Notebook drives work fine in HTPC's. Use Novibes to suspend your drive in a 3.5" drive bay. Yes, you'll need a IDE (40 pin) to notebook (44 pin) drive adapter cable, you can get one here . Be careful, some notebooks drives (Toshiba) have a casing that protrudes in a way that may short the power pins...

So what's the word? Does the XP-120 fit on the AOpen i855 GMEm or not? No. I tried the XP-120 on my i855 and it does not fit. The heatsink pipes hit the retntion bracket. The XP-90 will fit, but it hard to tell if it's making contact with the CPU die. It may be bottoming out on the rention bracket ...

I tried the Thermalright XP-120, Swittech MCX478-V, and the Scythe NCU-1000 and NCU-2000 heatsinks and they did not work on this board. The Thermalright XP-90C can work, but it's hard to install without putting uneven pressure on the CPU die. I did install it once, but when I revmoved it, a corner o...

I was really excited about this board when I first heard about it. I was going to buy it for my HTPC - the DVI out and Pentium M seemed just right for me. The proprietary CPU heatsink mount is a deal-killer. I can't understand why they did that. I'm interested in hearing about the new Aopen heatsink...

Do you think this heatsink would fit on the Aopen i855GMEm-LFS board? That's the board with the socket 478 retention bracket, but the heatsink has to sit lower due to no IHS on the wonderful Pentium-M.

...are my concerns just FUD? I think so, but it would be fun to experiment making an EMI "silent" PC. Without a way to measure your success, I'd think you'd be wasting your time and money. If you have an electronic device near your PC that dosen't work now due to EMI (never heard of this though) th...

This is a complex subject! What problem are you trying to solve/prevent? There's a copper/steel alloy called TI-Shield that's fairly easy to use. I've used it before with mixed results - the problem is that you really need to know what you're doing to use it effectively. .01" of TI shield is suppose...

I wonder if the Ninja would fit on the Aopen Pentium M board? Looks like the base is fairly small.

Yeah, that's the brick I got. Not recommended, the fan kicks in too often, but is off when the system is idling. I think Mouser and/or Digikey carry some 12VDC bricks w/o fans > 100W. Expensive though, like around $120. I've rigged a cheap ATX PSU for brick usage and that works best of all. Requires...

I've used the 200W version of this plug-in on an EPIA board and it works great. But the brick that comes with the plug-in has a small noisy fan that kicks in when my 3.5 hard drives come out of sleep mode. Not good. To stay silent, you'll need a fanless brick that supplies 100+ watts (good luck) or ...

I use one for a Northbridge cooler on my P4 machine, and another as a CPU cooler on my EPIA PC. They are well made, heavy duty heatsinks. The small fan is not too bad, and undervolts well. I remove the fans to keep noise at a minimum, but I think they would probably be quiet enough at 6-7 volts to n...

palled wrote:Now running my Dothan ... with Thermalright XP-120.

How did you get the XP-120 to fit on the Aopen board? I tried mounting a XP-120 on my Aopen board and the heatsink pipes hit the rentension bracket and prevented the heatsink from lowering into place.

Picky, picky, picky! :) You bet! My dream PC (this month) is a Dothan with a Scythe NCU-2000 heatsink, fanless PSU rigged for external operation, and encased hard drives ( GUP Smart Drive or Silent Box ). I've got all these parts already, using the Aopen P-M board and a Enlight 7602 case modified f...

Ralf Hutter wrote:The DFI 855GME-MGF has functional AGP/PCI dividers/locks.

Working locks and no easy way to mount a decent heatsink - DOH!

tic wrote:get the Soltek 855GEI-FGDR ... It's supposed to have working locks.

How do you know the Soltek has working locks?

Looks like the board does not heatsink retention bracket, so you may not be able to use decent heatsinks on it.

Have others had the same experience with the locks not working? What about with the newer BIOS's? FYI - the BIOS that dosen't lock for me is the latest on their website , version 1.07 dated 1/17/05. Would love to hear if somebody got the locks working. RMClock works fine for me on this board, but t...

Lubic:
http://www.aerocool.com.tw/aerocool-fil ... ic/kit.htm

Acrylic:
http://www.delviesplastics.com/ACRYLIC%20SHEET.htm

Tslots:
http://www.tslots.com/TOPTEN.html

Online metals:
http://www.onlinemetals.com/

Or just uncheck the "Automatic fan speed" box on the "Readings" tab. Then you can play with the fan speed manually to find their lowest possible running speed.

My 1.6 Dothan runs fine at .95 volts, it may work fine with less VID than that. I went as low as .9 volts, but did not pass Prime95. The Aopen BIOS has like 3-4 voltages between .9 and .95 for your undervolting pleasure. I wouldn’t trust a vendors website for detailed technical info. I can also OC i...

You may want to look into off-site backups. These would be immune from viruses, power failures, bad hardware, etc at your site. I use the "Connected" service (http://www.connected.com/), and there are others like Xdrive. Off-site backups are kind of expensive, so only some of my data gets backed up ...

ultraboy wrote:Get the T-ban XL with analog sensor.

Do the analog sensors do something mo' better than the digital sensors?

ultraboy wrote:I turn my T-ban control on CNPS 7000A w. stock fan down to 4% duty cycle and it's still spinning at 113 rpm

Wow! I have 3 PC's and none can control a Zalman like that! I just ordered a T-Balancer.

You're talking 100% straight-line DC and not PWM DC, right? My Zalman fan won't go that low on PWM. I'm disappointed with Zalman fan speed via PWM - it stops around 50% duty cycle.

I bought a Fujitsu 2.5" SATA drive and am disappointed at the high frequency whine the unit produces. I have mine mounted in a Novibes suspension rack, but the whine is still evident from 1 meter. Idle and seek noises are low, comparable to my Toshiba 2.5 GAS drives. The whine is very directional, s...

I just got six 6B300S0's (Maxtor 300G Diamond Max 10 SATA 150) and am very impressed with the low noise levels. Quieter then the older MaxLine II 300G and in line with older Seagate’s. I'm testing them with Spinrite now, so I can't elaborate much more. One surprising thing though - these drives are ...

Thanks the_smell! Since learning the name of the cable (duh), i found it in the US at http://www.cablesonline.net/940pinto44pi.html

dukla2000: the red stripe on the cable goes to pin one on the drive. Pin1 one is labeled on my Toshiba 2.5".

Has anyone ever seen a speciality IDE cable for this? The adapters are a bit of a pain. It would be great if someone made a cable with the 40 pin connector on one end and the 44 pin on the other.

tay wrote:Isolate your sound equipment from your PC and you should be fine.

Except you may create ground loops. If you go strictly optical between your PC and audio system, then'll you'll be ok. Otherwise, you're asking for noise.

Hate to be a party pooper, but I vote "None of the above" 100 times. Most AC filters are poorly designed and ineffectual. I looked at the Alesis webpage and was not impressed. The neon bulb in the power switch, LED lights, and dimmer circuit will add plenty of noise to the AC line. Can’t tell what k...

I just got a NoVibes 2.5" notebook hard drive suspension system and was surprised that the mounting holes on the NoVibes frame are NOT THREADED! These are the holes used to mount the frame to the PC chassis. At first I thought it was just a manufacturing oversight until I saw that the screws they in...