Just saw this thread here on 1080p playback requirements which also references comments from Extremetech on H264.

Gigabyte do a interesting looking S939 mATX board based on the NVIDIA 6150 chipset, which (allegedly) has hardware assist for H.264 playback. It's not clear that it allows for undervolting though. I believe the Gigabyte model does not have DVI. The MSI does, also the similarly speced ASUS A8NVM-CSM...

Are you getting acceptable temps? If so you could try Speedfan to slow down the heatsink fan to a more acceptable level, or use a rheostat controller like the Zalman fanmate. If your temps are already hot, you may see if your mb will support utilties that dynamically undervolt, underclock your CPU a...

Simply using CrystalCPUID to undervolt and Speedfan for controlling the fans, allows this system to be very quiet with reasonable temps. At two feet, the fans are inaudible over the idle noise of the Samsung single-platter notebook HDD (tested by SPCR at 17dba from 1m). This maybe the quietest out-o...

Although I can't vouch if you'll damage anything or not, I have a 120mm fan connected to the USB port of my NAS running 24/7 for several months now without any problems. For a while, I also had a 80mm Panaflo-M connected to my Dell LCD's USB hub without problems (you don't have a whining Dell do you...

Regarding A64 vs T64, keep in mind that the newest A64 chips seem to be artificially limited to a minimum voltage of 1.1V. The Turions don't have this limitation. Also, I believe most A64 chips run at the same stock voltage as the ML T64s: 1.35V. However, we will have to get our hands on some new p...

QuietOC

What's the brand/model of your mb? Also what is the voltage range you can select in BIOS? And does it have BIOS fan control or support Speedfan control? Thanks in advance for the info.

Great article giving Turion more exposure; even with more people becoming aware of AMD's desktop chips' superiority to Intel's in performance/watt and overall power consumption, I think few people have even heard of the Turion and even for many enthusaists the details were not clear. However the bur...

I'd go for 1 raptor as a system drive, 1 samsung as a data drive, and 1 more samsung in an external enclosure or NAS. I went through setting up Raid0 and trying to get two HDDs to coexist quietly can be problematic. If the frequency of the two are slightly off, you'll get a very annoying pulsating w...

Certain combinations of mb/psu/components create this buzzing/whining, and the exact same components will work without noise in other systems. I had a similar problem with my MSI NF3 mb and a Tagan PSU, the high pitched noise seemed loudest under high voltage and low CPU load. Either loading the CPU...

Noted PM and Turion are probably the efficiency champs and not to go OT. With the Turion being so desirable, I guess my question is how close can you come with an undervolted desktop A64 and will those few extra watts make any practical difference even in a silent rig? Turion 64 MT40 (2.2G) draws 64...

I have a question: can you cool the Opteron passively at that Vcore? I don't have much experience with passive cooling, but suspect it might be possible although not easy. My setup is with a fanned XP120, will try to post up some temps/wattage details in the next few weeks (sorry don't have access ...

Curiously, as has been mentioned in other threads in relation to the Sempron64, although the BIOS will allow undervolting down to 0.8V it's not possible to go below 1.1V with CrystalCPUID or RMClock. When you undervolt below 1.1v in BIOS, does the vcore readings from monitoring utilities like Speed...

My old 90nm Sempron 2800+ will POST at 1.000V on my TForce 6100, but hangs loading Windows XP. It will boot into Windows and run stable at the 1.1V BIOS setting (actually 1.07V). However, I managed to get a 130nm Athlon 64 2800+ to run off 0.850V, but It would not POST at the lowest 0.800V setting ...

There are plenty of CPU overclocking threads recording top speeds achieved by individuals, giving a rough idea what one can expect out of these chips. How about recording the undervoltability of CPUs which we know is more relevant for the SPCR enthusiast. I suspect the AMD 90nm chips with it's compe...

