Not many users here favour top-down cooling anymore. I know of only a few members here who favour it: thejamppa, doveman, you and myself. :) We must be a special select group. 8) There are probably others, but I haven't discussed much with them. Well, it's nice go against the grain every once in a ...

I've now read in several places that the X58 series chipset and VRMs on most if not all X58 boards get very hot. I have no experience myself, so this is all second-hand hearsay. Yet, as I'm selecting parts for my i7 build, I'm wondering: Has anyone tried additional / 3rd party cooling solutions for ...

Good comments. However, I must add that one thing that people overlook often is as the weakest link in high output thermal dissipation. If one has a very high thermal output (say i7 @ ~ 4GHz) with a well performing heatsink and a SPCR style fan, then the TIM can actually make a difference of 10C at ...

While testing TIM materials can be tricky, margin of error high and the tendency to draw to far-fetching conclusions from any single results equally fanciful, I though I'd post this round up. I've only included fairly big roundups with fairly consistent - even if not faultless - test methodology: HW...

Looks interesting. Nice to see that top-down cooler market has not been abandoned by heatsink manufacturers. I'll try to remember to add it when we get first reviews.

Thanks lodestar. I've modified the post to be more informative to others. I don't know how I missed Noctua NH-C12P originally. I'll add it. Thanks!

The vertical orientation of heat pipes in a downward-cooling sink (i.e. pipes pointing up) is also recommended by X-Bit Labs: "It turned out that when the cooler is installed with the ends of its heatpipes facing up: http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/coolers/xigmatek-roundup/18_cbr_inp_small.jpg …it ...

This is a work in progress. Most core i7 boards have passive heat pipe cooling for chipset & VRM area. Regardless of this they tend to get very hot, especially in setups where overclocking, low air-flow inside the case, or side-to-side cpu cooling is used. For this reason, this thread is dedicated t...

While it's true that space-wise SSDs are not very good value yet for many people, speed-wise they are great value to a lot of people. Increase in IOPS is great as is the promise of TRIM support in future firmware. Not supporting the earlier generation with a TRIM update is - imho - really lame as th...

One additional contender Noise-blocker MF12-P http://www.caseking.de/shop/catalog/Fans/Noiseblocker/Noiseblocker-Multiframe-S-Series-MF12-P-120mm-PWM::11333.html Test in a recent round up: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/120-140-fans-roundup_16.html I've ordered Akasa Apache and NB ...

Here's a small review against Noctua NF-S12B Flex: http://www.ginjfo.com/Publics/Dossiers/Ventilateur-SilentWings-USC-120-mm-de-Be-Quiet-206-Ventirad.jpg.html Looks like a tad higher rpm, thus a bit more cooling power while producing slightly lower noise. However, the noise measurement results are n...

I've scoured the web and it seems that Megahalems and IFX-14 change places depending on thermal load, amount of airflow, test setup and probably most of all, margin of error. Some samples: http://www.silenthardware.de/2009/07/04/roundup-neun-92mm-kuhler-im-vergleich/14/ http://www.meisterkuehler.de/...

Excellent analysis and explanation. Your reasoning makes sense.

DFI is now high on my list. Off to hunt for mail order stores locally.

Thank you very much for writing about your experiences, Loimlo. DFI looks like it has a layout that I could use. My previous DFI mobos were quite tinker heavy, which I why I've started to shy away from them. However, your comments, esp. about fan control, have re-invigorated my interest. The thing t...

Hi Nate, can you please describe you experience with the EVGA GTX 275 once you've had it for a while. How is it noise-wise at idle or on minimal desktop use? How about intensive 3D games? As for the difficulty of finding quiet(ish) fast performing cards, it is indeed a mystery. Galaxy makes one, Inn...

Thanks Jamppa! Based on this earlier round up which included the older T-Rad2 (non-GTX): http://en.expreview.com/img/review/vgacooler08/testruslt2.png http://en.expreview.com/2008/09/09/review13-vga-coolers-roundup.html/20 T-Rad2 GTX looks like a worthwhile contender, with lower profile than HR-03 G...

Does it not come with a fan controller to adjust the speeds? If so, does it help any (without killing the cooling performance)? Looking at this image: http://www.thermaltake.com/product/Cooler/VGAnCHIPnMEM/CL-G0102/+_image/03_topview_450.gif it appears that the fans are attached to the heatsink usin...

Thanks. I was looking at Deluxe V2, but it has a different layout and again the 2-slot vid card cooler block one of the PCI slots. This seems to be a very common occurrence in almost all X58 motherboards available today. Otherwise it looks like a nice board.

It's upgrade time here as my motherboard blew up and I sold the rest of the parts while am waiting for the replacement, which I learned today is going to take a looooong time. Because I don't like to upgrade each year, if I can avoid it, I was hoping to go for an i7 build. The cpu of choice is 920 p...

Looks interesting, a new VGA heatpipe cooler from Thermalright: http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_page/product_images/vga_cooler/T-rad2_gtx/1-1.JPG http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_page/product_images/vga_cooler/T-rad2/35.jpg http://www.thermalright.com/new_a_page/product_page/vga/t-rad2_gtx/produc...

Please be advised that the new Pioneer models DVR-*18 (e.g. DVR-218) and such use a different chipset (Mediatek) and the jury is out on whether the drive's acoustic performance is on par with earlier NEC chipset based drives. BTW, at their max speed at 16x and above (up to 24x now) none of these are...

Short stroking is not the same as multiple partitioning. Short stroking is the same as placed single partition of a limited size. It needs to be a single partition, i.e. you do not place any other partitions on it, which you access and which totally kill the performance increase of the short stroke ...

Sata: SH-S223L
http://www.samsungodd.com/Eng/Products/ ... l_idx=4448

P-ATA: SH-S222L
http://www.samsungodd.com/Eng/Products/ ... l_idx=4434

Buy an ordinary silicone thermal paste ( sold in electronic component stores), they are viscous enough to keep the heatsinks in position and transfer the heat. While this may work for others, it didn't work for me and as such, I'd encourage some caution, especially if running on low ventilation and...

This is not the fastest, but perhaps enough: Inno3D iChill GTX 275 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2009/07/15/inno3d-ichill-geforce-gtx-275-review/14 Now, I don't have credible noise figures for that card, but as it's a well known AC unit that is also used in their iChill GTX 260 model, pe...

Review @ Xbitlabs:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cooler ... html#sect0

Unfortunately no dB measures and their 'quiet' claims are somewhat dubious.

FYI: If you need a small basic computer to handle 24/7 duties, but with no heavy load, consider this for low energy consumption and silent needs: http://excito.com/assets/images/BubTwo_frnt_bbg.png http://excito.com/assets/images/back_400x300-trans.png Specs http://excito.com/bubba/products/technica...

Thank you for this report. Very informative for me and one of my old Ultra-D boards with a fan that sounds like it's about to die (not a silent system, but I don't mind if it becomes less noisy).

Not quite, but there are of course unit-to-unit variations within the same model. You are using Samsung, so you should try their magicspeed utility and throttle it down: http://www.samsungodd.com/eng/Firmware/MSpeed/MSpeed.asp In general, one can use this as a rough rule of thumb: Least noisy: Pione...

The bottom line is that Windows writes to the drive more than Linux even when both are idle. It is possible to disable indexing, but very few people do that (and besides, it is not just indexing that causes the frequent disk writes in Windows in my experience), and that is why the WD Green Drives d...