Are you 2 even talking about the same CPU? (talking to BIONIC and Djang). Are you both running C2D or what? I have a stock AMD X2 6000+ with idle temps of ~43C with 26C ambient so 44C doesn't seem abnormal to me, but again, I don't know what you're running... Speaking of which, has anyone with an X2...

Nice start, I like your work, BIONIC, clean and sharp. I tried out blocking off the LED light with tape, but light still comes through the clear plastic part as it passes through, obviously, so I'll have to either tape that up too, or paint it. Maybe try to slide the hole-end of a balloon onto the c...

Interesting. Why did you taped/blocked off the bottom vent with tape? Doesn't the hot air stay at the bottom? Does it help in drawing hot air out? First of all, heat goes up, not down so "in theory" no -- the hot air doesn't stay down. And as for why he did it, most likely it's because he wants mor...

I like that front-bezel mod too. I was thinking of doing something similar but without sanding off the clips. Instead, I thought about mounting strings to the end of the 3 clips and feeding them through the frame and out to a reachable place such that when pulled, they release the clips and allow yo...

jaldridge6 wrote:actually it looks like the sticks are separated by an empty slot, hence, correct.

No, it doesn't -- that's the point. An empty slot is only good if the board is AABB. If the channels alternate (and that varies from board to board as I said), it's wrong.

You sure your memory sticks are not in the same channel? :) Most boards I've used alternate slot channelss (i.e. A,B,A,B) and if your board also uses that orientation, you're currently running both sticks in the same channel. I know there are some boards out there that do A,A,B,B but I've not seen o...

I configured the RAID5 through the RAID controller's (si3114) BIOS setup program. Windows Vista automatically detected it as a single volume. Two drives were WD3200KS and the third is a WD3200AAKS . The entire system specs can be seen in my sig. And, if you're wondering if all three drives were wor...

In my last setup I had three Wester Digital 320GB SATA2 16MB drives in a RAID5 off the Silicon Image controller on my A8N-SLI motherboard. Performance was TERRIBLE! I had the OS installed on a single 160GB drive, and everything else on the RAID5....if I was playing a game and attempting to stream a...

Well, SW RAID sound good on paper, but my experiance has steered me away from another attempt. I'd be willing to give it another go, if it was a "known" good setup. (Then again, for serving my media files, performance isn't quite as importtant (at least not until I start encoding 1080p video files)...

Why? Does SeaSonic RMA those easily for a new unit?

The inside looks okay, but the front panel gushes with cheapness, looks very low quality, definitely fits the price. I don't think it's bad - it may be just the compression artifacts in the review pictures. The matte-glossy combination kind of reminds me of IBM designs. I guess you'd have to see it...

The inside looks okay, but the front panel gushes with cheapness, looks very low quality, definitely fits the price. The case also looks like poorly built like it's prone to vibrations, installation quirks, and defects, but that's that's just an opinion, I could be wrong.

I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too here. It's a bigger case you need to generate somewhat more air flow to move heat around effectively. That's one of the disadvantages of bigger cases.

One possible factor is the proximity of your HDDs. Did you leave out any space between each HDD in the P182? In the Solo if you use the suspends, you get a fair amount of space so the air blowing in can easily breeze through. In the 3-slot-mount P182, it's pretty tight so HDDs would hold their heat ...

I never understood people that cut into these nice cases so willingly, especially people that carve right into the polished SOLO finish sides/top. It's like cutting the sleeves off of a really nice leather jacket. :? Even if it increases airflow efficiency, it does so by so little, keeping the case ...

What about front-intake fans? Did you use any on the P182? Do you use any on the solo?

Talking as a SOLO owner with no P182 experience, I can't answer the main question, but I'm sort of glad to hear what crispy said =); gives me some reassurance that I bought the right case. I returned the P182 today, but I'm left wondering -- isn't this case supposed to have superior cooling? Could y...

Simple, but not elegant and technically the HDD is not "suspended." Suspended is when it's completely in mid-air. Yours is more of a well-cushioned soft-mount. I wouldn't call it genius but certainly creative.; a quick and easy solution, and most importantly, cheap.

Currently I have a SI-128 in a Solo, and it cools my X2 4600+ reasonably well (CPU in the mid-30s idle, low 40s load). However, I'm wondering if a tower HS like the Ninja, with a fan oriented in series with the case exhaust fan, would improve airflow over the hard drives? My HD temps aren't bad (mi...

Wedge wrote:You answered my question, thanks.

By "tower-style" i'm charactering the tall heatsinks that usually have the fan blowing across them rather than down on them. They do not have the fan blowing down in the direction of the motherboard.

My Zalman 9500 blows horizontally and fits fine.

I was trying to make the very same decision when I bought my SOLO. I didn't consider the P150 though because Antec is not known for quiet PSUs and I don't trust the P150 PSU. I bought a SOLO for $50 (AR) from MicroCenter and added a SeaSonic S12 430W. The reason I went with SOLO over the P182 is sim...

Another question-- Do the tower-style heatsinks fit without issues? I know this can vary from one tower to another, but are there any towers that will definitely NOT fit the SOLO? Not sure what you mean by "tower-style" but the SOLO is not a micro-ATX so if you use a standard ATX mainboard, most wi...

jhhoffma wrote:Why not the WD5000KS or 3200KS? It is SATA2 as well and probably quieter than those Hitachi's.

I think he wants to buy from the local store and those are his only options.

Just go to your local hardware store and look for single-sided padded tape, I'm sure they'll have something close enough.

Okay, I'm sure now that I have the revisioned version.

For future readers, here's a visual comparison:

OLD:




NEW:

Can someone post a old-bands vs. new-bands photo to illustrate the difference? I just got a Solo and I'm not sure if what I have is the new or old style bands. I want to be proactive and order a set of the new type if I have the old, so knowing would help

Assuming the drive has S.M.A.R.T. support, I'd look at the fail rate stats. It might show an unusually high rate of errors. There are 3 particular smart measures I'd look at: UDMA_CRC_Error_Count Seek_Error_Rate Raw_Read_Error_Rate CRC is probably the least meaningful as even working drives can have...

I will try and make due with my 3 Samsungs for now. I think the performance may be better than I first thought. I'll make a 3-way mirror raid for the first 20gb of each drive so performance might be enough for my needs. The remaining space will be RAID5'ed.

Ummm... I'm starting to wonder whether what you think you're looking for even exists. What do you think a modern 40GB drive is precisely? Frankly, it sounds to me like your assessment standards are either stuck in the five years ago, or stuck in enterprise space. I didn't say it MUST be 40GB, I was...

Well, I always set my OS to the first 1-2 partitions of the drive but you only have 1 head so if I'm doing something on the "slow" partitions, the first partition is still slow.