comomolo, with that little space you are looking at Macgyvering something or getting a custom heatsink. I've seen some really weird heatsinks for Xeons. You might be able to cut one in half and drill some holes for the mounting pins. The other thing that I can see working is getting a slab of alumin...

My monitor is 1280x1024. I think is is safe to assume that an 8600GT isn't playing a recent game maxed out at 1900x1080. Should the 9600GT be released on time, it sounds like the way to go. Most of the reviews so far have been a bit sketchy (one put the 9600GT on par with an 8800GTS 512 MB), but fro...

My 8600GT ran Bioshock just fine with everything maxed except for the AA and AF. I was pretty impressed - I was certain that it would have trouble (I guess based on reviews...). I don't think it is worth your money to get a 8600GTS over a GT because they are basically the same card, except overclock...

I'll second what mr_plow_king said. Go for a Ninja/TRUE and an Accelero S1. If you don't end up using a PWM fan for the CPU heatsink, you should be able to disable the error in the BIOS.

I guess there are some pretty old PSUs in that list. Some of those prices are absolutely ridiculous. I would consider paying $100 CAD (~70 euro) for a high end PSU, but some of those stores are trying to sell you PSUs for upwards of $440. What you are looking for is an ATX V2.2 PSU. It will have eve...

Welcome to SPCR Darko! There are a lot of previous threads with regards to HTPC builds. From the last two weeks, here are the threads that are asking about HTPC building advice: First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth. You may want to have a look at these threa...

How important is the ad revenue? I know it costs a bit to host the site, but it will cost someone else to host the wiki. If it is a problem, I'm sure most of use wouldn't mind paying $10 to be able to post on the wiki. If traffic is an issue, you might be able to make it so that it is a private wiki...

Wattage calculators are complete BS. I've run my setup though every one I could find and I got a wide range of inaccurate results. It just isn't worth your time. The article you are quoting has an overclocked quad core, a pair of 8800 GTXs, and four hard drives. This article is irrelevant. Let us ta...

That is good to know. I was originally thinking of getting an HR-03 for my graphics card, but was a little wary because of the cost. If the Accelero S-1 has a similar performance, then there isn't much of a contest between the two.

comomolo, the digram you have posted is not very clear. What I get from it is that you want to mount two heatsinks that are restricted to a volume of 80 x 92 x 170 mm each and the CPU sockets are near the top, front of the case - near the CD/DVD drive bays. If that is the case, you are going to have...

With an 8600GT, 430 W is going to be just fine. I expect that your system will draw about 150W idle and no more than 250 W at load.

Sorry, I guess I wasn't very clear. I was thinking a hardware fan controller, as I find them less hassle than software methods. I tried a bunch of different ways of regulating fan speed a while back, but I settled on 500 RPM fans because I got them cheep and it was the path of least resistance for m...

I've had a look at the wiki threads and what the project lacks is someone to make this their personal crusade. If a wiki is to be made, someone needs to take charge. First MikeC and the mods need to be convinced that this is a good idea, so that it can be an official SPCR wiki. I'm not saying anyone...

Welcome to SPCR! Why the old components, though? I see a lot of people still going for 975x, and there are newer, more capable things out. Same with the E6850. You're better off with an E8x00, which will be cheaper, faster and more easily cooled (... all generalizations). If you are looking for an ...

I'd love a wiki. There is so much good information here, but digging through threads is clearly no the best way to find it.

One important thing to remember is that a video card's ability to handle such high resolutions isn't very well documented/reviewed as most reviews deal with gaming ability. Since things are a little more iffy, I'd look at getting a Nvidia 8800GS/GT or am ATI 38xx. I know people that play recent-ish ...

Well, I had a look into the hardware involved in the graphics cards, and I found out a couple of interesting things. None of the Quadro cards support OpenGL 2.1 - only the 8xxx series does. Of all of the Quadro cards, only six are based on recent GPUs - the FX 370, FX 570 and FX 1700 on the G84GL, t...

If my understanding is correct, they are basically the same processors as the Core 2 line (the 3xxx series anyway) that met higher quality standards. There many be be some low level differences, but unless you plan to use it to crunch numbers 24/7, it just doesn't make much sense to buy one. With a ...

Thinking green is a great idea. Unfortunately, the majority of a computer's environmental impact (think energy usage, and derivative impact, heavy metals mining and use, chemical production and use...) is during the manufacture of the parts. After that, the main impacts that a computer part has is u...

If I remember correctly, a stick of RAM only uses on the order of a couple of watts. It is safe to say that you won't see a difference between two RAM speeds.

Both the cost/benefit and benefit/power usage ratios are highly in favour of maxing out your RAM.

Well, I don't think the Xeon is going to have any effect on CAD performance specifically, the graphics card will. I have a Nvidia Quatro NVS 110M in my laptop and it takes 50 part assemblies no problem where my 8600GT struggles with a couple of parts. I think it is more of a function of that the 860...

Was it not an American president that said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants"? Almost every day I see another story of a ridiculous lawsuit, new law undermining human rights or questionable death at the hands of your police. All you have...

I remember walking to school in grade three when it was -56 C with the wind chill. I remember it so well because I was rather angry when I found out that I walked all that way for nothing - the teachers didn't show up.

For me it was major hearing loss in one ear. Unfortunately, how it turned out is that I can't hear voices very well (the ones in my head are still loud and clear!), but pick up background noise very well. So, I sold everything else and bought a laptop for school, but it couldn't keep up with the hea...

A passive 8600GT sounds like it will fit the bill. Asus and gigabyte make passive 8600GTs in addition to MSI.

My 8600GT provides surprisingly high framerates when gaming at 1280x1024.

If you have the money to spend, the G92 8800GTS is mildly faster than the 8800 GT. Its core speed, memory speed, stream processors, and shader clock are all ~8% higher/faster than the 8800GT 512MB. You might want to check heatsink compatibilities for this one. Stock ain't going to be quiet. The 8800...

Plissken is right - 15 A. You'll want to see if you can figure out which wall sockets are on which circuit. If you plan on drawing 1000+ W from one socket, I'd make sure that it is alone on the circuit and that the wire is in good condition. 15 A doesn't generally call for a very large diameter wire...

autoboy is right - the D201GLY2 is the miniITX way to go right now. They're aren't many comparisons of the D201GLY2 with other low power processors and I don't think many people have owned more than one of these boards. The reviews that I have seen show that it is clearly a better buy than anything ...

Here is a list of SPCR recommended PSUs.

Here is the SPCR review of the first PSU, and the second.
They're both on the list above.