I've always tried to approach silent computing by attacking the source of the problem, heat. Or, in other words, power consumption. Is there any way to tell whether one recommended PSU is more efficient than another? Or should I just grab an 80+ and call it a day?

I haven't dropped into Silent PC as often as I'd like lately (not in the middle of building a computer), but I recognized your name when I read the Home Power article!

Great work as always, though a bit of a retread for us silentpcreview folks!

Well, the article says that the estimate is based on 16 hours of 35W sleep mode per day, and 8 hours of 60W + 75W monitor per day. The figures used were 110W for boot, 60W for idle, and 35W for sleep mode. I have two computers... one boots at around 120W and the other boots at 130W. They idle at clo...

What you have linked is a dc-dc converter. By brick PSU, I mean a PSU shaped like a block. If you have a better way of describing what I mean then please tell me. Ah, I see what you mean now. My personal vision of a "brick PSU" consists of two parts, the brick (AC to regulated DC in) and the PSU (D...

I asked about "where to purchase a brick PSU ". I replied with a link to a brick PSU . /shrug If your complaint is that you couldn't add it to a shopping cart, then I apologize, but you could have just clicked on the words "buy online" on the page I originally linked. http://store.mini-box.com/itun...

http://www.mini-box.com/pw-200.htm

200W, but I'm not sure which brick you'd use.

I think you'd have to have a pretty f**ked up heatsink surface to notice much difference. My suggestion: Don't waste your time (it takes a while to do it correctly). I agree here, you need a pretty lousy surface for it to matter. You only really need it with a concave surface, not a scratched one. ...

I'm a little confused. If you don't want avatars, why not disable them?

http://www.phpbb.com/support/guide/#section3_2_2_5

Solar, wind, and hydro powered systems generally have to deal with this, unless they feed their power directly into the grid. When you decide to build one of these to power your home, you end up storing your energy in a bank of batteries in the basement. They usually run at 12V, 24V, and 48V, and ha...

50C is no big deal. 90F=32C; 110F=43C. The latter number is hard to believe... I'm down in the LA/SF area often enough, I don't recall temsp THAT high. SF hit 90F maybe once during the 4 years I lived there. LA hasn't broken 90F more than a couple of times since I've gotten here. However, 20-30 mil...

I just wanted to point out a related topic of interest done by google. Google is interest in minimizing search per query. This means buying the most powerful, cheapest hardware possible that consumes the least amount of power. If there is a way to track down their findings, it might be similar enoug...

I'd rather have the laptop personallly, but there's always Centrino Mini-ITX.

http://www.commell-sys.com/Product/SBC/LV-671.HTM

I'd go silver. A little bit of difference in reflectiveness doesn't bother me in silver components, but I find it glaring when there are several black components with varying degrees of matte. I don't like matte in the first place, I like my black shiny and smooth. Just make sure none of that silver...

We used to worry about the P90 overheating. Haha... But it's true, the heatsink was tiny with a tiny fan screwed right into the ridges. In summer you had to watch it. The 486SX-25 also would overheat on a hot day. If we had today's heatsinks there would have been icicles on these. My first machine ...

I've been kicking around the idea of a mini-itx system for a while, but wanted to explore this option a bit. Does anyone have a SFF PC that runs 8rdavcore well? I'm looking for low power consumption in a PC, and an nforce2 running 8rdavcore would give me more options than a mini-itx. I looked around...

Edit: Should have taken this to private messages.

I was disappointed when the initial post sparked negativity instead of discussion.

haha, MCS is really cracking me up, and I don't even fold. The only remotely borderline comment made by trodas in the linked topics was to say something about cpro's machine downtime affecting their folding capabilities. Isn't the part of point of a competition to motivate the other competitors? He ...

Also, if your case is as old as I think it is, you can eliminate 30% of your heat simply by replacing the power supply with an efficient one.

What's your budget here? If it's big, then I'd recommend trying to build your own case, with the entire airflow coming in throuh the bottom front and coming out through the top front, where you have fresh air intakes and exhausts when you pull your computer 1/4 of the way out. With a case like this,...

I had a USB 1.1 extension cable (maybe 20 feet long?) that dropped everything going through it to 1.1. It wasn't just a cable though, as it was long enough to need some sort of repeater (the female plug was enclosed in a little black box)

Typical integrated motherboard (onboard sound, ethernet, video, etc): ~25W Typical no-frills motherboard: ~20W EPIA Mini-ITX motherboard: ~15-18W Nano-ITX motherboard: ~8-10W I think you're assuming too much. :lol: How can you separate the M-ITX and NITX board power from the CPU that's integrated i...

Motherboards take very little power in general. There are not significant differences of heat/power draw amongs them, in general. I think you can safely ignore that in the overall equation. If you into power efficiency, I strongly recommend you get something like a Kill-a-Watt AC power meter . It i...

The mini-itx platform has been wanting this for a while... I think this is the biggest I've seen so far. http://www.mini-box.com/pw-press.htm Delivering an impressive 200 Watts, the 12Volt PW-200-M DC to DC converter is 25 % smaller than a credit card. With an efficiency rate of over 95%, the PW-200...

Really, I'm more concerned about power consumption. I hope to run my computer off a solar-panel-charged battery in preparation for eventually having an off-the-grid home. That, and because every little bit of energy savings helps. Yay! That's been the goal that led me to follow SPCR as well. The tw...

yea, the SB get uncomfortable for me hot too, however I quess that adding a heatsink there ALSO limit the case airflow AND therefore cooling of other components. Okay, temp droped by about 20 degrees, but these 20 degrees get into the case and that is not good. I think that next time I skip the SB ...

Putz wrote:Most routers make a high-pitched squeal all the time.

Someone I know has one that squeals *some* of the time. It's some cheap wireless B router (belkin?), and it only whines when wireless capability is turned on.