I can only offer anecdotal advice. I recently switched the hard drive in my laptop to a WD 320 GB 7200 RPM drive (BEKT?) from an 80GB 7200 RPM Hiatchi drive. The Hiatchi's seek noise was so loud I could hear it 5 meters away in the next room. The WD is great, except for the very occasional weird noi...

@Aris: drobo.com I've seen one in action before, and I don't remember it being noticeably loud. It was in a store, so the ambient noise was pretty loud. It is a neat piece of hardware, just not worth the vast amount of money they want for it. I could build a file server with a couple of TB drives fo...

The best comparison I can make with the Tri-Cools is between those and the Scythe Kaze 500 RPMs. At low, the Tri-Cools seem to push about as much air as the Scythes, but have an audible effect at 1 m, whereas the Scythes don't. At 500 RPM or thereabouts, it is pretty tough to make any objective meas...

Samsung SyncMaster 920Nx - no noise produced at any brightness.


Will edit to add another Samsung and a Dell in a month or so.

I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but I stopped using AVG Free a year ago because it went from occasionally freezing my system to commonly freezing my computer. I've been using Avast ever since, and haven't had any problems yet.

Not on the same subject, but this one is one of my favourites.

Great article - thank for that!

I've had classes with a number of professors that work on biomechanics - specifically knee and hip replacements. I remember a number of points that they made. There are three obvious modes of failure in a hip/knee replacement: 1. Failure of the implant (it breaks) 2. Bone failure (leg breaks, implan...

Just as a data point, a Scythe Kaze 500 RPM (...which is 120x120x25 mm) on my TRUE keeps my E6750 nice and cool regardless of what I throw at it. Granted, I don't run it at load for long periods of time, but I think you are overestimating your heat transfer requirements.

Hi guys, I'm a little out of the loop these days and have a couple of questions that google isn't helping me solve. I'm building a computer for someone who only uses it for basic, non-gaming tasks. I was thinking of going the E1200 and Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2L route, but starting wondering if that is go...

Looks pretty sweet. I think you will be happy with the build as it is.

A long time ago, I was signing up for a number of forums. I needed a name that was unique, not too ridiculous, and forgettable. I spend a while thinking and then looked out the window.

Those numbers are interesting. I really don't feel like digging through those sites to find the relevant articles, but unless I am missing something important, those numbers don't really complement each other. When in doubt though, stay far away from Tom's. They are the odd man out when you compare ...

I would strongly suggest using a bolt-thru kit. Motherboards are strong, but when the better part of a kilo is involved I would err on the side of caution. There is the added bonus of getting a better thermal connection. I can't say whether that specific kit will be any good, as this is the first ti...

Welcome to SPCR majicjack_11! Quiet is a pretty relative term. For most SPCR members, the stock Intel fan (I believe that they are the same for each family of processors) is very loud. But then, as you may have figured, we are a picky bunch. I have an E6750 and I ran the stock cooler for a while, a...

Looks like a well thought out list. I have the same HDD - it is great, I can't hear any seek noise even with the case open (@ 1 m). I think you are good for the ram, PC2-6400 is what you want. I'm running 4GB in my system. As for the difference between a Q6600 and E6750, it depends on what you are g...

It is just the opposite for me - my girlfriend was very impressed at how quiet my computer was.

If you are comparing 320GB platter drives from the same manufacturer, wouldn't a one platter drive be quieter than a two platter drive? Unless you need to buy now, I would wait until there is new 640 GB stock simply to guarantee that you get a two platter drive. If you do need to buy now, good luck ...

I see a couple of things in your build that aren't conducive to a cool and quiet build. First is the CPU, why are you going for am E6850? The E8400 is faster (well, more cache), cooler and less expensive. Second are your hard drives. Older hard drives use more power and produce more noise per platte...

Thread necromancy?

By the time XDVD posted (a month an a half after I started the thread), I had spent a month tinkering with the system and sold it. It looks like you are more than eight months late for the party.

If you can't see a reason why, then don't. The P5B-Deluxe is a $300 motherboard where I am, and I could get a motherboard with more useful features for a third of that.
If it works for you, it works for you.

The P5B-Deluxe supports 45 nm quad cores (right under the title on the spec page). Why get an old motherboard though? P35 is currently the low cost, DDR2 route.

Here are all of Gigabyte's recent mATX boards:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

They all have integrated graphics, but you can just turn it off in the bios. Any of these boards should be fine for what you are doing.

You're in luck. Toshiba makes lots of laptops with ULV processors. They start at 1000 GBP though.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Those are the laptops with ULV processors. Some don't have internal DVD drives.

Cooling a 95 W TDP processor at full load for a couple of days would be quite the feat to do passively. If you didn't use the integrated graphics at all, I would suspect that you could possibly do it with a Scythe Ninja with two 800 RPM fans - one on each side. There should be enough airflow to keep...

Noctuas are one of the few commonly used brands of fans that I don't own. With that said, I wouldn't recommend using a Noctua fan. From the countless threads I have read here, they are a common first-time-silencing type of fan. They start out sounding quiet, and by the end of all of the silencing mo...

If you don't need a professional card, but do need power, the 8800GT is the way to go. I have yet to hear about any of the stock coolers being anywhere near reasonably quiet. I would highly recommend putting an aftermarket cooler on there (have a look at those that I mentioned previously). It is rea...

You should be able to keep the Solo and Seasonic - 430 W is good enough for most people that do game. It is hard to just up and say x graphics card is what you need. Depending on what programs you use, you might want a professional graphics card (although unlikely). Upgrading to anything recent from...

From the tables you have there, you are going to get better performance from the WD 640 GB drive. I'm neither not a big fan of RAID 0, nor older hard drives - I've seen way too many lightly used, older model HDDs fail lately. The WD wins in a lot of categories - better performance, less power draw, ...

I'm not familiar with nvidia's older generations of cards, but there are a bunch of low profile, fanless 8400GS for about $40 on newegg.

Now I can't vouch for how powerful they are, but they should be better than anything onboard these days.