quest_for_silence wrote:Thanks for being such a fair, honest, thoughtful reviewer, Mike.

Thanks Luca, I try. Let's hope others are as forgiving.

POSTSCRIPTS ADDED - 15th & 27th of Jan: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1437-page11.html This is a followup in two parts to the question of pump noise first raised by the screeching noise exhibited by the EK-SBAY DDC 3.2 PWM in dry testing. The first part explores the cause of that noise; the s...

quest_for_silence wrote:Thank you Lawrence, your reviews are always unvaluable!

You mean invaluable, right? Or was that a joke?

The Cyrorig C1 looks pretty neat... (I suppose Lawrence used some sneaky reviewer channels to get his in Vancouver?) Anyone happen to know if there's any Canadian distribution in the works, or any stores elsewhere that will ship to Canada without unreasonable fees? No sneakiness -- I asked them for...

Hi guys I have a question for you. I want to realize an htpc completely fanless. I want to use a motherboard with cpu integrated with notebook psu. I have found this 2 models Asrock Q1900M-itx Asrock Q1900DC-itx For hard drive i will use ssd and maybe the optical drive. The question is: Do you now ...

MikeC: I noticed that when I search for pump decoupling, there are a lot of web and image hits, which suggests to me that there is actually a fair amount of interest in quiet pumps. So if you *wanted* to test lots of pumps wet, with your nice tools, and build an authoritative list, I believe there ...

"As long as the motherboard remains frozen in a form factor never meant for video cards that exceed the power and thermal profile of CPUs, liquid cooling will continue to attract." How would you like it to be changed? 1. GPU should be parallel to CPU and be allowed as much room, around and above --...

I've been trying to figure out options for large passive radiators. Do you have any info on using radiators like that? Here's one from a fellow Vancouverite who used to hang out on SPCR forums. Ron was in touch recently to say he's finally dismantled his copper pipes. http://www.overclockers.com/pc...

"Since the radiator is where most of the heat in the system will end up, the main task of any fans not directly on the radiator should to ensure as much cooler air to the radiator as possible." I have no doubt that you would've liked the opportunity to keep fiddling with this thing for months, No, ...

Great article! Thank you. There's a typo at the beginning of page 6, the Intel i5 is 4690 and not 4790 (you meant the i7 I suppose). No typo. 4770K was used, iirc... maybe 4790k -- it's starting to blur. Great article! Thank you. Insane work documenting this quest indeed, and I can see it got a lot...

Good build But no space to install 3.5 HDD I'm thinking of using NH-L12 CPU cooler, then the radiator & fan on top of it Leave out the space for the 3.5 HDD bracket But CPU cooler fan -> intake, radiator fan -> exhaust Could have some air flow issues Not sure if there's enough space for 2 1" fans +...

frenchie -- Flames?!! Really? I've been told for years that modern electronics can't burn at all because there's so much flame retardation in them. This is pretty amazing. Also, pls repost your images to SPCR's server. The problem with external image hosters is that they aren't really reliable long ...

Multi-rail is highly unlikely. 250W power rating is too low for that. p7-1110 system released Sept 2011. >80% of power will be in 12V line.

FYI, current video cards cannot saturate the PCIe 8x slot. There have been many tests comparing performance on 8x vs 16x slot. iirc, perhaps monster dual GPU cards see some wee advantage, but that's about it.

OK, I get it. I took the pump out and examined it more closely. Still, I doubt there's any bearing damage; it wouldn't sound smooth and quiet even by itself if the bearing was damaged. I took a couple pics for those who might be interested but wouldn't dig deep for themselves. These pics are now par...

That's a novel approach... but you could also go to your local foam shop and see what they have in their scraps bin. I went to my local foam/mattress store & got a huge bag (at least a meter square) for $30 (iirc) some years ago. Way too much it seems, as 75% of it is still there, to my wife's displ...

Ah, just had an exchange of emails with another water diehard who suggests the bearing is right at the impeller, which make sense -- ie, the wobbling. Hence the general don't run w/o water warnings... OK.

Hey Mike, just to let you know, I really appreciate looking into this. The Laing DDC pump is a wet running pump. What that means is that it doesn't use lubricant other than the water it pushes. Thus, running it without water, means you run it without lubricant and you cause overheating and unneeded...

dansergiu -- thanks for your suggestions & comments, will explore. You do know that we used watercooling in our NCASE gaming build, right? BTW, I have this to report: I solved the mystery of that screeching noise. Took 15 mins, should have done it before. 1. Power up the EK-SBAY DDC 3.2 PWM pump/res...

Just checked & official heatsink clearance seems to be 110mm so it should fit, even if the tips of the heatpipes touch the PSU, which should not be a problem. There's probably a bit of wriggle room in the way the PSU seats. We did review these coolers btw -- http://www.silentpcreview.com/Noctua_NH-U...

flinx & tim -- I agree with both of you: liquid cooling only makes sense when the thermal load is very high -- and dense. If there's room around the components, like the CPU in most tower style cases these days, then air-only is the obvious choice. This changes as soon as you go to the VGA. For seve...

So first of all, running a pump dry damages it very fast. It's also a lot louder without liquid so testing it dry is useless. Pitty that the test on the Laing DDC 3.2 was done dry, I was actually looking forward to a SPCR review of that pump. Maybe it's not damaged and you could still run a test on...

11" wide x 18.5" deep for a mini-ITX case that really can't go anywhere else except atop your desk. Hmmm. That makes the Corsair 240 seem positively svelte! No way it could go on my desk.

With the new m-itx http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/gigabyte-mini-itx-gtx-970-graphics-card.html graphics cards now available. Do you think making a specific m-itx http://imgur.com/bqJ4cpG made air 240, would be better cooled option? Most of those short "mitx" 970 cards look too tall to fit in the ...

iirc, I actually ran a system in the Antec ISK300 for a while, something modest with onboard graphics & the internal 65W AC/DC adapter. Not sure if that models is still available, I see the links are for the one with a 150W PSU which isn't quiet under load. Anyway, I just used a couple of quiet 80mm...

3) sure, no prob.

88w vs 84w? No difference whatsoever.

The only time such a small TDP dif. would lead to a hotter/cooler CPU would be other factors like...

1. the die is smaller thus one has higher thermal density
2. worse thermal connection between heatspreader & die = poorer cooling

Thanks again Mike. I think I'll go with a Phenom as it's for a 100W system so its ventilation/cooling issue doesn't matter. For a sub-100W system, why bother with such cases? Footprint is way too big, imo, unless you can justify it for a discrete VGA card. I'd go with something way smaller -- maybe...