Noctuas generally offer low value, and very low performance, with unneeded extras, in the retail packaging. But, the noise amount at low RPMs, and overall quality, are there. IMO, Arctic Cooling's F14 PWM is a good value alternative. But, given the Redux's price for the next day, I'd go for that, in...

If you wanted to work at it, I'm sure you could do it, but it doesn't look made for it, by a mile. Silverstone's PS07 can easily be made inaudible when idling for any hardware that fits, though is a challenge for heavy loads, and the TJ08-e can be made whisper quiet for almost any load (the big fan ...

Many are GTX 670 PCBs, it seems, which I guess are dropin compatible. I'm awaiting my 2nd sample of MSI's. The first wasn't as bad as some YT videos (that their mics were picking such noise up over their case fans is :shock:), but it basically would not shut up, except at the most extreme idle state...

I've got my 2nd one on the way, an MSI. The first (also MSI) had coil whine that was quite audible just web browsing with GPU acceleration on, which is simply not acceptable, and got really bad with any games or 3D testing programs. Outside of benchmarking, I can't stand having V-sync off, so that's...

In the days of mITX or MATX systems, 2 radiators will be hard to stuff into those small cases. If a case can be part of the upgrade, there are plenty of options, even with smaller cases, and many will have enough room as-is, if they did not go with slim desktop form factor small cases. I will likel...

If you can go with H chipset and if you want to avoid any potential DPC latency issues, then take a look at the H97 mobo's. They can be reasonably priced (at least here in the US). Some examples. Do you know if the Z97 chipset is also a safe bet if one wants to avoid DPC latency issues? Try to find...

Yes. The kernel includes the features, but there are different tools to manage them on different distros. Being Linux, there are new kernel features to replace the old ones, and so on, so the details are always a moving target, with some distros even supporting multiple power management packages. Bu...

What about video transcoding? Don't tools like Handbrake use up all cores/threads that you have? Yes, and they tend to get returns from HT. But , you need to have expectations of use in mind. I can think of only a handful of times where cutting down video encoding time by 10x would have made any re...

So it will take a little bit longer for someone doing some crazy live streaming thing while gaming? Irrelevant. Get over yourself if you really think you're important enough that someone cares to watch you play computer games! That's an example scenario to test, by someone that is making videos peo...

Just a couple of questions if I may: I can see from your list of suggestions, cerbie, that you've not included any S or T CPUs. Is it because the energy efficiency gains that can be had with a 65W or a 35W CPU can be emulated in a 85W CPU if you undervolt? I think I read somethng along these lines,...

Yes, it has those back mounts. But, also, with the moving parts involved, you could use tape or velcro, and put SSDs anywhere, too.

With a different CPU fan already, the Hyper212+ should be perfectly fine.

so I'm torn between deciding on a system now and waiting for the next-generation Broadwell processors (which will reputedly offer lower power consumption that current Haswell processors). Is it possible to have a quiet system (audible but not intrusive in a quiet room with low-level ambient noise) ...

The Hyper212+ seems like an odd choice. Maybe it will be drowned out in the R4, or maybe not. I'd get something a little more sure to be inaudible and/or pleasing. I personally have found no fan from Cooler Master to be satisfactory, to date. I would avoid LiteOn for the ODD, as you never know if yo...

Half of it is getting louder as they age, since the fans almost always ball bearing. The other half is the noise character. Like anything else you get exposed to on a regular basis, you gradually learn to pick out more of it than when you first hear it, so an easy to tune out whirring whisper gradua...

The driver, iastor, works in both AHCI and RAID mode, and works fine if you don't have any option for RAID mode. There is no harm in installing IRST (which is not present at all in your BIOS; it is a Windows software package). If you find it to be a problem, or can't use it to do something like run ...

Just got a new build together. The important bits are: Silverstone PS07B 2x Noctua NF-S12A-PWM Thermalright Macho Gigabyte Windforce GTX 460 (carried over, has 2 fans about 80mm) Until swapping out the case fans, the stock ones were the loudest things in there, running at full speed. Upon installing...