In that case, go with the Slipstream 800s for front and rear. Dial them down to low speeds and you should be pretty happy. Out of interest, which version of the S-Flex fan do you have? D (800rpm) / E (1200rpm) / F (1600rpm) or one of the super-fast models? I find the S-Flex E I"m using as the top e...

What's the rest of your system config - CPU / GPU etc? I am not much of a gamer. This PC is running 2008 Server in desktop mode, along with a few virtual machines in Hyper-V. CPU - Phenom II X4 810 GPU - planning to replace an old nVidia 7600 series running passively 6 HDD - all WD Caviar Green I d...

I've got a P180 case with stock fans. My CPU cooler is a Xigmatek, that I could probably run passive, but have an s-flex on there now. The system definitely whooshes, even though I have all the stock fans turned down. Temps are no problem at all - I live in San Francisco, and the ambient room temp r...

but with the 4770 you really need to replace that fan... It is really load. THenk again, even if you buy the best vga cooler it is still cheaper then the 4850 and preforms as good @ 1680*1050 :) Most likely whatever I buy, I'll be replacing the fan, so that is basically a wash... I have seen some c...

Well, I bought the 4850 with Accelero for my e8400 based PC, and it is really nice. Runs a lot hotter than what I had in there before, but the performance cannot even be compared. I was thinking about the same combo for my Phenom II X4 based computer (which sees some light gaming, BlueRay movies, an...

Why not just modfiy the Accelero so that it does fit? Fear?? I haven't done any of what you suggested yet. I guess the plastic cover is a no-brainer, but when I gave it a cursory look the other night, it did not seem it would yield much extra space at all. I thought about crimping/bending the heat ...

Over the past couple of months, I've been switching around components and re-building systems (Phenom X4 based 2008 x64 server running Hyper V, media PC w/ low power AMD and Vista, e8400 based x64 Win7 box) Anyway, after getting some good advice here on a vid card (thanks El Jefe and others!), I bou...

ew. i always hated that card. I forget why. Well, yes it is good enough. the cpu will do more than you need. However, a 4670 uses very little power. the new 4770 i think its called in a month?? is even faster but useless for wow. the 3000 ati and 4000 ati have a great UVD decoder chip for bluray/hd...

Mats wrote:

ob_kook wrote:I'll make a new i7 build and will choose decent components and case (Antec Solo most likely), and the thing that I just can't decide on is the GPU.

What graphics card do you have now? Maybe the i7 upgrade is enough for WoW?

I've got a GeForce 8600 GTS at the moment.

Awesome feedback guys. Thanks for that.

Guess I'll do a little shopping for a slightly lower end and more efficient GPU.

I was all set to pull the trigger on either a GTX260 or an HD4870 with an Accelero or Scythe to silence it. But after reading various threads, I wonder if it's worth it or if I should get an older model for cheaper since my gaming needs are modest at best. I've got a 22" Acer monitor (1680x1050), an...

So what video card would you recommend? I'm most concerned about the GPU fan noise, and that it will fit in this system (mini P180 + mATX).

Funny you should mention that make and model. I was just checking out a website in Japan I often hit up for local pricing on computer parts and electronics, and found the 64GB Samsung being sold at 33,780 yen and is very highly rated. http://kakaku.com/item/05370210072/ I travel there about every ot...

Well, as far as the SSD goes, I don't think "heart set on one" would be an accurate characterization. :D If the performance isn't there, then the cost tradeoff probably wouldn't do it for me. I do like the silence of it, but frankly, I could put the Scorpio in a heatsink enclosure and make it silent...

@ shleepy - actually the Antec PSU is on the recommended list, and was really highly rated (except for the price) I am sold on making my next build from the i7, if nothing else for the sake of being on the latest architecture. Ekeing out a tad more gaming performance from a C2D is not a huge concern...

I'm planning on building a moderately high performance rig on the i7 920 platform. It will be used for work apps (non high perf) and gaming. I'll sacrifice some performance for lower power and quietness. Here is what I have in mind, and would really appreciate feedback! Case - Antec mini P180 mobo -...

It seems that there are a lot of posts here that point to the same thing: mos systems do not need the huge power supplies being marketd out there. Prior to finding this website, I "upgraded" my PSU in order to accomodate the 6 HDD I am running to a 600W Xion PSU. I'm not very happy with the result o...

Nick Drake - Three Hours

I'm interested in what OS and software you are going to be running on it. Also, will the OS be installed on your RAID5? I can't imagine 7 drives being very quiet, so attention to drive mounting, using either Antec's silicone spacers or suspension should help. I know there's some serious suspension ...

How are you serving files to your machine? I have a back-end fileserver, the costs of which are not included here as it's salvaged from various bits I had lying around. You'll need to up the cost for extra storage and silencing if you're planning on keeping all the media locally. I'm running Vista ...

For making it faster(er), look into Datacore sanmelody. It's not NAS, but rather iSCSI block level SAN. Since it uses system memory as storage cache, the throughput is unbelievable.

But for a home system, it's not cheap. Unless you are comparing against the $30K+ systems out there it competes with!

Detritus, I camce across your post with great interest as I am just in the process of planning a re-build of my HTPC, and I was considering that same motherboard and processor. The alternative would be a p-35 variant and a passively cooled nVidia card (not sure which model yet). The question I have ...

If you really want to improve your HDD performance, you'd best address the issue like enterprise class devices do - implementing cache which can be dedicated to read-aheads and coalesced writes. RAID5 and RAID0 will both help with reads, RAID0 will help with writes, but RAID5 will be a penalty for w...

Have you considered an eSATA enclosure? I certainly would not be opposed to it, however, I am not sure it would be a clean migration. I have over 800GB on the RAID set and not enough excess capacity to migrate to an external enclosure. At the rate HDD capacity keeps growing, (especially in relation...

I am using this PC as my all purpose box. Work related email and office applications, a little gaming, media shares to a Squeezebox and to an HTPC. So I have 7 HDD in it (4 x 500 in a RAID 5, 2x250 RAID0, and a single for the O/S) I just picked up a Pentium D 925, Gigabyte P35 mobo with heatpipe, za...