It's not that replacement fans are outside the overall system budget, it's just that I don't want to spend an extra $30+ for fans (and deal with the PITA of rigging up some way of undervolting them) if I don't have to. Besides, I suspect that the hard drive or PSU will be the noisiest system compone...

I'm building a new computer for my sister. I've got most of the pieces nailed down, but there are still a few that I haven't decided on yet. I started with the idea that I would put everything in an Antec P180 case. Here's the components without moving parts that are going in it: Heatsink: Scythe Ni...

Wow. I haven't followed silent computing for maybe a year now, and still the top silent desktop drive is the SP80? That's kind of depressing. Although I suppose the Barracuda IV was king for at least this long, too.

Here.

Non-German speakers may want to bring a translator. The roundup includes a good number of fanless models that are generally unavailable in North America.

Drives (including those in notebooks) I've purchased (for myself or family) that have failed in the past few years: 1/3 Western Digitals 1/4 IBMs (not Deathstars-- and the bad one was in a RAID 0 array!) 3/9 Seagates (including one in the last week of warranty, and one factory replacement that was r...

Edward- Thanks for the clarification, and reminding me that you were just talking about cache functions as opposed to buffer functions. For performance considerations, though, one might as well consider them together since they both depend on the amount of on-board memory on the drive, and since the...

MikeC- You didn't mention anything about AAM status of the drive. Does this drive support AAM? If so, is there a substantial noise difference between performance and seek modes, and what is the default setting? Edward- While while you're quite right that additional hard drive cache does not increase...

I got a Toshiba MK4025GAS for my laptop, which is otherwise silent, and, frankly, it's pretty damn quiet. Quieter than a Barracuda IV would be if installed similarly, and quieter than other notebook drives I've heard, which I'm too lazy to name now. You can rather easily hear the seeks on it, though...

Mu - Afro Finger and Gel
... and, god, how I love it

Aphonos- International friendly is a good idea. I don't know if there's any way to get phpBB to handle that. (Probably not, since the articles aren't kept under the Forums. phpBB, of course, does do international dates in its posting times, etc.). I suppose the day of the month really isn't importan...

Would it be possible to get article publication dates listed in the section article indices? That is could this.... http://silentpcreview.com/section12.html · SPCR's Unique Heatsink Testing Methodology (11720 Reads) · Review: 4 Socket-A Heavyweight Heatsinks (51702 Reads) · Review: Temp-controlled C...

How about Mobile Celeron? No kidding? Are Mobile Celerons drop-in compatible with Socket 478? I guess that would make sense, since P4-Ms are. What a great alternative they might be for certain low-power uses. I don't want to threadjack this question to ask about Mobile Celerons; could you post a ne...

it looks like these cases do not have mobo trays (!), so I doubt you'll be able to upgrade to BTX either. The PCV-1000 lists "*Slidable M/B tray" as a feature, as does the PCV-1200. If the picture looks like it doesn't have the right screws in the back to allow for this, it may be that they've deci...

* Triple layer case to aid sound insulation All this time I've been getting ripped off with only one layer! I'll never settle for less than three again! Based on the picture of the internals, my big concern is what kind of HSFs can be accomodated. It looks like some of the bigger ones might interfe...

And, by the way, I had to replace two yo-yo AC adapters for my powerbook because they had a design flaw (where the wire goes into the plug wasn't reinforced, so it would eventually short). I call it a design flaw because later yo-yo adpaters had the wire around the plug reinforced. AND, I had to ope...

Jaquar was beta. Get Panther, your going to love the Expose feature on a small screen. Jaguar was not beta; don't be absurd. You wouldn't let a Windows fan call a second update to their OS "beta". I was toying around with Expose on a TiBook and I don't really dig it. I prefer apple-tab and apple-ti...

Maple Walnut and Butter Brittle from Fisher's in Reading Terminal Market. Generally, I like any ice cream that's not made with thickeners like guar gum and carageenan. This rules out just about every supermarket brand, especially that poseur Ben & Jerry's garbage, which tastes like a frozen accident...

If I had unlimited money, then sure I'd get a Mac. I'm a hardware junkie, what did you expect? In fact, with unlimited money, I'd get a few hundred G5 XServes for the genetics lab of my "Pleistocene Park" extinct large-mammal cloning lab. More realistically, if the question is "Would Justin_R pay fu...

My friend with a 1614N just told me that one of his two partitions is now reporting itself as unformatted. It's possible that this is the result of some kind of software error as opposed to mechanical failure (he hasn't said anything about the rest of the drive, but I don't think he's using it much)...

It looks like it has potential, but it also looks like the front bezel could let through a lot of noise. Any idea whether that front is solid or not? Looking at it again, I'd say no. I wonder how much difference having it open makes. But you could always pack some foam or rubber behind it. (Or you ...

I was browsing at newegg and I found this . The manufacturer's site isn't very informative*. The interesting things about it are: 1) unobstructed 120mm fan exhaust hole 2) 5.25" bays in bottom front for easy suspension mounting 3) top-mounted USB/1394/audio ports make it easy to keep on the floor, a...

DJ Danger Mouse - The Grey Album

Regarding the Silverado, why did you end up not using it? It looks like just a small silver disc (33g) attached to the bottom of a heat sink. Doesn't seem very efficient. I was running 2 noisy IBM drives and a noisy WD drive at the time, so swapping out my undervolted Golden Orb for the Silverado w...

The situation: a 1U case with no case fans (no internal PSU, either), just enough room for a Zalman 6000, CPU oriented horizontally with ventilation holes poked directly above it. Ambient (outside) temp possibly up to 30C. What kind of wattage do you think such a setup could dissipate? I'd be real h...

Coming soon to a store near you, Arctic Diamond heatsink compound! Did you miss this on the page I linked? Heathru DiaPaste -- Advanced Diamond Solutions, Inc. now carries a breakthrough complementary diamond-based thermal interface product line to maximize the effectiveness of its DiaCu and DiaSil...

It's probally better that there are no new heatsink matierials it would only encourage AMD and intel to put to it to good use. The thermal conductivity of diamond can approach 6x that of silver. Other carbon structures, such as graphite foams and nanotube bundles, can also have thermal conductiviti...

Iirc you can make a mobile barton from a non-mobile barton by connecting 2 of the cpu pins with a copper thread or similar. Undoable mod which does not void your warranty. It's a bit inaccurate to say that this pin-mod makes a non-mobile into a mobile. What it does is make your motherboard think th...

Does I/O Magic even manufacture their own drives, or do they just rebrand OEM drives? You can check out their online forum if you want to hear different horror stories. MattH- A lot of drives will ramp up randomly due to certain system calls from Windows. Of course, there's also settings in the driv...

I got one from Office Max for $10 AR. OfficeMax nearly always has a $10 AR CDRW. As for noise, I'd say it's neither great nor terrible. Like you, I use it infrequently enough that I don't much care.

Looks like you can get ADDA fans here: http://www.mouser.com/ [snip for brevity] The AD0812DX-A70GL is available on that website. They cost $21.90 for 1 unit, but only $6.13 each if you buy 25. I know . I guess we never got together for a group buy on them because SVC still had the $2 NMB fans. The...