New parts came in - 1) SAMSUNG SpinPoint P 160GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb hard drive 2) A cheap (with decent customer reviews) Aluminum USB2 enclosure Thoughts and setup issues: Before beginning I decided to simplify the XP installation by slipstreaming SP2 into my original XP Pro disk. This was remarkably e...

Fanless enclosure, eh? Hopefully, there will be decent thermal conductivity through the aluminum case... Yeah, we'll see about temps. Many of the newegg reviews say the enclosure gets pretty warm, but I suppose that's just the aluminum case doing its job. Initially the device will see a massive amt...

Good lookin build geckokarma. What are you using for audio outputs? The onboard sound? I didn't see mention of a sound card in your kit list, and you've got a bunch of open PCI slots... That's one of the reasons I ultimately decided on the squeezebox - high quality d/a conversion and analog outs (an...

Ok, I'm going with option 2 - last night I bought the following:

1) SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series 160GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb hard drive

2) A cheap (with decent customer reviews) Aluminum USB2 enclosure

Jay

Get an internal HDD and put it in an enclosure... Internal drives have 3-5yr warranties while external drives tend to have 1 yr warranties. Exactly my thinking - it's cheaper to build your own and you get a better warranty. Why do prepackaged external USB hard drives have shorter warranty periods? ...

Ah - VERiON, now I understand why you are eager to punch a holes in your "closet"! With freestanding cabinets, I'd say it's a judgement call. Things to consider: How handy are you with a tools (esp. a hole saw)? What is the cabinet worth to you (in case you make a mistake)? Assuming it's wood, it sh...

I've thought about this for a while too. And I want there to be a way to do it without heat pipes. Heat pipes are cool for what they are, but I'm not sold on their effectiveness and they look really ackward to set up (Zalman's tower cases for example). I used to be way into tweaking and diy-ing audi...

Look at that thread for various user feelings about the 7200.9 SATA. Yes - I have read that thread. It seems hit or miss with the 7200.9 drives - some people like them and some hate them. The Samsung HD160JJ has also caught my eye. I like Seagate mainly for their warranty, but Samsung has a pretty ...

[...] server in a 3x5 foot walk-in closet. [...] Is that 3x5 feet or meters? If it's feet it seems a little small. Do you have a lot of clothes in there too? Like I said, 3x5 feet (emphasis added to original quote above) - it's a 1926 milwaukee bungalow. I'm happy it has closets at all! The entranc...

I need some advice. I need a backup hard drive for my recently completed flac server. It's an older Dell P3 with only IDE and USB1. I have a 250gb IDE drive in it now. I would ideally like an external usb drive for backups and because I can unplug it when I don't need it. The slow x-fer speed of USB...

I think it depends a lot on what components are in your server and how big your closet is. I have a slow P3, single hard drive, no video card (or anything else) server in a 3x5 foot walk-in closet. The door is almost always shut, except for a 2" gap by the floor. Walking in there, I cannot tell if i...

Having said what I said in my previous post... ... 7600gt's are nice but I wanted to upgrade to play oblivion but they dont seem to play it that well... Please check out the Firingsquad mainstream article - the 7600gt does surprising well, beating the 6800gt (roughly equivalent to my 6800gs). Anandt...

I also play oblivion, and have been researching gfx card upgrades for a while. I'm currently playing on a Venice A64 overclocked to 2.2 ghz, and a single PCIe 6800GS. Because I have a native 1280x1024 lcd monitor, I can't stand playing at any lower resolutions. I have to turn grass completely off wh...

I dont know exactly what kind of theme you're going for, but I think your enclosure looks tough as hell. Everyone's talking about hiding the cables - but what if you did the opposite? Make the cables a design point. I envision a single big, fat techflex-sleeved umbilical containing all your cables c...

