Thanks. That business with the fans makes much more sense. It looks like the 8700 will also fit. It's probably overkill in terms of cooling, but hey, why not? The fan will be horizontal - does that affect what I should choose, or should I just keep a close eye on it and swap it out if it goes south...

Chris Chan wrote:What's with that crazy eleven blade side fan? Is it a 120x20? One wonders if they could have not made the case 5mm wider.

Read the original post, it's a 14cm fan.

I'm sure it cools well, but it seems kinda big for an HTPC. I built an HTPC with an Overture II not too long ago, and the 8800GTS and TV card sitting next to each other is killing my temps. This case looks interesting, but still seems quite large. It'll probably compete well with the Silverstone and...

This answer probably won't reassure you, but . . . The only time I've had a hard drive reach 50°C is when I had a 300GB Seagate 7200.9 (hot drive) hanging outside the case with almost no flow on a hot Houston day. With decent airflow, I don't think I've ever seen a hard drive get up past 50°C. Wit...

The ASUS P5K3 Deluxe can only use DDR3 RAM. I don't know anywhere that carries that RAM, and if you do find some, it could be extremely expensive. It might help you future proof your system, but I don't think it's worth it. The P5K Deluxe only uses DDR2 and should be good enough unless you're willin...

I think the Thermalright SI-128 would work better with an NSK2400. In the 2400 there's no top vent like in the Antec Overture II, so a fan on top of the XP-120 wouldn't help all that much. The SI-128 is beefier and cools better, but of course also costs more. There's not many socket 478 motherboards...

Great article! I think you'll need an engineer experienced in designing wind/water tunnels to do better. I do think the grid would be helpful. A series of grids might work better. One deep grid creates boundary layers along the walls of the grid. This is basically air resistance. The deeper the grid...

The thermalright XP-120 with a fan on top is another option. The XP-120 is quite a bit shorter than the SI series, so you could fit a fan on top. With the SI series, you'll have to run the heatsink passively. But since you have two big fans near the big heatsink, it's probably not an issue. Zalman 7...

Hmmm. That's a very interesting layout. Just for some more clairification, when everything is closed, how is the fan oriented. Is it blowing toward the back of the case or down on the memory? Where is it sucking air in from? Sorry, I can't really tell from the pictures. Also it doesn't look like the...

Like grekawaski said, cutting off the fan blades doesn't help since the fans will still spin. You get the heat and buzzing of the fan motors, but zero cooling for your components. A fan over the memory is not very descriptive. I highly doubt that they have a specific memory fan that's any bigger tha...

Mike, I just read this article and some things popped out to me as strange. The hard drive temperature for the AMD system was consistently lower, even when the AMD CPU was under load and the Intel CPU was idling (lower temps). Do you think this is just an issue with the HDD thermisitor or is there s...

You can't conclude that all or even most budget core 2 systems use 30W more than an AMD equivalent. maybe not 30W, but there is plenty of evidence that current AMD chips use less at idle than Core 2; for some reason idle power of C2D is relatively high, even with EIST. However the difference betwee...

O Really? HP Pavilion a1640n & a1630n: Intel vs. AMD? AMD w/CnQ at Idle: 47W Intel w/SpeedStep at Idle: 76W That may be true, but one should consider all the facts. The Intel computer ran signficantly hotter across the board (CPU and HDD) and the chipset was most likely the same. I'm not positive a...

The main benefit of an AMD system vs an Intel system these days is that the AMD system will have much lower idle power draw thanks to Cool'n'Quiet. Less power = less heat = less noise = lower electricity bills That hasn't been true for quite a while. Intel has SpeedStep or EIST (enhanced intel spee...

Here's an old how-to I wrote up: Bubble-wrap plus plastic jar suspension The pictures show me using some cardboard to make a crude tube, but a more sturdy option is to cut up a fruit juice plastic bottle. Your case lacks the space required for the full all-around suspension, but there's enough room...

