Thanks to both of you for those links. I hadn't realized that only the i5 and i7 offer Turbo frequency boost, nor that there were i5 CPUs with just two cores and 35W TDP.

What does the 'T' in the i5-3470T product name indicate?

I'm not very familiar with the lower end socket 1155 CPUs. Below the i3, are they all single core?

Which card? I've been contemplating a 7750 or 7770.

I've always liked the M350. Front panel is kinda ugly, but for its size, the fully ventilated case is ideal. It's hard for me to believe that you need to go from the extreme of a rack of servers in the garage to this server mounted under your desk. You have no other place in your entire home where y...

On that motherboard, with an mSATA boot drive, are both SATA drive headers usable? I was trying to figure out how to fit an SSD and two 2.5" drives into the M350. Using an mSATA mini card would answer that. Can't you use the Dynatron T459 cooler w/fan? It was mentioned recently in another thread. ht...

I'm actually doing a Mini-ITX build right now using an Intel DQ77KB and an i5-3470T. Trying to get it fanless/no-moving-parts into a mini-box M350 (using a "big chunk of copper" 1U Dynatron heatsink). Might not be cool enough, but I'm giving it a shot. Still waiting delivery on a couple of parts. P...

Thanks. From what I'm reading, the i3-3240T is OEM only. I see that there's an i3-3220T, though.

What exactly does Haswell promise in this arena? They're going to be able to lower TDP from 35W to under 10W for comparable performance???

I'm putting together a mini-ITX system and would like something with more processing power than a dual-core Atom or Brazos. What are the CPU candidates?

I don't see the point to begin with. Isn't Windows own power management sufficient, spinning down idle hard drives after some configurable number of minutes? Not really, windows power management is pretty disappointing, random drive spin ups (MFT/ tracking.log) and to mention installers and similar...

I wish I could find the Argon DA2 in the US, but it doesn't appear to have a distributor here. It's the perfect size and configuration for my desktop audio system. I'd use the USB input from the computer and would use the coax S/PDIF or analog input for a Squeezebox Touch in my office. Have you loo...

The optical connection is electrically isolated from the computer. But jitter on the S/PDIF out from a typical sound card or motherboard is terrible. Asynch USB should be nearly jitter free. USB would bypass the on-board sound chip For music, that's good. Unless you want to apply some kind of EQ wi...

I don't see the point to begin with. Isn't Windows own power management sufficient, spinning down idle hard drives after some configurable number of minutes?

A PWM fan splitter Then there's no rpm monitoring is there? The way I've seen most of them work is that one fan on the splitter would still be connected to the PWM monitoring pin of the fan header, so there is monitoring of that fan. To some extent it assumes that all the fans you're using are the ...

I'm surprised that there aren't more card-type controllers so that you have intelligent software control instead of manually diddling knobs to set fan speeds.

Why aren't you using the USB input on the DAC?

A new BIOS, version 1616, is available.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_ ... /#download

Why would you NOT want to control PWM fans via PWM?

Does anyone make a PWM fan controller? Preferably one that controls 3-4 fans.

Does anyone know:

Would an i3 with a Big Shuriken work in the M350 with two 2.5" drives mounted?

I have a Scythe Mugen 3, which is 130mm wide (slightly wider than the Big Shuriken), mounted on the P8Z77-M PRO and there's about 10mm of clearance between it and the first PCIe slot.

This may be the first time I've seen (or noticed) a 2.5" 1TB drive under $100.

15% off w/ promo code EMCNAJF72, ends 9/16

TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

However, if you are loading any case up with hard drives in 5x3 enclosures, the resulting effect will be anything but SILENT, even if they are 5400rpm "Green" drives. You'll need to cool those drives, which requires fans, and you'll need to power them, along with the controllers you'll need/want. O...

kirys wrote:I'm just sad that there is no "consumer" version of those adapter with vertical layout (2x 5 1/4 bays for 6/8 disks) they use large fans but they all need the features of high-end sas controllers.

What features are those, apart from using mini-SAS connectors?

I have a Cooler Master Centurion 590 that fits the bill for top-to-bottom drive bays. But it's not designed with much thought to being quiet other than having a 120mm exhaust fan. One of the things about the 590 was that it appears to have been designed as a desktop case, so has a lot of unnecessary...

Yep, looks like Amazon and a some additional retailers have picked up the Fractal Design case line.

What size fan is that? Obviously it's going to be a screamer, but if you replace it with a slow fan are you going to have sufficient cooling? Are you sure you wouldn't be better off using 3.5" drives in a 3x5 (five 3.5" drives in three 5.25" bays) backplane? The ones that I use from Super Micro have...

Which Asus Xonar card are you using? XD? DX?

I've been hearing some not great things out of the onboard audio (occasional distortion) and am thinking about adding a PCIe Xonar sound card or an external USB DAC. I only need two channels.

Did you see the 1504 BIOS update that came out on Aug 10 (ten days after the previous one)?

I did the update, even though it's a bit of a pain, since I have to set memory timings and fan configuration every time the BIOS is updated.

I don't see the potentially better cooling. Not with less internal volume, and you haven't necessarily made the airflow any better. The case you've designed above would be limited both in the size of the PSU it could use and in the size of the video card. You need to get a lot more creative with the...

So is the entire point of this exercise just to reduce the depth of the case? Is there some particular value in that?