Yup, I was using a CRT monitor.

The thing about the volume control is that it didn't change the volume of the sound artifacts, like the "lasers" or buzzing. Lowering the volume did lower hiss, though.

Back when I was using my older Sony Vaio system, I noticed that the computer exhibited numerous artifacts and sound anomalies of which I could hear through my speakers and headphones. Like moving the mouse around would cause a buzzing sound, and opening a window would result in me hearing a higher-p...

I have a friend who ran a P4 3.06 GHz and X800 XT AIW on a Dell OEM 250w PSU (ran 3dmark05 and got around 5400 marks).

Don't worry I'm aware that 120mm psu's have fans on the bottom, but I was thinking of them in the context of my case (so 120mm psu's would be upside-down in my case). I should have posted the case. It's an Antec 900 (image here) , kinda of like the Antec 300 Vicotnik posted except with more fans. I ...

It seems that the current trend for mid-high end enthusiast PSU's is to use 120mm (or larger) fans, which apparently lower noise, particularly with loads >250w on 80plus units. However, my case features a bottom-mounted PSU and I have PCI-expansion cards that I feel would suffocate 120mm top-mounted...

I noticed that power consumption results are not consistent from site to site.
eg, the link on the first post quotes the HD3850 as consuming 82w at load, where as another site I looked at says the HD3850 peaks at 63w, and a different site says the unit consumes 90w.