Ah interesting - I actually used the screw holes for the CP850, but through the vent holes of the case. Note the position of the screws in my picture.

Ok, I see. At least I think I do. So basically in your case, the PSU "hangs" suspended by the screws in the back? With no support from the bottom or the top? Correct. As for vibration - "what vibration?" :) The entire point of using a CP850 is because of the low vibration and quiet operation. While...

There is air between the PSU and bottom of the case. The screw holes don't line up, but instead I used the vent holes. This is also why I mounted it with the case upside down: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/CaosTngoNS_mnDa2rPrGHA If you want to use more than the two screws I did, you'll want t...

The greatest benefit seems to be from the improved VRM temperatures, which should leave to better durability in the long run. About the only thing "wrong" with is the space it takes, as not everyone can let a video card take up 4 slots. I can't for instance, as it would cover the second 8x pcie slot...

A hacksaw would have taken care of the cooling plate incompatibility. The cooling plate is a lot better than the small heatsinks since it covers a much bigger area, and the thermal tape usually used with the small heatsinks tends to be bad - they fall off easily if not applied correctly and it's not...

Nowadays there are quite a number of people who claim that wifi is bad for there health too and some schools have come under attack from such groups for offering free wifi in school, something they claim may be bad for kids. That's just FUD in effect though. They don't understand the phenomenon, so...

Richard's story is interesting, but confusing also. He claims to be bothered by 'noises' in the RF spectrum which just isn't possible..-sniip- Actually it's not only possible, but a known phenomenon. You don't even need a lot of power for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect A...

Since samples of both the 550 and the 650 are on hand, we'll find out soon enough. EDIT - forgot to mention... the main reason for my comment is that the TP-550 has heatsinks identical to the ones in the TP-750. That does sound promising, and more logical. I've gotten more skeptical about PSU noise...

Since you picked Corsair - that's actually a good example of how noise differs when you look at their PSUs which are made by the same manufacturer. Their Seasonics perform very different from each other, as do the ones made by CWT.

The lower power models can surely be expected to provide the same acoustic and electrical performance at <300W, which is the main power range of concern to the vast majority of DIY PC builders. I wonder where you get this from? As we've seen time and time again, fan ramp ups are not the same for PS...

Got this a while ago, but only now had the time to install it. Tried it out at first outside the case, but the fan control didn't work. After a lot of troubleshooting, I finally discovered the 12V wire to the molex connector was loose. Fixed that, but the trouble didn't end there though - when tryin...

I got an FP01, and imagine my surprise when it doesn't work with a Scythe Slipstream SY1225L 12M. After scratching my head for a while, I'm starting to wonder if the fan controller on the FP01 is PWM only - can anyone confirm/deny? I can't find any information in the documentation slip that comes wi...

What I want to know is if I XFire two cards can I use the outputs on the second card to attach even more montors? Yes, but EyeFinity only works from the monitors connected to one single card. In other words if you have say 3 monitors connected to card A, you can add card B to achieve increased perf...

Actually superglue is used quite a lot when you want a more semi-permanent installation of a heatsink. There are other glues of course that are specialized for heatsink applications, but their benefits are questionable. Another option is to dab a drop of heatsink compound in the center of the chip, ...

One word: Cyanoacrylate

lodestar, except Nvidia hasn't come out with any low end parts yet, so this is what we have to deal with. Unfortunately as we've seen the GTX 470/480 parts are pretty much unusable for silencer purposes - the only way I can imagine being able to deal with the heat output is water/liquid cooling, and...

accipiter wrote:However, I'm beginning to understand that a 'quiet' pc that can run current game titles is never going to be quiet, and is limited by niose made by the GPU.

You can easily have a quiet gaming PC, with the right cooling. Silent is also possible, but much harder to attain.

Of course the lifespan will be somewhat shorter than if you can run it cooler - that's just how electronics work. By the time the card dies however it will already have been obsoleted for several years. The built-in safety features and low power usage already means that the 5xxx generation should la...

The stock 5850 and 5870 run at higher temperatures than that, so you're perfectly safe. As long as the VRM temperatures aren't going high enough that the gpu downclocks, there's no problem. If that happens during normal usage (not furmark/OCCT) you need to add more cooling somehow.

The problem is that with dual cards you're pumping out a lot more heat into the case than with a single powerful one. In addition neither crossfire nor SLI work perfectly, and there's also other related issues such as gaming with two cards not working with dual monitors (one will have to be blank, o...

Well there is the Vapor-X version. If you have time to wait, we should be seeing more custom designs. On the custom 5850s they redesigned the power section, which means we might see a 5870 with more VRMs that run cooler due to better load distribution. Nvidia's new cards should be showing up in a mo...

On the 5870, you'll have to use 3rd party VRM/RAM sinks - if you look at my pictures you'll notice the stock cooler is part of the base plate and can't be separated from it, unlike the 5850. If the base plate is separable, it's a much better cooler for VRMs and RAM since you get a much larger surfac...

ok got a new cooler and stuck it on and voila it does auto adjust..only prob is CCC never pushes higher than 40 and with furmark, my card is still hitting 90 when all is said and done..how can i get the fan to get up to 90/100%? Don't. That temperature is fine, and so is the fan speed. The ramping ...

Parappaman is right - there's really not much you can improve on for the HD 5XXX series. The idle power usage beats anything else out there already. You might be able to save a watt or two during full load by undervolting, but could quickly run into limitations due to the tight tolerances involved. ...

How would you know if it is safe to keep a video card at a certain fan speed? 20% is the fan speed used on reference card for idle temperatures. The bios is programmed so that once a certain temperature is reached, the fan speed will slowly begin to ramp. So unless you screw around with the fan spe...

sakraycore wrote:Don't you void your warranty if you change your bios?

Depends on whether it's an official bios or not. If you modify it, sure, but if you flash back an official bios then the warranty is intact again.

Or you could just realize that fan speed is set by GPU temperature. Since the temperature goes up when you use 3D games, the fan speed does as well. Once you stop gaming the GPU temperature will go down, and so will the fan speed.

Sorry to hear that. At least we did manage to trace the error.

I must say I'm still surprised that manual fan speed control works, but the auto one doesn't though.

Ati Tray Tools let you set up profiles, so you can have different ones for different situations. CCC is the same as usual - hopefully the newer version makes the fan ramp up properly like it's supposed to. Since manual fan control does work, it's most likely either a driver glitch, or a bios one. Yo...

ekerazha wrote:There's also a 4850 from Gigabyte, older, less efficient, not DX11 but maybe a bit faster.

Umm.. the 4850 is slower and hotter.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3658&p=1