Search found 31 matches

by ao
Wed Feb 23, 2005 12:24 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Apple drops tiny, cheap Mac bomb
Replies: 117
Views: 58119

hey Hifriday, I just wanted to see if you've replaced the HD in the mini yet, and if it did the trick for you. Also -- thanks for pointing out the NAS devices. I haven't found the Buffalo enclosure you're talking about (the one without the HD), but I did find the linksys NSLU2 (I think that's the ri...
by ao
Thu Feb 17, 2005 9:13 am
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Apple drops tiny, cheap Mac bomb
Replies: 117
Views: 58119

* AO, is yours also the 40G, 5400? Seagate HDD (reads ST940110A under Profiler)? Have you noticed any similar clicking? I am wondering if this is a factory setting in the harddisk itself that can be changed with some Seagate utility or if it is fixed in the firmware? Yes -- this is the same drive I...
by ao
Wed Feb 16, 2005 12:44 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Apple drops tiny, cheap Mac bomb
Replies: 117
Views: 58119

I do have a 2.5" enclosure with a 40 gb fujitsu in it, but they don't make 2.5" drives that are large enough for the entire music collection. I have a *lot* of cds. Making them easily accessible and mixable in a way that's silent enough to not detract from the enjoyment of sitting and listening to m...
by ao
Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:48 am
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Apple drops tiny, cheap Mac bomb
Replies: 117
Views: 58119

AO did you get around to switching the HDD? Any other Mini users have similar problems with the noise levels? Noise level aside, the Mini is definitely a cool machine, and it's so small! I did crack open my mini and put in a 1 gig patriot stick of pc3200 (150 bucks at newegg and works great), but I...
by ao
Fri Feb 04, 2005 11:33 am
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: What is a good replacement for Seagate Momentus 4200.2?
Replies: 1
Views: 1903

Re: What is a good replacement for Seagate Momentus 4200.2?

Do you know how much more noise do the Toshiba drives with two platters (for example MK8025GAS) make? I mean I would like to have more capacity than 40GB but not if it becomes too noisy. I can't speak to how much louder the toshiba drives get once you add another platter, but I can speak to the fuj...
by ao
Sun Jan 30, 2005 5:05 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Apple drops tiny, cheap Mac bomb
Replies: 117
Views: 58119

Hey -- I just wanted to follow up on this. I used carbon copy cloner to clone the disk onto an external enclosure, and then booted off of it. a) that's a heck of a nice trick, and unbelievably simple to do. I've done it by hand on linux, but it certainly wasn't that simple. I've never heard of the e...
by ao
Thu Jan 27, 2005 11:08 am
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Apple drops tiny, cheap Mac bomb
Replies: 117
Views: 58119

There is a tick "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible" in System Preferences/Energy Saver From the Terminal, you can access power management settings using the pmset command, spindown is the option for suspending the disk. man pmset will tell you everything you need. /sdc Hey -- thanks, this is...
by ao
Wed Jan 26, 2005 10:51 am
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Apple drops tiny, cheap Mac bomb
Replies: 117
Views: 58119

does the mini come with the OS and applications disks that would allow you to reinstall the system if you replaced the drive? unless apple is drastically departing from all their other models, you get both a restore cd (to set the unit back to factory shipping software config) and an OS cd with the...
by ao
Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:29 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Apple drops tiny, cheap Mac bomb
Replies: 117
Views: 58119

I'd have to disagree with a review that says that it's basically silent at times. I haven't had a ton of time to play with mine (yet), but even when idle it's definitely noticeable in a quiet room. It's very,very quiet, definitely much quieter in overall noise level than my most silent homebuilt wit...
by ao
Sun Dec 12, 2004 11:18 am
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: I'm thinking of getting a DiamondMax Plus10 300GB - madness?
Replies: 44
Views: 23468

I wouldn't say that 250 USD is awfully steep for a new HD model with 400 GB. I get your point about trusting SPCR people more, but what difference does it make if BFG9000, Bish or micnn @ SR joins SPCR, is that suddently a guarantee for their knowledge about low noise? Of course not. Your point is ...
by ao
Sat Dec 11, 2004 9:33 pm
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: I'm thinking of getting a DiamondMax Plus10 300GB - madness?
Replies: 44
Views: 23468