I suggest that you reconsider you hard drive choices. The Seagate 7200.10s run hot and noisy. Consider getting a Samsung or Western Digital SE16 drive for data storange. I would also reconsider getting the Raptor. They're fast, but with advances in technology inside the 7200rpm drives, the Raptor's ...

Well, the pictures in that link you posted show a solid partition between the HDD and the PSU (maybe it's removable?). http://www.dansdata.com/images/pcv1000/inside640.jpg If there isn't one, I think you could get away with not having a front intake fan at all since the PSU will pull air through the...

1. The SOLO comes with one 120mm Antec Tri-Cool fan. At the lowest of the three speed settings, its fairly quiet. Quiet enough for most people IMO. You might want to hold off on getting the Nexus fans until you find out the Tri-Cool is too noisy. Or you could get one and use the Tri-Cool if necessar...

Well for me its an interesting exercise in how I would cool your case, which is one I probably wouldn't buy myself (not a big fan of the mesh look and large case). If there's no solid partitions between the HDDs and PSU, you might not need an intake fan if you seal the bottom vents. The PSU will pul...

I'm not suggesting that you put a fan in where the DVD drives are. I'm hoping that the exhasut fan and the slot cooler will draw enough air through the front mesh to keep that area cool. The "front mesh intake" is just an area where cool air is supposed to come in, not necessarily a fan. I also just...

The P150's included PSU is perfectly fine. It's very quiet, and only slightly louder than a Seasonic, which are the quietest PSUs out there unless you get a completely passive one. Personally, I'd say stick with the stock Antec Tri-Cool and set it on low. If it's too noisy, then get the Nexus. The s...

I'm a little confused by what you mean by 'above'. Do you mean relative to motherboard slots, or physically above? Heat rises, so you would want the slot cooler in one of the 'lower' motherboard slots, which are physically 'above' since your case has an inverted motherboard layout. You might also wa...

Well a 3Ghz Pentium 4 isn't exactly easy to cool, but looking at your setup, I'm not sure what would be causing excessively high CPU temps, and actually 60-65C isn't all that hot for a P4 under load. Maybe make sure that the CPU heatsink is well attached and that you don't have too much thermal past...

Wow, that looks great! Thanks for the pictures, now I know how much room an XP-120 really needs on a mATX board. I'm looking to build something very similar to yours after the Core 2 Duo price drop later this month. I really hope you can cool it passively, and IMHO I think you can if you have both 1...

To replace the noisy ASUS chipset fan, I'd suggest looking at the Thermalright HR-05 SLI. It's designed for SLI motherboards, which I don't think you have, but it could work on yours and allow you to take out that noisy fan. I'm not sure about what to do with heat building up above the graphics card...

I was about to post most of the same things as wherewolf, but he beat me to it. I agree with all his comments except for a few. I don't think you'll need the power converter adapter. I'm pretty sure 20+4 and 24 are the same thing. The advantage of 20+4 is that you can break off the extra '4' pins an...

Hard drive temperatures would be helpful. Use SpeedFan or some other software that can read hard drive temperatures. Seagates aren't necessarily very cool and quiet these days, but since yours are fairly small (not many platters), it's probably OK. BTW, angelkiller, the P150 has 2 90mm fan mounts fo...

They're going to fit a new hard disk, on the basis that a noisy hard disk probably indicates one that's going to fail soon (bear in mind that the machine is just two months old!). The Seagate model in the new iMacs should, according to an engineer I was speaking to, be virtually silent. He's never ...

I suspect the only thing I can do is replace it with a different model. Are there any notoriously quiet hard disks around? iMacs use SATA2. There are quieter SATA 2 hard drives out there, but I'm not sure if you can just move the operating system over like in a PC. Macintosh is notorious for making...

There's a reference/recommended list here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article699-page1.html . Most people will agree that anything above a 7 in quality and noise on that list is fairly good. Two things I see: 1) You don't need 600W for that system you're proposing. Even a 300W PSU can handle what...