They all tend to be high speed, and yes because of the brittle clear plastic, they will never be as quiet as other fans. I've seen black framed fans with LEDs. They were at least being made several years ago when I sold computers. It should be pretty easy to add LEDs to any normal plastic frame fan...

I just installed my new 3-platter Caviar Green WD10EADS and it seems to be the loudest hard drive I've had in a long time--much louder than the "Blue" WD6400AAKS. My quietest drive is actually a Black--a 2-platter Scorpio Black. Maybe it is all sample variation, so YMMV.

Blue_Sky wrote:Seagate and Hiatchi make loud drives.

Wrong. My Hitachi P7K500s were quieter than any of my WD Caviar drives--too bad they were fairly slow too (high access times). The speed of the WD6400AAKS is worth the extra noise to me.

I have read on newegg quite negative reviews on the integrated chipset motherboards. Ranging from terrible QC to overheating integrated GPUs that can't even run 1920x1080 resolution. Any truth to this? All integrated graphics chipsets for Intel suck--even the overhyped Geforce 9x00. Both AMD and nV...

it goes like this. 5+3+3+3+3+3 = 20. So it should be about 20 dB. But you can get whole lot different result in real life... No, it doesn't. It should work this way: 1 fan --> x dB 2x --> 3 + x 4x = 2x(2x) --> 3 + (3 + x) = 6 + x 8x = 2x(2x(2x)) --> 3 + (3 + (3 + x)) = 9 + x 16x = 2x(2x(2x(2x))) --...

Xbit Core i7 Super Cooler Roundup http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/coolers/core-i7-coolers-roundup/103_diagr2_refer-(Xbitlabs).png http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/coolers/core-i7-coolers-roundup/104_diagr3_oc-(Xbitlabs).png http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/coolers/core-i7-coolers-roundup/111_diagr4_ocs....

Mine is on order (don't know when I'll get it, but I'll let you know how I get on with it.) Yeah, uhm, cancel the order. The drive is a pile of garbage. Here's a roundup of 1 TB drives, but it also features a larger Pipeline. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/1tb-14hdd-roundup.html A...

Rebellious wrote:ok. So is "01" = 1 watt or 0.1?

"01" = 1

Also, there is no battery to charge in the iMac.

The Gigabyte G31 board looks nice except the max memory is 4GB and I might want to expand in the future. According to Intel the G33 chipset is the lowest power of any currently available--though G33 motherboards are getting harder to find. My Foxconn Foxconn G33M-S had no trouble with 8GB of DDR2-8...

I rarely turn off my PC, but I did yesterday and I noticed that the power meter showed "01" Watts. If the computer is turned off shouldn't it be 0 watts ? The power meter is a P3 Kill-A-Watt P4400. Also, when the PC is suspended, it shows "03" Watt. Is that 3 watts or 0.3? My iMac might use more po...

My ~$400 Gaming System: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 ($99 on eBay) Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L ($58 ) Coolink BAT1VS ($21) Scythe S-Flex F ($15) eVGA Geforce 9600GSO ($50) 2 x 2GB ADATA DDR2 800 (?) WD6400AAKS ($60) Samsung DVD Burner ($29) In Win Z-Series Mini Tower ($50) E7200 works fine up to 4.2GHz @ 1.5V (...

Heh. I guess my frame of mind is that thedon will aim for an 80+ PSU. Otherwise, why ask us and not the dudes over at behemoth_psus_help_warm_the_planet.com? Given that baseline, the waste heat and power from a 500W PSU running 80% efficiency at 225W load vs a 300W PSU running 80% efficient at 225W...

AZBrandon wrote:Some companies may be better than others, but it seems there are no truly excellent companies left anymore, just "good" ones, along with a lot of marginal and bad ones.

And no bad product users/reviewers?

1066-1200mhz speed ram has a noticable difference in gaming and he's gaming. No. Core 2 Duo FSB bandwidth << bandwidth dual channel DDR2 800. The only thing you can do is reduce latencies and you can do that with slower memory too. Increasing L2 cache size has diminishing benefits, and most games a...

