Well, I have both rear fans as exhaust now. So you think the other three Panflos should all be intake? I just reversed the side intake fan to exhaust to see if the temps would drop, but no difference, so I guess only the two rear exhausts are beneficial. Is this what you mean by "open up your intake...

We all want a quiet system but we all want a cool one too. So when I bought that very hot running Silenx iXtrema Pro 450W power supply (see my warning under "Power Supplies" here http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewforum.php?f=6&topicdays=0&start=60) and complained to their tech about the heat (38 ...

I know there has been quite a debate here about Silenx and their products. However, in the quest to silence my PC, I decided to take a chance on the Silenx iXtrema Pro 450 Watt power supply, which they tout at 14 decibels. Turned off, maybe! For the outrageous price of $134.95 it is a rip-off and, q...

Could be, but one bad motherboard, possibly two and/or a possibly bad video card add up to a lot of trouble. I am not knocking ARM in the least because they have been great with me, but I think I have gone as far as I'm willing to go with their product. I already lost a half day at work because of t...

I just got off the phone with Roy, one of the owners of ARM, and told him I would be returning the computer for a refund. He had offered to test the unit and suggested that the garbled BIOS screen may be due to a bad chip on the video card but he had no explanation for my iPod troubles, other than t...

More anomalies tonight. My iPod kept charging for over 8 hours last night without ever saying "Charged", way more than it should and had been since I got it a few weeks ago. Tonight Windows would not detect it with either a USB 2.0 or firewire connection, so I downloaded the latest iPod software and...

I have Nero and I agree that it is better at certain things, especially burning images. I didn't mean to imply that CD/DVD Creator would harm the BIOS (how could a piece of software do that?) only that there was an anomaly on a machine that I'm a little worried about. I have a few more days to test ...

I have decided to take Straker and Ralf's advice and ship the PC to ARM so they can check it out while I'm in China. They are paying the cost of shipping both ways because I bought the service contract. The only anomaly I have encountered since the initial crashes into a corrupt BIOS screen is that ...

I recently purchased a Stealth Level-4 UltraQuiet PC from ARM Systems, including Asus K8VSE Deluxe motherboard, Athlon 3200+ w/512K l2 cache, 2 sticks of 512MB 400DDR CL3 stock SDRAM, 160GB SATA/150 Samsung SpinPoint hard drive, 400W factory modified UltraQuiet PS, 128MB DDR ATI Radeon 9800 Pro vide...

So the AthlonXP is out? You didn't mention. Someone said previously that it runs cooler than the Athlon64, so I wanted to consider it. RAM - No way am I buying 256MB sticks. They're basically obsolete and if I end up upgrading to 1GB or more they'll be useless. I hope the performance hit isn't as ba...

So, I assume you prefer the Athlon64 over the XP? Memory - When you say don't use 1 RAM stick in a dual channel system do you mean 2 slots, and aren't most motherboards either 2 or 3 slots? Video cards - any advantage to 256 bit interface over 128? I guess more detail and slightly faster speed? On t...

First of all, I should have mentioned I am using a cable modem. I don't know if any broadband connection uses more or less system resources but maybe you could enlighten me. The other thing is I doubled my memory from 512MB to 1GB awhile ago, hoping it would speed things up and/or allow more efficie...

Here's the type of multitasking I'm usually doing on my pc: web browsing (usually multiple sites at once), downloading (large files, sometimes up to a gigabyte or two, three or four at a time, simultaneously), while playing mp3's or sometimes watching a video. Which processor do you recommend and do...

So which processor would you choose, Athlon64 or XP? And what do you think about Prescott Hyperthreading or Athlon64 Hypertransport? Do either really improve multitasking or is it all Hype?

Wanted to let you know I'm up to $1,400 with ARM, now that I've upgraded the cpu, motherboard, "stealth" cooling package and warranty. Staill can't decide between AMD Athlon64 or XP, or Intel P4 Prescott chip. I want fast but not too hot or unstable.

Thanks for all of your advice, Bob. As you can see, I don't know diddly about motherboards and compatibility, just the features I want. I was picking the Athlon64 or Intel P4 based on processor power but if the Athlon XP will provide as much brawn with less heat I want it. I still want a powerful vi...

OK, Bob, if you want to know what I have in mind you can refer to spastic's ARM set-up with a couple of changes: CaseType: ARM STEALTH UltraQuiet MT w/RamAIR Duct/2x120 Fans/Black or Zalman fans PowerSupply: 400W ARM STEALTH UltraQuiet PS - Factory Modified Zalman (or go with the 300w if it's much l...

I mounted my case fans with thick rubber washers to absorb vibration. I'm curious whether ARM does this and if they didn't, have you tried it? It seems to me if they're still noisy, they're obviously not quiet fans.

Hi Bob (if you're still around) or someone like him, I'm looking at ARM's Powerhouse Athlon64 system and wondering if you could do it cheaper. I'm talking acoustically dampered and ducted case, low noise fans for the case, PSU, CPU, chipset, video card Zalman heatpipe (not even sure they have this),...

Hi Mike C, First of all, great site! As an old-hand pc builder (going back to the XT), and someone who has a low tolerance for any noise I don't intentionally make myself, I would love to buy a silect pc without having to to do all the work myself and spend a lot of additional time and money to achi...

Here I was all set to buy one of these (dare I say "pricey"?) systems and now you're making me think twice. I hope they fixed this problem because I can't imagine they put all that high tech effort in quieting the PSU, CPU and video card coolers, case, etc. and goofed on something as obvious as case...