There's also a Seagate, but I think they're new to laptop drives, and it has only 2mb cache. Actually, the two sizes of Momentus series 2.5" drives, 20 and 40GB, are available with either 2MB or 8MB of cache, though a lot of dealers only have the 2MB. From http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsa...

[quote="Gooserider"]Something dies in the PC, acting to set it on fire - Not likely, since most all the stuff in the PC will die at or below 100*C, [/quote] What about thermal runaway? Maybe the junctions in the transistors are too small for this to become a fire hazard before they open, but while t...

At issue is the materials we use for 1) baffles and 2) damping. I'm trying to find the requirements for UL ratings for printed circuit board fiberglass, because I thought it might be a good choice for baffles. It turns out that there are all kinds of issues with halogenated flame retardants such as ...

Some of the posters have brought up noise when idle for laser printers, some of which runs fans all the time. Inkjets should be silent when idle, but as we're finding out, bad power supply design can make CRTs, USB hub wall warts &c whine & buzz. In a "normal" environment, we'd never notice this. My...

With a "Larson Davis 824 sound-level meter" he claims readings of 8 dB above 120 Hz and 14 dB below 100Hz. http://www.larsondavis.com/docs/824-6pgBrochure.pdf Noise floor on that meter is "<16dBA" which is good, but sure isn't -30dB. Besides that, the clip seemed kind of neat (for mainstream), thou...

Low-volted fans are going to have a very hard time with restricted intake or output. MikeC or Rusty can probably say something more scientific, but I think the main thing to keep in mind is that CFM figures are typically in free air & they drop as pressure rises. I didn't want to vent from the front...

I see you're using an SLK900. Which way are your fins oriented? Up/down or left/right? I ask because my AMD OEM cooler was left/right & also only 60mm square, so the air flowing out had plenty of chance to reach the case fan. The SLK900 goes up/down on my GA-7VTXE motherboard & it's so big that the ...

I wish the work units were a little smaller. I know that puts more load on the servers receiving the results, but an all-night run only got me to 100 of 600 iterations in a WU. At least you can resume a WU in progress. I have my DigiDoc 5 set with low thresholds so I'll catch a problem before it get...

I received my 92mm L1BX, 80MM M1BX and a FBL (louvered) 80mm L1A just to get the order over the $25 no-handling-charge limit from DigiKey. The 92mm is now on my SLK-900U, FanMated down from a 800-1800 range to 1000RPM. The other two are in the parts bin, but I may put the 80mm M1BX in my PSU so I ca...

I'll post some pictures in a followup, but I ran into a problem with my new SLK-900 blowing hot CPU air into my power supply this weekend. I'm using an Athlon XP 1600+ (Palomino) in a Gigabyte GA-7VTXE in an Ahanix Landrover case with a Powerman/Sparkle/Fortron Source power supply with NoiseKiller (...

Panaflos with RPM sensing came up in another thread (about the 80mm medium-speed @ low volts vs. low-speed at 12V), but it seems to be ignored, so I'll post this here too: Digikey also has Panaflo 80mm M1BX RPM-sensing fans listed in their catalog. http://dkc3.digikey.com/PDF/T031/0974.pdf In fact, ...

Digikey also has Panaflo 80mm M1BX RPM-sensing fans listed in their catalog. http://dkc3.digikey.com/PDF/T031/0974.pdf In fact, they're the only site that comes up if you Google for fba08a12m1bx. $10.13 each though. At the same price, the also have FBA06A12L1BX FBA06A12H1BX FBA08A12M1BX FBA09A12L1BX...

Well, it was bugging me that I couldn't figure out why my fan wouldn't start. Easiest model is a voltage divider, pretending the fan is a resistor with one value while running and a lower one while starting. 120mm L1a is something over 6W (the max for a Zalman FanMate). Using 20 ohms for the fan (R2...

Sorry about replying to such an old thread, but I know some of you are still around here. What are those reporting low start voltages for Panaflos using for voltage control? I'm guessing that 5V and 7V are right off a power supply, but what about the other values? I ask because I have a 120mm Panfaf...

Looks like Heatsink Factory is going to get some soon. If you believe this review (some don't buy the use of reference heat sources), the SLK-900 only does marginally better than the SLK-800 using the same fan. I see the mounting system as an advantage- I was considering a Swiftech MCX462+ simply b...

