Monkeh16, out of curiosity what is wrong with the x-fi? Its under £30 in the UK, compared to over £50 for the Xonar, not sure if the gap is smaller elsewhere though. The drivers are horrible. I can put almost every single BSOD I've had since building this system down to the X-Fi drivers. At one p...

Do not buy the X-Fi. I made that mistake, and it's a big one. Try a Xonar DX, not much more expensive, and certainly can't be worse than the X-Fi.

Socket M. See here.

that Linux guy wrote:Frankly, the Audigy SE is well worth the price for those who can hear the difference. Unfortunately, most people don't have the trained ears to notice a difference between the Audigy and onboard sound.

I've heard onboard sound which is better than an Audigy SE. Those are really quite crap cards.

It doesn't matter what the rating of the pico is. A 200W will provide the extra 12V lines and not use more power.

Those are USB devices. They'll work on any board, but they'll only physically fit boards they're designed for.

Another case to look at might be the Sharkoon Rebel12. I haven't tried one, but it's high on my list for my storage server, when I can afford one.

I have a better question: Why Vista?

*runs for the hills*

I'm also surprised you make such a big deal about the mini-SPDIF adapter and analog/digital 3.5mm jack. As others have noted, these things are nothing new. Indeed, dual analog/digital 3.5mm jacks have been around for years and have been heavily used by Apple. The Airport Express has one, as does th...

Perhaps get a couple of these: http://scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=603609 Also you don't need one with eSATA ports, there are adapters that can be used to convert an internal SATA port into eSATA. Some enclosures come with one. However there's more to eSATA than a different connector. I'd no...

The ones above the CPU socket, by the back panel, are probably the ones you're after.

You should perhaps look up what RAID levels actually are. RAID-5 requires three disks minimum.

bonestonne wrote:do correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't JBOD just mirroring two drives?

No, JBOD is concatenating any number of drives.

bjorn wrote:Isn't the 780G NIC connected to the PCI-E bus, while the 630 NIC is connect to the PCI bus? That may be the reason for the 780G gbit performance then.

You can use either. PCI is not a bottleneck for a single gigabit NIC.

Networking performance is down to the NIC, not the chipset. The 780G has a seperate NIC on the PCI or PCI-E bus.

Of course, a badly broken chipset could limit NIC speed, and I wouldn't be surprised if nVidia are making one that badly broken..

Interesting. The knee-jerk answer is "all mobos have a jumper to switch whether the USB ports get power from +5V or +5VSB, switch yours from +5VSB to +5V!" Except having had quick peek at the manual it appears the GA-MA78G-DS3H has no such jumper(s), which is a surprise to me but ...! In about a do...

Try using the Catalyst 8.5 drivers. I know they work fine on the board I worked with. 8.7s suck, and I've not bothered with 8.8s (it's a general desktop machine, if it boots and works, it's fine).

I use OCZ DDR2 happily. Mushkin and G.Skill are supposed to be good.

I'd personally recommend against Corsair RAM. I've bought XMS twice (DDR and DDR2), and had faulty XMS twice. Everyone I know who has bought it has had faulty RAM.

I can recommend the Intel DP35DP as a stable board, at least under Linux. Can't say much about the fan control though, as I don't use it (only CPU fan is attached, and options are.. limited.).

Tzupy wrote:Would the Xigmatek bolt-through kit be usable on other Skt775 coolers (not Xigmatek)?

No. The bolts come attached to mounting arms, and I didn't see an easy way to get them off.

thejamppa wrote:

Monkeh16 wrote:Or you could buy a good quality card, with a lifetime warranty.

if you're refering to BFG: Life time warranty is only for American and Canadian customers. For Europeans get to used Limited 10 year warranty..

I'm referring to EVGA: Lifetime warranty for everyone.

Or you could buy a good quality card, with a lifetime warranty.

As long as the ambient temp isn't too high, and you're not packing drives together or heavily loading them, most drives will be fine with minimal airflow. Laptop drives almost certainly will require no airflow. However, 10k drives may require a little more (the only ones I have are 3.5" SCSI drives...

read , other posts , bolt through attaches to rear of mobo , and gives better contact / temps ? Possibly better temperatures. Contact with the pins on the Xigmatek is very good, but I did notice a several degree difference when I bolted mine down. However I also applied TIM differently.. However, t...

Xigmatek. Cheap, effective. Don't forget the bolt-thru kit (Scan sell those, too).

While you're at it, bolt the SB heatsink down. The things are so loose stock they're almost useless.

As long as the ambient temp isn't too high, and you're not packing drives together or heavily loading them, most drives will be fine with minimal airflow. Laptop drives almost certainly will require no airflow. However, 10k drives may require a little more (the only ones I have are 3.5" SCSI drives ...

duncan bladen wrote:now just got to find one in the uk
thankyou for your help

Easily available at Scan, as are most (possibly all..) of the SPCR recommended heatsinks.

Be careful buying fans, though. I picked a Scythe and got shipped a Noctua.

1440x900 is fairly standard Sorry, I mean not a standard HD TV resolution. I am speculating that the HDMI on the board might be designed for 720p and 1080p primarily. There's no difference between HDMI and DVI when it comes to video. It's entirely a software problem, unless the hardware is somehow ...