Thanks guys, but I wasn't looking for product suggestions. I was just asking whether you felt the current crop of video cards contained wind turbines as stock coolers or have they improved to the point where getting your own aftermarket heatsink isn't the only way to get proper noise levels. Sure I ...

I've been holding out for the longest time on upgrading my video card primarily because I've been waiting for 3rd party manufacturers to produce quiet, cost-effective aftermarket cooling solutions for the new graphics cards. Well I've been waiting a while now, and I feel pretty disappointed. Sure th...

Oh wow, socket A. I was in your shoes a few years ago when I was trying to update/quiet down my old Socket A systems. Good heatsinks were hard to find then, and probably even harder to find now. Ebay or any other second-hand dealing sites is your best bet. The very best heatsinks are probably going ...

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'll have to go take a look at those Lenovos. I've heard good things about them. I already know what I want in terms of hardware. I'm guess what I'm really looking for is opinions on build quality. Does the keyboard squeak when you type, does the LCD hinge wear out q...

The other reason I'd rather not go with the macbook is because I'd rather not be locked into the mac ecosystem. There's been far too many times where I needed a small program to do a specific, obscure task and something like this would easily be found for Windows (and free!). I'm not so sure that wo...

I hate to make yet another one of these threads, but choosing a notebook has been far harder than I thought. Purchasing a whole system requires making some compromises to your needs/wants, and its really hard to assess ALL the possible options out there. So I'm going to need some of your opinions. N...

Thanks for the links guys. It looks like the story really hasn't changed much when it comes to performance gains coming directly from faster ram, if going by that bit-tech link. It still seems like a faster cpu clock goes much farther in speeding up your system. Before, faster ram let you get those ...

Somewhere down the line I'm going to upgrade to Ivy Bridge (or whatever the 22nm Sandy Bridge update is called), but since DDR3 seems like it's at its all-time low in price right now, I've been buying good deals I come across. I see these deals for high speed "enthusiast" DDR3 ram all the time, but ...

I think you're a pretty reasonable guy, ces. And this rule-of-thumbs list you have is pretty solid, but I think you could do more to emphasize that they are rule-of-thumbs that might not apply to everyone. I'd hate to have someone stumble on your list, follow it exactly only to be disappointed when ...

This is quite an interesting and lengthy analysis. Excuse me if this was answered somewhere in the previous posts, but where is your justification for the linear relationship between SPL and voltage? Other than your curve fitting, that is.

looks like a ZOTAC NF610I-E-E ? sure is ring chokes and chinese caps in thar. have you cleared the cmos? Close enough. It's actually the NF630I-E-E I haven't tried clearing cmos yet, but I might just RMA this board since I think it's still under warranty. btw: which psu were you using, how old is i...

Another possibility is replacing the video card? I used onboard video, so no separate video card that can be replaced. what you are looking for here is the beep code that's present when you first turn on the computer... you should be able to pull the ram and still get a beep code. I don't have case...

Some people are clearly overreacting over this. Read the anandtech article. Intel estimates that over the next 3 years, a certain percentage of motherboards might end up having unusable sata 2 ports. No data loss. Hardly catastrophic.

I have a small file server I keep running all the time, and just overnight it mysteriously shut itself off. This morning when I tried turning it on, I got absolutely no video output. No bios messages, nothing. After tinking around a bit, I'm inclined to believe the motherboard is just dead. Here's w...

Thats kinda disappointing. But what about for people who don't need space for massive amounts of HDDs? I was looking at this mostly as a smaller-sized gaming box with room for very big heatsinks. Is the width that big of an issue?

Pretty sure that little bit about heat pipes needing the proper orientation is a myth. Heat pipes are not affected by gravity to any significant degree that it would reduce performance.

Hey man thanks for replying, but that 4650 looks overkill (in power and price) for what I want to do. I already managed to buy an X850 XT platinum edition off ebay, so I've found my card.

LiquidRain wrote:Turning on any form of v-sync (double or triple buffering) will fix the whine.

Interesting. I had absolutely no idea that turning on v-sync fixes coil whine. Where did you find this information?

Looking to buy an AGP card to upgrade an older socket A machine to play some older games on. Specifically, I want one that I can stick my Acccelero S2 on. The ideal card I'm looking for is the Radeon x800/x850 cards.

The damping helps reduce standing waves, some of the hum of cavity air resonance. Interesting. I never thought about using damping for this reason. I think cavity resonance is stopping my system from achieving absolute silence at my current air flow. What's the reasoning behind this? Less empty vol...

I also find this hilarious. What was the point of that other thread then?

Sweet. Looks like a good design and being from Thermalright it'll likely be a good performer. Too bad it'll also be very expensive.

For SSDs specifically, I think it may be more prudent to poll by controller type rather than manufacturer. Failure typically lies with the controller software rather than poor manufacturing. What complicates things is that sometimes manufacturers will tweak the controller themselves or use a model o...

Seriously. Very low capacity needs and absolute silence in an open air test bench? SSD. The only option. Everything else will disappoint. If you don't like the price then that's just too bad. A quiet 2.5" laptop drive double enclosed isn't going to be very cheap either. Probably be close in price to...

I pass on the fan then. So does $28 shipped work for the two hard drive coolers?

Price on the luxurae sounds good. Are you sure about the scythe fan? What model # is it? I've looked all over their product line up and I don't see a slim PWM fan.

I'm interested in both of the luxurae hard drive coolers. How much would shipping be to the midwest?

Also, what speed is that slim scythe slipstream fan?

That sounds like a bad sample rather than an endemic problem with their PSUs. I have that exact model PSU in the youtube video and I don't have this problem.

my suspicion is that no matter how much I invest time and money into a PC equipment, it will never be dead silent This is where I disagree with you. My system is effectively inaudible, as are many PCs of SPCR members here. Some members have even built truly silent computers with zero moving parts. ...

I'm sorry but when I buy something that is considered to be the top of the line equipment, I expect it to work. When you buy an Audi, you are not expected to fix it using duck tape. Then perhaps DIY computers aren't for you then. There's two major reasons that I believe make building PCs worthwhile...