i still have an 11 year old 486 66MHz compaq that runs 24/7 as a router.

Has anybody else used the IBM 180GXP or Hitachi 7k250 with the Antec 3700, P160, or Sonata cases? Do you hear the "recalibration" sound out of these drives every few hours? I'm asking because I have used my 180GXP with other cases and had the calibration sound often described as a prrr or meow. As s...

The LG drives I've used (about 4 combo DVD/CD burners of various models) dont support speed throttling. That's why I'm using a crappy lite-on in my HTPC... cause I can slow it down to 10x CD speed and it's very quiet. Sounds like it, but want to be sure, Do the samsung drives support CD speed thrott...

This motherboard supports 100, 133, and 166 FSB. This CPU runs at 133, so running at 100 will reduce the CPU speed by 33% and will lower the @load temp by a few degrees (allowing less noisy cooling) The motherboard has no under or over voltage abilities to my knowledge. This should be a good board, ...

There was a thread about this on storagereview.com a while back. While this product seemed really good for someone looking for only 80-160GB of capacity, the costs added up really quick (not to mention having to rely on unproven drivers that are only available for win2k/XP (not even win9x). Personal...

The kt266a chipset is pretty cool running and shoudn't need active cooling. Even crappy heatsinks are fine in my experience.

Use the stock heatsink and fan, but put a resistor on the fan. It will be inaudible and run fine using a .. hmm.. I think I used a ~22ohm resistor...

That's what I did.

yeah, PCI is dumb... use ISA instead, because atleast they had the good sense to put components on the top of the PCB where the heat could rise off of them.

Has anybody seen or tried one of these deals? http://www.nexfan.com/cofannoki.html http://store4.yimg.com/I/nexfan03_1761_12980575 It apears to be an inline fan speed controller that changes the fan speed based on the readings from a thermister that can be placed anywhere... make any fan into a "sma...

what I use is a school supply kit from K-mart/Office supply stores and some foam. It gives about 1/2" to 1" of room on all sides of the drive, easily snaps shut and doesn't look dorky... plus it only costs about $1. [edit] oh, do you mean for operation? dunno... I would be worried about a no-vibes b...

With a CPU at idle it's not abnormal for the temps to be just a couple degrees fahrenheit above case temps. I have noticed this on AthlonXP CPUs when the HALT command is honored.

This does require a completely idle CPU, and background tasks like p2p programs, seti, and F@h will jack up CPU usage.

you could put the drive into sleep mode if you dont like it.... I have a 180GXP and noticed the reset noises when I ahd it in my enlight case. I have sinced moved it to an Antec case and the nosies went away. I am using the same PSU... dont know if the data cable is the same or not. I have heard tha...

i am personally waiting... better media compatibility and features along with lower prices are just around the corner.

the plus drives I believe have the 8MB cache.. I really havent followed seagate's drive names lately. The serial ATA ATA-V (that's alot of vowels) is mechanically identical the the P-ATA version, except it is electronically a S-ATA drive.. the 1st production S-ATA drive in fact(although it supports ...

isn't that body temperature?

from my ecperience it is very hard to quiet a HDD... just get a new one and sell your WD to make up for the cost... a Maxtor DM+9 or the new IBM/Hitachi 250GB drive will probably be faster and both are going to have near silent idle noise.

On AMDMB.com's forums there was a guy who had a "dud" board.. it ran his AMD athlon at 66MHz FSB. I thought this was really funny because some of the guys over here want to underclock their athlon. I also found it very odd because the athlon was never designed to run at 66MHz FSB, it was released at...

The 3.3 volt line is used for standard SDRAM and for the expansion slots as you've noticed. I believe 3.3 will also be used for S-ATA hard drives in the not too distant future. Most motherboards use the 12V lines for the CPU, but PIII and older will uise the 5v lines for this. Current mobos use the ...

oh, aparently power color makes an ATi 9000 in PCI format... same with Hercules... don't know where to find these bad boys though... [edit] Aparently googlegear (know know as zip zoom fly) has them. http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=320676 They'll cost you a bit more than t...

The TV wonder cards are not graphics cards. They are conexant based capture cards. No output. I was recently looking for different graphics cards myself and was looking into PCI designs. I thought the ATi 7500 (regular or all in wonder) looked very good. It is passively cooled and offers decent perf...

that's a quick way of splicing, personally, I prefer to solder because it only takes a minute and I like to do a good job. Heat shrink tubing is a nice touch as well.

Make sure the fan is plugged into the correct header on the motherboard. Sometimes the motherboard only allows RPM throttling on certain headers... the CPU FAN header is a likely candidate, and a chassis fan is a runner up.. the chipset fan header is very likely not throtle-able.

I have an SB51G and an SS51G. The noise level can easily be dropped down by replacing the stock fans with quieter ones. Remember that the stock case/HSF fan is a sunon that usually spins a good 5500-6000RPMs but is slowed down to around 2500 with the help of the BIOS. If you want to keep the BIOS co...

I've ran a PII 400 and a pIII 650 fanless.. these were both slot 1 CPU's though so they had huge heatsinks.

In addition the PSU had a fan blowing inwards onto the CPU... so they did have air flowing across them.

if you can see epoxy or glue then it's not worth taking it off... but alot of the time it's just thermal tape (like double sided tape). You can usually tell because the tape will have a little twist (you can rotate the heatsink a few degrees), while epoxy will have no give or take to it... if it's t...

if it's the same mobo and BIOS and the readings are taken from the CPU core then I'd say that the difference (temp before - temp afterwards) is probably accurate to within 5-10% However, if it's an external temp probe then the probe placement or contact can make too much of a difference... and overa...

I think a gfx chip can usually run at the same temp as a CPU... I have fried a fanless TNT2 M64 before... months at very high temps (>60C) caused the screen to go blurry... But I'd say that under 50C should be fine. You might be able to give it longer life if you keep it cooler though.

How silent is silent? ...The C3's have reletively poor performance and only the 600mHz ones are spec'd to be fanless... so I dont know how they perform if you use them for high quality vid capture w/ timeshifting... This card may have mpeg hardware encoding (if it does that'd be an incredible bonus)...

they show you how in the PDF.... you have to use a bracket

most systems run fine without a NB fan... if you're upping the FSB faster than spec then it'll probably run hotter...

It really just depends on your system temp/cooling whether or not you need a fan on it or not... typically excess airflow from the CPU HSF is enough to cool a NB.