Yeah, Big Shuriken is a pretty good cooler if you're limited in height, but in a case like that you should get a tower heatsink. You'll get better performance with less noise.

Nice system, and all the systems on your site are great as well. Those WiNDy cases are a work of art, just beautiful. Wish I could afford to buy and import one.

Yes. The hotter it is, the higher the resistance and the more power it consumes. I think the difference is very tiny, though. You're talking about maybe a couple watts difference over the usual temperature range for a CPU or GPU. I'd swear I remember reading an Xbitlabs (I think) article where they ...

Ah sorry, I misread it as 640GB per side.

They don't use a backplate, so for heavy heatsinks there are concerns about bending/warping the board. Also I don't think they mount as tightly and securely as a bolt-through kit with a backplate. It's just a very poor mounting solution for large, aftermarket heatsinks.

640GB on one side of a platter is some pretty incredible density.

Wonder if there's anything stopping them from achieving that density on both sides and shipping a drive with ~1.25TB/platter. 5TB 4-platter drive anyone?

Kind of comparing apples to oranges. If you want something compact, NSK-3480 is about as good as you can do without making big compromises (half-height expansion cards, proprietary power supplies, etc.). I've been very happy with the form factor of my NSK-3300 (earlier revision of the 3480, almost t...

You can use silicone grommets to reduce the amount of vibration transferred to the case from the hard disks. It helps, but isn't nearly as good as elastic suspension, so I don't know if it'll get rid of your problem. Suspension was the only thing that kept my old 7200RPM Samsung 1TB drive from trans...

You could try infrasonic's power connector mod. Or a right angle power adapter (4 pin molex or SATA power, depending on the type of drive you have), I'd assume these can be found online. http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=56875 External USB optical might be the easier route, though...

Definitely the hard drive, the fans spin very slow and don't make much noise.

Mike, wouldn't happen to have one of the new passive X Series PSUs in the lab yet, would you?

Saw this on another forum and came here to post it. I was too late, though.

Very exciting products, can't wait until Mike is able to get his hands on one. It does appear to have more/bigger heatsinks that the X-650, though, and the case is also more open.

There's no original model AFAIK, that's the same Big Shuriken you can find today. Looks like SPCR just took their own measurements instead of using the manufacturer's advertised ones (120mm fan, 58mm height for the cooler according to Scythe). Also I'm not sure where you're seeing it uses a 3-pin, l...

No problem. How long until Mike is able to review the AC fans? It'd be nice to have some objective noise measurements on them. As I mentioned, they seem quiet to me, but I probably don't have nearly as discerning an ear as some of the people on this site. Will be interesting to see how they stack up...

I've been pretty happy with my Arctic Cooling PWM fans (different model than you're looking at, though, AF12025PWM, not F12 PWM), they don't seem to have any obtrusive motor noise or anything. Have owned a handful of AC fans and they all seemed pretty solid from a noise standpoint. You might have to...

Old, but still a pretty solid heatsink, especially for passive cooling. Check eBay completed listings to get an idea of what it's worth, looks like the Plus rev B sells for $10-15 + ship.

Fin spacing looks tighter, which will probably hurt performance as a passive cooler. Then again, most people these days opt for a very low speed fan on the CPU, as you can significantly increase cooling performance while adding a negligible amount of noise. Also, the flame (?) decal on the top is ju...

Modern drives are pretty quiet when they're just reading a DVD at 2x or 4x, something like that. It's just when speed ramps up that they get noisy. Set them to burn at low speed in your burning software instead of MAX. Will cut down a ton on noise, but will also take forever to burn stuff, so that's...

I think it might be worthwhile to measure open-air FPM, because that would probably be pretty relevant for people who want to use them as case fans or in other situations involving low static pressure. But I agree that measuring FPM with the fan mounted on a heatsink doesn't really seem to provide a...

Good stuff Mike. I guess I never really thought about it before, but delta C does seem like a much better metric for measuring fan performance on a heatsink. One simple measurements that takes into account static pressure and other variables that would be difficult and time consuming to measure sepa...

Things get warm definitely, but are within acceptable limits for me. GPU temps are fine (even with a slight overclock, am running it at 790/910 compared to the stock 750/800), they get up into the 80s when running Furmark, but none of the games I play burn the GPU anywhere as much as Furmark. During...

Meh, I didn't have too much difficulty installing an Accelero S2 on my card. It could definitely be improved, but the heatsink was very affordable and offered excellent performance. I can live with a bit more headache during installation, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives. Also a lot ...

Thanks. And yeah, I've gotten it to the point that it's very quiet. But recently my LCD has started acting up and buzzes really bad at times. Kind of negates the quiet PC, gonna have to find a replacement sometime. :( Anyway, added a very basic duct between the CPU heatsink and rear fan. Updated my ...

Built a low profile system, but ended up going back to my old tower for a couple reasons. The cooling wasn't that good, it was loud, and it wasn't that much more compact than my NSK3300 (actually it seemed a lot bigger, despite having a smaller volume, because it was a few inches longer and deeper)....

Have a Scythe Big Shuriken low profile heatsink for sale. Was only used for a week or so and is in like-new condition. SPCR did a low profile heatsink roundup that has some info on the Big Shuriken's noise and performance. Here's a link to the article. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article964-page1....

Nothing too interesting, just creating a duct from the CPU heatsink to my rear 120mm fan by zip tying a couple fan housings together. Two 25mm wide fans should be just about perfect, they will butt up almost right against the heatsink and make for a good duct. Anyway, I think I found what I need, th...

Hey, am looking for some broken/dead/too loud/otherwise useless 120mm fans. Only condition is the outside casing needs to be in tact, can't be cracked or broken or anything like that. But broken fan blades or a hub isn't a problem since I'll cut that off, I just need the housing. Actually all I need...

Is there any possibility to RMA your unit and get a new one? I'm really surprised that everybody talks so very good things of this cooler and in your review it seems to have been such a frustrating experience (noise-wise speaking) I'd tend to chalk it up to most computer enthusiasts definition of "...

To be fair, these kind of quibbles could probably be said about most boards. My Gigabyte is great overall, but not without its share of annoyances and quirks. Unfortunately no motherboard is perfect, and even if you do your research before buying, you're probably going to run into some minor, unexpe...

Tantalum caps are expensive, and the temperature stability probably isn't important enough to justify the cost. I'm sure you'll be happy with either board, MSI and Gigabyte both make great products.