I would expect a system like that to idle in the neighborhood of 50W, especially if underclocked. I put together a similar system a while back, except the CPU was a 5050e, not underclocked, and I think I had it idling around 60W. For HD's, I had 3-4 WD 1TB Greens.

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe the wick "is typically a sintered metal powder or a series of grooves parallel to the pipe axis, but it may be any material capable of exerting capillary pressure on the condensed liquid to wick it back to the heated end." I would think ...

Has anyone tried the single-platter versions of these drives yet, and is there any improvement in power or vibration (especially in the WD)? I'm a little leery of Seagate at the moment due to some bad experiences with the Momentus 7200.4 (supposedly same platters, but 7200 RPM), so I'm kind of leani...

Something just occurred to me: When SSD's finally hit mainstream, just think of all the fun that will be had messing with noobs who post looking for advice on short stroking them.

Couldn't you just short stroke the Velociraptor too and get even better performance?

To echo psiu's comment, sometimes it works, sometimes not. IMHO, the closer your new motherboard/CPU/video/audio/lan/etc. are to the old ones the greater your chances will be. Also, on the new motherboard, before you first boot it you probably want to go into the BIOS and disable as many peripherals...

I don't know if those drives run excessively hot, however I've found the P18x to be pleasantly effective at cooling the lower drive cage with just the PSU fan. Just make sure you seal up any air short circuits, like the grille on the rear of the case around the PSU (not sure if these holes are still...

Point of Intel push-pins is cheapness of manufacture, not quality of solution. Trying to improve it adds cost and thus nullifies the purpose of being just good enough while costing as little as possible. Agreed. If Intel wanted a "better than good enough" solution, IMHO, they could simply specify t...

Question - do you know if the August 2007 PS3's have the better cooling design? I see that they're the last PS3's to have 4 USB ports instead of 2, and I think that would be my biggest reason for sticking with the 60Gb version. That said, it's not a complete deal-breaker, and I might try switching ...

I am also curious. I also wonder how long it will be until WD releases 500gb platter 1tb drives. Probably depends on how many of those 2TB drives they're moving at the absurd price premium they're currently charging. If those drives are taking up all their 500gb platter production, it doesn't make ...

I don't directly see what else do they save from moving the 12V->5V conversion from the PSU to the mobo than having shorter wires for 5V power. But if the 5V needs to be further converted to some other voltage, surely it is more efficient to do it directly from 12V without the intermediary step? An...

Very impressive acoustics from the 2TB GP, especially since it has 4 platters. Really the only thing i dont like about the drive from all the reviews ive read is the very high price. Id still take 2 1TB 3 platter drives over it and save a substantial amount. Once the price drops i'll consider it. I...

Yeah, but now you've got double the noise, double the power and double the chance for failure leading to data loss. It's also not double the chance for failure. If we assume each drive has the same probability of failing, the chance for that one 2TB failing is the same as the chance for one of the ...

Just to follow up... I ended up going in a totally different direction. Plans fell through on getting hold of a DS3R, but I found someone who was interested in my current motherboard/CPU combo (I threw in some extras to compensate for the possibly flaky SATA controller) So I decided to switch over t...

Sorry for the thread bump, but I just purchased this motherboard and also received a rev 2.0. In comparing the 2.0 vs 2.1 photos on Gigabyte's website, the board layout and components look identical. The only differences I could see are the colors of the heatsinks, and, possibly (hard to tell from t...

I didn't look at all your requirements, but the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3L comes to mind. edit - ICH10 not 10R, but look at some of the other Gigabyte boards. There are a few with plenty of slots. lol! edit2. there is actually one called the UD3LR that had the RAID. Yes the LR was the one I linked to (9...

Unfortunately the Asrock board has the ICH10, not the 10R. The price is right though, so I'll keep that one in mind. Newegg is also running rebates on some of the Gigabyte P45 boards which would put them in the ballpark of the Asrock. I have not looked into the G3x, but I think I've seen tests that ...

Can anyone recommend a good LGA 775 motherboard for low-power Windows Home Server duty? I have an existing C2D E6400 and 2 x 2GB DDR2 that I'd like to reuse if possible, though I'm not averse to considering an AMD solution if it makes sense. Stable WHS drivers, excellent GigE performance, and plenty...

I've been using these enclosures for a couple of years (mine started out with IDE to USB/Firewire bridgeboards but I've swapped them out since then.) http://www.cooldrives.com/midudrnasaen.html You'll probably want to swap out the 80mm fan for something quieter, but that's trivially easy to do on th...

same here. I need some more storage but the bays in my home server are maxed out and I'm waiting for either the Samsung 1.5TB or a major price drop on the WD 2TB.

I have a Visiontek 4850 card that I modded with an Accelero S1 and adhesive ramsinks. The machine it was in is being repurposed as a low-power server (running WHS), and the idle power of this card is way too high for that, so I'd like to sell it, or at least put it back in a state where it will fit ...

I have a P180 that is not currently being used... should I just use it or is the p182 worth upgrading? Probably not. IIRC, the main difference between the P180 and 182 is the improved cable management, especially the raised motherboard tray that allows you to route cables underneath the motherboard...

P182 can holster easily 4 HDD's down compartment, but they would require middle fan there. With proper sealing, I've had good luck cooling 4 reasonable HDDs in the lower chamber without the middle fan (generally not exceeding 40-45C under load at normal room temps). You just have to be careful to s...

Nice build! You're right, there is a ton of space in the PSU compartment. BTW, I went with an Alpine 7 instead of the mini-Ninja because I wanted a little airflow over the NB/IGP (GeForce 9400 IGP), but at the moment I'm skeptical about how much difference it really makes. I may try the Ninja at som...

I just ordered an Antec NSK2480 for a new HTPC build, but I'm a little nervous because I have not run across any information on the amount of space available in the 5.25" bays (often an issue with mATX cases). I would like to mount my LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray combo drive in the top bay. The drive measure...

I jsut bought the WD1600BEKT (only difference is mine doesn't have the free-fall sensor), and I am a little worried. I stuck it in my desktop today to format it and transfer some files onto it (before sticking it into my laptop), and I was surprised at how much noise I could hear coming from it. Sl...

I'm going to get a second 360 when the Jaspers become more available. Since I've already got a spare 120GB HDD, $200 for an Arcade isn't a bad deal I'm thinking about getting a Jasper myself some time next year. I've read, though, that they will have the same DVD drive as the Falcons, so that part ...

Many years ago I bought one of these enclosures (made by Mapower) from cooldrives or fwdepot or a place like that. It's designed for 5.25" drives so it's pretty huge, but it uses 80mm fans and a standard ATX power supply form factor (as far as I can tell, anyway, though the one it comes with lacks t...

Wow, given the prices on those Koolance kits, it probably wouldn't be that much more expensive to wait a bit and buy the next revision of the PS3 (with the GPU die shrink). That one should produce a lot less heat.

Has it been confirmed that 100x12mm fans will fit on the T-Rad? From the pictures I've seen, the 2x92mm configuration doesn't appear to leave much space between the fans, at least if you want to use the stock mounting holes.