If you were smart you would be a stockholder. The business has it's own survival in mind. If it didn't it wouldn't be able to give anyone a job. Does it have your interests in mind? Well, you had better make yourself a valuable asset to the company or it can treat you anyway that makes business sens...

Hey, here's an idea! Drill our own oil! We are sitting on so much undrilled oil that we could become energy independent. Using land for fuel is inhumane. The future economy will be electric as cheap wind, solar, and wave energy will become more of a portion of our economy and battery technology take...

A cheapo 3450 can also run HD movies just fine. Both cards have the same hardware for playing movies. Unless you want to play games, you might reconsider your 3850.

Get yourself a good pair of headphones. the sealed type earbuds are amoung the best and many manufacturers have good ones for around $50. Don't get the open earbuds, get the ones with foam rubber that seals around your ear canal.

Is this for 2D or 3D? Why are you replacing your graphics card? Do you play games and want more speed? Then why limit yourself to older cards when the new ATI 3XX0 cards run very cool and passive? If you just want a passive graphics card for 2D, then any card will do. A ati 9200 or 9600 are good cho...

You can software undervolt most sempron processors.

Well, there you go. A single core Sempron undervolted to 1.0V should be a great system for what you need.

Yeah, i would say it is not a good time to build one of these boxes right now with the excitement around all the new small form factor systems out there. I mean, there is the new Nvidia 8200, the AMD 780, the G45, the Via Isaiah, and the Intel Atom all coming in the next couple of months. I hate say...

You know what I would do? Get a cheapo Via passive mITX board for music and a Playstation3 for DVD and BluRay. That is my setup. It's much easier than fiddling with drivers.

The UVD does the BluRay decoding and works regardless of 3D power, while the picture enhancement and deinterlacing are done in the 3D hardware. The 3450 is now fast enough, like the 2400XT was, for all the advanced filtering and deinterlacing techniques. If you are really curious, the AVSforum has a...

The AMD 780 has the same processing as the 3450 cards which are now fast enough to support all the features for HD video and processing. The 2400pro was not fast enough. However, the 780 only does the advanced deinterlacing with a HT3.0 processor (Phenom). According to reports, the Phenom 780 combo,...

You could also just get yourself a mac mini. They have the same specs as the boards you are looking at now. What kind of videos are you watching? Will this include BluRay? Getting one of these systems quiet will be difficult. If you wait, Nvidia is coming out with a ITX board with its latest onboard...

Highly recommend the 3650 over the 2600. Similar speed, much lower power consumption and heat than the 2600. Intel or AMD would suit you just fine. Overall, an AMD system in this performance range would be cheaper for the same speed but either are workable. I just prefer AMD for the motherboard sele...

I want to add that you CAN use a subwoofer with this amp. If your sub has line level inputs (they look like regular speaker terminals) then you can run the cables through the sub and the sub's crossover will pull the bass out of the signal and pass the rest on to your speakers. I don't think this is...

I added it too. Not too many SPCR folders on there.

IMO, there is no reason to risk running a computer without fans. High quality, low speed fans with fan control are inaudible and cool MUCH more effectively than a passive setup. Even though this is SILENT PC review you will find very few veterans that actually run passive computers. We have all expe...

Your thread no longer resembles the one you started. If you do not want to be bound to codecs that support HD decoding then the intel system makes sense. However, you said you were interested in picture quality, and codecs that do not support hardware are hardly good at picture quality. If you skip ...

The thing I find annoying about the Ninja is that it makes working on the PC an annoying, and potentially dangers affair because it is so big and sharp. I can't hear the AC Alpine, so what is the benefit to me to put a ninja in? I just replaced my Ninja with a AC Alpine 7, and my computer is easy to...

I think some people can take it too far when they try to get all noise out. I don't take that route. I simply aim to get the computer nearly silent without going to extreme measures. When i try to quiet my friend's computers, I simply explain high quality fans, low temperature without overclocking i...

The Arctic Cooling alpine 64 is a great cooler for low power AMD systems when coupled with fan control. You may also consider the AC alpine 7. It is designed for intel but fits on AMD systems and comes with a 4 pin fan. I run the Alpine 7 on all my current builds including even a 2.8ghz 90nm 85W 560...

I don't understand why you are searching for such a powerful cpu. Is this HTPC used for anything else besides playing HD? Will you be transcoding video or anything else CPU intensive? With the HD video codecs decoded outside of the CPU, you can build a HTPC capable of BluRay playback for less than t...

You made a good choice. All great stuff.

This area is going to get really interesting when the new Atom chips come out from Intel. With the power of an original centrino, and dual core versions coming soon under 10Ws, this should be a fun thing to watch.

Good article. I found my 3870 was barely acceptable in my gaming rig, which is not on most of the time. I am very impressed with the speed of the card. I initially thought the 3850 would be louder than that! That is good news and I may consider one for my regular PC. I have friends come over and pla...

This review seems to contradict many of the points that Tomshardware made. I hate to say this, but Toms' review reads more accurate than this review. Who is actually correct, is beyond me. I kinda wish you guys would update your graphics reviews with more real use video benchmarks. The guys over at ...

AMD rules the budget sector. I would recomend a cheap AMD system with a Cheap 6100 board and a dual core 4000+ because it seems a little pointless to go without a dual core machine. Programs and multitasking will run smoother. There is also the Intel Celeron E1200 that is dual core for the same pri...

Maybe the Ninja's time is over and we just move on? So the Ninja will now have the same fate as HD-DVD and Rear Projection TVs? No way. I'll be waiting for the Ninja Rev. C. Actually, I'm quite happy with my $10 Arctic Cooling Alpine 7s now on half my seven computers with more to come. When good en...

Will the videos be in HD?

AMD rules the budget sector. I would recomend a cheap AMD system with a Cheap 6100 board and a dual core 4000+ because it seems a little pointless to go without a dual core machine. Programs and multitasking will run smoother. There is also the Intel Celeron E1200 that is dual core for the same pric...

I definitely think the main differences here can be attributed to the heat pipes making contact with the base. If you solve this issue for the Ninja, the article will be very well linked around the web since it is such a great heatsink. It might be time to break out the soldering gun.