You might be in the neighborhood of 300 watts worst case while your drives are spinning up, so yes, you have plenty of power supply. If you google a little for 8800 gts power usage, there are sites that show sytems similar to yours using 270-290, and other sites show just the graphics card using bet...

Hi Jones_r, A co-worker and I were talking about the probable cause of the BIOS idle vs. Windows apparent idle power discrepency. Most BIOS's will not use the halt instruction, and so even when not doing productive work, the CPU is still busy the whole time. (And it was not that long ago that people...

Why force a RAM drive? The whole point of a swap file is a place to swap out something from RAM to fit something else into RAM. Putting in a RAM drive would just take away RAM, making you need to swap sooner, and then you are moving the contents of RAM around not accomplishing anything. I have used ...

A co-worker who introduced me to Silent PC review just ordered parts for a system, and his list started out very similar to yours. He ranks low power a little ahead of quiet, but it is a very close second for him. Even your description of your decision to go with the lower power version of the CPU s...

Wussboy, curious how much you sprayed, and in what area that caused it to go bad? Moving dust around, and causing a bad connection as has already been mentioned is probably the most likely cause of the problem. It is possible to damage a part internally if you caused a sudden temperature change. (Di...

I have both a freezer and a Sunbeam, and the fin spacing on the Sunbeam is not much wider than the Freezer.

I like the add a pixel per post message. I can be a little [by my scale :)] sarcastic at times, and this poked a little fun at the situation without being too over the top. But I think protocol would have required a smiley face, and not just any smiley face, but a huge, animated, 50 MB smiley face. ...

Thanks for the info and suggestions. I have started using fahmon. I saw reference to electron microscope, but in looking where to get it, it looks like it is no longer supported.

For a while, my points per day were bouncing all over, between 400 and 1600, but I was averaging 800 to 900. For about the last week, I have been almost a flat 600 every day. I have the same 3 machines (one with dual core, so 4 cores folding). Is it normal to hit clusters of work units that are wort...

Hey Max, Gah, "robust" in the conclusion. I am just curious, what is it that annoys you about that usage? [There are plenty of words that grate on me when they are mis-used. Then they get so often mis-used that they get added to the dictionary. Gah! :) ] I have heard the term robust used in regards ...

For years, I have wondered why Video cards were built with the heat producing components on the bottom side of the card, trapping the heat against the card. Interestingly, you rotated the motherboad which could have resolved this, then use heatpipes and huge sinks under the card, still trapping the ...

I've gone looking, and haven't really found anything (though my google-fu is admittedly somewhat weak), and the referenced newegg issues have all been with other sticks - and even for those, the response is by far mostly positive as far as I can see. So I feel confident they're still good. When I w...

Maybe not at all the direction that you would want to head, but a slimserver does not take much of a computer to run. Are you familiar with OpenWRT? People are running Linux on some very inexpensive low power devices like routers, Network attached storage devices, etc. I have a friend who has OpenWR...

I picked up a solo on sale at frys.com a few weeks ago for abotu $65 shipped. f you are not in a big hurry, you might want to watch their ads for the next couple weeks, as it seems they often will repeat sales.

I have seen crucial highly recommended in the past, and had fine luck with what I have used, but recently, I have seen several negative comments on Newegg, and I notice that they are also aggressively discounting it recently. I would recommend that you check out reviews of the RAM before you purchase.

dyJohhny's point is valid for the CPU though. If you look at the power usage by the CPU, it does have some loss on the motherboard where the voltage is stepped down to Vcore. This conversion though is probably in the mid to high 90% range though, so the other rounding up and margins that are being a...

Hi Aris, Thanks for the reply. OK, I exagerated a little. (What was I doing up in the middle of the night posting?) My point was that AC enters the computer power supply and is rectified and regulated (or this part is in the brick for the PICO PSU folks) to be DC. I have not looked inside a power su...

This is an interesting thread. I see some have a strong preference to DC instead of PWM, (even though that DC is probably coming out of a switching power supply, so even the DC is probably just PWM'ed at a different place (and maybe filtered I guess).) I also thought it was interesting that in build...

Thanks for pasting the link mcoleg, that was the review I was refering to. I was not where I could stop and look for it.

Just something to add for the folks wanting data. A while back, Tom's hardware did a stess test on a large number of power supplies. I think that they presented a lot of interesting and useful information.

Well, that visit to the list was short lived. Gotta see what I can do to get back.

I live just down the street from a gravel pit, and the trucks coming out of that place provide me with an amazing amount of dust! I did not realize until very recently that filtered positive pressure is almost certainly the best way to go in this environment. I appreciate the pictures and informatio...

Hi Kevin, Are this an Athlon CPU that has a problem now? (That is where I heard of the "pencil" trick.) If so, some of the early ones could be unlocked just connecting across a laser cut, but later ones, the laser cut had a trace below it, and so the area first needed to be sealed so that your penci...

I got a couple more machines folding, and just made it to the top 20 contributors. I guess my name was not too original since we have 2 vikings in the top 20.

What direction is the air moving from each of the three fans that are right next to each other? If the Nexus on back is blowing out, and the powersupply is also exhaust, then it looks like the fan on the heatsink is trying to fight those two fans, and might get more air flow if it were turned over. ...

Heatsink looks like trouble. The way the heatpipes are bent, it looks like the fins on the inside edge of the curve are basically touching, blocking your airflow.

I hate to disagree here, but following what you are saying is plenty common. I have not seen much mention of cooling air being brought in through the case bottom, but many case cooling articles I have seen mention basicallly bringing cool air in low and exhausting it high, and often front to back. I...