Olaf van der Spek wrote:Phase? DC doesn't have phase, does it?

Silly me! I was stuck in AC mode. I guess there could be inrush/ripple/switching characteristics in a real system, but they would have to be negligible..

The test setup looks awesome. Feeling lab envy.

Nice! Still pretty satisfied with where the X650 sits. How is Pout() being determined for each PSU, though? Sorry (I've probably missed this), but is there a per-rail I*V sum being done for these figures? With what meter(s)? Edit: and do the readings take phase into account, or not? I.e. is it reall...

Best part is, I'm pretty sure your own OS won't boot if altered by a virus.

I guess we could argue about whether not booting is better than booting without knowing you are infected. But this certainly seems like the nuclear option of "if anything is broken, everything is".

If my computer is infected with secureboot, how do I remove this?

Sounds terrible..

I've got to agree with Mike on this one. Obviously giving yourself a little bit of a performance overhead is nice for both current and future operation, but it only makes sense when it is economical. (I guess there is a whole other debate to be had about the definition of economical.) I'm still usin...

she dislikes resource waste and pollution. You might consider re-using the old case, cd drive, etc. That would be the most environmentally friendly option by far. That, of course, assumes they meet your new form factor & motherboard connections (IDE on motherboard?). If the monitor, keyboard, etc. ...

I have a feeling that for most boards this will be a "luck of the draw" situation. I've generally had good luck with ASUS as far as coil whine goes, but obviously you have had a different experience. Is it a new board? ASUS generally has good QA, so they might give you a replacement if you ask. Obvi...

I finished this a while ago, but realized the other day that I never updated my thread here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=57358 My original plan was for an MDF case, but I ended up using cherry/mahogany for the experience. Air is drawn in the bottom over hard drives and drive...

I'm a bit late to the table, but I just wanted to consent to the consensus :) TLDR: All drives fail, redundancy is key, SSDs cost more, especially when weighted for longevity. I've had wonderful experience with my Crucial C300 64GB, which I've been using as an Ubuntu drive with nearly 5,000 hours up...

Sorry if this has been re-hashed in the recent past. I tried a search but didn't find much SPCR input on the topic :D TLDR: Why are GNU/Linux framerates 1/3 the Windows framerates on my A4-3300M (AMD Llano fusion) laptop? Should I not be using the 11.8 catalyst binary blob? Background: I've long stu...

In short I'm not sure why you are so bothered by it. Don't worry, be happy. Curious might be a more accurate term :). I'm just not used to "exotic" behavior from memory timing. Most of the usual suspects (per your list) are predetermined by code, compiler, ISA, hardware, etc. Network theory is appl...

That's a lot of stop signs / red lights. It's as if the light is red 50% of the time. The ram could be twice as fast and still not be as fast as the DDR5 used on a discrete card. Rough numbers DDR3 1333 20 GB/s DDR3 1600 25 GB/s DDR3 1866 30 GB/s ---DDR3 2000 32 GB/s DDR3 2133 34 GB/s Once again, t...

The CPU and GPU are sharing that ram so if a program were using both close to equally contention could slow both down more than 20% each. Any time waiting on data means zero work. Think traffic jam vs smoothly traveling cars on a highway. The number of cars doesn't change anywhere near the ratio of...

I'm personally running an 8800GT fanless with an Accelero Rev2, and I top out just over 60C during graphics stress testing, or just over 70C if I start stressing the CPU and graphics. For real-world use, I almost always see the graphics temperature stabilize at 59C while gaming. That's with 2x noctu...

Nice!

It's surprising that "Alien vs Predator" increased more than the 20% the RAM speed would imply (timings were the same, yes?). IANA graphics engine expert. Any theories?

Source engine is pretty lightweight and heavily weighted to the CPU. You can probably run Portal 2 at your native rez with the HD3000 IGP. HD2000 is the min req. I have not tested this nor read anything to the contrary, but this seems unbelievable to me. Is this really true? Are we talking 1920x108...

Except for the sweet new 10,000W PSUs cooled with vacuum cleaner technology (TM). :)

AMD also had to get something out the door. They are getting pummeled in the marketplace, and were not doing too hot even before Sandy Bridge. I just pray this takes us in the direction of the Athlon glory days

Also: I believe there is an error in the article concerning the price of H67 motherboards. $160 appears to be the maximum price on Newegg, not the average. I have not checked any other figures. Perhaps you should double check the spreadsheet you used to calculate the averages? Hope this doesn't ruin...

Great article! As always, love the power figures on all of the benchmarks! I agree with those talking about testing 1866MHz RAM. I've read several articles comparing 1333/1600/1866 MHz RAM, and the results scale nearly 1:1. I see the point in keeping the platform the same, but perhaps if you count t...

I will note that every single review I've seen comparing idle power seems to be using an H67 ASUS board, and I admit that they are not known for their power efficiency... But then, we don't really know what ideal A75 boards look like yet, either. Idle power comparisons seem a bit moot, at the moment...

So many pretty graphs, though!

Anyone else reading the Anandtech Llano reviews? They do a price comparison, but they compared a high end ($150) motherboard to an H67 low end ($100) motherboard. Then they talk about "Is it worth a $75 premium?" (counting the processor as $150, which most sources were pointing to $135...). It just ...

HFAT, you could be right, but considering my D945GSEJT with extremely minimal equipment (1 stick of low voltage RAM, 1 fairly low power USB drive) idles at ~9W AC (and 11w with a mobile HDD, more ram, etc), I find it hard to believe that and SNB equipment (mobile or otherwise) idles this low. Even m...

Not sure about the noise, but if you are storing a refrigerator: DO NOT CLOSE THE DOOR! It will mold/mildew and be disgusting when you want to use it again. As long as you make sure the door stays open, it should be fine. The mechanical parts should last decades whether you use them or not (or at le...

Just a thought: Abula had told me in another thread that he uses a shipping service to order off Amazon: does Amazon ship to Guatemala? I have tried multiple times to buy from newegg, and the problem is they dont take international credit cards, i use a USA based freight forward company so newegg on...

What cooler do you currently have on the E8400? I've recently overclocked mine to extend its life, and it's running fine on a passive Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (with a nearby 120mm exhaust @ 800rpm). With the overclock, I actually run SC2 fine with my E8400 and a stock 8800gt, although FWIW I bel...

BitFenix Shinobi:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4460/bitf ... dget-ninja

Any thoughts?
It's priced at $60 USD without the window. Seems like a great budget option for all the features & drive space (8x 3.5" internal bays).

I guess it's more a thermal paste than what you would call solder. This is what I was leaning towards, but I can't think of anything lead free that would melt at 100C below the lead reflow temperature. I was thinking silver, but I looked it up and the melting point is actually quite high. Any guess...

heat it to 85 Celsius. Assuming the chip is RoHS compliant, this is probably not accurate. I did a bit of solder rework station design in college (~3 years ago), and most lead free solders were 210C - 230C reflow temperatures. This actually makes it a lot harder to remove a device without damaging ...