Re: bottom intake I thought about this also. I didn't want a bottom-of-the-front intake because I bought a noisy (Maxtor) hard drive by mistake, so wanted any openings to be a long way from it. I put my intake on the back & added a baffle so the air flows in a U shape from back, around the front, an...

bluechili pictures and temperature measurements Work towards a quiet computer using a huge case and high volume, low velocity airflow. Case came with a noisy 120x120x38mm fan which I replaced with a Panasonic Panaflo FBA12G12L1A, - 68.9 CFM at 30.0 dBa. Power supply is a sparkle(SPI)/fortron source...

I've learned a lot about keeping a machine cool without a lot of noise and my Athlon XP 1600+ machine is a lot quieter since I applied some techniques (120mm undervolted case fan, temp-controlled PSU fan, suspended & side-sinked drives, careful airflow routing). It's almost there-- improved suspensi...

I think Attack is acidic, so it'll eat PCB traces and IC pins. GPU overclockers get glued-on heatsinks off by taking advantage of epoxy's weaker peel than shear strength. http://homepage.mac.com/dgiessel/PhotoAlbum5.html (this should work better than twisting the sink) Epoxies do get weaker at high ...

There are epoxy solvents, but they're nasty stuff as epoxy can be pretty tough stuff. "Attack" is the first one I found googling for "epoxy solvent." It's mostly methylene chloride (a type of paint/finish stripper). Methyl Ethyl Ketone or Toluene and Xylene are others I've seen mentioned. Problem is...

Northbridge coolers seem a bit primitive and the higher-end GPU coolers (e.g. for GeForce 4) seem to assume a lot of area around the chip so they can be oversized. I used Photoshop to size VIA's "high resolution" picture of the EPIA M9000 to 170x170mm & measured the CPU (which is really an 800MHz, n...

I found some students who did a digital variable fan controller and temperature monitor: http://www.eb.uah.edu/~wells/cpe496_sp_ ... report.pdf

Very nice!

That looks pretty nice, but it doesn't tell you what the temperature is. It looks to me like the "digital control" is either a dedicated (not programmable) PWM controller or a PIC/AVM with a very simple program. It looks like something fulfulling the totality of my vision isn't far away. I didn't re...

On Shuttle's USA page, they show their heatpipe for the SS51G as a separate item (PH4), but I don't see anyone selling it. Rather than trying to build a big shroud to use the case fan as a heatsink fan (a la Dell), I'd rather use a right-angle heatpipe radiator with maybe a small shroud due to diffe...

Found another big cheap case: Maxtop CSF-900. $92 @ newegg.com

It has a 120mm in the back & an 80mm, but looks like room for a 120mm, in the front & drive bays all the way to the bottom.

Not sure if that RAID cage would work for suspended drives....

GamingGod- I found another case with 5.25" bays all the way to the bottom: the Codegen ATX-9001 (also known as CK-9001) which goes for 1/2 the Landrover (US$50 vs. US$100) and has feet. Review at http://www.dansdata.com/cgcase.htm, Mfg. page at http://www.tricodsh.com The ModTheBox review is awful. ...

Fortron Source = Sparkle = PowerMan I don't know if PowerMan is a marketing name like Antec, but my FSP supply came branded that way. I built my mother-in-law a computer last Christmas out of parts left over from PII-233 to XP 1600+ upgrade, but swapped the power supply from her new case into my old...

Found something: the crystalfontz.com 633 does PWM variable speed control and temperature monitoring. It doesn't use temp to control fan speed but this should be possible from the PC using the serial interface. Still about 60% DIY. You have to wire up "one-wire" temp sensors instead of just plugging...

quokked- the Magic Box only offers manual H, M, L control. MikeC- this is exactly what I'm talking about, but I want a retrofit for existing systems and I want more control than I suspect most on-motherboard solutions will offer. I imagine they'll focus on the most common case configurations, but if...

http://www.panasonic.com/industrial/appliance/pdf/fancommon.pdf explains the part number system. FBA08A12L1BX would be a 12 volt 80x80x25.5 mm low speed fan with a 3 wire tail and a speed sensor. Digikey lists them in their catalog but lists all but one model as zero on hand. Their prices are good, ...