I love my Western Digital Green Power Drive. They only spin @ 5400RPM, but they have dense 250GB platters. They've also come out with the enterprise quality RE2 series: Western Digital Caviar RE2 GP WD1000FYPS 1TB 16MB Cache SATA-300 Hard Drive EDIT: Sorry, didn't see your 7200RPM caveat. Hard to re...

It's just Intel marketing to push a CPU for the low end server market. They're the same exact CPUs. Same CPU ID. Xeon E3110 http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sspec=slapm Core 2 Duo E8400 http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sspec=slapl So why Xeon? Because I bought it for $200 s...

I'm surprised I don't see anyone talking about this in the forum. I ordered a Xeon E3110 for < $200 off buy.com shipped after I verified someone said it worked in a Gigabit P35 motherboard that was known to already support 45nm E8400s. The consensus is that it is a rebranded E8400 for the low end se...

I have completed my dead-silent HTPC, and now I am ready for a gaming rig. It doesn't have to be completely silent, but my last gaming rig was an athlon 64 single core and 6600gt and it was distracting, I've been 360ing it since, and am missing some good strategy games. My Proposed System: Case: Ant...

You can't go wrong with a BE series Athlon, they're the Dual Core 45W ones. I have a PICO PSU 90W, and my BIOSTAR 7050 motherboard has no BIOS voltage control, so it was a good choice in processors in my situation. I have a BE-2350 2.1GHZ with a Ninja Mini Heatsink running passive. I have my case op...

I've been seeing that term a lot, Automatic Acoustic Management I see it means...

How would one know if it is enabled? Where would I go to do it?

I give the WD GP drives 2 thumbs up. I have a 750gb, which I can't hear from across the room. My old samsung 500gb drive drove me nuts with his rotation and clacking. I can play a 1080p x264 MKV file (all I have is Island Fever 4 :oops: ) just fine with my single drive setup. Edit: Mine is just in a...

Video card: Go with a Radeon HD 3450 or 3650. They have built in x264 and vc-1 decoders. Hard Drive, I just replaced the noisy samsung 500GB with a Western Digital GP 750GB. It can stream a 1080p x264 MKV just fine, and it is SO quiet. Heat Sink: I have a scythe ninja mini in my HTPC, works greatly....

I also wanted to post load wattage.

playing a:

480p 32W
720p x264: 36W
1080p x264: ~60W

I have finished rebuilding my system adding the new PicoPSU 90W, WD GP 750GB, AMD Athlon BE-2350 45W Processor and Scythe Ninja Mini Heatsink. It idles @26W and 25 degrees celcius on passive cooling. It is absolutely silent. I haven't changed any of the stock settings, so the BE-2350 idles with CnQ ...

OK, so there would be actual wire stripping and binding involved.

I dont' understand, I don't know much about power.

How can I get something that goes into a 2 or 3 prong wall outlet to connect to a ATX PSU?

I was reading you can disable a CPU core doing this: You need to right click on "My Computer" -> Properties -> Advanced -> Startup & Recovery; There, you will find a button named "edit" - by pressing it you can edit the Windows Boot.ini file manually. at the end of the line add the following code: /...

Is it possible to rig your PSU to power other non-peripheral equipment like network equipment or 5.1 audio speakers? Considering some PSUs really only reach peak efficiency when under load, I thought this would be a greener alternative. Plus there's also the thought of when you turn off your PC, ite...

Did you stop the indexing service too?

Here's how to turn off indexing in Win XP:

http://lifehacker.com/software/optimiza ... 031440.php

So are you gaming too? My idea for a HTPC is something I can leave on all the time, so will be power efficient and SILENT. Your proposal seems like overkill for a HTPC. Those 45nm processors are nice, but they're hard to find and expensive. So why not save some money: AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 Brisbane ...

Has anyone undervolted a BE family processor?

I mean, could I get one down to 15W relatively speaking?

I would buy a Scythe ninja mini, but I already own the ZEROtherm BTF95 CPU Cooler. I had planned on installing it originally, but realized it was too tall for the case despite my preplanning measurements. Now with the top removed, I'm not worried about it being too tall. This is the case if you are ...

I built a HTPC based on the integrated NVIDIA 7050PV. I wanted my build to be made out of standard parts (no laptop hard drives, mobile processors, etc.) It's important to note that the top of this case is removed. It resides in my TV stand enclosure and the top is protected. It's snappy and fairly ...

Wow, sounds like you want to go all out and make a gaming rig, not a HTPC. That system is going to generate a lot of heat, which means it won't be quiet. The new Radeon 3450/3650 series offers a dedicated unified video decoder (UVD) for H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats for <$100 passively cooled and...