Some more pictures, including a closeup of the blower fan with model numbers and the power connectors. Oooogly.

I also simply moved the LEDs on my Sunbeam. Pulled them back, taped up a piece of cardboard in front of them, calmed the blue roar down to a blue haze. I don't know how well it would handle just snipping the things though.

I'm seeing a trunk mounted genome mapping cluster for the chemical biologist on the go... in the Gobi. But if it is a car mounted solution, and quiet isn't a goal, SPCR isn't really the place for it. There are a ton of sites out there that have already covered car installations, though I doubt they ...

So this is a mobile project, intended to run for weeks at a time?

If you want to ensure proper cooling for a machine and you're looking at 50C ambient, you need to seriously consider reducing ambient (air conditioning). A computer-specific vapor phase cooling unit (Vapochill or similar) is not going to work very well in high ambient temps, and a peltier run in an ...

I have abandoned four posts due to the "if you can't say something nice" principle, but I do feel the need to say this. I used to run machines 24x7 in my house in Arizona, without A/C, where internal ambient temps for the house ran up into the 85-90F range. I had lousy stock heatsinks on hot Athlon ...

The Dell 5150 that my dad purchased for his business is surprisingly quiet, everything spins up at startup to a horrible din for a moment and then settles back down again. At full load, the cpu fan starts cranking up and making itself known, a few more minutes and the power supply ramps up to what I...

After a recent "upgrade" (mumble grumble ECS motherboard mumble SATA support), I had to purchase an IDE drive to replace my delightful Samsung SATA hard drive. I decided on a Seagate 7200.10 200G. After a short time I realized that my new machine was quite a bit noisier than my old one, so I started...

Also, USB repeaters versus putting in some longer phone lines? Seems a little ridiculous to me.

Try turning off CnQ and just using something like RightMark to reduce the voltage, and see if that's what is causing it, or the dynamic multiplier.

You could actually do that now, with a piece of allthread running down to the bottom of the case. I don't have any expansion cards in my machine that are anywhere near as long/large as my video card, so I doubt it would foul on anything. Maybe a pair of nuts holding something to clamp on the card, a...

Built a system in one of those last weekend, just FYI, not quiet. It didn't have a bad sound character though, just a lot of whooosh of moving air.

As a computer support person, I plug in a monitor to a machine about 250 times a week. A properly designed connector (like DVI or even the venerable and durable DB15) doesn't allow you to plug it in upside down without putting up a fight. The DMS-59 is minutely trapezoidal, but not a strong design w...

My only comment is the Raptors too. If you're going to Raid 0 them, you should already know the benefits (slim) and the hazards (many), and the fact that you are paying a huge premium for very little benefit. Are you going to overclock? If not, that ram is prolly overkill as well. But if your goal i...

I wouldn't say that connector real estate was at a premium, but I understand what you mean. On the flip side, it's awful annoying to sit down to work on a Dell and try plug your DVI cable into the very similary shaped port, realize your mistake, then find the DMS-59 splitter, end up installing it up...

Not to be a total smartass, but why are you walking on stale bread? But I agree with this, top exhaust on cases is the pits. I modded a case to mount the psu upside down, and flipped the bottom fan, so it was blowing out. Worked great, kept the fans down pretty low, but one fateful day someone was c...

Sounds right to me. I don't have CnQ enabled either, I use Rightmark to manually set the voltage on my proc to 1.1V, which runs it happily. I highly recommend it (lowered my load temps 10C, idle temps maybe 2-3C).

I think I'm comfortable with the additional heat from the resistor, but my concern is whether or not there will be problems due to the pwm. I never end up adjusting the fans from "as low as possible" on the controller anyways, so I think I may just pony up for a brace of fanmates and hook those up. ...

Geforce 6800 vanilla, Zalman VF700 fan hooked up to a Vantec pwm controller, turned down as low as it goes. It idles at 39C. After a long, long, long time in a 3D game, it rises as high as 68C. So I don't use a program to do anything with it, though I am thinking about trying a "quiet mode" resistor...

I'd pay $500 for the ability to upgrade video card and possibly run a second hard drive, suspend a 2.5" drive, or run a desktop 7200 rpm hard drive... Something in the small desktop/tower form factor (look at the Dell Optiplex GX520 and imagine something a little shorter). Probably not going to happ...

So the card you're talking about is the IceQ3? Interesting. The IceQ I have does pump out quite a bit of air, and I wasn't able to get the PWM to turn the fan down at all. I hooked it up through a FanMate and that brought it down to an acceptable level of noise (my system is far from silent, but fai...

^^^^^^

Listen to this man's advice. I didn't heed it and now I am officially rue-ing the day (rouxing? roowing?) that I disregarded his advice. My motherboard is a stinker, but getting the sink off of the back to upgrade is going to be a big project.

You do need to take the motherboard out to install the Ninja. It replaces the stock heatsink retention frame with one that is more like a socket 478 retention frame. Take my advice and go ahead and install the heatsink while the motherboard is out of the case, too, as I had some trouble engaging the...

That power supply is probably overkill for your setup, unless your definition of "a couple" enters the half-dozen range. The 7600GT's I've seen haven't been much more than two inches past the back of the PCIe slot, I doubt terribly you'll have issues with it getting near the drive cage, I have heard...

Driver "maturity" for XP-x64 is something of a joke, and I would love to hear someone name 10 applications that are 64-bit aware. XP-x64 remains a hacked up, broken little experiment with few (if any) benefits. It has the potential to address more max memory than XP x32, but really, how much ram do ...

HDTune can also read SMART data.

I have a couple fans that develop a strange buzzy noise (that is very aggravating) when hooked up via PWM, but can be undervolted or hooked up to a resistor to good effect. And no, the Artic Cooling Silencer didn't come with a Zalman Fanmate, but you could hook one up and give it a try, it might work.

I just used a hot glue gun to goober a line across some coil windings, which helped quiet down a cheap power supply I was using that would chatter under load.

Well, if you had a system set up with a bunch of passive coolers and hooked this up blowing gently over the top of everything, it would be a single fan solution. Or you could use it as a single exhaust and just create a long ducted path from one item to the next.

Why don't you just 7V trick them?