I bought a Black Edition 5000+ x2 and had the same crashing with it and RMClock. I ended up selling the 5000+ since I didn't have time to futz with it. It was really unfortunate, since I wanted the ability to go up to 3 GHz when I needed it (encoding), but clock at 2 GHz normally, and 1 GHz at idle ...

Oh, and just give me five minutes alone with the twat who came up with that "wall of thumbnails" idea in the video library... ...through them in a logical order because of the stupid up-down-across way they're arranged. /end rant. Yeah, that wall of videos is just about as stupid is as stupid does....

Now someone just has to try it for their fusion... 'Cause I'm gonna be starting a build very soon, and that would be awesome! So who's gonna take one for the team? (I would, but can't afford it...) Has anyone successfully put an Accelero into a Fusion / NSK2400? I'm thinking that it would wrap over...

As with my previous Brisbane, I am still unable to run RMClock's Performance on Demand profile, even if I adjust voltages above what I've found to be stable on Orthos for 12 hours. However, static FID/VIDs run just fine. Anyone else with similar issues? Unlike my 3600+, if a VID/FID combo didn't fa...

I agree on the processor - try to get an EE version of the X2, and you'll be happy. The heat on the quads is really going to cook in that 2480 case - on my 2400, I went from an undervolted EE X2 to a slightly undervolted X2 Black 5000+, and the heat rise was noticable enough to cause reboots - not e...

plympton wrote:I recently bought a new desktop for a friend who ends up not needing a Quad-core after all, so I'm swapping out his quad for a low-power dual.

I can get the stepping and version, but it's brand new (pull).

-Dan

Wow, that was fast. Sold it locally on CL within a few hours.

-Dan

I recently bought a new desktop for a friend who ends up not needing a Quad-core after all, so I'm swapping out his quad for a low-power dual.

I can get the stepping and version, but it's brand new (pull).

-Dan

I'm upgrading my HTPC. It's a Windsor AM2 processor. In my NSK2400, it runs Vista MCE stable at 1 GHz, 0.875v 2 GHz, 1.15v It actually runs stable at .8v->.825v and .975v->1.0v, but I was being conservative, wanting a high WAF, and rock solid stability. I've never overclocked it, so I don't know how...

The review comments the 3850 heat sink being copper.. is it really? In the photos it looks like painted aluminium to me. It's an way-too-common fake trick.. some manufacturers even glue the painted ALU pieces together, instead of soldering. I put an Accelero on my Visiontek 3850 - it definately SEE...

Asrock Conroe945G-DVI, overclocked E6600, Radeon 3850, 2xhdd (320, 500 GB), SCSI card. ~ 90-105 watts at idle (XP vs. Mac). Asus M2NPV-VM, undervolted energy-efficient Athlon X2 3800+, 1x 40GB 2.5" HDD (boot/OS), 2x 500GB Samsung 501LJ, 1 HDTV Wonder, 1 Cat's Eye Tuner, PCIe 3450 Passive, 4 fans low...

.. and I use it very often. It is finally stable, but the road getting there was long and hard. Be prepared for what you are about to embark on - as another poster said, Apple makes hardware for a sub-segment of the market, and my needs weren't addressed by them. iMac's are too limited: I need a PCI...

I'm very VERY happy right now. I got my Accelero S1 last night from SVC, and dropped about 25oF in idle (110 -> 86!), and 60oF on load! (165 -> 106). I've found that the opening screen for World of Warcraft actually puts the most load on the GPU (more than gameplay even), and it's stable, so I'm con...

http://www.sage.tv http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2008/01/supercharge-your-htpc-with-sagetv.html There's always the AppleTV with some serious hacking (can't beat the ease & price, though) - http://www.apple.com/appletv/ http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/10/how-to-play-divx-and-xvid-on-your-apple-tv/ I...

I was going to suggest SVC, since I ordered one from them last week - not in stock anymore.

Wow... NCIXUS.com also had them last week, but now are OOS, too. They have pretty steep shipping, so I didn't order from them.

-Dan

robinhat wrote:Thanks for your informative post, plympton.

I think I will go for the 3450 - sounds like a nice card. How important is it if it is 256 or 512 MB?

