Site News

Not the kind of diamonds that might have glittered in your mind, but... Innovation Cooling is giving away 100 syringes of IC Diamond 7 Carat thermal compound to SPCR forum members. In return, Innovation Cooling seeks test data on how well the thermal compound performs in your system. Check out the details here.

A number of readers have asked for an SPCR investigation into MS Windows Home Server, which is available as OEM software, as well as appropriate hardware to run this OS. Popular opinion on WHS seems inordinately high for a MS OS; some people feel it's the best thing MS has produced in years. We're working now to deliver an article on WHS and building a power-efficient home server silent enough to not put it in the closet, hopefully by the end of this month. In the meanwhile, here is Missing Remote's recent comparison of the HP MediaSmart Server vs two homebrews variants, and Microsoft's home page on WHS. * Discuss this news in the SPCR forums.

This is a blog in the forum about facility and equipment upgrades currently being implemented at SPCR. The big project is the building of a hemi-anechoic chamber on the ground floor of my house. The blog was started at the end of May. Latest report, July 20: With double doors and nearly 600 lbs of blue fill for acoustic damping, daytime SPL in the room is now 12 dBA. External traffic causes only 1-2 dBA rises in SPL.

SPCR is always working to improve its testing procedures, and every once in a while we make a breakthrough that massively changes the way we go about testing hardware. Recently, we had such a breakthrough in our airflow testing methodology.

The problem with breakthroughs is they tend to make things obsolete. Such is the case with our current database of airflow results — our new method improved things so much that we have to throw out all of our existing results and start again. After countless days refining our test procedure — and several more of retesting — we proudly present the fruit of our efforts. With the exception of some obsolete 80mm fans, every fan in our database has been retested with the new test procedure.

Fan Round-up #1: 80mm fans
Fan Round-up #2: 120mm fans
Fan Round-up #3: 92mm fans
Fan Round-up #4: 120mm fans (again)

Unusual Fans
Noctua NF-S12 Series
SilenX Ixtrema Pro
Arctic Cooling Arctic Fan 12L

SPCR's lab clearance corner is open, we need to clear off the shelves again. Grab some great deals & support your favorite hardware site.

Enermax USA has decided to give away their new Modu82+ power supplies in a raffle draw to two lucky SPCR forum members. Read the giveaway details here, and our review of the Modu82+ 625W here.

Zonbu is offering a 5% discount on their products for SPCR buyers. Use coupon code SILENTPC or just click this link to receive your special discount. Zonbu is a tiny, completely silent PC which has many other attractive features and benefits including:

• silent and reliable because there is no moving parts - no hard disk, no fan
• affordable at $99 plus a two-year service contract
• hassle-free experience with transparent software update, unlimited support and automatic backup for $14.95 a month
• eco-friendly - the first consumer PC to receive EPEAT Gold, it consumes only 9W on average.

Some users feel the front intakes on Antec's popular enthusiast PC cases don't allow quite enough air inflow. Here's a simple way to improve it.

It's another one of our famous blowout sales to clear the SPCR lab. Don't miss it!

Just in time for Christmas... moving beyond 1000W load capacity with the Bonefish edition.

We took a look at a Fusion as a postscript to the NSK2400 review, and it's pretty much what we expected: A new brushed aluminum bezel with built-in VFD on the NSK2400. It's slick, and aimed at the top.

The Scythe Ninja heatsink, originally reviewed 18 months ago, took the enthusiast world by storm. Since then, the Ninja has under gone two major revisions. Kelly Stich examines the latest, designed to mate with the latest CPU sockets.

We have to clear off the lab shelves periodically to make room for the steady flow of new review samples. Our overflow is your benefit: Most samples of the gear we've reviewed in the past 6 months are all priced to sell.

Hewlett-Packard, which overtook Dell as the world's biggest personal computer maker by shipments in Q3 2006 for the first time in three years, has a new enegy efficient PC in its AMD CPU based s7600e series PC. One of the three CPU options in the compact Slimline s-series chassis (just 9.75"H x 4.375"W x 13.125"D) is the much talked-about low power 35W AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ dual-core processor. Click on read more to read more.

Just a quick note to say that a long-planned transition to a new server we built and installed in a colocation host in Vancouver seems to have been successful. The name servers changes should be complete everywhere on the web by now. There is still some housekeeping to be done; please bear with us and let us know if there's some glitch we seem unaware of. Comment on this news in the forums.