Oh yeah, pimpin' the wraparound desk, executive-style.

Anandtech's Socket-754 motherboard roundups ( part 3 , part 2 , and part 1 all review different boards) make some mention of board stability when 3 DIMM's are used. Most boards are stable, and some can keep tight memory timings. It might be a good indication of how well your memory will work. How fa...

Are you looking for an AGP card or a PCI-Express 6600? The AGP cards appear to be selling for about $150, and since the 6600GT's can be had for $200, the 6600 doesn't sound like such a good deal. Especially since they come at 300core/550mem speeds, and the AGP 6600GT's are 500core/900mem. I don't kn...

What about flipping the 80mm exhaust so it blows inward? It might completely screw up the airflow, or it might help bring cool air to the PSU and CPU. It's worth a shot...

The unbleached, unlaminated cardboard packaging calls out to my tree-hugging inner self. Too bad they didn't make the PSU out of cardboard as well, that would have been interesting and easily recyclable.

MSI's AGP 6600GT has the shroud and the quoted 28dB fan. While it's quieter than many of the screamers on the market, (I've also heard the MSI 6800, wow that's loud!) it will still be the loudest component in any reasonably quiet PC. Its heatsink appears to be larger than the stock heatsink that com...

Replace Soyo KT400 Ultra --> Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe Replace 2600+ Thorough Bred --> Athlon XP-M 2400+ 35 watt version (overclock to 2200mhz) If you're going to upgrade, you might as well replace old tech with new tech. Get an Athlon 64! Search around and you'll see the outrageously low power draw peop...

If the old PSU can do it with 14-16A on the 12V line, then the 400W Seasonic, with 22-24A, shouldn't have any trouble at all. It seems that Seasonics are conservatively rated, too: MikeC (SPCR founder) did some informal voltage-sag tests on various PSU's, and the Seasonics were able to handle intern...

I think you should mod the card with a quiet or passive cooling solution. There's no warranty left to void, and if you sell the card in the future, the aftermarket cooling will make the card more valuable. I think upgrading would only be worthwhile if you really want better 3D performance, not just ...

Are you already powering this system with your cheap generic PSU? If so, then wouldn't a 400W Seasonic cut it? Either way, with that many hard drives, "staggered spin-up" sounds like a good way to reduce boot-time power requirements. This feature should be available on many SCSI controllers, and I'v...

Wow, that's a nice clean setup

Look for posts by the user "bomba", he has posted several times on EMI issues. Here's a good thread . From what I gathered, EMI from the PC can sometimes cause problems, but if you don't see anything wrong with your CRT or nearby electronics, then there's nothing to worry about. If you do see interf...

Make that 29 days and 1 hour: I just enlisted my silent dual-CPU box to work for the SPCR folding team.

The audible noise from my coolmax falls somewhere between the noise level of my 300W Seasonic and my Fortron Source (which is quieter than average, but no where near silent). I would expect the CR-450B to fall somewhere in that same range. Just don't expect complete silence from a power supply that...

If my so-called quiet 28dB MSI VTD-128 6600GT (AGP) is any indication, even the Galaxy will be very unpleasant to hear in its stock form. Plan on modding it if you want a quiet video card.

I thought one of the Overclockers.com editors was watching this fellow. :| He's written a review of the Seasonic Super Tornado 400W ( article here .) Notice in that review, he complains that the Tornado spins up and becomes audible under load, although he makes no mention of such spin-ups in his Sil...

Yes, they've been discussed many times on this forum. Search for EAR grommets (enter at the search page: "ear AND grommets") if you want some info.

Huh, that's an interesting thought. I wonder if GPU's are programmable enough nowadays that a meaningful pixel shader could be programmed to generate coded graphical data? My guess is that, since GPU's are designed to blend textures together and dump geometry on the screen, it would take more CPU ti...

I found this post by josephclemente: http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?p=101392 He built a snazzy CPU duct for his Wavemaster, and it lowered system temps all-around by about 10°C. It allowed him to drop the speed of his Zalman 7000 by a whole lot, and I think in another thread he said ...

I took a look at the Wavemaster case yesterday in the store. The airflow path is good (bottom-front to back), but the top fan might do more harm than good, if it pulls air through the case without passing over the CPU heatsink. Experiment by removing the fan, and see if it adjusts temps by a degree ...

Neil is right: for temperatures, case design and placement of fans matter as much, if not more than, having lots of high-speed fans. For example, when I was experimenting with fan ducts on my PC, I was able to change hard drive and CPU temperatures by 6°C just by flipping the direction of one of my ...

ckolivas is right. Newegg user reviews have very limited value. You can't use them to compare products, and it's doubtful they can even be used as a rough quality indicator (how many dead pixels an LCD has, or how fast a certain memory will run) because the reviewers could be uncritical, exaggeratin...

I was just kind of fascinated that you rejected all existing PSU's without bothering to say why. When you say, "I hate everything, find me something I like!"... well, there really is no satisfactory response to that.

Hi, which Shuttle XPC case are you using? I think there are about a dozen different models, all with slightly different sizing and different air intake patterns. That info will determine what's possible and what's not, unless you are willing to mod your case.

Hi dfrost, Welcome to SPCR! :D I was going to mention the Zalman NB, but it looks like you already found those threads. :) You can save a few bucks by custom-mounting a larger heatsink, but all the products you mentioned are sure to work, and they're less risky than a homebrew solution. I'm pretty c...

Thumbs down on SilenX. Nexus fans are a good bet for 92mm and 120mm, from what I've seen here. Search around, there are literally a thousand posts on fans. With the XP-90, even a low airflow fan should keep an OC'd Athlon64 reasonably cool. Be sure to see SPCR's XP-90 review, since they test with lo...

Hi and welcome! Make sure you read the forum comments on the Silentium T2 case review. Swapping the PSU is basically out of the question, so you either keep the PSU that comes with the case, or you get a different case. Playing with the fans might improve noise, but even that will be complicated. Th...

Take a look at this Ace's Hardware article where they compare nForce3 motherboards, and you will see what happens when you use a cheap GigE adapter. The onboard adapters in the article can get close to maxing out a top-of-the-line Athlon 64 when transferring data at high speed! I think a high-qualit...

Re: GlassMan's Xbit link: check page 7 for the relevant comments. At x5 HyperTransport multiplier the system remained stable till the clock generator frequency reached 237MHz. With 4x HyperTransport, we raised the frequency to 292MHz. When we dropped the HyperTransport multiplier to x3, we managed t...

Hi Oleg, thanks for stopping by and explaining things! Also, thank you for explaining/examining the 110/220V efficiency. I'm very eager to read Xbit's next PSU article... You're right about my "fine" comment on the BeQuiet, it was a bad word choice. I should have said "tolerable" or "disappointing"....