Beats me... I've never had a card > 256 MB. For an HTPC, I'm sure 64 MB is overkill.

-Dan

Thanks Dan for the clarification. I read your first post as MCE2005 OS did not work at all, as in you got a blank screen just booting the OS. I have a pretty clean install of MCE2005, but I really don't use the MCE part that much so I should be good. Thanks again, SouthPaw Yeah, that was the infuri...

Ouch! Thanks for posting this info. I'm interested in this card but I cannot upgrade to Vista because the 2 PCI TV tuners I have do not play well with Vista. Are there not any XP drivers for this card? Can you explain why you had to upgrade to Vista just to get this card to work? What steps did you...

Thank you so much for the feedbacks. I'm currently researching the suggestions. Often I've seen people recommending high end gaming cards for HTPC applications. It seems a bit overkill but explanations given are that HD rendering requires high end GPU's. The $50 sapphire card from Newegg is looking...

Mariosxania wrote:Ok thanks for the answer plympton.Samsung does not make no sound at all?

Sure, it makes noise, but not the clicking noise of seeks that the WD drive makes.... it's just a purring away most of the time.

-Dan

High guyz i am a new member and this is my first post.I bought 3 days ago a wd5000aaks hdd and it is too much noisy wehn seeking(iddle is totally silent).I didn't try setting aam lower but is this improving the whole situation? Also could you plz tell me if sasmsung 500 hdd is silent beacuse i am t...

There's a long thread about 3450's at AVSforum here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=983278&page=5 I decided to bite the bullet and pick up a Sapphire 3450 for my HTPC, as my 6150 was giving me kernel panics randomly (heat? Undervolted CPU? Driver?) Well, I finally got around to dork...

Unfortunately, the link you gave just gives their general configuration/order form (doesn't indicate which mainboard/etc. you were considering). (Probably have to copy and paste it into a message, or something.) One thought that comes to mind. Mac Mini I'd thought of that, but they only take 2.5" h...

That is a great tip, Dan, and it'll be interesting to see what happens to my Visiontek 3850. Thanks for the info. Too bad about your "hackintosh" temps, though. Well, it IS a hack, after all. :-) I'm really curious what PowerPlay IS, if it's not just dynamically scaling the clock speeds. From the p...

Greetings All, I'm nearing completion of my HTPC. I'm seeking a silent (or near silent) video card that will: 1) Fit in an Antec Fusion case 2) Has the ability to decode blu-ray DVD's 3) "possibly" have HDMI connector. Any suggestions? I just picked up a Sapphire 3450 from Newegg this week, hoping ...

Not sure if anyone caught this yet, but there's a way to underclock, and underVOLT the 38xx series of video cards directly in the BIOS. If you sent your region to German (for the "." and "," swap) it will worok for the voltages (otherwise an extra "bit" gets written to the BIOS file and corrupts it)...

Just get a slow 120mm fan and place it strategically inside the case - it shouldn't add much if anything to the noise, and gets that inside air moving around. This should even out the heat throughout the case, and decrease "hotspots" like on the NB.

-Dan

I'd worry with a 3450 at the moment in my Antec NSK2400 - I've just got the CPU, Side, and PS fans, all on low-speed, and with 2 500 GB drives, . Looks like it's idling at 25C for the CPU, 39C doing encoding, and up to 36C for the WD 500GB drive (they're always hot... :-() Anyway, I'd worry that th...

if you buy the cheap version of the mybook, you will only get 1 year warranty on the drive, vs 3 years when buying the drive alone. You're right - I thought they changed to a 3-year warranty after looking at this page: http://support.wdc.com/warranty/policy.asp#policy But I was looking at the Asia ...

EDIT: Oops - the 750's do have a GP and an Non-GP version. Oh well! No, I haven't, but I've thought the same thought - just keep the plastics around since you might need them to RMA the drive if it fails (I just did this with a 500GB drive that failed < 1 year after purchase!) I put it back together...

Hey all, I've got a 3850 that I'd like to underclock. The reason is that I'm using an OS that doesn't fully support the card, and runs it at full-bore 100% of the time even at idle. Does anyone know how to force it to clock low by default? And, is there an app that I can use to then up-clock it if I...