Looks like a nice build. How silent is this setup with minimal safe flow? Does the pump or fluid make any noise?

By the way, I love the brutalist speaker stand.

Thanks for the info. Too bad the Noctua won't fit--it's 90 mm high.

How large is the clearance below a standard optical drive? Would a Noctua NH-C12P fit in there without the fan, or is it too high?

Given how much the i7-2600S will auto-overclock, I'd say it is a prime candidate for a quiet gaming rig, unless AMD can whip up some terrific magic. Remember that many games still are not using more than 2 cores, so the high turbo difference will be an important factor in a CPU that's guaranteed to ...

If you have enough exhaust fan(s), and the mid-case fan(s) pointing at the exhaust ports, you can probably do without ducts. Remember that ducts can keep airflow from less hot components that still need cooling; maybe use some cardboard covers to create internal intakes by blocking some airflow path...

Then I found the PWM/VR-adjustable Scythe which might give me the best of all worlds: it'd be SpeedFan adjustable if I wanted, or dial-VR adjustable without additional hardware/mods. You don't need PWM when using SpeedFan. There's an option called "PWM mode" on the "Advanced" tab for your chipset. ...

Nice. I can't wait for the Gigabyte answer. Looks amazing, but I trust the passive cards from manufacturers no more after my 5750 reached 100C under Furmark within 4 minutes, despite good cooling. Nothing will beat the Accelero S1 I got on my 6850. GPUs are designed to survive very high temperatures...

If it's the graphics card, turning V-Sync on can help. It's an easy thing to try, just look in the video driver settings.

Using Page Up/Down isn't much of a solution, as they do what they say and I like to scroll slowly with the side-bar or arrow keys as I'm reading, or when I'm looking for a section of the document and want it in the middle of the screen. I see your point. Maybe LCDs are just not for you yet. (No sar...

Unless you scroll through images a lot, you might just switch to using the Page Up/Down keys. A non-moving picture is perfectly static on an LCD, so even a cheap one is better for reading than any CRT.

My best experience was with metal-mesh filters over intake fans, using a positive pressure setup. Anyone can do a basic clean-up of that with a vacuum cleaner without opening the PC. Fanless will work as well, if the budget allows it. It should be easy enough to set up if a graphics card and/or high...

doveman wrote:So if there was a way to cap games to 60fps, it might be worth sacrificing the extra fps and using a PVA/IPS LCD @ 60hz.

That's exactly what vertical synchronization does. Triple buffering can reduce the performance hit considerably.

True, 900RPM is a lot for the typical 140mm fan, but the lack of a box or shroud should practically eliminate the majority of turbulence noise (aside from what goes through the fins). This will also allow a lot of air to move around the fins instead of between them, wasting airflow. That and the sh...

Yes, it only needs to be a standard-sized case for most people. The standard size is achieved by cramming stuff together, and forcing hot air to move from one component to another. You won't get a small case while retaining good airflow. Note that the cube idea would mean doubling the case width. T...

Silverstone makes cases that apply this principle: The Raven RV-02, and the Fortress FT-02—both reviewed here at SPCR. Take out the fans, and you have a basic fanless setup. Keep the fans, and even the most power-hungry components will stay cool. As to why there aren't more of these. They are very b...

The Apple Keyboard's low travel is a blessing when you do a lot of typing (like thousands of words a day). It's easy on the wrists, and it allows extreme typing speeds without much effort. Yes, you do have to get used to not raising your fingers so high, but that's a couple of days tops, and it's th...

In fact, forget model numbers . Tell me why a smaller chip that uses the same power as a larger chip should run cooler, even though it has less area for heat dissipation. It won't. Funny thing is, AnandTech shows the 6870 as having virtually the same power consumption as the 5850 while providing ad...

That really doesn't have anything to do with what I asked. Yes, better cooler will help, but that goes for both the 5850 and 6870.My question has nothing to do with coolers, I am talking about a fundamental property of the chip. You seem to be confusing the chip with the card as a whole. I already ...

The new GPU runs hotter because AMD used less efficient heatsinks on the reference cards. The performance per watt is better, but if you want coll & quiet, you need to look for non-reference heatsinks.

I have to correct myself. I found an Intel whitepaper (PDF link) stating that overprovisioning their SSDs can increase performance by 10%. However, it seems that you need to use their tools to reduce the available capacity, not just leave parts unformatted.

This advice sounds like something the first SSDs would benefit from. Most current models clearly have spare capacity set aside by the manufacturers. Just look at how many don't show capacities that are powers of 2.

What do you mean by "fan maintenance"? You buy an S-FLEX, you put it in, you forget about it.

ermi wrote:The top open scenario is not realistic at all.

This was worrying to me, too, but I found other reviews with different "cooking" setups and the same awesome results. Take a look here (testing setup described here) and here.

I cannot make out though, how exactly a card can be quieter, having higher TDP (and temps not going through the roof). AMD sacrificed some cooling to make the fans slower, figuring the GPU can handle it. Sapphire added a more efficient heatsink, lowering the fan speeds further. Nothing unusual abou...

GFLOPS is just another benchmark, every benchmark you choose will give a different percentage increase. The difference is quite big in every game benchmark on every site. It's a lot more than the modest GFLOPS increase. You'd know that if you'd bothered to check instead of repeating your assumption...

Comparing GFLOPS values for different architectures is a great way to not get anywhere. Look at some benchmarks—the actual rendering performance increase is many times that of the power draw rise.

Overall not much is gained in power efficiency. Same 40nm TSMC manufacturing process, a bit smaller die, expected result. Idle clocks for both new cards 100MHz core and 300MHz memory and idle consumption on par with 5770. What do you mean "not much gained"? The power consumption of the 6850 is near...

Wow, nice marketing work they did. Have you watched the latest South Park episode?

12 TB? Seems pretty sensible for GIS backups in a small company.

As noted by others, this is mostly good for lowering the prices of smaller drives. I'd watch the 2.5" hard disks. 1 TB is already there, so we're approaching a point where recommending 3.5" for a quiet rig won't make sense any more.

The top is a Gentle Typhoon at 1200rpm, and it's supposed to be controlled by the motherboard, but no matter what I try, this board wont adjust it's speed. This probably means that the motherboard sets some minimum speed at boot, and never has to ramp it up according to its sensors. So it looks stu...