The last time I probably posted was around the time I built my old computer (Athlon XP 2600 was it?) with a Zalman AlCu CPU heatsink and 9800 pro with arctic cooler. Anyway, it was relatively quiet in those days (at least compared to my friends), but now it seems downright loud compared to my MacBoo...

You know what, the best solution for watching divx/xvid on a TV is a modded xbox. You can get component outputs too if you really want high quality video. I think they're going for $150 US now. Add the cost of a 120GB, modchip and labour would cost about $50 I'm guessing. You just FTP stuff to your ...

Sorry I meant to say "My page file is now completely contiguous on disk", not "My page file is not completely contiguous on disk".

Yeah, I've got it at a fixed size so it should stay contiguous indefinitely.

A small update, I freed up several gigs after deleting stuff (pr0n), and did a full defrag using Diskeeper. My page file is now completely contiguous on disk, whereas before it was fragmented into 11,800 pieces. Still extreme slowness in some resource-intensive games. Conclusion: 512MB RAM isn't suf...

If you have a Maxtor, you can enable Acoustic Management which makes it almost silent, but slows it down just a bit.

Vegita, I have a hard time believing you can't free up enough space on your drive to get back enough space to run a defrag. The standard things like emptying your recycle bin, deleting temporary internet files, etc. can do quite a bit. One other thing - if the file system by chance is FAT instead o...

Also note, CpuIdle and similiar utilities don't help at all during load. Not true-- exactly the OPPOSITE of my experience. I find CpuIdle to work best UNDER LOAD (caveat: nForce2, so no disconnect from bus). That's because CpuIdle runs a normal priority thread which executes HLT and competes for ti...

wumpus: it looks as though your 9600 is a prime candidate for overclocking.

Get ATITool and get it up to 9600XT speeds.

A problem I have with defragmenting is that the programs require 15% free space to do this. I only have 4% free space, and I can't really afford to keep 15% free so I can regularly defrag.

Sure, they'll run at whatever capacity you have them running at, but as you fill up the drive, the read and write speeds shrink because of the circular nature of the platters on the hard drive. Towards the inside of the platter, the rate at which the drive passes the head is slower and thus the dri...

So now that I'm thinking of picking up another stick of RAM, would I get any benefit from getting a namebrand one over a generic, given the stick I have in there already is generic?

My drive is 96% full.. and not defragmented... BTW, the slowness after exitting seems to be unique only to the games that use a lot of pagefile. ie. Far Cry, Silent Storm. Games like WC3 and UT2004 run fine, and don't use as much pagefile. I'm guessing this lend more support to the theory I need mor...

Vegita, before you go out running to buy more ram, I still advise you to turn your hard drives to performance mode just as a test and play the game. You probably won't stand their noise for too long but at least you'll know if it has something to do with it. :wink: I'll try it for one game with a s...

Yeah, swap file usage went wayyy up when I was playing - I checked in Task Manager. So if I have 1GB of RAM, will this problem cease to exist? Can anyone with Far Cry verify this? It's a simple test, open Task Manager for a few minutes, and then open Far Cry (while keeping Task Manager open). On min...

So are these the only solutions? What causes the clicking anyway?

Just installed Speedfan, and it's telling me some messed up voltages! -12V: -16.97V -5V: -8.78V Also let me mention before, a couple of months ago, when I was cutting plastic ties, I accidently cut one of the ATX wires: http://www.jasonli.com/cut.jpg . That blue one was the only cut one I could find...

I played Far Cry, and after I exited, Commit Charge peak was 648MB. I have 512MB RAM.

My Windows XP crawwwwls when opening and closing some games. Like, after the choose to exit from the game, Windows very very slowly redraws on my screen. When this happens the hard drive is being heavily used. Also, it remains sluggish for quite a while after. Some games are fine, ie. WC3. But some ...

Doesn't the VGA Silencer fit the 9700 Pro? If it does, try it. You'll love it.

I noticed my 7000A-AlCu makes a clicking noise @ 1400 rpm (what I run it at). On higher rpm, it is replaced by a "whooshing" noise.

Is there any way get rid of this clicking noise? Is this common?

One thing that really brings down the temp is the "Idle CPU disconnect" feature of the nForce2 chipset. When I activate it, the CPU temp drops ~5°C; without it, I hover at around 40°C. Seeing as the rest of my gear is pretty unremarkable, I'd look for that option in your BIOS. CAVEAT: the CPU disco...

Cool, I'll probably try just changing the fan then.

Which 120mm did you replace it with?

I find the fan "alright" when the load is low, but it speeds up too much when I play games and such.

Would changing the fan fix this? Or would I have to move the thermistor?

Cool.

So is there any consensus on 120mm is quieter? Papst or AcoustiFan?

Sorry, my question seemed to have gotten lost:

Do I need to deal with this thermistor stuff even though my Fortron is the version with the manual control for fan speed?

Do I need to deal with this thermistor stuff even though my Fortron is the version with the manual control for fan speed?

I'm OK with that I think.

And I suppose there is some precautions I should follow when opening this sucker up?

Ok, since my Fortron has manual fan speed control, all I want to do is replace the 120mm fan with a quieter one.

Is this as simple as opening the PSU case, disconnecting and unscrewing the fan and putting in a new one?

Awesome. So is there any article I can refer to when replacing the 120mm fan inside the Fortron? The one on the article list seems to apply to thermistor-controlled fans, whereas mine is manually controlled. (Although it does seem to speed up, or something at least gets louder when my CPU loads.)

Check out this thread . The better airflow through this Fortron makes it much quieter. I was able to lower fan speeds significantly, while maintaining the same output temps. I think the pictures that you originally posted are gone. Posters mention some pictures of yours, but I didn't see any. Also,...