I'm pleased with my 500Gb Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVTand am looking to get a 1Gb WD10TEVT or TPVT. I'd appreciate any feedback on these: on noise, performance, reliability... and how they compare to Samsung Spinpoint MT2 HM100UI or Toshiba MK1059GSM?

cheers

They're all fairly close these days, I think vibration is the biggest variable, probably as much from sample to sample as model to model.

Does that mean there's now really not much to choose between the 2.5" drives? The spec/performance/reliability are pretty similar...?

Will SPCR be re-testing some recent drives? I'd be interested in this too, and especially at the 1Tb 2.5" drives: Samsung Spinpoint MT2 HM100UI Toshiba MK1059GSM Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10TEVT / TPVT Anyone have any experience with these? in terms of performance, noise, reliability etc.? :)

It's relatively easy to account for the slightly different power consumption of, say, chipsets, and of course you would test using same set up with RAM, drives etc. And the tests always have different 'usage scenarios', i.e. they test at idle, under different loads etc.

Please could SPCR do a review comparing several Sandy Bridge boards using the same CPU? It's clear that there's a significant difference in energy efficiency between boards using the same chipsets. As power draw becomes more frugal, particularly at idle power, this is becoming the point of distincti...

It appears that with Sandy Bridge, the CPUs have gone as low as they can go at idle... If you are chasing watts, the action has shifted from the CPU to the motherboard. I agree, and so perhaps this needs more careful analysis in reviews. Intel boards appear to be setting the benchmark for efficienc...

CA_Steve, I agree, but the review does not make it clear how this compares to other CPUs on a like-for-like basis. Or to put it another way, it does not clarify the energy efficiency between boards , which is an important consideration for people looking at low-power systems. Sandy Bridge represents...

At top right of each post there is a small symbol next to "Posted: date...". Right-click on that and "Copy Link Location"

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1143-page5.html In the above review, the 2100 idles at around 20w DC (~30w at the wall). In this review, the 2100 idles at close to 40w DC (~50w at the wall). jeffy1021, I agree and raised this in the post above , but the discussion went other ways. These are bi...

Great article, just the info I was hoping for. :) I have the i3 530 and an Athlon II X2 240, both good value CPUs. I don't need high-performance CPUs, so efficiency (esp low idle power) and value are more important. It's interesting to see the difference the motherboard makes in terms of efficiency....

Hello, would like to buy the ECS H55H-I mini-ITX board, Intel Socket 1156. New or used. Was recently on Newegg for $50 with voucher.

Anyone have one?

cheers

Why is there no idle power consumption improvements? Wonder what i3 is like. I'm interested in this too. I can't see that Sandy Bridge offers any significant improvement in idle power over Clarkdale, although there are leaps in performance and efficiency under load. There are also likely to be sign...

Yes I've been searching for a review of a Sandy Bridge mini-ITX board that compares it to a Clarkdale mini-ITX board... but haven't found one yet :( There's also a big difference between mini-ITX boards: of the Clarkdales, the Intel and ECS are very efficient, the Zotac less so, and the Gigabyte som...

In terms of idle power consumption, is Sandybridge really that much better?

The Intel DH67BL is 17W at idle, but so is the Intel DH57JG mini-ITX board.

Look forward to hearing how this goes, I've always wanted to build a case that looked like this: http://www.chappellofbondstreet.co.uk/image.php?size=big&product_id=WIT-W804-MET ...but very hard finding one with base large enough for mini-itx, though possible with pico or nano. I'd also thought abou...

since the power consumption discrepancy might be because of the on-board video, have you tried undervolting the IGP? I notice on the BIOS screen that the option is definitely there... Anyone tried this? I also read somewhere that disabling USB3 reduces the power consumption. Be interested to hear w...

Thanks MoJo, presumably the pic is from Robert Dyas...

And I wonder how you decide to choose from the identical £6 or £5 one...

There may be similar questions around cooling in the new Wesena cases, see this thread for links through to discussion on avforums. With all that thick aluminium it would be great to get heatsinks pressed against the side, or onto the lid. You may be able to use one of the heatpipe coolers for Seren...

Anyone in the UK should check Robert Dyas shops. They have them for £5 in the clearance section at the moment.

MoJo, I couldn't find this on Robert Dyas online, is this clearance offer just in-store?

cheers

@dhanson, a really useful thread, and the cross-thread at storagereview, thanks for your hard work... methinks I'm going Intel G2, about the best for XP...

Anyone have experiences with the BIOS fan control on this board The BIOS can control fan speed, although options are limited to setting the minimum fan speed to 'low' or 'off'. I've heard that with the minimum fan speed set to 'off', the system allows the CPU to get pretty hot before ramping up the ...

This mobo has a option to enable bios controlled fan speed. There is a further option to set the minimum fan speed to 'low' or 'off'. I have tried both, and found that both work well, although like ntlavas, the system allowed the CPU to get pretty hot before ramping up the fan speed when the minimu...

Instant failure on the 'picoPSU' Shame... There's more discussion on the original avforums Wesena thread HERE . I like the look of these cases, although the ITX7 is an Origen M10 lookalike, and the ITX2 casing appears to be based on the same aluminium extrusion as the Habey ITC cases ... a nice des...

Thanks for the info, yes it seems the additional 4 pins on the 24-pin ATX are for PCIe cards in high-power systems. I am looking at the ECS H55H-I, which has max processor TDP of 87W, and will not use a graphics card, so I am assuming that there wont be a problem with a 20-pin ATX connector. However...

Thanks for this Mike, very useful... although I now notice the link towards the end of your Winmate DD-24AX review . Do you feel this is typical, this significant difference in efficiency between a 'typical' server board and consumer board? If so, might you start including VRM power efficiency curve...

I've had an email back from LinITX saying that the FSP 150W adaptor they sell with their PicoPSU 150-XT is fanless. I have asked Mini-box the same question about their 150W adaptor. I need to use a PicoPSU with 24-pin ATX connector, which limits it to PicoPSU 150-XT or 160-XT. But I lam very unlikel...

For me the limitation is that only the PicoPsu-150-XT and PicoPsu-160-XT have 24-pin ATX connectors, as on most of the H55 or 780G boards I was looking at.

The 90W and 120W PicoPSU are both 20-pin ATX

I am also looking at the PicoPSU 150-XT, but for an i3 -540 on the ECS H55H-I board, and the comments above indicate that I should be OK. I was also wondering how much difference there is between the 150-XT and the 160-XT ? It seems the 160-XT is higher power, but also better efficiency at lower loa...

Any offers for this BorgFX VGA heatpipe cooler kit? If not will put on eBay...

Found another manufacturer's pic showing these rubber grommet mounts for hard drives: http://www.gelmec.co.uk/GelmecImages/GelmecSoftGelGrommetProductShot.jpg Very similar to those used for hard drive mounting in the Coolermaster case, see pics on Epiacenter review: http://www.epiacenter.de/modules....