My case also sits on the floor nexto my desk. (its too big for the desktop) Over time I havent noticed any excessive dust buildup. I tend to open the thing every few months to tinker, and then once a year for an upgrade. I have a cat in the house with me (read: walking hair factory), but with reason...

ok.. oddball question here.

What is the seek noise like on this thing?

It sounds like you can get rid of the whine by removnig it from the heatsink -- which is good.

But when/if I get one i want to mount it in such a way that I HEAR the seek noises but no annoying whine.

2 things here... a) what size of RDRAM chips do you have? ... I may be interested. b) have you tried taking EVERYTHING out of the motherboard and see what happens? If the board is still good, you should get a series of beeps when you try and boot with nothing in. If its still quiet, you either have ...

My spouse's brother asked me to help with a computer problem he had, "it just turns off after a strange bleep". The HSF was packed with gathered dust rolled up in balls held together by cat hair. Lucky enough, summer wasn't in full effect yet and he now vacuums it regularly. My brother's PC had the...

id start RMA'ing stuff.

First with the PSU - since it appears to be a possible problem.

A is Warranty great - but take care you dont wait too long and the warranty expires.

Good plan there.

Dust just killed the fan on my server's video card.

The help & support service is one of the things I disable automaticly on my own PCs.

never had any issues created when its not running.

Good review there. Ditto on the burn in question by MoJo. were they strait from the cloth bags to your PC and on to the review? or did you spend some time with burn in? One concern I have with their design is that the amp is _inside_ the one speaker. This seems to give an unequal amount of volume in...

Edit: compiled their folding-strength :). 8400GS: 14,4 pts (1 pt is 1 SP x 1 GHz) 8500GT: 14,4 8600GS: 37,7 8600GT: 37,7 8600GTS: 46,4 9500GT: 52 9600GT: 104 8800GTS 320/640: 115 8800GS: 132 9600GSO: 132 8800GT: 168 8800GTX: 173 8800Ultra: 192 8800GTS 512: 208 9800GTX: 216 *GTX 260: 238 (final cloc...

DO NOT USE A VACUUM. this can't actually be stressed enough. vacuums can create a static field around the end of the hose, which has more than just potential to kill your rig for good. Funny, I've heard of more people killing their rig with compressed air than with a hover. Apparently, the biggest ...

Ditto on the P190
Impressive looking case - but is the price tag worth it?

besides raw video files, is there an effect on performance to using just one hdd with the system files, movies and the rest on it? the build is also intended for some 2d graphics with big, high resolution files. would that be a problem for a 1 hdd system? Yes you will see some performance improveme...

Sorry to hear you decided to abandon the 8 core system. One thing I have found with "dual socket" systems -- of which I own 2. They last a LONG LONG time. So while you may pay 50% or 100% more than the current generation desktop system, you wont need to upgrade for a long time to come. I have an old...

Im looking at a simmilar system in my future as well. everything looks good so far (eatx MB in eatx case). but make sure the memory you picked will work. most of the supermicro boards want FB-DIMM memory. Check to make sure what your buying will work. Fully Buffered memory is usually quite a bit mor...

Dont the passive coolers dump a lot of heat into the case?

I ended up putting a little slot fan nexto my card after my case temps went up by 5-8 degrees when I upgraded.

The only component ive ever had die on me due to heat was a HD. Not sure how hot it was.. but it was uncomfortable to touch while sitting in my case. But overall when I worked at making my components quieter -- they also got cooler. No longer does my cpu run at a steady 70c... 45-50 is where it sits...

SOLELY based on SPCR's reviews, I've bought the following hardware: <...long list clipped...> That's just a LITTLE bit of money up there, racked up over the past few years! Along the same line - ive also purchased some things based on reviews here at spcr... but how do we ensure spcr gets "credit" ...

The donation links work great.
Just sent mine in.

Also check which fan plugs you are using for your CPU fan.

some motherboards have a auto-shutdown when the cpu fan fails. and if you are plugging the cpu fan into the wrong plug, the motherboard wll think the cpu fan has failed.

I'll keep you posted :wink: And you're right btw, it's more of a whoosh than a hiss and it's mostly late at night when cruising around on the web that I notice it. At that time system temps hover around 40 on the CPU, 40 on HD, 50 on GPU and 35 in the case. Temperatures only rise when gaming which ...

Ran kill a watt on my main system for a while: Idle after windows boot: 178watts Load: 238watts - load is with FAH SMP version running specs: Supermicro 742S-420B case. Tyan K8WE Opteron 246 x2 (dual socket board) 2GB ram (1gb x2) Maxtor Atlas 3, 10krpm u160 SCSI drive Maxtor Atlas 10k V, 10krpm u16...

Interesting stories. The svc.com wearhouse is just down the road from where I live, and the several times ive been there they were pleasent to deal with, although one time I had to wait what I thought was a long time for somebody to get off the phone and come bring me my fans. Never had any issues w...

Only suggestion i can think of that would help is to take a look at your cable management. if you keep them tucked away in corners or tightly attached to the frame of your case. This makes things look better and removes lots of places for air turbulance. I bougt a bag of zip ties from a local radio ...

I have no problems with my server 2003 setup. but then its not running on an asus board. I have an old supermicro P4DC6+ running a server OS on a non-server motherboard might be the majority of your problems. However server boards have their own issues -- namely price. mine was $750 when i bought it...

eventually I'll get numbers on my other 2 systems. But for now:

IBM Thinkpad A31 laptop - 22w on idle
Samsung 970p lcd monitor - 22w. (im running 2 of these)

I have a pair of Samsung 970p Monitors. And overall ive been very pleased with them.

Tomshardware.com reviews monitors, but i havent seen any recently.

Good catch on the floor tiles -- I hadnt thought of that one.

I may endup trying some of those too.

After I ended up with my not-as-good-as-I-hoped setup of Sonic Impact T-Amp and homemade speakers (based on the Audio Nirvana fullrange drivers), I spent a considerable amount of time searching the web for speakers that were high-efficiency enough to be powered by a tiny amount of power, but also h...

go visit a fabric store or a craft store. get a sheet of "eggshell foam" thats used for mattress padding, or just a small mattress pad and then cut it to size. You can pay $20/sqfoot for the audiophile grade sound dampeners, or you can pay $7.50 for a twin sized foam mattress pad and have enough lef...

I got xp x64 with my last system build in 2005. Overall its been great. only 1 bluescreen - and that was due to user error. When it first came out, yes there were problems with getting drivers. but nowdays its normally no problem. My first real "driver" problem was with my new samsung monitor. They ...