Understood :) I'm doing similar experiments, for the sake of some local musicians who need audio workstations and are fully fed up with Apple (though I don't really understand why, all because one of them got a G5 with heat issues). I'm going to try out the Savvio route, once the new generation is r...

Man, I just gave you a whole bunch of bad links. Yes, that HP is a TN panel, my eyes were wandering to another more expensive model and somehow correlated the two. I also linked you to the wrong Sceptre, this is the actual model:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6824112176

Oh, and yes, that Acer is a step up from the 22" models you mentioned. But I've never liked Acer panels, the backlighting tends to be subpar, and the physical build leaves something to be desired. Namely stability, and quality plastics. EDIT: I think I may be wrong about that 20" HP, it may be TN. O...

Sceptre X20WC It has the same resolution as the 22" screens, so the pixel pitch is tighter. It has an MVA panel, which should be pretty decent. It is rather cheap, though, so you're still likely to have build quality issues. I would probably jump on this HP instead, they've been making some very go...

Personally, I would avoid the 22" LCD's because they're most all TN type panels. TN, no matter what the specs might say, have horrific viewing angles so bad that the color is inconsistent across the entirety of the monitor. Most TN's also still use 6bit panels, resulting in a true color display of 2...

I tried something similar with a Raptor in a Nexus Drive-a-way, and I wasn't at all happy with the result. I switched over to a NoVibes III and it worked like a charm. It's still loud, being a 3.5" 10k drive, but suspension is definitely the way to go. It makes for better airflow around the drive, t...

I say if the net effect is negative, the higher the airflow the more the delta between smooth and rough. In a low airflow situation the heat will be rising more relative to the flow. In high airflow, the flow is relied upon for the level of performance and anything interfering will hurt more. But I'...

I'm probably wrong, but here's my theory. I think that with a smooth fin the "boundary layer" that was mentioned earlier is pulled away quickly and evenly with airflow. When you make the fins rough, the troughs will be blocked by the peaks, and hot air will stagnate in them. Also the extra turbulenc...

You added a fan that wasn't there before? Try turning that off, and see what happens. I'm not very familiar with the Sonata 2, I only built once in one, and it was ages ago. But it is possible the additional fan is leading to hots spot that weren't present before by lowering/raising the pressure pre...

Ibase and some others also make MITX s755 motherboards for core 2.

So I'm looking at building myself a new performance workstation, kind of a proof of concept for power and quiet, and a test bed for the bright (yeah right!) ideas I get. I'm torn between these two cases, and I really can not make up my mind. The A16 has all 120mm fans, and has both direct cooling fo...

What happens if you mount the fan to blow over the top of the RAM and onto the ninja? Does it get enough airflow over the memory to cool it to adequate levels? I'd think that would be less disruptive to the airflow in most cases.

That's rather ingenuitive, though, I wouldn't have thought of it.

Check out point of sale suppliers for cherry keyboards in the US. You're probably looking for the G80-3000, G80-1800, and G84-4100. The G81 line is rubber dome.

A lot of add on cards do their RAID 5 in software, too, and software RAID 5 will be slow. You still get the redundancy, but it's almost always going to be slower than a single drive. If you're in it for speed setup a level 0 array. If you want redundancy with a little speed improvement on reads, the...

For whom the bell tolls...

Does it sound kind of like a sonar ping? If yes, backup now. You should backup anyway. Clicks and pings are generally NOT good in disks, and these types of mechanical failures often won't show up in diagnostics until it's too late.

By creating a small partition at the outer edge of the platter (beginning sectors) you get better performance. The downside is you cut the capacity of your drive very significantly. If you partition the extra space and and use it at the same time as the other partition you'll have severe performance...

Only if the usage patterns are predictable enough to cache the data you need. The farther you get from a simple transfer of a single file, the less caching will help.

Considering the Savvio 10k.1, according to storage review, has faster access times than any other 10k drive out there, and current 3.5" 15k drives are in the 5.5 to 6.0ms real world range... you're not going to come close. It should also be noted that the 10k.1 Savvio comes in the top 10 of tested d...

Wait for the new Savvio 15k, they should be something resembling not horrifically loud if the Savvio 10k.1 is any indication. Also the transfer rates probably won't be near other 15k drives unless Seagate made some huge improvements, but the access speeds will likely blow everything else out of the ...

Nor about airflow, those fans are just going to fight against each other no matter how you arrange them.

The cache probably won't make a huge difference for your usages. What will you be using the drives for? Maybe you could get a larger capacity Samsung which has a 16MB cache. Western Digitals have very harsh, annoying noise signatures to me. I'd get a Seagate 7200.10 before a WD, but first I'd drop t...

Sorry, I don't know about using a CF card w/ adapter in a laptop. I would imagine probably not, but it might be hackable in some models. Logic Supply does have some 2.5" form factor flash disks which look like they may be a drop in replacement in an IDE equipped notebook. I think they're going to be...

I wasn't quite clear in my original post. The Fujitsu P7120 is fanless, but it's looking like the new P7230 is not. Based on past Fujitsu patterns, the P7120 will probably be available until the P7340 or whatever is released. All of the Panasonics in the R, T, W, and Y series are now fanless, I beli...

The only problem I had resuming from standby on the Asus was that ACPI 2.0 was disabled by default. Once I enabled that standby works fine. I haven't tried overclocking, but the BIOS doesn't look particularly versatile. I don't think most of these MATX boards based on the v965 will be. If you really...

quick update: it looks like the P7230 probably isn't fanless, but I haven't seen anything definitive

The Q2010 has a fan though, and I've heard reports that it can be rather loud. The review at Notebook Review, for one, though the reviewer himself didn't think so. The P7120 on the other hand, is completely silent. I'm not sure about the new P7230. Also, the Panasonic T, W, and R series are silent f...

Just grab a NoVibes III, I got mine from Frozen CPU and it did wonders with my Raptor. To get an idea of the impact it will have unmount your drive (while it's off) and then power up. Then realize it will be even quieter because the drive will be inside the case.

This sucks. My HX520 didn't buzz out of the box, so I opened it up and threw in a Nexus fan so it can cool my CPU consistently. Now after I void the warranty it develops a louder and louder buzz over the course of a week, load or no load.