Beautiful work - you have really raised the bar for diy cases - well planned & certainly well executed. I've been thinking of building my own case for a while, and your project is very inspiring. the case was built for about $90 (everything from the local hardware store) What kind of tools did the m...

cool a Pentium 3--it is REALLY EASY Isaac - indeed, the lower clocked P3's are incredibly easy to cool. That is the very reason I got one! I started at the SPCR recommended CPU charts, focused on the coppermine for it's power dissipation vs. performance, and then read every thread I could find in t...

How does the Husky do on the polished floorboards? She's 2 years old and so has only 2 operating states: full speed running, and sleeping. When she's sprinting around the house, the wood floors of course offer no traction so she looks like a cartoon running in place. This is obviously not good for ...

this system for $60 Hi Isaac - yeah, I looked at that one as well. The slot CPU turned me off actually. As far as I know (meaning you probably know more), the socket 370 coppermines were much more powerfull than the Katmai P3's, and I like the 256k cache and the 133mhz bus. I also wasn't sure how e...

Ask and ye shall receive... In the living room, connected to my 13 year old sony es receiver (pro logic what? Say it with me: s t e r e o). http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/7723/10027482ny.th.jpg Note the siberian husky - momentarily silenced, but certainly not low temp. And certainly shedding all...

I think you should have the HD right-side up Thanks - makes perfect sense. but finding a cheep comptuer cheep enough hasnt been easy. Yeah, I did endless cost/benefit analysis with the used P3, mini-ITX systems, undervolted/clocked Semprons, and this strange little Asus barebones with Via C3 thing ...

I have ubuntu running on my p3 server, and tried to get lmsensors working. It was quiet a challenge, but I am a total linux novice. In the end I think it's working but my dell i810 motherboard doesn't report temp/rpm info - all I get is ram stats. Remember too that even when you get it working, you ...

diver - I'm jealous of your 7600gt. I bought a 6800GS about a week before the 7600gt & 7900gt were released, and I regret it. The 7600gt benches the same or better (esp. in oblivion) than the 6800gs, is less expensive, and uses less power. Boogers to me. Questions on your duct: is it 4-sided? Or a 3...

Thanks again for all the advice everyone, I just posted a writeup and pictures in the general gallery here.

Jay

Hi all, My main reasons for wanting a file server were 1) I wanted to tinker with linux, and 2) I wanted a low-powered 24/7 pc for serving FLACs to my new squeezebox . So, for $40 I picked up a 766 mhz PIII coppermine Dell Optiplex GX110, with 256mb of ram, a 10gb hard drive, and an old sony cd burn...

whereas I saw many issues concerning AMD 939 based motherboard having some trouble with FireWire audio interfaces, ... Yes - but I don't think AMD or the socket are to blame. In my experience with MOTU firewire equipment, only TI-chiped firewire adapters are reliable. I'm not sure what all AMD 939 ...

Zacchino- I still do a bit of audio recording although I used to do a bunch more. It's really shocking to see what qualifies for an "nice, average" DAW PC these days - I used to mix 16 +/- (16/41k) tracks with many plugins on a PII MMX many years ago! I still have enough power with my 500mhz G4 powe...

My 4-month old 6800GS is getting worked over by Oblivion. So I'm (again) in the market for more graphics power. I'm looking at the specs for the new 7600GT and 7900GT, and I'm confused about power consumption. Here's some data: For the 7600GT: GPU Voltage runs at 1.3v in 2D mode and rises to 1.36v i...

MikeC wrote:We have a sample of the NSK2400 in the lab.

I've been anxiously waiting for this one. Could you include a note on maximum CPU heatsink height? Like from mobo to inside top of case?

Jay

The pioneer A11XL comes in silver as does the LG 4167BBS Are these AU exclusive items? Google turns up mainly Australian sites. Also, if you look closely at the inside of the front panel, you can see the cutouts where the volume knob and the VFD display will go on the Fusion. Strange. From the fros...

What tips can you give me about your ASRock 939Dual-SATA2? I have the same board, but have not underclocked or undervolted (I'm actually overclocked a little). I recommend checking out the so-called 939Dual-SATA2 FAQ at OCWorkbench. There are very specific procedures for installing motherboard agp ...