Let's not get into cars (especially MB and AR, now there's some polarising brands right there); I went off on a bit of a tangent with the drives already. I just felt like exploring why I didn't like the whole drive and comparison getting discarded off-hand like that. On a side note, Sandisk employs ...

For example a Seagate 600 Pro is double the money. The Seagate 600 Pro is an enterprise-class SSD, and it's priced accordingly (i.e. it cannot be in the same league of Sandisk/Samsung). I would argue it is a direct peer of these drives. It is an entry-level enterprise drive, set apart only by a cou...

PS. I highly symphatise with the notion that in-house dev and hardware (like what Samsung, Micron/Crucial do) is more reliable. Someone building a drive out of outsourced pieces just doesn't have the same interest in guaranteeing the product will be as optimised and as reliable as it can be, nor do...

I'd like to see more 5 year warranties like this. There's just no reason not to have one for a mid-to-high budget drive. The only other consumer-oriented drive with one I know of is the Sandisk Extreme II - incidentally it's very close (depending on what you test for) in price and performance, Anand...

It's such a big oversight though, but fair enough.

Good to see more complete computer products reviewed. I've actually been looking to replace the aging 1.5 TB Buffalo NAS I have.

The Recommendation here is a bit questionable though, the caveat(s) is (are) simply too big. At least HP probably won't use the "seal" in their marketing.

Oh my, they've put a 5-year warranty on the Blacks? Now that's how I like it. The price bump is like +25 %, or 50 to 60 EUR, so not too bad if durability is desired... too bad it's a loud drive not suitable for my kind of operation.

There is some merit in thinking "if it's not breaking in two years, it won't break in three". The oldest drive I have is a 3.5" WD Blue from the 00s, still working after 2,562 power-ons and a total power-on time of 1,233 days (well over 3 years on and operating ). Every drive of the 20-or-so I've us...

A challenger for the WD Red, excellent! And a pretty good one, too, according to the review. In Finland the NAS HDD and Red are priced dead even at around 190 EUR apiece (4 TB models). The Seagate only offers a two-year warranty compared to the three-year WD warranty, so at least here the Red is sti...

That one degree sure is critical.

We could install coolers on our Thunderbirds without IHS or incident, we can do it again no sweat.

(just have to be veeeeery veeeery careful, and suddenly dosage is going to matter a lot again)

That's the stock fan's RPM range, and Thermalright doesn't ship the best fans with the coolers (think the 140 mm might be the sole exception). As the fan probably needs swapping, that little price difference might become relevant - 10 € goes a long way when buying a fan. Once your setup is truly qui...

Glad to help! And we all came here wanting, and were satisfied as we stayed. Wouldn't need all this if everything was silent already. :mrgreen: dB ratings are usually unreliable at best, so wouldn't worry too much. The manufacturers announce whatever: minimum RPM dBA, maximum dBA, average dBA... and...

Judging by my own testing - the results are in my signature, idle & load with cooler & case RPMs for both - 300-600 RPM is plenty for even a midrange CPU (77 W IB i5) with a proper cooler.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appmeth/int/vl/intel_app_method_vertical_line_v1.1.pdf is the "Vertical Line" method general instruction, the rest are still available at http://www.arcticsilver.com/methods.html (sans some older material, I see). It seems the instructions haven't changed much since ...

And alignment really matters. Actually, check out this review for a better explanation. The bit about the IHS and pictures that show it are from "Looking for an Explanation" and afterward. Thanks for this! I only had time to glimpse at the alignment pictures and conclusion, but the observations see...

Second that on the fan. "No backplate" sounds bad - they got introduced and then spread widely for a good reason, and that reason is the pressure and torque a heavy cooler and its mounting system creates. "Heavy" here in the context of Intel's recommended maximum cooler weight of something like 300 ...

These >1000 g coolers are simply insane. It's not just the diminishing returns aspect that bothers me, but it's a safety issue when you're moving the PC around (and possibly forget you have this kind of cooler in there) - but I guess there's a demand since they are still being made, even when a 400-...

Anyone asking for more retests should just read the article again - or refer to Mike's post here. The deformation issue affects flat base coolers, which I for one thought to be the "golden standard" coolers should aim for. The ones that caused the deformation won't obviously be greatly affected, and...

I've been paranoid about convex-base heatsinks for a good while - if motherboards can be bent, why not IHS? It's good to know the situation isn't THAT dire for your regular PC, but that the phenomenon still exists. This was a good read and an excellent study into review methods and the mechanics inv...

Bit of a disappointment for a new SilverStone case indeed, never mind a Fortress-branded one. How does this pass quality control?

The front's intake looked inspiring, but that's about it for this case.

With a 120mm tower cooler, (Hyper 212 evo) the fins overhang the PCIe slot's centerline by about 4mm. This cooler is symmetric, there are a few that have things offset just a bit, where you might be able to turn it one way or the other and get it to fit. A 92 to 100mm wide cooler would fit with no ...

Thanks for the insight and input about caps - and the fun story! :lol: I was hoping my display's whine was caused by something like bad caps so it would blow up and I could buy a better one... 6 years later no luck . Similar experience with my whining, once-exchanged Seasonic PSU (S12II-430) and som...

Would definitely try to align the fins so airflow passes them along the channels. It's that or get airflow into the main chamber itself, because the bottom is probably blocked by the PCB(s). So fins top for me (if that is where your airflow is). Natural convenction and dissipation by radiation I wou...

I'm with wayner on the price, $1800 sounds a bit insane, even with manual assembly. Regarding the precisely defined certification and the new 30 degree ambient, I'm all for those. In the summer I see 28 to 30 °C daily in the workspace, and never does any part of the house go down to 21 (regarded as ...

Thanks for the review! Looks like a basic but solid board, would definitely pick for an office type build. Having any sort of fan control is a positive surprise, and the Intel card is definitely the high point of the package. Every wireless solution by Asus has so far been a disappointment. Actually...

This cooler is the best passive heatsink Silent PCReview has ever seen and they don't give it top honors? :P "It's important to note that the entire genre of passive coolers, the CR-95C included, is encumbered with some significant disadvantages. A heatsink half the size and a third of the price ca...

More annoying to me is motherboard designers who put stuff on the back of the motherboard in the area that the Noctua backplate covers - there are a number of Gigabyte motherboards I won't use for that reason, and one ASUS, too. This is something I haven't run into yet, but can see how it would be ...

I'm somewhat surprised this heatsink works so well - the spacing between the wires in fairly tight; but apparently it works quite well. I'm not an expert in the science at play, but could the shape (round) and length of travel (short side-to-side) help the (low-speed) flow? As I've come to understa...

I can not recommend Crashplan highly enough. Proper backup with versioning (and not only duplicating the files), and you can do it peer-to-peer to one or more friend's computers for free offline backup. Been running it for a few years now (my server acts as a backup server for 10+ computers) and it...