One other suggestion, 4 500GB 7200rpm notebook drives in RAID 0. Might not be quite as quite as the 20EARS...but probably not much worse if you pick some fairly quite models, and you'll have a crap load more speed. I've been considering a couple of 320, 500, 640 or 750GB 7200rpm notebook drives in R...

I'll throw in behind the Samsung F4EG 2tb drives as well. Only word of caution is there is a bug in the early firmware that causes write issues if a "Drive identify" command occurs during write in AHCI mode. Samsung has a new version of the firmware out there that corrects it, and supposedly all dri...

^ || You just have to worry about setting up the proper alignment. The best/easiest way to do it is if you have a Vista/Win7 machine, and you might be able to do it with some of the latest distros of Linux. Just pop the drive in the machine, format to NTFS, take the drive out and put it in the XP ma...

I haven't personally used that one, but the Gelid Silent 80mm fans I have in my case are pretty damned silent.

Obviously a pretty old chart, but I found one from 2007 that lists the lowest rate in the US as being in WV at 6.2c per kw/hr and HI as 20.7c per kw/hr. It listed MD as 8.5c per kw/hr. Considering my current rates, I'd say all those on the chart are probably about 20% higher today than in 2007. That...

Build I finished about 2 weeks ago Rosewill blackbone case Asus M4A78LT-M LE motherboard AMD Sempron 140 2GB stick of Mushkin Enhanced silverline DDR3 1333 1TB Samsung F3 7200rpm HDD 120mm Gelid silent fan Total build cost was $250. Admittedly I am adding a new GbE NIC and just dropped some change o...

True, but if you are paying your power bill in US dollars, I assume you are also living in the US. Even taking in to account varying electrical rates, 1 watt/year of electricity runs from about $.80-1.40 in the US based on the various electrical generation and transmission rates that I am aware of f...

You do have an issue that a lot of the big fans (>140mm) I've seen tend not to have very good static pressures. So this probably contributes to poor case ventilation compared to something a little smaller with the same CFM rating.

You would probably save some on bills. I think the most cost effective thing to do is get the most power efficient PSU you can, and one rated at no more than what you think the computer will ever use. Don't over spec it, that just leads to spending more and it makes it less efficient. You could almo...

If I was that concerned about ramped up temperature under heavy server load, I'd just spring for some thermally controlled fans. Gelid makes really great silent fans with good air flow. They have PWM controlled fans, a similar spec fan that is 3 wire that is thermally controlled on its lonesome, and...

There is little selection over 140mm in size, and most tend to be power hogs for the air moved and just not as quiet. Just not many manufacturers investing the time and money to make good fans over 140mm. Bigger is better to a point. Frankly, 120mm is really the sweet spot as pretty much anyone wort...

That is unfortunately what I have concluded. My whole budget was sub $300 for everything from CPU to drive to case. So I could have gone lower power, but it would have cost significantly more, or it would have compromised on what I need/want. For why do I want RAID support, because I want chipset na...

Good ideas, especially vis a vie the SSD. I knew it was going to be a bit of a trade off going with a uATX board over an Atom uITX board. However, I wanted something with at least 6 SATA ports as well as more than a single PCI-e slot for future expansion. Eventually I may be adding a GbE NIC and do ...

Err, sorry. I am using a Kill-a-watt. The power draw was when in the BIOS, since I don't have an OS loaded yet to see what the power draw is idling on the desktop/console. I care more about final plug draw than DC draw really. Thanks for the suggestion on the PCI-PCI-e as I'll probably never use the...

ASUS M4A78LT-M LE Sempron 140 Antec 380d Mushkin Enhanced Silverline DDR3 1333 1x2GB Samsung F3 1tb Rosewill Blackbone case That is what I currently have. I am looking for suggestions on ways to par down the power consumption. Eventually I plan to add a 2tb Samsung F4, but probably not for a few mor...