Obviously, I want as much silence as possible, and the 160gb Spinpoint seems to be quieter than the 7200s, but I"ve seen the reports about annoying whining, which scares me some. As you are aware, there is a black cloud hanging over a significant number of Samsungs, and what this means is virtually...

There's some info on the stock heatsink (for the 2800+ at least) here: http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=a642800&page=3 Not exactly a full review but it does say: We found that while attaching a Zalman Fan-Mate (which sits in between the CPU cooler and the motherboard, allowing one the ...

The latest CPU power consumption figures from Tom's Hardware, including the new LGA775 P4s: http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040619/socket_775-49.html The tables look impressive and the figures appear to be isolated CPU power consumption rather than for the whole system, but it's a pity the...

Didn't think I needed to add a disclaimer: I quoted it because I thought the analogy and use of the word "damn" on a corporate website were funny

Another vote for Eraser: http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ It's Free/Open Source. Used it just last week to wipe a hard disk I sold on eBay. The single-pass overwrite of psuedorandom data should be adequate. Incidentally, has the idea occured to anyone else that there are people out there who buy HDs en m...

I've always liked the answer from Global WIN gave on their website back in 2000: Q: Hot air rises from the CPU, How is the air flow direction of a cooler better? Suck above or blow down to heatsink(CPU)? When you feel so damn hot in summer, do you prefer to have the fan sucked or blwon to you direct...

They're suggesting that in place of a thermally controlled fan on the HSF, that you use software to adjust the fan speed, which seems like a good solution. It wouldn't have to be Asus' software, it could be something like Speedfan or CPUcool as well. Okay. I misinterpreted it as saying "if you don'...

Regarding the ASUS K8V, I was browsing through the manual for the SE Deluxe when I noticed the following: The AMD Cool 'n' Quiet Technology feature works only with the AMD heatsink and fan assembly with monitor chip. If you purchased a separate heatsink and fan package, use the ASUS Q-Fan Technology...

Drive 1 Noticeable whine (with case closed, about 1 meter away): No Noticeable whine (with ear next to harddrive): No Model Number: SP1614N Supplier: Sephiroth Computers (Australia) Month of purchase: 2004.03 Motor: JVC sticker, no "FDB", P/V80 2D R2, 31211BD Revision: Rev A Date of Manufacturing: 2...

It's not an addiction, it's an itch that needs scratching. :roll: At the moment I'm having an argument with myself over upgrading to an Athlon 64 2800+ from my current XP 2500+. I tell myself that the XP draws too much power at idle, pushing the PSU fan and making the system noiser than I would lik...

1. Any advantages to creating multiple partitions in terms of performance? Less fragmentation and quicker defragmentation, as people have already mentioned. Though if you're a mad about defragging and optimising in general, you'd probably get more benefit from using programs like O&O's defrag and c...

What I see asked a lot is some form of the question "so will the A64 run cooler with Cool'n'Quiet enabled?" Well, honestly, that depends on how you use your computer. I think this is 100% correct. However, I think CnQ should NOT be taken into account when considering the heat output of the A64. "Bu...

As far as drive noise is concerned best 7200RPM drives are as quiet or almost as quiet as 5400RPMs, perhaps because manufacturers now put all their development efforts into the former. But heat, which is a factor in overall system noise, is a different story. I happened upon the Samsung SV1604N arti...

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/index.html

Truly unique in that old CPUs are tested with modern real-world benchmarks.

Anyway, for those of you seeing very little temperature drop at idle, you should really look in to downloading CPU Idle . Or VCool , which may do the same job and doesn't cost 30 Euros. I used Vcool Alpha 6 (with Cool Bit enabled, Halt Detect disabled) and it reduced my Barton 2500+'s idle temp fro...

Make sure the board supports S2K bus disconnect. See the sticky thread in this forum for more info. Without it, the Barton is grossly inefficient, particularly at idle. My Gigabyte board doesn't have the feature, despite being noted in AMD's recommended motherboards list as supporting "Advanced Powe...

Carrying this over from another thread-- it deserves its own topic. Yeah, in the Hot & Noisy VGA forum ;) The most interesting thing to come out of this card are the power consumption measurements performed by Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20040414/feforce_6800-19.html For exa...

yeah but as soon as you have any real apps or a game going, 89W, here we come! This is why it's given a range rating of 3-5. I can't help but think the Athlon 64 is a little underappreciated being shoved all the way down the bottom of the list. Its 89W peak certainly won't impress SFF fans who take...

new socket standard is coming so getting one now is a bit of a dead end It's often a moot point though. If you waited a couple of months and bought a Socket 939, would it be so you could upgrade to a 4000+ at the end of the year? Given the relatively small performance gain (from a 3000-3700+), what...

Wumpus, I have a question for you. Did you follow the Ceramique instructions? No. He scooped used Ceramique off his old heatsink to re-apply to the CPU for use with a new heatsink, if I understood correctly. Maybe that's OK (I doubt it), but in any case you won't find that conservation tip in the i...

Since we're still starved for info, I thought I'd do some poking around re the new Athlon 64 revision and came across the following articles. They're not new nor even really interesting, they just haven't been mentioned here before. http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20031215184404.html http:/...

Looking at pics of the Voodoo5, the fans are a standard form factor screwed atop the heatsinks, so the easiest option would be to get a pair of quieter fans (e.g. Papsts) the same width and height, screw them on with the existing screws, and plug them into the PSU or motherboard headers. Anyway, tha...

The 9600 has video de-blocking, the 9200 doesn't. I figure if I'm going to spend $x on a new video card anyway I may as well spend x+delta and get a vaguely decent one. I noticed some time ago the hint of a difference by the fact that DivX puts the 9600 on its list of cards with optimized post-proc...

Pretzel, not sure about pricing but see if you can find the http://www.sapphiretech.com/vga/9600-xt-ult.asp (they're impossible/hard to get here in Australia but should be easy where you are).

I'll only be using the graphics engine to drag windows around and view the occasional DVD, so this isn't a big worry. The only possible issue is whether 2 hours of continuous DVD playing (MPEG decoding/deblocking via the graphics engine) is going to cause problems with heat buildup. I kind of assum...

At the moment only the socket-754 Athlon 64s have Cool & Quiet. Re how its throttling works, the doc you want to look for is "AMD Athlon 64 Processor Power and Thermal Data Sheet" (unfortunately I don't have a direct link to it at AMD's site). The CPUs have a min, intermediate, and max P-state. What...

It's something like 89W I believe... not as bad as an equivalent P4 but hardly cool and quiet.

I think the approach, if it works this way, would be to turn down Folding's CPU utilisation until you find the "sweet spot" where the Athlon 64 throttles down.

There is no "standard" in the U.S. for receiving digital (cable or Satellite) for HDTV. Sticking with terrestrial, which is what the Nebula card (among others) is and what the ATI is (albeit for the ATSC standard), I think that "larger companies won't find it worthwhile" is consistent with my littl...

Funny how small innovative companies like Nebula have allowed Brits, Aussies, and people in other countries using the DVB standard to receive digital HDTV on their PC for over a year now, while ATI with its huge budget is only just catching up.

Since about a week ago I've had a proper 9600 (HIS manufactured) with a stock pin-fin heatsink, and it gets very warm to the touch, which isn't surprising since it's basically a dead air space in that part of the case. So far I haven't encountered stability issues with it, but nor have I done any se...