well the ultimate test is stability and temperature. have you tested for stability with prime95 and occt? are your temperatures out of your comfort zone? that's what really matters here. whether your numbers perfectly match up with other random people on the internet shouldn't be that high on your l...

you'll get the best igp performance from a board having 'sideport memory', preferably ddr3. if a board has that, the only difference to another board will be igp clock speed, which most of these boards will let you change anyway. at any rate the difference is not that great. all of these 785g boards...

well if that's all you're after, then i dare say any 785g board would be fine

i'm leaning towards the gigabyte ga-ma785gmt-ud2h myself, but my needs may be different.

looks great! there's not much i'd change about that system. perhaps go microatx instead, but it sounds like you might go for a 2nd video card some day.

any eventual upgrade plans? what kind of screen/kb/mouse/speakers have you paired it with?

newegg had a couple 4770 cards with stock 90mm-fan arctic cooling heatsinks, but they appear to be out of stock or delisted. both were around $95.

i'd prefer those over the 4850. or if you're not in a rush, the mid-range 5xxx radeons should be coming soon.

i think changing the video card and hard drive(s) will do a much better job of quieting your system, than a new case. plus it'll be much faster with the new parts. you could even skimp on the video card if you wanted, radeon 4770s are being shipped with arctic cooling heatsinks as stock. still much ...

yep all i would try next is a different stick of ram in each of the ram slots. something here isn't working the way it's supposed to, and it's 99% likely to be amongst the cpu, motherboard or ram.

i don't believe it's going to be possible to passively-cool an i7 920 (or any i5/i7 cpu for that matter), especially not with a geforce 280/285 dumping heat around it. furthermore with that much heat in a small box, i just don't think it can be done quietly. you could try something like this chiefte...

yeah that's completely insane

you could run a 4-disk nas with a sempron 140 and never see cpu usage top 10%. you might tax it a bit if you were running strong full-file-system encryption with software raid or some other extravagance, but even then a sempron is overkill.

hmm i'd have to say either a silverstone sg01 or sg02 for a cool-looking case, or a coolermaster elite 360 for something cheaper/hackable. gotta watch the width restriction though, some heatsinks or vga coolers won't fit. if i was going to transport this thing around a lot i wouldn't like a super-ex...

the hard drive rpm has less to do with your requirements than you think, you need a drive with strong multithreaded-io-handling firmware, and the samsung f1 and f2 drives performed terribly. there is as of yet no f3 review that shows whether samsung has fixed this, but it would be a big problem for ...

you could go with a tiny mt. jade case like the in-win bk623 or bk636 - you can fit full-height cards, a 5.25" drive, a 3.5" drive and a 2.5" drive in the external 3.5" bay.

the second 3.5" drive would have to be external, but that's where a backup drive should be anyway

i typically prefer igp boards anyway, as you have built-in redundancy should a vga card die.

any reason you're avoiding microatx boards? you'll have many more cheap options that way.

the gigabyte board is noted to have slow bootup times (7 seconds or so just to get to post, let alone the wait for windows after that).

i'd rather 4gb than 2gb also.

i don't know anything about their acoustic setup, but anandtech found that the ocz modxstream psu was as quiet as a modular seasonic but much cheaper (see here).

i'm looking to pick up a 500w for my next build.

How come your quad core is so energy efficient, my system q6600 idle at 85 watt on desktop, and thats an underclocked system with a 17w idle gfx board and one harddrive (incl 80plus PSU and a Micro-ATX Asus mobo + 4 sticks of 1 GB memory). his cpu is not only 45nm (yours is 65nm) but it's a special...

i haven't really kept up with the positive/negative pressure debate (and there have been many), but i've been running my case with negative pressure. temps are fine, but i'm much less fussy than most here :) i think you're just going to need to experiment unless someone's used this case before. ther...

the mt. jade cases (microatx, fits full-height cards, in-win example here) are 12.3 liters.

they use the cpu cooler's fan as an intake though. but they are workable.

well the concept of positive or negative case pressure revolves around whether air is trying to get out of the case (positive pressure inside) or air is being sucked into the case (negative pressure inside). if you have more fan capacity blowing into the case than exhausting out of it, you'll have p...

K.Murx wrote:?? That's news to me. Link please?

see review here, as i pondered in this thread.

the gigabyte p55m-ud2 should be a cheaper p55 board and still very functional. is there are reason for a full-atx board?

i'm very concerned about 40mm fans. i feel you'd be much better off noise-wise with the lowest-profile and largest-fan cpu heatsink you can get (120mm slim fan would be ideal) that you can use as an intake, and rely on the psu for exhaust. if planned right you'll end up with positive case pressure t...

i wouldn't be surprised if many of the stores were supplied by a single importer/wholesaler. if they don't order any more of the parts, all the dependent retailers will reflect that.

or it really has been discontinued

newegg has plenty? i don't know if the -b model there is a new revision or in any meaningful way different.

argh yes i found some a while ago, lemme look again. they were pretty impressive as memory serves me. here we go: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2384&page=3 http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/hardware/grafikkarten/2009/kurztest_zotac_geforce_9600_gt_eco_9800_gt_eco/5/ second link h...

random thoughts: - immensely overpowered psu - go a usb wireless nic instead, you'll use it more than you think you will (i do anyway) - it's definitely not worth spending a lot on a video card this close to a new generation coming out. go with a cheap dirty passive card, something like a radeon 455...

well i'll be, here's a dual-dvi motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121357 says it's dvi-i and dvi-d, so both output digital. i'd check the manual first to make sure, but it seems to be able to do the job. and it supports hd acceleration thanks to the g45-level grap...

see http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/pr ... q9400.html for q6600 vs the newer quads.

yeah i don't know of any motherboard that support dual digital displays. most will support dvi+vga or hdmi+vga, but not dvi+hdmi. you *definitely* don't need a psu that powerful either. i'd save the psu money and go for a q8400 or q9400 cpu. also do you not want to salvage the heatsink? it will cool...