That broadcom device is a nifty little thing, unfortunately my board only takes 3x5cm mini pcie cards. It`s a big bummer, since I also wanted to use one of those mini pcie ssd`s. I realise it's maybe a little bit late now, but you can get 50mm Mini-PCIe SATA SSDs now. The ones I've found are kinda ...

Meh, I dunno. There's 100% load and then there's 100% load. It's kinda like running versus say rowing or something - you can be running at 100% speed, but your upper body muscles aren't taking on much of the load, unlike in rowing where almost every muscle is working. Same deal with a CPU - parts of...

@mentawl: ....Is it much worse with the side panel on? I'm guessing in your case it might be, since it's a bit crowded.. Heh, I should probably have explained that I've been playing Mafia 2 recently, and it benefits greatly from having an nVidia card available for PhysX work - hence why my old 9800...

Well, I guess the short answer in my case is "really darn hot", at least in comparison to Core2s etc. Good ventilation and an excellent cooler really are essential to running an overclocked Socket 1366 i7. http://www.banzaiinstitute.net/ment/i7thrm.jpg Screenshot of my own i7 920 @ 4ghz @ 1.275vcore...

Hey, nice build . Just curious - is the PSU still setup to exhaust out the front of the case, or did you flip the fan so it's actually an intake into the case?

Howdy! =)

Oh, I know. But I ran the home server from a Pico-PSU 90w (I think) during testing, and it was generally around 40-45w power draw. In the case of ultra-low power draw machines, the inefficiency of a full-sized ATX PSU can have quite a large effect.

The problem is the machine is using a lot of juice at idle (73 watts) even with an 80 plus PSU. This is with the drives spun down. So, I was thinking about the new Atom setup as it's probably 16-18 watts at idle with the drives spun down. Chances are that you won't get it down to the sub-30w idle s...

... Found that the top plastic panel can be removed from the case - it's attached via small clips along the sides of the panel, as well as double sided tape. After removing the fan, I managed to gently lift the rear of the top panel, and insert a small piece of foam (double layer of leftover Akasa ...

roastmeat wrote:Plus lightning comes from the sky, not ground.

Actually it can do both .

Really neat paintjob - how did you get the waterdroplet effect?

As another option, you can always put a second fan on the backside of a TRUE too. I've done that with mine, and it certainly boosted performance a decent bit . Only issue is having to somewhat jury-rig the mounting, but it can be done - I used bungee cord.

What kinda load are you putting it under?

The only case I can think of with more than 1 rear-mounted 120mm fan is the old Liteon FS020, but there's basically no chance of getting a hold of one of those nowadays =(. Shame too, it was a nice case. Hrm, found some on Craigslist new, but dunno if that's any use to you. http://sfbay.craigslist.o...

Just thought I'd post a a little fix I used to stop the top fan vibrating so badly. Turned out (in my case at least) that it wasn't my 1200rpm slipstream so much as the interaction between the metal grill on the top of the case and the metal case structure beneath it. Found that the top plastic pane...

The only consumer drives still coming with a 5-year warranty are the Caviar Blacks, unfortunately. Well, and the Velociraptors, but you can't get one of them that's bigger than 600gb.

If you want a 5-year warranty and 2TB capacity, your only option are two Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB drives, which aren't really very quiet from the reviews I've seen. The only way to get a quiet 2TB drive would be to relax your warranty need to 3 years and go for a Caviar Green (quieter but lo...

cordis - considering that's the CPU running at a decent load, 51c is absolutely fine and you have no need of a new cooler whatsoever unless you want to start getting silly with voltages. IMO anyways. spworly - I've had my i7 920 up at near 90c on the core sensors during stress testing (I just can't...

It's kinda funny, although you'd think Borderlands would be fairly lightweight on the GPU, it's actually one of the more demanding games out there. Hope it runs ok on the 8800GT

Eh, if the 8800GT is still fulfilling your performance needs, I'd go with the cheap and elegant bolt-thru ramsinks. Even if you planned to upgrade in 6 months or something, I might be inclined to get them, purely because they look pretty sweet >.>

If the fan exhausts look to be filling the height of one narrow side of the switch, then they're 60mm fans - probably 60*25mm ones if they're noisy (that's what was in my old HP switch). You should be able to replace them with any 60mm fan you can find, but you'll probably have to splice the wires -...

That Mercury PSU is one extremely cheap thing - I'd much rather use the Antec PSU, were it me.

PSU should be absolutely fine, will be a nicely balanced little machine

No, upping the voltage alone isn't overclocking. Overclocking is when you raise the clock speed of the CPU (over clock) above the normal value. Raising the voltage is merely a means to achieve this, and having a higher voltage alone will not improve performance at all, and will just create extra hea...

Well, 70 under load is ok, but just copying data to and fro is not really a load for any modern CPU. If removing the side panel doesn't help matters much, then it's entirely to do with the heatsink, so I doubt case fans etc are really at fault. You'll not really be lowering the voltage on the CPU, j...

Some of the current breed of motherboard are very fond of arbitrarily raising the core voltage if the CPU voltage is set to "auto". In the motherboard bios, try setting all the voltages to "normal" rather than "auto", see if that makes a difference. A new thermal paste application -may- help, but th...

Looking at your location, what are the ambient air temperatures while the cores are idling at 45-50c?

Assuming it's not really high ambient air temps, it's possible one of the heatsink push-pins isn't completely engaged, if you're using a pushpin-based heatsink.

zodaex wrote:But these suck compared to the Vertex

Not really. A few % slower, a few bucks cheaper, same controller.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdo ... =3631&p=16

1) I never used the Tricools supplied with the case, but I have a 1200rpm Slipstream in the upper fan mount, and I do get a certain amount of rattle from the grill occasionally. A pile of heavy coins in the centre of the grill stops the issue, but it is kinda annoying all the same. 2) All fans in th...

The fan controller is integral to the Tricools I'm afraid, no easy way to seperate it out. Best to buy a fanmate or similar if you'd like to adjust your Slipstreams.