Good call on the Silverstone; that's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. The only complaint I have is the stupid vent over the video card area, but that's nothing some hot glue and foam-core board won't correct.

Further suggestions are still welcome!

I'm looking for a relatively small case with excellent build quality and appearance. As far as size is concerned, I'm mostly interested in something along the lines of the Antec NSK 3480; just barely big enough to hold a mATX motherboard, 120mm fan, and possibly a full-sized power supply (although a...

You can use that in a computer very easily. The power switch in any ATX computer is just a momentary switch, which is exactly what you've bought. You'll just want to hook the power switch leads inside your case up to that switch instead of the built-in switch. I can't really counsel you on mounting ...

When I mentioned trying an 80mm fan, I didn't mean one of those plastic funnels - pretty much the only reason to install a 60mm is if an 80mm wouldn't fit on the back panel, so I assumed it was pretty tight in there. No, what you'd have to do is construct a duct out of heavy card stock or foam-core ...

Normally, this is a bad idea. That's because normally , adding just one extra 120mm fan to the case and running it at very low speed will result in lower total noise level than letting the PSU fan handle all the ventilation duties. However, you've got a bit of a special situation, with those 60mm fa...

Heat spreaders aren't really intended to reduce RAM temperatures, and are completely unneccessary on DDR RAM of any variety, because the heat is already spread evenly over the chips. Heat sinks reduce component temperatures by providing a much larger surface area for heat transfer, but RAM chips alr...

Silent computing is a tiny niche, and most manufacturers pay us no attention whatsoever. For the last few years, we've ridden on the wave of environmentalism - companies wanted to appear environmentally friendly, so they started creating lower-powered components. This worked brilliantly for silencer...

I've left the tricools in place whenever I've built a computer for a friend or family member, and they are genuinely quite good compared to most stock fans out there. However, in a quiet room, I can still hear them when installed in the case, whereas I cannot hear an undervolted 1200 RPM slipstream ...

Now that you have a fancy anechoic chamber, I realize you're not going to go back and retest a bunch of old parts; the time requirements would be ridiculous. However, it seems like something you might want to do for your Reference and Recommended parts. I know doing reviews is a lot of work, so I'm ...

The problem you're running into is that a modern PSU won't provide power on anything but the standby rails unless it's plugged into a motherboard via the main ATX connector. You can trick the PSU and bypass the issue by shorting the green wire in the ATX block to any of the black wires.

Planar PL2010M - No noise whatsoever at any brightness setting. This is, however, an older part number; the newer monitors have switched to a lower-quality LCD panel. I don't know whether the backlighting has been changed or not, though. Gateway FPD1765 - No noise at any brightness. However, there i...

When I first read this, I came in here to voice complaints similar to those already mentioned. However, I've tried it on both of my monitors, and it seems pretty reasonable on my good monitor. My older, cheaper display, on the other hand, looks fairly terrible with the brightness reduced this way. R...

The tubing should be available anywhere that sells water cooling supplies. I've had friends use www.frozencpu.com in the past, and been very happy with the service; you're looking for tubes with a 10-14mm outside diameter and 8-11mm inside diameter (with a 1-2mm wall thickness). The power cord is go...

The Pentium 200 MMX has a 15.7 watt thermal design power, and back in those days TDP was an actual measurement specific to each chip, rather than a blanket statement across the entire range. Many modern northbridge chipsets use more than that (up to double) and have no problem with passive cooling (...

A 450 watt power supply is more than adequate for a system like this. You would actually be very safe with only 300 watts, but most of the really quiet choices lately have been higher wattage. I'd actually suggest an Enermax Modu82+ 425.

I'm really liking the results you get from the new setup. Well done! However, would it be possible to remove the blue background from the graphs, and either remove the gridlines or make them substantially thinner and lighter, so they don't interfere with the data trace? I know I'm being picky, but s...

That DFI motherboard might work, but you've really got two contradictory goals. A full-on gaming computer might require you to use a full-ATX board to get all your expansion options in. On the other hand, a modern HTPC generally doesn't use a fire-breathing quad-core and a midrange graphics card, it...

I didn't even think to mention fans in my first comment. None of those three cases comes from the factory with good fans, although I suspect the Solo has the best start. With any of the cases, you'll want to upgrade to something from the SPCR recommended list . I generally use Nexus fans, and am ver...

Definitely the Solo. The Cooler Master cases are basically frames with mesh for body panels, which means they won't reduce sound even slightly, and probably don't even have great airflow - they have lots of airflow, but because there's no predictable path it'll require a large number of fans to ensu...

It's actually fairly straightforward, but there are a few pitfalls to watch out for. First, here's your equation: http://crazybob.travisbsd.org/files/powercalc.png Now, that looks very simple, but there's a catch - the thermal design power for a processor is generally way higher than the actual powe...

It seems that as dies shink, we're seeing more and more things move on die. I was impressed when I saw that Sun's new T5220 systems use a processor that actually has a pair of 10 gigabit network controllers built on die, so the network has as much bandwidth and as low latency as possible. Their mot...

I've recently had my computer in an un-air-conditioned room for the hottest part of summer in Iowa, so I know the challenge. I doubt I was ever dealing with temperatures above 95°F, but my cooling was effective enough that an extra 10-15° wouldn't have been a problem. I started with this: http://c...

Notice that the system requirements call for a 1.8 GHz Core Duo, not a Core 2 Duo. A Core Duo is roughly 30% slower than a Core 2 Duo at the same clock speed. The 2.3 GHz AMD you've selected should do quite nicely; as far as I can tell, Athlon X2 and Core Duo are nearly identical clock-for-clock.

btw, tehcrazybob , I don't believe there's any advantage in having your HDD run 32C compared to 40C. As long as the drive is significantly below the maximum temp rating (say by 10C) then the only real wear factor is how often the HDD undergoes temperature change -- and how extreme that change is. M...

So, does this confirm that the problem has spread past laptop-integrated GPU chips and is now affecting desktop cards? The delay doesn't surprise me much due to the average laptop having much less effective cooling than even the hottest desktop. For people who own one of these cards, are there any s...

No, it won't be. An Athlon X2 6000 is a hot and power-hungry chip, and will all by itself pump out more heat than most of the entire systems on this site. This makes it very difficult to cool quietly, as well as killing your electric bill. You'll want to look for a Brisbane AMD chip, particularly on...

For what you're looking for, I think you've chosen pretty well. Realistically, absolutely any dual-core processor will give you the performance you need, so if your budget is extremely tight you could probably drop a bit further. If you're content with the noise and efficiency of your current power ...

In general, it's best to stick to the recommended list. Personally, I'd suggest getting a Seasonic S12-II. Despite the popular trend of huge power supplies, it's actually very difficult to build a system which requires more than 300 watts (think of an overclocked quad-core and triple-SLI graphics; m...

I'm a US citizen, but the majority of my online interactions are here and at Bit-Tech.net, based in England. As a result, I'm very careful to avoid mentioning America unless I mean the continent, and I also respect the distinctions between British, English, and the rest of the UK that AndyB pointed ...

I'm not sure what's drawing you to the conclusion that it won't work. Looking at your system specs and the numbers you posted for the power supply, I don't really see a problem. It may not be a really good brand-name PSU, but it's certainly better than the dirt-cheap supplies I was talking about. I ...