Anandtech recently ran a series of tests with a RAID-0 array of WD Raptor disks. Many of us have considered RAID-0 for improved disk performance, especially with the extremely quiet but somewhat slower disks available (e.g., Samsung). While the Anandtech article doesn't directly address the details ...

Notice, however, that the "fast" PATA in the benchmarks is running at 133. Be sure your motherboard supports this. Otherwise, the SATA (even with the serializing bridge chip) seems a win. OTOH, I'd say the performance differences are quiet slight and possibly within the margin of measurement error.

I've been using an ARM-built FX-53 for a bit over a week now (and am expecting to get a couple of A64 3400+ into the lab any day now). Working with Steve and Roy was a great pleasure during the ordering process. They are friendly, helpful, and very knowledgeable. So far, I'm quite pleased with the p...

Monday & Tuesday by Michael Torke (Vol 4 of his collected works)

Are matrox cards good? i thought they only made low-end cards. Search these forums for "Matrox" and see the opinions of SPCR folks. The general consensus appears to be that Matrox boards are unparallelled for text and 2-D, but do not have the on-board hardware to do the accelerated 3-D manipulation...

I'll repeat my usual: Look at Matrox P650 or above. Their DVI output is superb, all passive cooling (and rather cool at that), 2-D graphics and text are excellent. I've played a few games on the P650 and the 3-D is fine for my taste, but I don't do heavy-duty gaming nor 3-D rendering (except the rar...

Why not a bit of visuo-acoustic homeopathy: safety/day-glo orange? The loud color will make the computer quieter. BTW, I've tended toward all black. I'm still impressed with the industrial design of Steve Jobs' NeXt cube. And the Connection Machine was all black with black translucent front panels w...

If you're not going for 3D rendering, you might consider one of the upper-end Matrox cards (e.g., P650, P750). Passively cooled, superb text and 2-D graphics, native dual DVI output--quite a nice combination. Be aware that many SPCR folks are noticing that a significant number of Samsung 160 MB driv...

Just bide your time, David. In the next few weeks, Allah willing, I'll be adding 3-4 brand-spanking new machines to the fold. Based on the recent discussions in another part of this forum, culminating in the great article, they will be two Athlon 64 3400+, one Athlon 64 FX-53, and a Dothan 2.0 (lapt...

A valiant experiment... BUT, what if your newly returned drive is ALSO a JVC motor that whines. How many iterations can be done?

I'm just guessing that the NIDEC/JVC motors go out in big batches from Samsung. It may well be that NewEgg's stock contains primarily JVC.

Indeed, clearly peoples' sensitivity and sensibilities vary considerably around the 'Net. For perspective, compare the visitation of KSWN upon SPCR (that got them banned and many of their posts deleted in a moderator's pique). For the unbelievably peurile, we had an encounter with another group (on ...

A shot in the dark: Does anyone have experience or recommendations for SPCR-quiet 12V or 24V AC fans? My experience, and all the discussion around here, is with DC fans. Secondary [ignorant] question: Can the Zalman fan-mate be used directly with an AC line for such a fan? If not what is the proper ...

Hmmm, the whole incident is turning most entertaining--in a black humour sort of way. I'm following the thread at folding-community and Macroumors with great interest. At the moment, the public hypothesis is that someone put a folding.msi installation on a P2P or crack site, which is then promulgate...

Carnival of the Animals -- Saint-Saens

OK, I'm starting to be convinced. I'm holding off for a few days on a purchase decision that I was about to make today. I've done a bit of searching/reading and am impressed with the write-ups I've seen. As usual, benchmarks are a bit like Disraeli's statistics. I want to know how a system will run ...

Thank you very much sharing your experiences. I'm very pleased with your positive reaction. I'll admit to have my share of misconceptions, though I also admit to remaining skeptical about the 100% backward compatibility (at least at the fringes today's software/drviers that can be touchy enough). I'...

Despite the numerous suggestionf for the AMD 64, one slightly neglected item is software. RLiu818, I don't remember seeing what type of applications you'll be running, which will inform any hardware choices. For example, despite the apparent superiority of the 64-bit processor in many areas, I'm bui...

A little late into the fray, but I'll add my own voice to the Matrox chorus. My lab is all 2-D. I've tried several ATI cards and have been very disappointed. My current favorite is the Matrox G650 which is the cheapest/best card I've found that has dual DVI output. If you can go analog, the older G4...

A hundred zillion brood X cicadas in all the trees around my house. At night they are a little quieter. Printed reports say they can reach 120 dB SPL!

Stevo, et al., A few of us are old enough to remember when "nobody gets fired for buying IBM." Many customers need a certain comfort level when purchasing items about which they do not have in-depth knowledge. Support can also be a crucial comfort item. Larger, well-established, firms simply have th...

I've built two 3700AMB cases with the Fortron 300 W PSU (using teh same Directron special order). Everything fits fine. I've been mostly pleased. Check out Ralf's P4 system for a great example using those parts. As a side note, though, one of my Fortron's 120mm fan has developed an audible high-pitc...

MikeC, I'll put my hand up as one who understands and thinks your project has a great deal of merit, in principle. The devil, of course, lives in the details of implementation. I think the goal of obtaining and delivering accurately reproducible recordings of *very* quiet fans (e.g., Panaflo at 5.75...

I'm probably better off just getting a single drive, and making periodic back-ups of my important files... In general, I agree. Indeed, frequent back-ups are *really* important no matter what disk setup you have. However, after a catastrophic failure of a boot drive (WD1200) on one of our lab's com...

[[ I wasn't sure where to post this anecdote, so why not here. ]] A week or two ago, I posted about a bone fide Samsung failure (currently RMA'ing through Newegg). Yesterday, I had a Western Digital drive (WD1200) fail, and today the WD diagnostics returned "Too many errors; contact WD." This boot d...

Dukla, the critters are ferrets (mustela furo). Your comments has sent me to do some research about normative air exchange rates according to established institutional guidelines. The vendor, who deals primarily with apparatus for small rodents, gave me the specs. On reflection, his quoted "several ...

Thanks for quickness to both dukla2k and silverarg. My response: 1. Ah, static pressure! I forgot. So, for my application, having a push-pull would be a significant advantage. 2. Yeah, I'd really like as complete an air exchange as possible. The box could be considered essentially empty for air flow...

I have a quiet fan application that doesn't directly involve computers. Mostly around here, we want very quiet fans that we manually adjust their RPM to be a balance between noise and empirically-determined heat (CPU/MB temps). However, my constraint is a minimum total air exchange, with a maximum o...

I'll hijack the thread for a REAL RMA. AFter ~6 months, I started hearing a slight clicking from an otherwise quiet rig. Then, the system would start randomly freezing. I had troubles with a bad stick of RAM before, so went through 24 hours of memtest (to the detriment of my folding ;-). No RAM prob...

Ps. By "old guys" a mean "have been folding longer than me" :lol: I resemble that remark. I'm pleased to be back in the top 15 of folders for our team. I also note, with the new point system, that I may be back in the top 10 for points in a couple of months (sorry, Zhentar), and will theoretically ...

After posting a little justification of why a (small) market segment might want a rack-mount silent computer, I P.S.'ed with the thought of laying a computer on its side to fit in the bottom of an electronics rack. It should just fit. My question, what issues might there be to such an arrangement? M...