Everything I've read by people who've actually measured says 1-2W per stick of DDR2.

Asus 1201N. This is Ion platform, so as long as your playback software supports hardware acceleration, it will do 1080P. For just playing videos, I think this is a good choice but I am dubious about how usable even the dual-core Atom (it has the 330) is for general computing. Also, battery life is n...

But, I doubt the network speed is what is bottle necking your file access speed alone. if you check out tomshardware.com and look at the eprformance charts for hard drives: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-3.5-desktop-hard-drive-charts/h2benchw-3.12-Avg-Read-Throughput,1010.html you will see...

One thing I've noticed is that the 2650e has exactly the same stats as the Neo MV-40 that can be found in some netbooks. I wonder if they are the same chip, or perhaps the only difference is the packaging/socket. It would be nice if you could buy a board with an embedded passively cooled 2650e or 32...

Mats wrote: Nexus shows pretty much the same dB(A) curve for both though.

That's what makes me wonder.

How small do you need the case to be? mini-ITX boards will mount in a normal µATX case. Those pretty much all will accommodate 2X 3.5" drives. Silverstone TJ08 is a nice µATX case that doesn't come with a PSU. There are plenty of less expensive µATX cases of a similar or slightly smaller size, if...

Your only quibble was no modular cabling. It would be interesting to see if the Nexus RX-5300, which has the same power rating and modular cables, also has the same acoustic profile. At current US prices, the NX-5000 seems like a better deal than the Value 430. Only $10-20 more for a model that has ...

I guess that the power consumption vs performance is more important at least for the people on this forum :D. That's why I wrote functionality and not performance. Again, from a consumer perspective, all the technical stuff is irrelevant. The real issue is whether it does what you want it to do at ...

Compromise is something I have been trying to figure out on this box as I am very aware that I am asking for my cake, eating it, and asking for seconds to boot. If you can't compromise on features, then you have to compromise on price or power consumption. If the motherboard you wanted were availab...

My point was actually that many WiFi routers support wireless bridging. This has become a common feature over the last couple of years, but before that it was very rare. I was very surprised, recently, when I went through all my spare routers (wired and wireless) looking to set one up as bridge for...

it is to me at least slightly curious that a range of 45nm CPUs will be launched with it that could be obsolete in only a few months. Development is continuous, so every CPU that is launched is obsolete in a few months. As a consumer, one should not be concerned with manufacturing process or techni...

a processor would cost a large sum MoDT is not for those who place a priority on price. Like I said, it is more cost efficient to have a system that idles 10W higher than to build one that can hit your ~13W benchmark. You can have your cake and eat it too if money is no option. Otherwise, you need ...

The Atom is also intriguing except that in several real world tests the E5200 drew less power overall because it completes the work faster negating the impact of the extra power it drew compared to the Atom. The problem with this line of reasoning is that you want the system to be always on, so unl...

I think the definitive answer is that the NSK3480 is much better straight out of the box, but with enough work the TJ08 can be made to work quite excellently. I think if you are just looking at the level of throwing a bunch of components and fans into the case, NSK3480 is the better choice.

I'm looking to buy/build/sweat/bleed a simple, quiet system The simple part is a very tall order. Modern levels of DRM make it very hard to get disparate pieces of the puzzle to work together. It is not too hard to capture any of the sources you listed, as long as you are satisfied with the quality...

There are only two reasons I'd consider a laptop drive, if I had space to fit something bigger: 1) I wanted a case setup that will have virtually no airflow. Shock resistant properties are not all that exciting in a server, but the ability to function well with no airflow (as laptop drives do, insid...

That being said... A few days before I purchased this one the price dropped so I pulled the trigger. A few days after I purchased this one I noticed the price increased. Clearing out the old inventory? Newegg has demand based pricing. Your purchase may have been the straw that broke the camel's bac...

What noise are you trying to deal with: the humming of the spinning platters or the discrete noises of seeks and writes? The humming is pretty much impossible to deal with without multiple layers of foam and mass-loading. The discrete noises seem best addressed by elastic suspension, but some have h...

but your keen measurements are rendered useless for people looking for the best heatsink to be used inside a case SPCR tests for a particular application -- low airflow cooling. What SPCR ranks as the best heatsink is the one that can dissipate the most heat at a level of airflow that can be achiev...

I was assuming that a SPCR regular that does a fan swap to a fixed 5v PSU fan is going to fix that fan at a very low RPM. I think you misunderstand me a bit. It's not so much how slow the swappers new fan is, but how unnecessarily fast the old fan would have been. Now when I say unnecessarily, I me...

I think you've got to go Windows, if your goal is "it just works" with the minimum of hassles. Given the low end CPU + RAM combo you're working with, I'd think you'd want XP Media Center edition. I see this is listed as XP Media Center 2005 SP2B by some places (Newegg has it for $110 with free shipp...

If you were going to use it on a low wattage system you might be happy using a fixed voltage fan swap at 5v but most wouldn't want to do that as it would lower the usable rating of the PSU. I am a proponent of the fixed voltage fan swap, if only for its simplicity (anything too involved and I'd rat...

SPCR reviews what they are sent by vendors. If they aren't reviewing vid cards, chances are they aren't being sent any. Pester the video card vendors to send SPCR samples, if you want reviews.

Well after configuring a million different "self build" options on various mini itx sites I gave up and bought a 2.0Ghz March 09 mac mini, I have to say its WAY better than the previous generation (1.8Ghz '06). I think the only serious complaint one could make is the lack of HDMI for single cable c...

Cov wrote:Another suggestion ..

Source

.. but you need multiple graphics cards.

How much is a graphics card capable of supporting Mah-Jong or web browsing? $30 at most . . .

omg do not go pay for software! its called linux. ever heard of it? These paid solutions are based on Linux. You're not paying for the software, you're paying for someone to assemble all the packages you need and put it in a nice installer and provide documentation. This is exactly the business mod...

Only problem is that I wanna stick with Windows 7. I would think you could run Windows 7 inside a virtual machine within the Linux host (using Virtualbox or similar). Would lose video acceleration, but I don't see why you'd need that for Mah-Jong and web surfing. Of course, now we're talking about ...

Can I have a motherboard integrating basic graphics and HDMI output without significantly raising the heat? Compared to a NAS, the answer is no. The HTPC motherboard, even if you went with an Ion platform, will produce too much heat to go into such a tight case. Realistically, if you want 4 HDD in ...

This software claims to make it pretty easy. It's not free, but $70 seems a decent price if it works well, and there is a free trial version.

PartEleven wrote:What exactly is the performance difference between dual-channel and single-channel?

<< 10% for most applications.