From the few comments I've seen about the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 IDE it surely looks good when it comes to low noise. Check the forum at Storagereview.com Price is still awfully steep, though, and I trust comments about quiet drives from people in this forum a lot more than I trust them in that o...
by ao
Sat Dec 11, 2004 9:07 pm
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: I'm thinking of getting a DiamondMax Plus10 300GB - madness?
Replies: 44
Views: 23468

Sort of on topic... I've got a pair of 6B200M0 coming in tomorrow. I'll report on my experiences with them when I get a chance. Oh, right, for those that are not Maxtor model number inclined, they're 200GB SATA DiamondMax 10 drives. -Ed Hi Ed and all, I've been perusing the SPCR forums the past few...
by ao
Mon Nov 15, 2004 8:16 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: NewEgg reviews....believable?
Replies: 15
Views: 6622

The one thing that most of the negative reviews I've seen have had in common on newegg is that they still assigned the product 4-5 stars. Seems that you can slip it under their radar if the stars are high, even if the text is raw.
by ao
Mon Nov 15, 2004 9:34 am
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: quieting noisy laptop fan!
Replies: 0
Views: 1103

quieting noisy laptop fan!

Hey everyone, Thanks to a lot of the advice on this site, and the posts in these forums, I've quieted down all of my desktop machines, and pretty much all of the ones I'm exposed to all day. I think I've finally met my match, however, and need some help quieting my laptop. I don't need a laptop to d...
by ao
Sat Oct 30, 2004 9:00 pm
Forum: Power Supplies
Topic: 3 pin fan header plug into 4 pin molex?
Replies: 5
Views: 2978

Not sure if i can help, but I basically converted the 3-pin into a 2-pin header by snipping off the old 2-pin head and swaping the red and black wires with the 3 -pin header... makes sense? Ehhh, I think I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure it's what I want to do. You're saying I should snip ...
by ao
Sat Oct 30, 2004 4:17 pm
Forum: Power Supplies
Topic: 3 pin fan header plug into 4 pin molex?
Replies: 5
Views: 2978

Just use an extention cable http://www.svc.com/123to3ex.html for $0.99 (CompUSA has the same thing for $3, but no shipping if you have one close. Almost all computer stores that have parts have these.) Sweet, that's totally what I'm looking for. All of the computer stores are far enough away that g...
by ao
Sat Oct 30, 2004 2:39 pm
Forum: Power Supplies
Topic: 3 pin fan header plug into 4 pin molex?
Replies: 5
Views: 2978

3 pin fan header plug into 4 pin molex?

Hey all, The short story: I need a 3 pin header to plug my modded PSU fan into, and there's not one in reach. I'm looking for advice to get power to the fan. The background: Long ago I modded my girlfriends enlight PSU and stuck an L1A fan in there. I didn't do anything fancy -- the power cable to r...
by ao
Wed May 26, 2004 12:12 pm
Forum: Power Supplies
Topic: Anyone have experience w/ a PC Power & Cooling Silencer
Replies: 13
Views: 5638

I've used both the 400 watt silencer and a 300 watt, and have to concur. Both of them are excellent power supplies, but I felt like both of them fell far, far short of their claims of being quiet. I was pretty disappointed when the enlight power supply in my friend's case was almost inaudible, but m...
by ao
Sat May 22, 2004 12:51 pm
Forum: Watercooling
Topic: Who has a fanless watercooled computer ?
Replies: 9
Views: 7078

I ran for quite a while with a fanless watercooling setup in one of my work machines. It was stunningly quiet, and still kept my 1.4 ghz athlon cool enough to do hardcore numeric simulations on stably. I just kept the radiator outside of the case, and enough air convected through it that temps staye...
by ao
Fri May 21, 2004 8:50 am
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Monitor buzzing and remedies
Replies: 7
Views: 4543

I've seen similar from my SGI 1600SW TFT, which I traced down to the PWM on the backlight. Turning the backlight up to 100% makes the whining go away. That said this monitor doesn't have a built-in transformer, which would be my choice for Most Likely To Whine as a component in a monitor. nutball, ...
by ao
Mon May 17, 2004 9:01 am
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: RAID 1 Read "Striping"?
Replies: 14
Views: 5234

