I bought one of those air cleaner replacement filters to experiment with. I found out is that the Hamilton Beach True Air Filter 04711 fits over the intake vents on the front of the case and the case door can still be closed over it! See the picture where I place one of the 04711 filters over the lo...

I have been ordering components from NewEgg and Monarch this evening after work. I made 2 more major changes to my configuration. First, I switched from the Gigabyte mobo to the DFI Lan Party UT nf4 Ultra D mobo. The reason was purely based on features. I really like the DFI BIOS vs Gigabyte BIOS. T...

I changed a couple things. * I switched the power supply from SeaSonic S12-430 to CoolerMaster Real Power 450 because it was almost $40 cheaper and it has longer cables. * I dropped the Windows XP Pro X64 for plain vanilla Windows XP Pro. I have too many software and hardware dependencies to expect ...

Unless you're writing Windows-only software, you might want to consider Linux. Linux software and development tools are at least as powerful as Windows counterparts, and they aren't encumbered by silly licensing. Whether or not you switch to Linux, you can switch to GIMP -- a free Photoshop "replac...

jackylman, The MSI ATI Xpress200 motherboard is interesting, but it is micro-ATX form factor. It looks like it has fewer USB ports (4) and IDE (2) than the other mobos I'm looking at. Also, the ATI chipset less widely used than Nvidia's nforce chipset. I'd rather stick with nforce3 or nforce4 boards...

Ok, I now see that the mobos I was looking at were based on nforce4 which supports pci-express. I'm still not sure if my old pci AGP 8X video card would work with it, but I'm guessing not. I found that the older nforce3 based boards are more of what I am familiar with. For example, GIGABYTE GA-K8NS ...

I also priced these components at monarchcomputer.com: $160 Antec Performance I P180 Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $272 AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor $124 GIGABYTE GA-K8N Ultra-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra ATX AMD Motherboard $231 OCZ Dual-Channel 2 GB DDR ...

Following is price sheet of the above components from newegg.com except P180 which was purchase at Fry's Electonics. $160 Antec Performance I P180 Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $267 AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Processor $129 GIGABYTE GA-K8N Ultra-9 Socket 939 NVIDIA nFo...

Hi, I am starting to build my 2nd computer. (1st was a P4 2.0 Ghz/ Lian Li case in 2002). I really like the look and design of the P180 case, so I went ahead and bought that. Also, I wanted to try an Althon 64 instead of Pentium 4 this time around. But I am having trouble figuring out which Power Su...

I just bought a P180 for $159.99 + tax at Fry's Electronics in Sunnyvale.
I also saw that newegg.com had them for $150 + shipping (+tax for CA).

I would love to see more discussion and articles about air filtration of computer cases. My home computers always collect lots of dust in them becuase we have the windows open much of the time which lets in all kinds of dust and pollen, etc. Over a few years, the dust builds up on the motherboard an...