My typical budget 80+ Gold PSU is a surplus or used Dell unit of around 240 watts and probably under $15 (not including shipping). The place I get them from is pretty good, the "used" PSUs look about like a new one, probably takeouts from unsold new stock... I can look them up on Plug Load Solutions...

Having just read the review paying particular attention to the HDD mounting, I see that it is slightly burried but it would work better if it was mounted in the middle slot and the top and bottom trays removed so that convection could flow a little air from bottom to top through the slots in the mot...

I know 80+ Platinum really isn't budget but I live in a warm area and don't have AC so keeping my temperatures low pays off for me. Platinum is rather pointless: with reference to your main goal, more probably that not it wouldn't add anything noticeable over a really good Gold unit. I don't think ...

Manabu wrote:

QUIET! wrote:I didn't look at the case in the article, maybe it buries its HDD.

I think you should have looked at the HD and SSD positioning on the case before jumping in defending it...

Who is defending? I haven't commented on the article or the case, I commented on a post about HDD cooling which I quoted.

After rebate that does look pretty nice and I have a Superflower built Rosewill Capstone that has worked well for me.

I'll have to think about that one.

Hot running SSDs should be a thing of the past also. I buy Samsung because they perform well and run cool. Any way, I think common sense dictates that any "silent" computer should not be packed like a high density rack mount server. If you can do that, it's not hard to generate enough air flow to ke...

JJ wrote:Are we not cooling hard drives any longer?

In this age of very very fast solid state drives, there is no reason to use high RPM hot running hard drives in a "silent" PC.

WD Reds run cool enough that unless they are burried, they are fine.

I know 80+ Platinum really isn't budget but I live in a warm area and don't have AC so keeping my temperatures low pays off for me. Any way, the cheapest I can find is the Antec Earthwatts Platinum 650 watt. I have heard some good (high efficiency) and some bad (high-ish ripple, noisy fan) and some ...

You could go for the Scythe Big Shuriken 2 Rev B ...but replace the thinline fan with a 25mm one (like the reference $13 Nexus Real Silent or a $15 PWM Scythe Glidestream). The total is ~$58-$60. Vastly improved performance and still only 71mm high. That's back in to the price range of a Noctua 92m...

Right now I think my biggest source of noise will be my BD burner. Unfortunately there is no easy way to mount it with grommets, gaskets or any other compliant mount. I could make a new drive cage but that seems a little extreme. I could cover the cage and exterior of the drive with something like D...

I'm in a similar situation, about 137mm of clearance. Also I hate push pin mounting. When my heat sink weighs more than a pound, I want a back plate, nuts and bolts, not some plastic gizmos pulling on the motherboard. I would try the Coolermaster TX3 Evo or whatever it's called but it uses push pins...

I was browsing the local electronics surplus store and I found an Accent HTPC case new in box. They are older Korean cases from around 2004 to a few years newer. They mostly follow a common formula: thick aluminum front pannel with a VFD display, a removable top that is aluminum I think and a steel ...

If your parts come in an anti-static bag, touching the bag should equalize your potentials, then make sure you are always touching something that is ground, like the metal can on a USB jack. That's my theory any way, just don't allow a big potential to form between your body/tools and the parts you ...

I guess that might stop some people, not me but some people...

Look at the specs and prices of the Xeon e3-1245v2. I keep saying this all the time but there are some Xeons that are priced very well. The 1245v2 is essentially a slightly slower i7-3370 (no k) for about $50 less. If your motherboard supports it (most but not all socket 1155 boards do), it seems id...

"SERVER Xeon" is just more poor marketing from Intel. The e3-12**v2 series are just slightly different versions of the Ivy Bridge socket 1155 core i3, i5 and i7 chips that don't have all the server features disabled. By the same notion, the socket 2011 i7s are just renamed (real) server Xeons and th...

That's not Z75...

Oops, I just saw my error, I wrote B75 when I meant Z75.

(Oops: edit) Z75 should support at least 2 SATA3 and 4 SATA2 but some boards like mini-itx may lack the connectors. In the past I have avoided Intel motherboards because they often lacked features I was looking for and were expensive. The Z75 board made me give them a try because it has the features...

I have an Intel dz75ml-45k and it seems fine. It was cheap, $80. The big issue with choosing a motherboard that does not support over clocking is that those boards often are lacking a lot of settings that a person might use to under-volt or power optimize an always on or ~silent PC. Last weekend I i...

Heat pipe technology is pretty weird but the heat pipes work incredibly well compared to a solid copper heat sink. The Gaia (and 212 I think) uses direct touch heat pipes that are swaged flat for good CPU contact and its bigger than a 92mm tower heat sink and those work fine too. If you push enough ...

I seem to recall that a PSU manufacturer remarked that all PSUs which generate 5v from the 12v rail would work and the picoPSU does exactly that, it generates everything from a single 12v brick. Power bricks don't have any type of 5v turn on circuitry like a standard ATX PSU so it will regulate volt...

Of course a good review would explain what a picoPSU is and why it was used for testing. A very good review would probably test with a cheapo PSU and a flavor or two of 80+ rated PSU as well to show the effect of PSU choice on power usage. The review in question hardly mentions the PSU, probably bec...

Stress testing: I tried 3DMark2011 but couldn't get it to run. I tried to fix it, no luck. Next try OCCT. GPU load test: 73c temp, 141 watts power draw. CPU load test: 62c temp, 68 watts power draw. Linpack load test: 63c temp, 66 watts power draw. PSU load test: 77c GPU temp, 64c CPU temp, 165 watt...

Sure but its not a smart setup for testing low power idle states. A smart and inexpensive setup would be a picoPSU with a 12v brick wired for 12v current measurement. If you wanted to do it right, 3-4 Agilent digital power supplies with GPIB or something for data aquisition. If I ever get a picoPSU ...

Its just odd that they would use a PSU so inappropriately rated when trying to go for low power consumption. They are really lucky that the efficiency doesn't go to hell at 2.5% load. I know I wouldn't expect my PSU to be efficient at 2.5%, I keep my fingers crossed at 10%. A lot of people will opt ...

Nice results but it took a $250 PSU to get it.

It was an 860 watt 80+ platinum PSU but that just reinforces the fact that people don't need 860 watts for a PC that idles at 21 watts (and 80+ certification needs to start testing down there too).

I was getting spectacular (to me) idle power with my i3-3220 and 7790 combo at 23 watts before I entered 3d mode, then it jumped to about 36 watts after that. It looks like I need a driver upgrade but at least I'll know what to look for.

Thanks.

1156, 1155 and 1150 all use the same motherboard hole pattern so compatibility is fairly certain, the biggest thing to worry about is a motherboard with some component that interferes with the mounting bracket. You can probably find photos that show the areas in question but most new motherboards ar...

Not 10 watts but I've been installing Windows Home Server 2011 on an i3-3220 with a Radeon HD7790 GPU and its idling at 23 watts with no real power saving measures beside a 255 watt 80+ gold PSU. That's like nuc power consumption with low end gaming system performance. I bet it would be much less po...

I'm very surprised that cases like you describe are so uncommon. I think one of the reasons is that the ATX PSU form factor isn't terribly conducive to fitting in a small case with a tower style CPU cooler and full height expansion cards. My wish list includes micro-ATX motherboard compatibility, a ...