Davinator wrote:Having recently bought a P182, I'm now glad I'm a coffee drinker!

Then I won't tell you how acidic coffee can be, either...

Didn't you just post this same question like 6 months ago?

Why not just continue the same thread?

To answer your question, I'll address the wires of your Antec Tri-Cool. The three wires that go to the H-M-L switch are hardwired to your fan and change the speed. The black and red are the power leads which connect to 12v+ and GND on a standard wide 4-pin (Molex) connector from your PSU. There are ...

What's most effective is isolating the junction between the optical drive shell and the drive cage. I've used small pieces of foam and/or headliner fabric (foam/felt sandwich) in between the two parts to create a sound gasket. It helps to reduce the transmission of vibrations from the source (optica...

It's all going to depend on the T(g) of the resin used. In general, acrylics usually have a lower T(g) than polycarbonates (Plexi) and are softer (less brittle/stiff) and less likely to resonate. Acrylics also tend to be a little denser, which helps. Mike's right though, if it performs better than s...

Low-power Dual core AthlonII paired with a 780G mobo and a few WD Green drives for storage.

WHS won't recognize the full amount of RAM since it's only 32-bit (you won't need it all though), but the next version of WHS will be 64-bit only.

The only thing I know for sure is that my Scorpio Blue is dead quiet, I'm lucky if I hear it parking before shutdown.

It might be worth considering Seagate. One bad drive is not enough to decide that they are all bad. I fix PCs for a living and I see a lot more Maxtor and WD drives fail than Seagates. The other thing about Seagate drives is that you get a 5 year warranty with them. For 24/7 operation that's someth...

Though those do work, they cannot work properly with my KVM swith. What i mean is that those only work if I have the KVM focused on that specific PC when I turn it on. If the focus is on another PC, and I boot said PC up without the focus, when I switch to that PC I will not have a video signal. It...

If you're going with that motherboard, I'd jump to a 45W Athlon II. Much faster and dual-core.

But if you're going to be using WHS, you'll definitely want to get at least two hard drives to take advantage of the folder duplication feature.

A low-powered (45W) Athlon II CPU paired with a 785G-based mobo would be plenty capable of what you ask. Pair it with a passive CPU heatsink and quiet HDD(s) and you would only have to worry about the PSU and/or case fans for noise However, those cases have 60mm fans which won't really be quiet. I w...

Looks like someone found a small crate of them at year-end inventory (physical). I wouldn't expect it to reappear...

Hardly fair to compare power of systems with two different video cards.

However, the Phenom processors will not be as efficient as the Athlon II series (particularly the new 45W models). My HTPC (see sig) idles around 60W with integrated GPU.

Any decent 80+ PSU will still be pretty close to 80% efficient in the ~100W range that most small WHS will run. A low-power 45W Athlon II CPU paired with an 760/780/785G chipset should run you below the 80W range at idle when paired with couple low power hard drives. My WHS, runs a 780G mobo with a ...

Power supply and Processor are overkill for a basic HD HTPC. I use the same mobo with an Athlon II 240 to play all my media. The GPU on the motherboard also does DXVA for h.264 so an extra video card is not necessary for video acceleration. However, if you need 7.1 LPCM via HDMI, then you may need t...

There's no reason it shouldn't work. Hopefully, you're only going to be using a 10' interface for HTPC work with that old TV. Anything else will be hard on the eyes and nothing like viewing on a monitor.

Audio does work over HDMI, but I'm guessing you're referring to 7.1 LPCM over HDMI, which is not supported by the 785G chipset combo.

Here's hoping AMD works that one out soon.

Why would you need a 5-series ATI card for an HTPC?

Are you gaming on the machine?

Regardless, the Corsair PSU is a good one.

Definitely doable... My WHS is running at ~80W at idle with the following hardware. Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD Athlon X2 4850e IDE DVD ROM Maxtor 200GB IDE (Primary) Maxtor 320GB SATA WD5000KS (500GB) SATA WD15EADS (1.5TB) SATA 2xWD5000AACS (500GB) SATA All hard drives running off the mobo with no a...

I also had the same issue with the automatic voltage control with a Athlon II 240e. It actually resulted in a little bit of instability at first. I ended up with the same solution about a month ago.

Not a big deal, but still something that should have been caught.

He's not using an X1 RAID controller, he's adding a PCI-e x1 (that's the little PCI-e connector) SATA controller to get more SATA ports. He's probably not using RAID functions at all, just JBOD.

A $250 RAID controller would probably be a waste on money on a bunch of slower hard drives.

Yeah, you will definitely need to cut out those fan grills. They are probably the most restrictive grills I've ever seen. Open up those holes and put a slow and quiet fan in the rear exhaust port. You can probably leave the front hole without a fan. If you are going passive on the video card, you wi...

I've been running 2 - 80mm fans in my HTPC for years and never thought them to be a source of noise. I modded them to run at 5v from the beginning, and they've always moved enough air combined with the 120mm from the PSU. I can't recall the fan manufacturer right now, but they are the stock fans tha...

Try searching for "Antec 300" or "Antec Three Hundred" in the Cases and Dampening forum.

You'll have all the answers you need.

And no, that foam won't do squat...

I use all three, but in different situations. For my HTPC, I'll never do anything but a 2.5" 5400rpm again (until SSD becomes practical). Since all media is stored on the WHS, large capacities are not required and high disk performance is not required. Low power is also more beneficial here. For my ...

I have a 785G mobo, Athlon II 240 and a laptop HDD, my loads usually are below 70W. I'm sure it's your HDDs that are giving you the extra load. However, my WHS runs off a 780G mobo, Athlon X2 4850e, and six HDDs (some 7200rpm, most 5400rpm) and it idles at 70-80W. Load is around 110W at boot. The LC...

Isolating the drive from the weak/lightweight panels that it is contacting is the only way to stop the vibration. I've wedged pieces of headliner fabric (foam and twill sandwich) in between my DVD drives and the mounts, it works pretty well if you can do it right. Doesn't exactly make it easy to pul...

I just usually zip-tie it backwards along the adjacent molex connector so it stays out of the way if I need to actually use that set of cables.

Why spend more for one quiet fan when you have 2 Tri-Cools and a no-namer in the system? My advice would be either to replace them all or save your money.

That patch was just to make Windows recognize that there was additional RAM there. It still isn't a true access to all available RAM, as individual applications aren't capable of addressing more than 2GB each. Bottom line: if you NEED 4GB of RAM, go 64-bit and upgrade the hardware you need to to get...