I'm also curious about this...I always understood that the RAID chips on motherboards work similarly to the audio and network chips on the motherboard...they implement the RAID or sound or LAN port as a separate hardware device, but rely on the CPU to do the actual processing...to get true hardware...
by ao
Sun May 16, 2004 8:31 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Monitor buzzing and remedies
Replies: 7
Views: 4543

LCD might be an option. But they are not perfectly quiet either. In the process of investigating which and why they make noise. Hear hear. My Samsung SyncMaster 171T LCD makes a really obnoxious whine, only sometimes, and I have no idea why. When it's happening, it's the loudest noise coming from m...
by ao
Sun May 16, 2004 4:56 pm
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: Performance loss of Seagate ATA IV?
Replies: 11
Views: 4206

Re: Performance loss of Seagate ATA IV?

I recently got fed up with the whining of my WD 1200JB and when looking for alternatives I came upon this site :D I'm aware that the speed of the ATA IV never was it's strong point, but how will it's reduced speed (compared to my WD 1200JB) be noticable? It's probably not a big deal, but as much of...
by ao
Sun May 16, 2004 4:49 pm
Forum: Silent Storage
Topic: RAID 1 Read "Striping"?
Replies: 14
Views: 5234

What motherboard are you using? Quite a few upper range motherboards can do RAID1+0 in hardware, but I'm not aware of anything (besides monster server stuff) that has RAID5 controller integrated. You can do it in software (assuming your OS supports it), but it's a beastly drain on CPU. This is some...
by ao
Tue Apr 20, 2004 4:28 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: Mobile Barton 2500 - owners and wannabe owners...
Replies: 155
Views: 149269

Re: MoBarton Recommendations?

1) A good mobo with onboard USB2.0 and 1394 that takes PC133 SDRAM. On-board Audio and/or video not necessary. I'll probably be underclocking/undervolting it to get it as cool and quiet as possible. I'd be really surprised if this combo, at least the onboard usb 2.0 part of it, exists. Seems that u...
by ao
Sun Apr 11, 2004 3:25 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: power comparison of slot one dual p3 vs tbred a xp1800+
Replies: 12
Views: 4212

by all means -- measure the wattage w/ the overclock. Less than 60 watts for a full 2.4 ghz machine (even if it is a celeron) is great. Seems about on par with what a post above in this thread showed for a shuttle zen system with a 2.4 ghz northwood at idle. Of course, that same post had an overvolt...
by ao
Sat Apr 10, 2004 6:15 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: power comparison of slot one dual p3 vs tbred a xp1800+
Replies: 12
Views: 4212

Yikes -- 50 watts is a lot. I saw someone post the other day on another forum that it costs on the order of $60 a year to fold. I can't imagine 50 watts would cost $60/yr even if it was on continuously, but it's a lot of juice nonetheless. 66 watts is more like what I'd be comfortable running contin...
by ao
Sat Apr 10, 2004 5:43 pm
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: power comparison of slot one dual p3 vs tbred a xp1800+
Replies: 12
Views: 4212

The 550's are from a compaq server that apparently was in a big fire. The whole front faceplate of the machine got melted, but the chips are (allegedly) fine! He's fine with me checking them out and returning them if they're not. They've just got the huge compaq aluminum passive heatsinks on them. T...
by ao
Fri Apr 09, 2004 9:46 am
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: power comparison of slot one dual p3 vs tbred a xp1800+
Replies: 12
Views: 4212

If you'd like, I can try and measure this with my dual PIII/550 when I have a free moment at home. that'd be fantastic! Especially because someone in a newsgroup just offered an exchange of a pair of 550 pIII's with passive heatsinks for me helping them with linux. I take it you have a 'kill-a-watt...
by ao
Fri Apr 09, 2004 8:34 am
Forum: The Silent Front
Topic: power comparison of slot one dual p3 vs tbred a xp1800+
Replies: 12
Views: 4212

As you have probably seen from the huge answer you allready got that your xp1800+ system probably draws a lot less than 250 watts. I guess that refered to how big PSU is suitable for that kind of computer or they might have calculated in the power draw from the monitor and other periferals. So to g...