I got the Gigabyte 1GB version and it is very quiet. Not silent, but pretty quiet. Haven't had a chance to really push it yet, but so far I'm very happy. Does it have an accessible fan control and have you had a chance to mess with it? Fan control is accessible through MSI Afterburner but it's hard...

Supposedly the video section of 8500 and 8600 is exactly the same... but I'll wait for the Anandtech review, thanks for pointing that out. Yup, you mention the 6 fans... I'm wondering whether I need them all. I don't want a passive PSU, but I was thinking that, maybe, I could use only one in front a...

After several months of "study" and thanks to all the info provided on SilentPCReview and in renethx's excellent thread (on AVS, where I crossposted this), I am about to pull the trigger on the following configuration. The idea is of having a near silent PC, capable of playing H.264 and VC-1 content...