Case: Antec Mini P180 PSU: Power Supply CoolerMaster 550W MOB: Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3LR P45+ICH10 FSB1600 DDR3 SATA2 GbN RAID CPU: Intel ATX E8400 CORE 2 DUO /3.0GHz/6MB/1333FSB/LGA775 GPU: Sapphire HD4870 512M RAM: GSkill 4G(2x2G) DDR3 1333 PC10666 DRIVE: Pioneer DVR-216BK 20x Dual Black HDD: WD 50...

doveman wrote:I thought the Foxconn A7DA-S 790GX looked quite good but I'm a bit concerned about reports that the Northbridge gets very hot as I wouldn't want to have to stick a noisy fan on it.

Foxconn seems to use rather small northbridge heatsinks, but it is fairly easy to replace them with somthing larger.

I have owned both!

Well, you always have the option to go to a store and have a look at the WD3200AAKS (~$55) - bring the pictures from the article with you and use them to determine if it's the silent version. Or try that 3200AAJS ($50). Why? The Hitachi P7K500s are quieter than any of the AAKS drives, and the entir...

A French type revolution would be very bad. I think we need a another American type revolution--just at a different scale. Specifically a universal voluntary constitutional republic. A borderless free country formed by anyone anywhere who is brave enough to belong to it. It's an idea.

OK, sounds good, but is are there any comparisons on the performance of the 2? I would love to hear of someone who owns both drives and could post some performance charts and give an opinion on which one is quieter. The Caviar Green should be a little faster than the Scorpio Blue. At least the 1TB ...

Pretty expensive for what you get. Speaking of used hardware: Handheld PCs are available fairly cheaply used and a few like the NEC Mobile Pro 880 and 900C even have (very slow) USB host ports. My 900C used 4W max at the wall (with the battery removed and the LCD backlight at max), but its 400MHz In...

I do not know anything about the AAJS, and it has not been reviewed by SPCR. Most retailers do not seem to have it in stock. And besides, how do you know that it does not suffer from the same issues as the AAKS, and you got lucky? I am pretty sure there was never a 2-platter WD3200AAJS. If so, at l...

Could someone please tell me about the external DVD RW and about what 4GB RAM uses the least power.-Am I right that all DDR2 RAM's at 1.8V use less power than ones @ higher voltage. Im not looking for anything fancy Yes, the external DVD burner will use less power if you keep it unplugged. I found ...

How does the Caviar Green 640GB spin slower than the Caviar Blue 640GB? I checked and their both 7200RPM So what I'm hearing from you is that the Caviar Green 640GB (WD6400AACS) is the quietest drive in your opinion? No, I am pretty certain the "C" = 5400 rpm. Western Digital is calling this Intell...

So you do need a modern low-capacity drive :) An example would be the 320 GB WD3200AAKS. You can find a review on the main site. The WD3200AA K S has several possiblle issues. Some are older design 2-platter drives (I had one, and they were decent), some of the newer single platters are missing par...

I hope you're not suggesting the media is all liberal, because the amount of right wing propaganda equals the left. If only they were at all liberal. Liberal propaganda is an oxymoron. Many think they are liberal but are actually very conservative. Most of the real liberal thinkers are called conse...

I'm not sure how much credence to put in this (superglue?), but if they're genuine, I guess those of us who've moaned about Scythe's pushpins may have to eat our words... I'm not worried that the push pins won't hold. It is that the mounting force of the push pin bracket is too low. Also a few of t...

With changes in party we typically see only changes in which corporations gain more favor than with the opposing party. But that is totally the people's own fault. People were and are decieved, not so much by the candidates but by the public educators--the news reporters. This is the real downfall ...

I certainly do not want a performance decrease when buying a new hard drive. Do you think I'll see an increase and if so how much? I am happy with my refurbished WD3200BEKT. It is small, fast, and quiet, and it didn't cost me too much. Maybe someone else can help you with more information about WD2...

That's what HR-03's are for. ;) If you don't need to use other expansion slots, a simple big hunk of machined aluminum will work. I've used a discarded Intel Pentium 4 heatsink that I bought for a $1. One of my current cards might get the Zalman CNPS-7000Cu I have sitting on the shelf. ;) I doubt a...