No sound, solid green light, no video....

90% likely it's a fried CPU. If it was a known good CPU before, then the swap blew up something on the MB.

It's tricky, since you have to crack the case. You want to take the intake and exit slot areas and Dremel them out carefully(finishing with a nail file very carefully is recommended so as to not mar the looks). This will literally double the airflow, which means less noise. Other than that, your opt...

Those things are worthless for grounding issues, IME. Or vastly overpriced.

http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/mo ... delID=2814
This company makes the real deal, IMO, at least short of special per-outlet blocks.

The stock fan isn't great, but you CAN take the little connector pin and hard-wire it to 7V if you want. I had a 9500. It's now in my EX's machine, in fact, with a new fan. Here's how to do it - you need to only remove the fan from the bracket. It's held on with a couple of screws and you'll need a ...

I got a sets of the Enzotech low profile ones. Works perfect, if a bit close. The 3m tape is the best out there and really sticks well. The S1 kit has a long heat sink for the Radeon cards in the kit, though the OEM one works better if you can manage to make it fit/not have to remove it. I used a dr...

The original cal of duty games ran just fine on my Radeon 800XT with a P4/2.4/533 and 512MB ram. Yes, that was about 5 years ago. Heh. Anything new will crush those old titles, which are still fantastic and cheap. Remember, everything is new to him. He'd probably like playing Quake and Doom, even.

The only option that I know of would be one or possibly two PICO-PSUs. they are essentially 95-98%+ efficient in themselves, since they are DC-DC power supplies, so the only problem here is how efficient the power brick/module is. And 90%+ efficient 12V power supplies are available. It's tons easier...

Also, trying to power devices like this directly from your computer can and will eventually burn out your USB ports. This can work pretty much as-is, though, from most powered USB hubs. They tend to support up to 5-10W on average, which is far more than you'll need for this.(but it's really then, ju...

Still, it's as fast as any SSD. But far more robust in long-term use. I have turned on old 386 computers that have been in storage for a decade or more and the ram still worked fine. The real deal, though, is what it does to a swap file as there's no cueing and in theory an unlimited number of heads...

Get a small 2nd drive or if running a 64 bit OS, use 4-8GB as a swap drive(ram disk). Video encoding thrashes hard drives and the swap file in windows, so putting it on a ram disk or SSD is a godsend. Or just turn the thing off it you have a 64 bit os/enough ram. Or if you are running Linux. Even ge...

Swap the drives - run a smaller set of two for the main one/OS in RAID 1. 160-250GB drives are fine, really. WD 160GB RE2 drives are a paltry $60 each at Newegg and worth the headache they save if a drive goes bad a hundred times over. Then put the games and stuff on the big drive. If it dies, big d...

yeah - it's not PG13. Mass effect, though, is a good cheap title. Never winter Nights 2 is as well, and Far Cry 2 is about the best dang shooter out there. They would all be somewhat kid safe I think. Shoot, even the original Far Cry rocked - and it's $10 on Steam. Get a HD4850. Best value for the m...

Remove the motherboard.

Dremel or cut the covers on the fan openings - that's the biggest help. Fans are literally 2-4x noisier with that increased back pressure than their ratings. And they die quicker, too.

Also note that almost every manufacturer overclocks their cards at the factory these days.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article76-page1.html If you can find one of these lying around in your local mom and pop shop, it also is good. Dremel out the rear fan opening and enjoy. Tick side case panels, proper fan positions, lots of drive bays, will fit a Ninja and Accelero S1 (inch wider than ...

If you have the money, get an ANS-9010 or 9010B. This is a ramdrive, complete with battery backup and CF flash backup capability. Otherwise, get the WD RE2 or RE3 drives. Run them in RAID1 for redundancy and data security in case of a failure. The 160GB RE2 drives are a whopping $60 each and are fas...

This might work, though, as it has those two wide channels for air in the middle.

Well, for less that the $50 this thing costs you could make your own, and get to choose your own fans. Bluefront made a similar device . I tried to craft my own using an 800rpm Slipstream to operate in reverse over top of an 8800GT with a Glaciator HSF (poor mans' Zalman flower), but it didn't work...

Yeah, the E2140 and dual core Celerons are rated at 65W by Intel almost by rubber stamp. They generally produce closer to half that in actual operation.

As in the 640GB Green looks to be about 75% of the speed of the 7200 rpm drives of the same capacity.

That would be exactly correct. 7200 X 0.75 = 5400 rpm. That's why it's so quiet and has less heat.

From Toms' Hardware: Intel Pentium D 820 Smithfield,2800/200,P35,667fsb,Socket 775,16+16 KB,1 MB 3DMark06 CPU: 1330 TDP 95W (mine, an 830, is 120TDP - ouch!) Dual Core E2140 Conroe L,1600/200,800fsb,Socket 775,32+32kB,1 MB 3DMark06 CPU: 1393 (~4% faster) TDP 65W (found online elsewhere and added the...

Snip or Dremel out the three fan grilles. My case had identical ones in it and it made a huge difference - at least half the fan noise was gone and the airflow literally went up my 50%+.

I'd be tempted to reverse the exhaust fans and have it all blowing inward at lower RPMs. The 200mm on top would of course be the only one venting outward.

Yeah the sad fact is that the newer processors run just as fast for a fraction of the cost and heat. Even the current dual-core Celerons run about as fast as the aging D series. Then again, I have a Pentium D 3.0 system myself. The CPU hardly ever pegs - it's always the video card that's taking the ...

I have an X1900XT with 256MB and it runs everything, including Far Cry 2 just fine up to 1200*1024. You don't need a high end card - just get the 512MB newer version of the X1900 series cards. That would be the 4870/4850/3870. the smart money is always on the middle one in such a case. At $199, the ...

I just hard-wired my fans to 7V for the most part.

1 - new case. Optimally, it would be full width(about an inch wider than a typical minitower) and have no side fan. 120mm in the rear and the rest is pretty much optional. 2 - replace the PSU. You could replace just the fan, but it's quite possible to fry yourself on the caps of a PSU if you aren't ...

I'll see what I can do(don't have a place to host the files easily). the thing is, it looks like a big difference in a screen capture. But in-game, you just don't see it. Far Cry 2 (for PC) can render 24 bit textures, but a lot(read - most) games use 16 bit textures and dither/blend/bump map them to...

Wait... if I count correctly, that's *20* heatpipes! I was joking a bit about it being good for a passive setup, but I bet it really *would* run better without that fan. It's gotta be so close to being a "wall" to the air around it that the normal exhaust fans should move about as much air as that s...

It's either the drive or the sound card is picking up RF feedback.