If you have a vacuum that can be reversed and blow air instead of sucking it in, then that can be used to clean computer components as well. The reason why most caution against using a vacuum cleaner to clean computer components is that you don't want the vacuum to come into physical contact with th...

Realtemp from techpowerup.com is prolly the most accurate program for reading off the i7's thermal diodes. Like others, I would recommend checking what realtemp says about your temps. Looking at the temps from CPUID, they are good to me. Though it's not recommended, i7's are designed to work up to 1...

Got lost in that last paragraph, but I'm definitely seeing Inception tomorrow. Roger Ebert (with whom I usually agree) gave it a good review, so we'll see how it is. Does seem refreshingly original.

...but with 'original' and 'new' comes 'really hard to tell in a story', so I hope for the best.

I never got the impression that Darko really understood his role in time travel until the very end, to the extent that when everything "rewound" he didn't place himself back in his bed as much as he was placed there by the rewinding though he was aware of the impending disaster and the end result. ...

@spook I definitely understand what you're saying and agree to an extent. I'm not saying at all that the wiki describes the only way one can understand the movie -- merely that it is one interpretation. I am definitely one who will not say "it's all relative" or anything like that, but the instituti...

I'd be simply using the IGP of the Core i3. Should be more than enough for an HTPC that's not used for gaming. As an alternative I'd buy a budget HD5450. Have that one in my wife's desktop. But don't think it has any advantages for this kind of use. Okay. In that case, then the integrated audio cor...

From the Donnie Darko Wiki: Writer/director Richard Kelly does not deny the validity of personal interpretations, but has expressed his own theories through the extra commentary on the two DVDs, and in various other interviews. According to Kelly and his fictional Philosophy of Time Travel, at midni...

even more: I'd need an extra module to connect to that flexijack I/O connector. Think I'll just try the onboard :) Sorry if this is late. What video card are you planning on using to send the HDMI signal? If it is the video card in your signature (Radeon 5750), those have a built-in audio core that...

http://www.techpowerup.com/125788/Scythe_Announces_Ninja_3_Performance_CPU_Cooler.html I thought my Mugen 2 had enough heatpipes, but this one technically has 16 paths of heat transfer to the fins :shock: It goes without saying...can we pretty-please have a review? I'm sure Scythe wouldn't mind send...

I can't say specifically for the i3, but for other computers that I've built that pass audio through HDMI, it passes both movie stuff and normal windows sounds. So unless there is something broken with the i3's implementation of HDMI (which I doubt), your computer sounds should be sent over HDMI, ju...

I could've sworn there was a thread somewhere here about this fan... Anyways, I finally got to see one of these fans at a Bed, Bath, & Beyond about a month or so. How it works is that there is some kind of fan in the base that sucks air in through vents near the bottom of the unit. This air then goe...

Haha I forgot about this thread! Thanks for reviving it :) I ended it up just connecting it to a standard PCIe x1 slot in my computer. I'm able to transfer at about 110MB/s peak, and I think that the limiting factor here are the hard drives on the server. As far as I know, WHS uses Server 2003 as it...

If I were to buy a card right now, I'd either buy a GTX 260 or Radeon 5850. The GTX 275 doesn't outperform the 260 enough to justify its price premium. So of DX10 parts, I would go with the GTX 260. If you wanted to step up to DX11, the water gets a little muddier. The 5850 is definitely a great car...

Yeah, that didn't last long at all. Amazon has raised their price up to $144.64 after rebate, and Newegg moved their price up to $139.99 after rebate. So basically 40% more expensive than it was at the beginning of the day. It's still a reasonably good price, but for a little more you could get a be...

Slickdeals is showing a deal on the 60GB OCZ Solid 2 SSD. $133 from Amazon, then $30 mail-in rebate. Pretty good deal for an SSD. From what I can tell, the OCZ Solid 2 is based on the Indilinx controller. This is a pretty good controller as these things go. Not as fast as Intel's or Sandforce's con...

I'm not an admin so I don't know for certain, but I believe that they get paid for both views and clicks, but get paid more for clicks. I'm sure that it also depends on the specific ad company/website.

Panasonic also makes some IPS LCDs worth checking out. Though definitely interesting, I still would be unhappy with the higher black levels inherent with any LCD panel. I have an H-IPS LCD for my computer and it works great for its intended purposes, but for video-viewing only, I'd rather stick wit...

@neil: I have been amazed at how far LCDs have come in the past few years; however, I still prefer the picture quality of Plasmas. I think that it's a fair generalization that LCDs have possibly longer life expentancies, lighter weight, and lower consumption. That being said, I still think that Plas...

@psiu: Yeah, too bad the Costco feed doesn't really tell you how good or bad the actual picture quality will be. I'm still very open to ideas, but if it seems that Plasmas will still be around for a few more years, I'll hold off on buying one. Though I'm such a terrible impulse spender that I may ch...

Thanks for the reply, Andy. I'll definitely look into some 1080p sets. It couldn't hurt having the extra resolution (except for my wallet :-p), but I doubt I'll use it for my computer for very long. Just to watch a movie or two every once in a while. So I've been just looking at Panasonic TVs. Are t...

Let me preface this by saying that I'm a stickler for image fidelity, which is why I'm looking at Plasma TVs only (no LCDs). Not that LCDs can't make a good picture, but I prefer Plasma TVs. I was shopping at Costco and found the Panasonic TC-42PX24 Plasma TV on sale. When I went home, I found that ...

Not sure how this will affect prices or not, but Intel's planning on launching its 3rd generation SSDs this winter season. These should be significantly faster than the 2nd generation drives, particularly in sequential write performance (where Intel's 80MB/s looks very bad compared to Sandforce cont...

Prima facie, fluid dynamic bearings are supposed to be immune to problems with mounting position and most temperature ranges, so they should be good in a power supply. Unless there's a specific defect with the design of this fan in particular...

http://www.techpowerup.com/120725/Scyth ... rings.html

EX-FDB bearings. Scythe says that it allows for even less friction. MSRP is just under what the S-Flex fans sell for. Maybe I can replace my Slipstream with these?

I sincerely apologize if anybody finds this in bad taste or offensive. Usually I shy away from initiating a thread regarding a contentious issue, but I thought that this brief was very good. http://www.acslaw.org/files/Lazarus%20Issue%20Brief%20Final.pdf An amicus brief is a paper submitted to the C...

I built a Windows Home Server with a Samsung F2 1TB (2-platter) main drive and a Western Digital Green 1.5TB (WD15EADS, 3-platter) secondary drive. In my experience, the WD drive is much quieter. I'm not sure if it's just sample variance, but the F2 is pretty noisy compared to the WD. The F2 vibrate...

Why am I here? Grif: It's one of life's great mysteries, isn't it. Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of... some cosmic coincidence or, is there really a God... watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff. I don't know man, but it keeps me up at night. Simmons: ... Grif: ......

Thanks for the reply, Andy. I tried using the tool a few times, but I kept on getting timeout errors. I'll try it from work to see if perhaps it's my internet connection that's causing the errors ::doubtful:: If all else fails, I guess I can email the greenhouse from where I bought the plant. Hopefu...

Screen quality even in the realm of TN panels can vary widely, but from the sound of it you have a pretty bad screen :-/ For comparison, I have two monitors: an HP LP2475w - a $625 H-IPS panel used for color critical work, and a Dell SE198WFP - a pretty bad TN panel that was about $100 a few years a...