Has anyone undervolted a Q9550 quad? I have an E0 step, and am interested in seeing if it's possible to undervolt it while remaining at 2.83GHz (or even when bumped to 3GHz). I'm waiting to buy a watt meter first (Jaycar here in Australia has a device, similar to the US "Kill-A-Watt"), so I can meas...

How many people here have upgraded their northbridge cooling for integrated graphics motherboards? I have a Asus P5Q-VM, and even just Gnome desktop results in very warm to hot temps on the little blue OEM heatsink. I'm considering replacing it with something like the Thermalright HR-05 or Xigmatek ...

Would those RAM coolers be the Thermalright HR-07 Duo ones? I found a review for the HR-07 heatsinks, and they appear to be quite effective at lowering RAM temperatures (http://www.overclockersonline.net/index.php?page=articles&num=991) - I have 4 sticks of RAM though and the regular HR-07 heatsinks...

I just received two Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB WD10EADS drives. There are some jumper pins on the drive that control some settings, but this one caught my eye - Power Up In Standby (PUIS). This apparently allows the drive to turn, but remain at standby rather than go to idle - so a startup pow...

RAID 1+0 is a striped set across mirrors (i.e. two RAID 1s in RAID 0)
RAID 0+1 is a mirror of striped sets (i.e. two RAID 0s in RAID 1)

Nice recycling effort

There's no reason we shouldn't continue to use old tech in new systems if it's still functional (well, maybe not CRTs!). Considerations like energy savings are usually blown away by the manufacturing overhead.

Isn't RAID 10 more tolerant of multiple disk failures than RAID 5? In RAID 5, if you lose a disk and commence recovery, loss of a second disk will result in the loss of all data. In RAID 10, (assuming 1+0 which is a striped set across two sets of mirrors), the array can withstand multiple disk losse...

Both of those mounts are specifically anti-vibration mounts, rather than metal-to-metal adapters. Sorry - to clear things up, the only noise issue I have is the resonance from the icepack heatsink - I haven't removed the drive yet from the heatsink, but I had thought that without the heatsink the Ve...

SUCH an annoying whine! That's really odd. Even with the previous Raptor (3.5"), high freq whine was not the main problem; it was seek noise. Maybe whine is the wrong term - it's the same high frequency noise in the first 10 seconds of your recording: http://www.silentpcreview.com/files/sounds/hddn...

Well VelociRaptors still have the whine! I didn't find these threads until I started up a new PC build tonight - sounded like there was a mosquito in the room. I disconnected every fan in the system to test, finally disconnecting the HDD.... viola! No more whine. Are there any silencing options besi...

I would go for the biggest Caviar Green available - 1TB. The power specs are excellent, and if you fill your 500GB drive (torrents anyone?) then you're up for a second drive, and two green drives will be like having one ordinary drive power consumption wise - might as well go for the best MB/watts r...

I've been looking at the WD drives - check the read & idle power figures against the Samsung - I think the WD wins out (green is relative!). Mind you, for a drive that is only going to be used occasionally and won't be on all the time, you could look to an enterprise drive like the RE2-GP that still...

I've decided against the Mini P180 - partly due to cost, partly due to the responses here. I'm now stuck on the NSK6580 versus the Three Hundred - both have similar capacities etc, and the Three Hundred looks to have better cooling - any opinions on one over the other out of these choices?

Not sure if this is news or not, but the DQ45EK and DQ45CB are now listed on the Intel website.

Any anecdotal experience as to whether this board will actually run a Core 2 Quad (e.g. one of the 45nm ones)? Quads aren't officially supported for this board by Intel, but...

The price difference between DDR2 and DDR3 shows when you compare 2 GB modules. 1 GB modules are not really worth it for a virtualisation server. Yep - that's the situation in Australia. Fast DDR3 is approx double the cost of DDR2, and I would want around 1.5GB-2GB per VM - so ~8GB for quad, ~12-16...

Yep - need 4 cores. Virtualisation server.

Might wait for it to come out and then pick up a cheaper C2Q/DDR2 setup. Forgot about the DDR3 requirement.

Anyone got any idea of what the power consumption of the upcoming Core i7 45nm chips will be, say compared to a Core 2 Duo 45nm chip like the Q9450? I'm holding off building a system until Core i7 comes out - hopefully they will be affordable, or at least drive the price of 45nm Core 2 Quads down si...

You would still need an internal 2 port SATA card with the DG45FC - it has 4 internal ports (the 5th is external eSATA) - you'd need 2 more for the 2.5" system drive and the optical drive.

Shame the board can't take a 45nm quad core!!!

I'm spec'ing up a machine for use as a server at home - here's the two case options I'm considering: Antec Mini P180 + Corsair VX 450 ~$250 (PSU bought separate) Antec NSK6580 + EarthWatts 430 ~$135 (PSU included with case) Those prices are Australian dollars. Given both cases meet my needs (mATX + ...

Haha! I hooked the drive up this afternoon to copy my iTunes library onto the disk - I reformatted it, and then the drive packed it in

Off to the next PC recycling day it is.

Spend $10 and get a IDE to USB external case and use the drives as a backup. Yep - decided to do this instead of installing them in a PC. I've got a cable for connecting a bare drive to USB, but will just get el-cheapo cases and keep photos, critical files etc on them as off-site backup outside of ...

Yeah... guess so. It's not like I'll be pressed for space once I get a 1TB drive in there - it just seems a shame to dispose of working tech.

I've got a USB to IDE/SATA kit that I use to access bare drives - might just use them for long term off site backups of photos etc.

I'm looking at buying a new case that comes with a 430W PSU (Antec NSK6580) - the PSU is an EarthWatts, so it has an 80 PLUS rating. I calculated (using Antec's PSU calculator) that the most I'm every likely to require is about 300-340W depending on how many HDDs I might use in future - given the ef...

Hi, Currently spec'ing up a machine for use as a home server - it will be used for virtualisation of some Linux machines, and it will be a quad core - so I've decided to go with a 45nm chip like a Q9300 or Q9450 to keep the power consumption down compared to say a cheaper Q6600. I'm planning on usin...