A fascinating read (I'm always fascinated when someone explains CPU architecture in a semi-meaningful way :)). I'm glad that Intel changed its design philosophy to "+1% performance for +1% heat". Now intel is so large that it's competing against itself. In turn, it can't allow Atom to become too pow...

From what I've heard of the Scythe kit, it either lowers your temps about 5 degrees (vs 10 for the Thermalright kit) or slightly raises them, as it has a nasty extra layer of metal between the CPU and the heatsink base.
Both secure the heatsink better than pushpins, of course.

About 600 KW-H per month. 5 people, 4 rooms, 4 CRT TVs (none of which I watch ), 2 computers.

By the way, it's not kilowatt/hours because you multiply KW by H, not divide .

Final (I hope) advice needed: Given an Antec P182 with 3 fans at ~20dBA each, as tested by SPCR (back exhaust, middle intake/gpu, inside PSU), when will the noise improvement become useless between these kinds of hard drives: 1) 3,5" WD Caviar GP in the bottom chamber, 2) 3,5" in a 5,25" bay in the ...

Video cards do highly parallel work, you can say that the 8800GTS is "128 core", even the Voodoo 1 was multicore in a way. Multicore CPUs, on the other hand, require explicit optimizations, because much of CPU code can't be easily parallelized. As I understand, multicore CPUs are there because now i...

It's a detachable "turbo module" that is optional with S1 but (I think) comes with this card.

Thanks for lots of info with nice pics!
I'm definitely getting a Scythe retention kit along with the Ninja if I can.

As for the "gaming can be louder" thing, a lot of my concern for silence comes from my brother playing at night in headphones, in the same room where I sleep .

HD: Probably 2.5" in Scythe Quiet Drive 2.5 (again yay!) or just a bare 3,5" in the lower chamber. 8800 GT dissipates around 110W of heat, definitely not 200W! Man, if this all works out, then I'll have 2+1 (PSU) hardly audible fans in the system, passive mid-high-end CPU and GPU and an inaudible HD...

OK, now that I've probably found an Antec reseller here in Russia (yay!), another part of my epic quest :). This time it's a puzzle - cool a C2D (up to 3.0) with Ninja plus 8800GT with S1 in Antec P180 with the least amount of 120mm 800rpm fans. I think three or even two of them are OK, but where to...

Thanks everyone then!

OK, so how do you strap/glue/whatever a 120x120 fan to the Accelero S1?

Krazy Kommando I should have mentioned that I live in Russia and have less choice in hardware than US or EU residents. Besides, I want to buy everything at 1-2 shops, even thinking of using the "premium assembly" service of one of them. PSUs: both shops combined have only InWin, Cooler Master, TT a...

I'm planning to build a new PC when 8800GT's become common (Jan-Feb?), that'll be my first quiet computer and I need advice. Priorities are: Very quiet Good performance, but don't mind minus 10-15% No overclocking Balanced for gaming Not extreme price (~1K$ without the quiet solutions) The relevant ...