With the restrictions on choice of motherboard, heatsink, and also higher cost, is the few watts saving of a Turion really worth troubling over compared with an undervolted 90nm desktop Athlon/Sempron? MikeC previewed a ML44 system at 2.4ghz drawing 90W under load with a similar A64 desktop drawing ...

Point taken, there are a lot of nice, small, quiet, and stylish Mini-ITX options if price is not a concern, but IMO these are targeted at the enthusiast market. The Pundit on the other hand is a relatively mainstream barebone with wide availability and priced pretty close to your normal noisy and bu...

It was very interesting to discover that the K8M800 mb in the new Asus Pundit P2-AE2 slim barebone allows the HDD Acoustic Management to be set from the BIOS! Blogged up some photos here . This is the first time I heard of such a feature from a mb BIOS, it certainly saves the hassle/time of booting/...

Spent some more time with the Pundit and found out I made some wrong assumptions. The mb does happily work with Speedfan and actually has a plethora of PWM options. The whole system draws an amazingly low 60W AC with everything running (Prime, HDD, and DVD) and undervolted this drops down to 52W. Th...

The local ASUS dealer just started selling this and I couldn't resist bringing one home. It came with a slim DVD/RW drive for around $220. It's a relatively quiet machine out-of-the-box, but not to SPCR standards. The most annoying noise is the whine/click of the CPU fan, but will try to see what ca...

The checkbox was checked, but it seems that you also have to enter a MB manufacturer and model number (not only clock generator) in order for Speedfan to remember the throttling settings. I just selected another NF2 board from the list (as mine was not listed) and all seems to work fine now. Thanks ...

I was pleasantly surprised that Speedfan 4.27 now allows the FSB clock on NF2 boards to be automatically throttled according to CPU load. I tried it on my Aopen NF2 SFF and it worked great. So far it throttles my XPM's FSB from 166 down to 66 without any problems. The total system AC draw at idle dr...

qviri wrote:It has space for a slim DVD drive, I don't think it includes one

Well from NewEgg it does seem to be included. You can see it in the product photos and user reviews. Considering that costs around $50 makes it even better value. Not sure though if this is included from all vendors.

Asus has released a new Pundit P2-AE2 barebone for s754 with an external brick PSU and a price around $180. Considering ordering a brick psu and DC-DC convertor alone costs over $80, this seems like relatively good value. This slim barebone (only a little more than 2" high) also includes a slim DVD ...

I have used many 3000+ 754 pin Semprons, the latest stepping that supports 64bittiness and they do NOT support C n C. Andy Are you referring to Cool'n'Quiet (CnQ)? Actually 3000+ and above 754 Sempys do support CnQ. I built several systems using various brands of mb with VIA K8M800 chipset and CnQ ...

This mb is so tempting on paper, I thought I would try my luck with it. After briefly testing this board for two nights, it seems there is hope to get this board working problem free, even though chances are good it will involve extra effort/troubleshooting. The first board I received, was missing t...

You should be able to adjust VID/FID via software only if both your mb and CPU support CnQ. Unfortunately 2800+ and lower Semprons do not support CnQ. For BIOS VID adjustments, it seems most budget matx 754 mb don't have this; the DFI K8M800-MLVF is an exception (but it has no temp/voltage sensors!!...

Do you have a MSI or Nforce3 mb and running CnQ? I had a similar annoying intermittent high pitched sound and eventually found out using CrystalCPUID that this occurs when CPU is set at high voltage but low/idle processor load. During simple tasks, even scrolling may cause CnQ to step up, but there ...

Sorry this advice may come too late, and also maybe a little above your budget, but another option would have been replacing the CPU/MB with a s754 Sempron with onboard video. Semprons run very cool (espcially compared with Socket A/Tbirds) and the stock cooler on a fan controlled mb makes for an ou...

Thanks for the advice. Will check further into the links. You both suggest the possibility to use A64 i/o Opteron, and load-wise I also think it would be sufficient. However isn't ECC RAM essential for a reliable server? Doesn't that rule out the A64 even if it has sufficient processing power? Also ...