accord1999, thanks for that link -- those benchmarks are more up my alley, and as usual, it's Intel by quite a distance. Nick, how does one go about finding out if my applications are CPU or memory intensive? Quick look on vendor pages didn't reveal anything of that nature. In any event, it seems li...

Hello, I'm going to be building a workstation PC for my office. It will primarily be running computational tasks like commercial finite element software and scripts in MATLAB. I would like the computer to be computationally powerful and future-proof, and money isn't an object, within reason (i.e. no...

I'm running a stock E2180 with a Ninja Cu, no fan attached to the heatsink. It's in an Antec Solo with a 120mm case fan nearby, so I'm not sure if that meets your definition of passive. Temps max out at 50C under 100% load on both cores.

I"m not getting any electrical noise -- no noise at all until your ear is about 6" away. It's in a Solo so no top vent.

Wow, I just did a fan swap on my Earthwatts 380W. As recommended above, I swapped out the stock fan for the 80mm fan that came with my Ninja Mini. What a difference! I'd now call it silent; before it would have to be considered only very quiet. Thanks for the suggestion!

I did the Ninja Cu - Mini bracket swap today. They are indeed interchangeable, so I now have the Cu bracket system holding the Mini, and the Thermalright bolt-through kit on the Cu, using the bracket that previously held the 775 pins. Clearly the bolt through is superior, particularly in the ease of...

Thanks Mike. I will give it a shot and report back.

Excellent review and comments on heatsink performance. I have a question for the group. I own (a) a Ninja Cu (used in a tower with stock 775 mounting bracket), (b) a Ninja Mini (used in a 2480 with 775 pushpins), and (c) a currently unused Thermalright bolt-through kit (bought and never used because...

I tried a similar thing recently on my Athlon XP 2600. I had a Nexus heatsink with a 60mm fan that wasn't exactly loud, but certainly wasn't quiet. So I bought a 80mm Nexus fan and a 60-80mm adapter. To be fair, it's a case fan and SPCR has indicated it isn't appropriate for a heatsink. That turned ...

Thanks, everyone for the advice. I went with dual 500 rpm Slipstreams. They seem ridiculously slow, but still move a decent amount of air. I never tested it before the fan replacement, but after replacement, CPU temps plateau at 35C after 20 minutes or so at full throttle. Good enough for me! My las...

Well, if the desktop has a sump pump it might need that much power.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136149

Looks like we both should have been more patient. Sorry to steer you wrong. Hope your build went well!

I was in the same boat a week or so ago. The 500 and 750 GB versions simply don't appear to be in wide distribution in the US yet. I considered getting the 500 GB version direct from WD at a premium price, but eventually decided to go with the 1 TB version because the newegg pricing made it a better...

Hello, first time poster but been lurking for some time. I'm building my first HTPC from scratch and I'd like to be as silent as possible. I've got an Antec 2480, E2140, WD GP 1TB drive, passive Ninja Mini, on-board graphics, and little else. Right now it is pretty darn quiet but I wonder if I can d...