Hi, my personal opinion: Buy Samsung or Seagate hard drives to your requirements, less is definitely more! i.e. 1 of 400GB much better than 3 of 120GB. 2 x 200GB could be good compromise of cost, capacity, flexibility etc. Copy OS, apps, games, data etc to new drives. (Ghost is good!) Sell old drive...

Hi, adapters to plug a SATA drive in to a PATA port can exist and probably do but don't know where to get one. Ebuyer's cheapest SATA card is £8.99 + VAT (£10.57) and has good reviews.
Seb

Hi, from what I've read it's a good drive. Pretty quiet, probably not as quiet at the 'cuda IV, and has competitive performance to other drives in its class, i.e. a lot higher than the 'cuda IV. You can get it for the same price from www.ebuyer.com (generally have very good prices) or ~ £78 for the ...

Hi, if you're going for passive CPU cooling I would suggest considering the ones designed for it, like Scythe NCU-2000 Fanless CPU Cooler and there is another but I can't remember what it was called :roll: It's P4/Athlon 64 fitting. People have used the Zalman 6000 series sinks on Athlons passively....

Hi, AFAIK the 9550 is an under-clocked 9600 and most of those where passively cooled too so there is no problem with passive cooling your card. Pretty much any heatsink of reasonable size that you can fix on it will do fine. eg old mobo / CPU heatsinks, I recently used an old Socket 7 sink with the ...

Hi, an easy way to calculate CPU power / heat output is to use Kostik's CPU Power program. See SPCR Downloads Section.
Seb

Hi, I've had a little experience with an Arctic Cooling Copper Silent 2. (The plain version, no temp control or LEDs). My impressions were good. The clip is very easy to fit/remove and has a loop that the screw driver fits in to so it can't slip out. The performance seamed good too, on an Athlon XP2...

Athlon XP2500 @ 2.2GHz (XP3200). Zalman 7000A-AlCu 1000-1100 rpm. Runs full load 24/7, diode temp about 35°C above ambiant, currently 50-55°C.

Hi JanW, I have a Zalman 7000a AlCu on a XP2500 clocked at 2.2GHz so it's effectively the same chip as you have. I also have a very similar motherboard, A7N8X Deluxe V2 (not E). I typically run the fan on the Zalman at 1100-1200 rpm (5V~1350rpm) and get CPU diode temps of 50-60°C. The Socket temp is...

Hi, I've got the power conector for my VGA Silencer 2 conected to the 12V/5V switch on a Zalman MultiFan Controller. As I'm only cooling a cool 9600pro i have the switch on the Silencer set to low. I tend to use 12V/Low (normal low) when playing games and switch it to 5V/low when not at which point ...

Hi, Dorathy sells a 60mm Panaflo. I don't know anything about this fan other than what's on the web site, I have never heard/seen one, just letting you know it exists.

Panaflo 60L1BX 60mm - Very low Noise - 3-pin Tacho - 14.1cfm 24dB(A) - £6.99 Free Delivery

Seb

Dorathy sells a 60mm Panaflo.

Panaflo 60L1BX 60mm - Very low Noise - 3-pin Tacho - 14.1cfm 24dB(A)

No idea what its like or how quiet it is, the picture looks like a lot of hub and very little blade.
Seb

Hi, I have panaflos working fine off a Zalman controller, the MFC1. With out the RPM feed back you get no LED.
Seb

Hi, my thoughts are as follows: Change MSI Northbridge cooler for passive one. eg Zalman NB32J/NB47J Change the CPU cooler, either of the Thermalrights you mentioned with a nexus 92mm fan or Zalman 7000 would be good choices. Change the graphics cooling. eg Zalman ZM80C/D or NV Silencer 3. Having lo...

Hi, I've just been building a machine with a Arctic Cooling Copper Silent 2 in it and its pretty good. I got the non-TC version and it's fine for most people at 12V and better still at lower voltages. In my case the motherboard will control the speed. When you consider it costs ~£7.50 (£12 for TC ve...

Hi starcycle, thanks for your praise. The hard drive is on its side in the drive bays. In an enclosure and sitting on foam. This is the best picture of it. If you look through the fan you can see there is another piece of foam above the drive as well. Basically as the foam is packed in tight it hold...

Hi all, I thought I’d share with you my journey to a quiet computer and through a big upgrade and subsequent efforts to return to very quiet. (You are here by forewarned that I’ve rambled on at great length but there are quite a few pictures if you want a quick overview.) (I've resized all pictures ...

Hi, glad you got it all sorted and working. Pictures are good too . I would have thought 10 MHz was a fair trade for quiet opperation. The limiting factor in your cooling is probably the glue between the GPU die and heatsink.
Seb

Hi, my understanding, which may be wrong, is that the SATA 8MB cache drives have AAM disabled (loud seeks, theoretically higher performance) while the PATA 2Mb ones have it enabled (quiet seeks, lower performance). I don't know which setting the 8MB PATA ones are set to. Decoupling the drive should ...

Hi tuna. I think Nvidia cards report they are not getting enough power when the "extra" power conector isn't plugged in. It's nothing to do with your PSU. Both your cards have a connector on the end of them that needs to have a power cable from the PSU plugged into it. Its the same type of plug that...

Hi, did you add another identical drive or two new ones? Is it one or both that are producing the idle whine? You can check by unplugging the data cable(s) from both and powering up with one drive powered then the other. The "rattle" is probably seek noise, this is best dealt with by decoupling the ...

Hi, The Zalman should fit on the motherboard. See here (noting the possible PSU clearance issue). The Aopen SilenTek feature is pretty good, my experience is that it will control the cpu fan and a case fan very effectively. The ones I've used need a bit of playing with in the settings page in the so...

Hi, this case looks the same as mine apart from the colour. As others have said it is a very high quality construction, strong and well finished. As for making a quiet case it does have some problems, but they can be overcome. My system has a Barton 2500 over-clocked to 3200 (2.2GHz) speed (and slig...

Hi, thats a pretty good link and gives a good idea. My PC is on 24/7 running a distibuted computing project so its probably over 100w average, not including my 21" monitor... of course that goes to sleep when I'm not on the PC.
Seb

Hi Project, in which country do you want an X800Pro ICEQ?
Ebuyer (UK) here.
Newegg (US) here.

Seb

Hi, I have an 80GB Barracuda ATA IV which also has the bee thing. It got less with time but now the drive is in an enclosure, which itself is isolated with foam I don't hear the buzz anymore. In fact the seeks are reduced to barely audible as well, as is the idle noise and my system is pretty quiet....

Hi, you might like to check out SPCR's review that compares the two. In particular look at the aside on the last page about the Zalman at 4V. My experience of 7000AlCu on my Barton 2500+ (overclocked to 2.2GHz) is that it holds it about 25-30°C over ambient at ~1200rpm. At this speed it is very qui...

Hi, I can't offer any specific advice on ratios etc but Zalman do a ZM17 heatsink for video cards that is intended to be glued on so what your proposing is fine in principle. It's only the execution that may be difficult. you can buy (at a price) thermal adheasive. I doubt a GF4mx takes a lot of coo...

Hi, I have a Liteon DVD and DVD-RW drive. They both claim to have automatic throttling, ie they adjust their speed to the requested data rate. I does seam to work too! Certainly while playing DVD movies after a minute or two they drop back to a speed that disappears below the level of the soundtrack...

Hi, by all accounts the VGA Silencer is pretty good and has good cooling, even for overclocking and dumps the heat outside the case which for total silence freaks is good as it alows quieter case fans. Its also very cheap. In my opinion (based on very little!) the Zalman may be more versatile, ie fo...