-> Consider getting a steel case that doesn't have an acrylic side panel. The Antec SLK3700 and 3000B are highly recommended around here. The Antec P180 is even better, but costs a lot more. -> Suspend the hard drive. -> Get a fanless heatsink for that video card. -> Get a Seasonic S12 power supply....

I honestly think they give you too much cabling nowadays. They should give you, say 4 standard Molex plugs, two SATA power plugs, one floppy drive plug, and the ATX plug (with the +12V thing separate). Anything else, you would have to split yourself.

Is it really that expensive to ship to AU, from the US? I had something shipped from Australia once, it was a couple years ago and it only weighed a few pounds, but I don't remember thinking it was at all expensive for what the item was. I do remember exchange rates being much more favorable to the ...

Great! My VF700Cu arrived yesterday. Greater! I burned out my card when I was installing it! (forgot to turn off PSU) :cry: Try and get an RMA. Put the stock heatsink back on, and tell them "the screen froze, and then I smelled something burning" or something to that effect. You probably won't get ...

Wow, that's some nasty cabling. Good luck cleaning it up....

I do it with a a small 7" LCD that sits on top of the computer. Using a dual-display Radeon 9600, and MBM, I can read-out all the temps in real-time. Alternately.....you could hook up a small external temp display,with the sensor mounted on the card. Cheapest solution... :lol: Where can you get suc...

You also have the option of removing the hard drive cage, putting the hard drive in the floppy drive cage, and suspending the whole floppy drive cage/hard drive assembly in the spot where the hard drive cage used to be. That is what I do, and it works great if you only have one hard drive.

Something like that isn't going to produce a whole lot of heat. You do need openings for air to enter and escape, though.

Yes, I have used recycled parts too. In fact, I'm using a cobbled-together system made from old parts right now, while I wait for a replacement heatsink. I doubt switching from the zalman to the ninja would be worth the money, so you're probably best sticking with what you have. And if you get tired...

Can anyone verify that the Scythe Ninja and the fanless Gigabyte X800XL will actually fit on an AN8 Ultra at the same time?

If you have AGP, it's probably a good way to go if a totally fanless card won't work in your case. You get all the benefits of a VGA silencer, without voiding your warranty. If you want some serious overclocking potential, throw some ramsinks on there, too. The VGA Silencer can take you beyond 9800 ...

liquid_celica wrote:Go to Tom's Hardware and other rep. sites

LMAO

How about screws through the bottom of the case? (Starting from the inside and going into the legs, of course.)

That may work, but you're better off just getting a better heatsink to begin with.

First of all, very good job cable routing, I like everything you've done here except the LED fans and the zalman heatsink (a Ninja could have been a potentially better choice IMHO). http://www.dynamiks.net/pics/P180/P180%20013.jpg This is a really funny pic. Instead of focusing on what's in the midd...

EPAstor wrote:Of course, that's no prohibition on upgrading - but I don't see any major/important platform upgrades coming down the AMD pipeline that don't involve a move to DDR2 anyway.

I don't think AMD is ever going to support DDR2. DDR3 is another story...

Route those cables man! Inside and outside the case, they're everywhere! Besides that, it looks a lot like my own setup as far as parts, I'm still in socket A territory so I've got the SI-97 instead, and I've only got one hard drive and it's suspended in the FDD cage. Other than that, very similar. ...

I have also modded my mouse... I call it the "Get Rid of the Damn Annoying Taillight That Keeps Me Up At Night And Is Totally Unnecessary" mod. 1) Crack open the mouse. 2) Find the extra LED, and wrap it in electrical tape. 3) Build a sort of "skirt" around the optical sensor and its light, using el...

In most cases, a gig of faster RAM will probably benefit more than 2 gigs of slow RAM, assuming you are fully utilizing the RAM's speed. Rarely will your software need more than 1GB. Modeling and rendering, though, will probably need more memory, so I say go for the 2GB. Don't take too much stock in...

If you somehow attach the smaller heatsink to just a fin of the larger heatsink, I imagine that the overwhelming amount of the heat being transferred into the larger sink, would just stay in the fin and radiate from there into the ambient air, not using anywhere near the cooling potential of the ent...

Well, seeing as that horrible northbridge fan finally died, I decided to go ahead and get a passive replacement. Should arrive by Friday. In the meantime I'm without a usable computer. Those skimpy little heatsinks are more or less useless without a very fast-moving fan mounted on them... I finally ...

It's still not safe, bcause even though it's not conductive, it can still be capacitive. So get in there and get it off.

You would probably never see a problem, but there's no reason to rush things and risk blowing a lot of money on replacing fried components.

Try to anchor your suspension from two opposite sides, either on the top and bottom, or on the sides of the drive. This will keep it from flopping around too much. Also, make sure that there is enough tautness to keep it from moving too much in the other 4 directions, but not so tight that it transf...

I use Outlook, because it has my address book, calendar, etc.

I keep most of that stuff in my head, but it's good to write it down somewhere just in case. Paper gets lost too easily... lol

AMD has message boards?!? lol

SE on ATI products denotes a somehow "crippled" version of the same card that sells for cheaper. Sometimes you can softmod or flash the BIOS to make it work like the full-powered version, but I don't think you can softmod the 9550SE. Google "9550SE softmod" for more details.

I have never bothered with optical drive silencing. I actually use CD's maybe once a week on average.... Never saw a point really.

Rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol won't damage the card. Dip a cotton swab in the alcohol and carefully try to wipe some of the adhesive away with it. You don't want to push it any farther in, where you can't get to it. After cleaning a little up, switch to a new, clean cotton swab. Acetone might even be...

Don't even think about it.... just scrape the shit off! You do NOT want anything bridging those pins.

And it's spelled "voila"..

bump.... still have some as-of-yet unanswered questions interspersed in my ramblings.