Finally I got Samsung XL2370 (led lcd) and it's totally silent at any brightness level! So if you need silent monitor for home use pay 2 times more and buy a led model. 8) Okay, silent is good of course! :D And dodging the price issue for now... how is the performance compared to a traditional fluo...

Guys, hope this isn't a dumb question but will this board support the Intel Xeon L3426? It's a socket LGA1156 chip, but I'm not clear on whether all LGA1156 motherboards will support all LGA1156 chips. If this board could run L3426, I'd like to grab one for the new desktop rig I'm building. Could so...

I'm about ready to replace my aging desktop and am planning to build around the new Intel Xeon L3426 CPU due to its quad core architecture and 45W TDP goodness. :D It's a socket LGA1156 chip but will it work with any LGA1156 motherboard, or does the mobo/bios need to explicitly support the L3426? I'...

Sceptre X20WC 20.1" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor with Speakers - the monitor does exhibit a weird flutter/whine/warbling sound that undulates for several seconds, then goes away for a few seconds, then repeats. It's quiet enough that having a small fan (as in an appliance, not a computer fan!) runnin...

Hey guys! Been a longtime member of SPCR but haven't been active lately... now it comes time for me to replace my near-obsolete Athlon XP 1800+ rig and I'm finding I've spent many hours of work time searching for inspiration without any satisfying solution... not good! I work from home (building cus...

This summer I bought a Compaq Presario F572US notebook for a real killer price (somehow, negotiated it to something like $390!)... :) first order of business was to wipe Vista off the thing and install WinXP and all the trimmings... I'm very happy with the result, a fairly quiet system and a real va...

I've gotta ask, guys, what's BE dual core? I'm not familiar with that abbreviation. :?: Also, FWIW, I used to be a big dual processor advocate prior to the emergence of dual core. Back in the day my personal rigs had dual P3-1GHz, then later dual Athlon MP... it just seemed that for my needs, the ad...

Thanks so much everyone! Here's some info in response to everyone... I would very much like to see some of your flashlight-work! Do you have a webpage or something? I've got a bit of a flashlight fetishism I think... :oops: I don't really have my own dedicated website yet, but you can see some of my...

Board DOA? Guys, I bought one of these boards from NewEgg and when it arrived tried to power it up (just to see if it worked) first without memory and without the 12V connector in place (PSU didn't have one)... nothing happened of course. Then I swapped the PSU with one from another rig, this one h...

Hi folks, I've been around SPCF a while but mostly as a lurker, except for posting one of the early reports on quiet laptop hard drives a year or two back. (My 15 minutes of fame!) ;) At present we've got a bunch of computers around the house that are all getting a little long in the tooth, and it's...

Really nice!

Probably a very dumb question (sorry if so), but where can one find more info about that case? Looks just about perfect for fitting everything in, and cooling it well... and quietly!

Never heard of Clarkconnect.com. I'll check it out! :mrgreen: The Qube2 is fully functional as far as I can tell, and even the stock software works... but of course it's running a VERY old Linux kernel and probably is riddled with security holes. I've heard that Debian and NetBSD both run pretty wel...

Thanks VERiON!

Special Linux distros... hmm... I would have thought any normal distro would run okay, given that the board is X86 compatible? Or am I mistaken?

Anyone else with suggestions, or is this pretty much the definitive way I'd want to go?

Hi Folks! :mrgreen: I've got a Cobalt Qube2 that I purchased long ago and haven't used in a long time. Here are a few photos (not of MINE, but lifted off the web) for reference... http://www.release1.com/milkyspit/images/image-qube2-diagonal.jpg http://www.release1.com/milkyspit/images/image-qube2-f...

Well, I'd never heard of those NetDisk products, which look like great choices. But can the hard drive be replaced with something larger down the road, or are you stuck with whatever you bought originally? And I'd never heard of ClarkConnect. If I understand correctly, it's basically a Linux distro ...

What sort of NAS (Network Attached Storage) appliances exist these days for home use? ("Home use" meaning INEXPENSIVE and LOW MAINTENANCE.) As of a couple years ago I was disappointed with how expensive the couple offerings were, but since then I haven't kept up with that part of the market. A NAS s...

http://www.mpja.com/pictures/14155.jpg They came from MPJA, a surplus electronics house. The link to this heatsink (for 99 cents!) is over here . That sure looks alot like the AAVID Passive heatsink selling for $9.00 over at SiliconAcoustics ... http://store5.yimg.com/I/siliconacoustics_1785_185018...

Oh! Just realized that I have a bunch of these laying around... http://www.release1.com/milkyspit/images/image-aavid-heatsink.jpg They came from MPJA, a surplus electronics house. The link to this heatsink (for 99 cents!) is over here . The box it came in talks about mounting a fan, but there are no...

Wow, thanks for all the good advice. :) Sounds like one of these copper beasts will be my best bet. I can mount a fan with FanMate inline if necessary, but am hoping I won't need to. The only 60mm fans I've got put out a fair amount of ball bearing noise (that high pitched whine... yuck!) even when ...

Maybe a dumb question, but can these mobile chips be used in a desktop rig? Perhaps with some sort of socket adapter?

And another dumb question... how badly is performance crippled relative to the same chip in a desktop version?

Folks, I'm doing some modding of my stepfather's ancient Gateway desktop PC, and will be installing a Pentium MMX/233 in place of the stock 166. (Hey, it's a faster chip, and only cost $6. ;) ) I want to cool this thing passively, which I assume is fine given the low power consumption relative to mo...

Thanks michaelb!

Pardon me for my general ignorance, but what's so great about the SP1614C and 1614N drives? Is it just the high capacity, or low price per GB, or great performance? Are they quieter than a Seagate Barracuda IV or V? I'm not trying to be negative, I really don't know. But you guys seem to be into thi...

michaelb , good luck to you! And please pass along your impressions about the new drive once you get it. This thread has sort of become the de facto source of info on quiet notebook drives, and your experiences added to it would be valuable. :) Where'd you order your 2.5 inch enclosure from? I need...

my newest IBM ThinkPad has a Hitachi drive in it, although I don't recall exactly which model. Very subjectively, it sounds roughly equal to the Fujitsu drive Could you see which Hitachi that is? michaelb , thanks for the Windows info about looking up my drive's model, but I'm running RH9 on this p...

Ah! Found it! :D It's actually very simple. Decibels are simply 10 times bels. So 2.1 bels means 21 dB. There are still some problems. As I suspected, this doesn't take "A" weighting into account, so a high bels rating could still sound quiet if most of the noise is in the "inaudible" (in other word...

michaelb , the short answer is yes, bels and dB can be compared (converted), at least somewhat. The thing I don't know if whether bels are "A" weighted, as in dB A . If not, the comparison won't make much sense. The "A" weighting puts more emphasis on sounds that humans can easily hear and less on ...

Speaking purely conceptually, it's going to be more difficult for drive makers to silence a 7200 RPM notebook drive (as opposed to the larger desktop drives) simply because there isn't nearly as much room for damping material, case stabilization, etc. Plus, the typical notebook mounts the drive with...

An Athlon XP 1800+ rig with MSI Nforce mobo that I've run silent for more than a year suddenly won't start. Yesterday it ran fine and had been running for at least a WEEK without being turned off. I shutdown the PC normally last night, and now the machine won't start again! When I push the front pan...

It's worth noting that plugging the PSU fan into one of the motherboard fan headers, you can have the motherboard itself control fan speed, which can be a big win if you have the good fortune of your motherboard's BIOS supporting variable fan speed based on temps...