hard drive suspension discussed in the Silent Storage forum. The general consensus seemed to be that rubber bands are not a suitable material for this sort of hard drive suspension due to the risk of failure. Typical rubber bands will get hard and/or sticky and/or BRITTLE when s...

BTW, the ZM80A is $29 at NewEgg--the same price as when I got it ($24.99 plus $4 shipping).

Well, I've since seen a picture on the internet showing the Zalman VGA cooler's heat pipe cut open--it does have a wick--so maybe it would work in other orientations. Even if not, you can turn a tower case on its side to get the same orientation as a horizontal layout case.

Cool tips! I have spare AT power supplies lying around, though, which are even more convenient for testing fans and stuff. Just click the switch for power!

The airflow coming out of the Fortron doesn't feel like much since it's spread over such a large area, but when it's bottlenecked into the smaller cross section of a duct it's easy to feel. It's enough airflow to keep my CPU heatsinks cool to the touch, which means that IF there were a way to adjust...

So, Antec KS280? A quick Google didn't immediately reveal interior shots, but I can guess its probable layout from how thin it is. Is the FSP 300 you refer to a Fortron? If so, I have the same model and it moves PLENTY of air. My Fortron 350 moves even less at minimum temperature, and it's still ple...

To boost smooth DivX video playback, there are a few critical things. First and foremost--software. If you're running Windows, first get rid of all codecs and codec packs, then install the latest version of ffdshow. Besides being much faster, it actually works. Play videos with either Windows Media ...

A straight duct to the CPU can work great if the CPU heatsink has no fan. My main workstation has a straight intake duct sucking air straight at the CPU heatsink. This required me to use a negative pressure case strategy, of course. Regardless, I have a simple idea for an internal duct. On the insid...

Sorry, I was refering to Goober's attitude that this system didn't deserve any money being put into it because it was "such an old system".

As far as image quality goes, a properly calibrated CRT is still the best--for now. In particular, alternate display types can't match a CRT's dynamic range. Only CRTs are capable of really black blacks and accurately reproducing dark details at the same time as displaying bright whites. However, CR...

Like I said, AT. Yippee, maybe I can silence that old Packerd Bell 386SX...

I have to comment on your attitude toward a Celeron 900--one way to look at it is that it's an old system. Another way to look at it is that it's a low heat system with more than enough power to be extremely useful. In particular, even a Celeron 333 is powerful enough for smooth DVD and DivX video p...

Am I missing something? One glance at that motherboard tells me it's obviously proprietary. It's not even vaguely simlar to any motherboard standard, except maybe AT.

One possibility is to look at the thread: Passive cooling a PII/PIII with a Zalman ZM80A VGA cooler Although this may be bigger and more expensive than you want. Another possibility is to simply remove the fan on the heat sink you have now and fashion an intake duct to feed all/most incoming air pas...