By the way, has anyone noticed any coil whine from this motherboard? While testing the system I've noticed an intermittent buzzing. It comes and goes seemingly at random so is hard to isolate. It definitely isn't caused by a fan (I've tried stopping them all) and it isn't caused by a drive (there ar...

I've just got one of this boards and built it using a AMD x2 3600+ 65w cpu. I've undervolted the vcore to 1v and it runs very stable. .950 is as low as I can go and it still boots and seems ok but I'll experiment a bit more. 0.925 boots but as soon as the XP logo appears the pc reboots everytime so...

Does anyone else think that the BIOS temperature readings are a little screwy on this motherboard? CPU temperature is about what I'd expect, around 55C at stock speed and voltage. That's roughly the temperature I'd guess by simply touching the Ninja's heatpipes. On the other hand, the motherboard te...

I picked up one of these boards for a new build and just finished installing a Scythe Ninja. The good news is that it fits the motherboard without any problems. The retention clip doesn't hit the motherboard's stock northbridge cooler, the Ninja's heatpipes are just clear of the capacitors around th...

I can see why people recommend against using sleeve bearing fans in PSUs, especially when quiet fans are around using other bearings. Having a reliable PSU fan is probably more important than avoiding CPU fan failure. I doubt that a PSU would run for very long if the single 120mm fan failed while a ...

If your application(s) work under both, mac and win, I'd prefer mac and OS X, especially for graphic design. Can you explain why? Nobody has ever given me a credible difference why a Mac is better suited to design work than a PC - the key software components are the same on both. I can understand t...

Bit of a pain having to mess around like that to put on a decent cooler. Maybe it would be possible to draw a bit more air over the chipset using a duct from a rear case fan? It doesn't look like any there are any motherboard components to get in the way, a simple card duct should be easy to fit in ...

Interesting ideas, the 120mm intake on most PSUs seems to work well enough, but doesn't seem like a perfect solution. Straight airflow through the PSU definitely seems more efficient. I played around with an old Enermax PSU using an 80mm and a 92mm fan. I found that the 92mm fan didn't make a huge d...

Anyone got a Noctua NC-U6 or Thermalright HR-05-SLI on this? Looking at the dimensions of the HR-05-SLI, and the layout of the motherboard, I don't think it can possibly fit. The Noctua cooler looks very similar to the Thermalright HR-05, I imagine it would have problems, the chipset just isn't in ...

The first computer I bought was a ZX81, but to be honest it was little more than a toy. Generally just used to play around with BASIC and run games like 3D Monster Maze (the original 3D survival horror). The novelty wore off pretty quickly and it ended up in the back of a cupboard. My BBC Micro was ...

Is it just me, or did they use pretty copper heatpipes and sink, but an aluminium block directly on the processor? :/ Its predecessor the VM102 was the same. It does seem a little back to front, especially with the greater weight of copper increasing the force on the card, but it didn't stop the VM...

Really? I've seen a few UK online stores listing them as in stock, so I assumed they were out. For example: http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/127248 http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/127249 http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/CPUs+%2F+Processors/Intel/Core+2+Duo/+Intel+Core+2+Duo+E2140+Retail?pr...

I've been planning to build an AM2 based system, mainly because of the low power consumption and decent integrated graphics of the 690G motherboards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Radeon Xpress 1250 chipset for Intel Core 2 Duo essentially the same? Should I expect boards using that chipset...

Thanks for the suggestions. That Biostar motherboard is pretty impressive, but I'd rather have an ATX board with at least one more PCI slot. Even with all the onboard features I can see myself running out of expansion slots. The AMD 690G chipset is looking very good, especially with the decent onboa...

I've been looking around for an AM2 motherboard to build a budget low noise system, but with all the choice available I'm having a lot of trouble deciding. I'm looking for a board with the following features: I definitely want a board that supports CPU undervolting/underclocking. Board performance a...

In my experience those metal enclosures amplify hard drive noise quite considerably. I've used a WD Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS in an Akasa Integral P2 HDD Enclosure, to me it was very loud, only tolerable as a backup drive that's used for a short time. The same drive was definitely quieter hard mounted ...

Quite recently I went through a collection of older hard drives, mainly pulled from computers, or used to backup information that's also on CD/DVD. Some were faulty drives, pulled from PCs after they started to develop problems, but most drives had been tested previously and marked as working. The d...

I think it's definitely easier to passively cool a Socket 370 CPU than one using Slot 1. I remember some PC builders using Slot 1 Pentium IIs with large passive coolers, but most of the coolers used noisy little fans. Any decent Slot 1 coolers are pretty hard to find these days. Socket 370 is compat...

I've been a long term fan of 2.5" drives for quiet storage, but recently I decided to try booting from an external SATA drive, hoping that placing the drive more distantly would reduce its noise sufficiently. I picked up an Akasa Integral P2 with a Western Digital Caviar SE16 500GB. The drive is ver...

I've been looking around for a cheap, passively cooled AGP graphics card for an Athlon XP-M system I'm putting together from spares. Image quality and the ability to drive a dual headed display at a decent resolution are the most important things, unfortunately my spare AGP cards aren't up to it. I'...

The rumours of a Macbook Mini are very interesting, but I'd be worried about fan noise with a fast CPU in a tiny case. I've had a chance to play with a standard Macbook, unfortunately I found the fan noise (when under load) and hard drive noise quite annoying. I'd like to stick with a system without...

Since the early 90s I've enjoyed almost silent portable computing and it's something I greatly value when writing on the move. I only require a system that can deal with word processing, simple spreadsheets, web/email and other basic tasks. In the early 90s I picked up a used Powerbook 100 with a br...

I'm not a gamer, but I'd love to see Apple release a mid-range desktop with some upgradability. The Mac Pro is too expensive, I just don't need that kind of hardware for the office/multimedia/internet tasks I'd use it for. With those high end CPUs and hard mounted drives, I imagine it'd also be nois...

In my media centre I'm currently using two 80Gb Hitachi 5K100s in a RAID 0. That's mainly because I happened to pick up two identical drives quite cheaply and prefered to have a single 160Gb partition. I definitely wasn't bothering with RAID 0 for the theoretical speed boost it promises. Having said...

It was surprising to see the Nexus fans do so badly considering how popular they are. Personally I've been quite happy with the 92mm Nexus fans I've been using, they definitely seem to move more air than the 80mm version, which makes me a bit dubious about CPC's CFM testing. Those 120mm Sharkoon Sil...

Bobfantastic wrote:Surely with a 1.8" drive there's room for an extra .7" or inulsulation over a 2.5" drive?

The real question is whether it would make any audible difference. Can you actually hear a quiet 2.5" drive once it's damped inside the case?

In my experience even 1" drives aren't significantly quieter than the best 2.5" drives. In fact the one in my MP3 player makes an annoying high pitched noise that's audible from the other side of the room when it's quiet. Unless the space available for the drive is really tight I don't think it's wo...

This kind of nonsense is one of the main reasons why I'm still using Windows 2000 pro, with no plans to "upgrade" to XP/Vista in the near future.

I've pretty much given up on 3.5" drives and enclosures. With the best enclosures the drive can be pretty quiet, but I've yet to find one that makes the drive inaudible, and I find that heat can be a real problem. You can solve overheating with decent airflow, but providing that airflow without extr...

SPCR reviewed the Hitachi TravelStar E7K100 and didn't find it too noisy, just not as quiet as the best 5400RPM drives. If you're going to use it in a desktop PC then I'd have thought that a 5.25" bay enclosure like a Silentdrive would do a good job of silencing it. If it's going to be used in a lap...