I'd get the dual core over the quad core for my needs.

The only thing I do that stresses my CPU is playing Supreme Commander. For games higher clock speeds are more useful than more cores.

using the included brackets? no. using other methods? yes. I used thread to tie a 120mm Yate Loon to my HR-03. I have the heatsink hanging below the video card and the fan hanging loosely from the heatsink. Wastes a few slots but no vibrations get transmitted to the rest of the computer this way. Yo...

As for the fan : - Is there a simple and not too dirty way of attaching a 120mm fan ? Maybe zipties ? I have my hr-03 positioned so it's below my video card. I used some thread to loosely suspend a 120mm Yate Loon below the heatsink and video card. No vibrations to be transmited to the rest of the ...

I doubt the problem was a faulty board revision. If it was, there would be far more problems reported. It's more likely you just got one with manufacturing defects. BTW, the PS1 problem wasn't overheating. It was the CD-ROM motor failing. Turning it on the side or upside down made it easier for the ...

Thanks, this helps me out a lot. They have a HR-03plus for the 8800, but would that be fine by itself? It recommends a 92mm fan added to it. HR-03 won't passively cool a 8800. Get a fan. I hooked up a 120mm fan to my HR-03 (attached to an x1950xtx) by hanging it with thread so it was suspended belo...

pyogenes.....you make it sound so simple. It's not. I was limiting my response to why manufacturers design cases as they do, not whether vents are useful in all situations. Unless we're talking about fanless cases or custom jobs, it's reasonable to assume usage of fans for air flow since manufactur...

vents work if there's very little airflow and convection currents are the strongest source of airflow. In a well designed PC, airflow is strong enough to push the hot air out of the system before it can reach a vent. Worse yet, vents can reduce air flow efficiency if they let air into the system and...

Barracuda 7200.10 320gb sata x2 If you can return them, do so. They will be the loudest part of your system my a long shot once you get things straightened out. Loud seeks, loud idle, and an annoying high pitch whine. In addition to the fans needing to rev up to maintain a decent ambient temp, the ...

I'm not surprised. They probably determined it'd take a lot of hours to figure out exact what is causing the error and fix it. If that's the case, then financially that's not worth the time to fix it since the bug doesn't corrupt data or cause any other problems and it's far more cost-effective to j...

ok so the temps are ok, what is the case like for transportation, is it LAN party freindly? :) (Mind , im almost always the host, so its not a huge issue) It's a somewhat big and considerably heavier than aluminum cases, but I'm of the opinion that when the case becomes too heavy for me to move, it...

it's a bug with chkdsk.

look here

Ok thanks for all this and im planning on using this PC for around the next 3 - 4 years if possible Depending on the games you play, that is prefectly reasonable. If you tend to play the latest games all the time, you might run into limitations with your video card (it's likely a newer revision of ...

Whats wrong with the seagate ? The seek noises are much louder than WD or Samsung, but more importantly many of the drives emit a high pitch whine. Lots of people say they can't hear it, but I suspect it's due to having a loud machine that covers up the sound (many defenders of Seagates 7200.10 on ...

I agree with everything andyb has to say. Some other things I noted: RAM: OCZ DDR2 PC2-8500 SLI-Ready Edition Dual Channel PC2-8500? That's a monumental waste of money. If you don't overclock you only need PC2-4200. If you do an insane overclock of you E6600 to get it to 3.6GHz you'd only need PC2-6...

okay, so 1 TB is hard to imagine anyone having outside of business? really....? It's not hard. I said irreplaceable data. :-D porn, downloaded movies, music, etc can easily break 1 TB but they are not irreplaceable. It's extremely annoying to lose all that data, but if losing it ever gets more than...

exactly how is anyone supposed to "backup" 1TB of data I have no idea unless you go BlueRay ($$$) or throw in all on DVD's (time consuming and actually kind of dodgy as DVD's are made so cheaply) I question why anybody would have 1 TB of irreplaceable data outside of a business environment. ;-) And...

A few thoughts on top of what Neil already said: Scythe Ninja is known to have compatibility issues with some motherboards. You might want to consider some alternatives such as the Thermalright Ultra-120 to avoid playing the entire "will I be lucky" game. Whatever heatsink you end up getting, make s...

I'm surprised I haven't seen more people around here talking about lapping (the C2Ds). From what I read, looks like you can expect a ~5 temperature drop. <shrug> Lapping is more useful for overclockers that want every last MHz out of their CPU. My E6600 is somewhat concave and would definitely bene...

CPU: Mine idles in the 50's and goes up to 62C under load. I can't reduce fans any lower without risking them stopping. But that's with a hefty overclock - I'm sacrificing heat for performance, not silence. GPU: Stuck a HR-03 on my X1950XTX using a 120mm Yate Loon suspended below the heatsink with s...

I'll probably replace the SB heatsink with one of those zalman ones. The lower fan should provide enough air for that and the ram on the gfx card. No need to replace the SB heatsink with a zalman one. Just replace the TIM and remove the cover and you'll be in good shape. The MB temp reading is for ...

any system that is not dual core will be trash or linux box one day. Eight years from now? For perspective, I had a friend that played mp3s on a 50MHz x468 laptop back in the day. Yeah, that's right - a chip designed before the word Pentium was coined is fast enough for mp3 decoding (albeit not at ...

The heatpipe/heatsink arrangement certainly doesn't feel hot to the touch or anywhere near it. That heatsink/heatpipe arrangement (northbridge and VRM) is thermally decoupled from the MB temp reading. As I already posted, the MB reading is for the southbridge chip which is not connected by heatpipe...

the MB temp is a reading off a sensor next to the southbridge chip which is why it looks high.

if you go to Asus' self service tech support site, you'll find that 40 is well below the danger point for that board nad is a perfectly normal temp.

I can't answer your motherboard chipset question but can offer some insight on CPUs. The Core 2 Duo chips are the most efficient when you factor in performance. That means they get the most calculations done with the least amount of energy. However, they are not as energy efficient while idling. The...

Although, you can save money by buying an e6300 ($180), the Gigabyte 965p-s3 ($110), 7900gs(or 8600 next month for $~150-200) and it'll still be a nice computer. That reminds me of another question I have. What does the extra $20 or so give you in the 965p-ds3 vs the 965p-s3 in practical terms? Her...

I think what you may be trying to suggest is that the improvement isn't related to the amount of time it's going to save the user. (e.g. if a video task takes ten minutes to complete, and a content creation test takes three seconds, then 5% savings is thirty seconds in the former and milliseconds i...

Gotta love percentages, the numbers are meaningless in and of itself. We need to put it in context. It is in context. Over an average of a number of different benchmarks, the extra cache is going to give a performance boost of about 3.5%. Removing games from the benchmarks bumps that up to 4.1%. Th...

Gotta love percentages, the numbers are meaningless in and of itself. We need to put it in context. Kind of reminds me of stupid marketing ploys: "Our business grew by 300% last year while our main competitor only grew by 10%" That translates to we made $3,000 last year instead of $1,000 like the ye...

Props to Abit for attempting to make a higher end mATX mobo.

But shame on them for the entire Fatal1ty BS. I can't buy one out of principle.

I am also curious about the AData memory. According to at least one OC database , the memory of choice for OC is Corsair, G.Skill, or OCZ. There is exactly one system in their db with AData memory. Is that just a matter of everybody following the herd or is there really something to that? Or maybe ...