What is the best way to control the cooler fan voltage with a Mugen-2? Is it better to use some sort of hardware device or something in the BIOS, or software. I guess I ideally want something non-software that plugs direct into the fan power cable and just allows adjusting the voltage lower than 12...

The lowest rated brandname PSUs I can find in retail channels (in my locality) are Antec Earthwatts 380 (only when bundled with NSK case), Earthwatts 430, Seasonic S12II-430 and Corsair V/HX450. I still cannot find one of these legendary 300W PSUs. With all the focus and development on higher watta...

I disagree. I think the rule of thumb is to read the motherboard manual ;) It is recommended to install the memory modules from the yellow slots for better overclocking capability I'm pretty sure they meant "into" instead of "from," but you get the idea. The yellow slots are A1 and B1, which means t...

If there's a spike in power consumption from HDD spin-up, it generally happens at a time when the CPU and especially the GPU are under low load, and therefore drawing far from their maximum power. Unless you have oodles of drives, if your PSU can handle your CPU and GPU both at full load, it should ...

LED backlights should be dead silent, whereas cathode backlights will have some hum (sometimes imperceptible, sometimes downright jaw-rattling) when the brightness is at less than 100%. You can decide if that is worth the money to you. If you don't spend time at less than 100% brightness, I wouldn't...

I just got ahold of the case from an old HP Pavilion Xe734 (same case as the Pavilion 45xx too). The pavilion mobo is mini-atx, but the case has standoffs and room to fit micro-atx. After pulling off the curvy molded plastic on the top and bottom as well as the bezel, we're left with a boring steel ...

Was wondering, would it be time to have another list with cases that has it's PSU located at the bottom? Stuff like the Cooler Master RC-590/690 or Antec Three Hundred. I second the motion You could get a bit more ambitious with this and call it "Cases with specific silencing features." It could co...

A couple that I've seen:

Powercolor
Gigabyte

The TJ08 is exactly the same case as the Cooler Master Elite 340 but with a different bezel. The CM340 is discontinued, but you may still be able to find one floating around. If you can find one, it sells for about $50, so apparently the TJ08 has a $40 bezel. Here's one place: Micro Tech Computer Sy...

If you want some gaming ability with a stock fanless cooler, there's really only 1 option currently: The ATI Radeon HD 4670. If you wait a while, some fanless HD 4770 cards are coming out in the next month or two. The 4770 might consume a bit more wattage, but puts out about 50% more video performan...

You are probably right in thinking that having two fans right next to eachother (PSU blowing up, CPU blowing down) would be a bad situation. You could certainly have the CPU fan blow upwards, however that will pump all of the heat from your CPU directly into your PSU, and the PSU will likely ramp up...

I think this is a case where a picture would be worth a thousand words. ;) It sounds like you have a PSU with a bottom-mounted fan pulling air upwards into the PSU, and a tower-style CPU heatsink with the fan blowing downwards through the fins. Is that right? What is the model of heatsink that you h...

Even if they overlap, because those fins run the same direction as the Accelero's fins, they could just interlace, with at worst a slight amount of bending.

Usually PSUs with 120mm fans are mounted with the fan on the bottom, drawing air from the CPU area, and exhausting it out the back of the case. The advantage of a 120mm bottom-fan PSU is that the fan is larger so that it can spin at lower RPMs (meaning less noise, generally) for a given amount of ai...

- Heavier than a Ninja or HR-01
- More expensive than a Ninja or HR-01 plus a Nexus 120mm fan
- Worse cooling than a Ninja 2 or HR-01

I think this thing is obsolete before it even rolls off the production line.

This thread inspired me to fire up HDtune and check my laptop HDD's SMART data. I have a 100GB Seagate Momentus 7200.1 (ST910021AS) Age: ~24 months Power on hours: 10251 (~14 months) Power cycle count: 2659 Start/stop count: 6501 Power off Retract count: 16108 Load cycle count: 2,954,613 It's going ...

Would a Nexus fan provide sufficient airflow (with PSU fan header) if the intake is ducted to fresh air via a 5" drive bay? SPCR's 80mm fan roundup shows it as only ~2 CFM behind the Scythe Kama Flex/Flow at the same voltage.

Specifically, I have the Earthwatts 380.

But consider that eSATA is simply SATA with a different connector; a simple adapter SATA cable w/ captive PCI cover port is all that's needed for eSATA. This is a matx dual-VGA board aimed at the performance gaming community. Many people won't have any PCI slot covers to spare. In that case, the on...

I've seen Accelero setups like that in matx cases before. It works, but the fan ends up almost touching the floor, so there's very little clearance from which it can draw fresh air. I guess having such a large VGA cooling setup is a decent reason to go full-atx.

For just 1 graphics card, 1 HDD, and nothing else extra, why go full-ATX? You could get a mini-p180 (on sale for $80) and a matx gigaybte board, and save some space, weight, and cash.

I prefer sandals.

Check the motherboard manual. Most manuals state that you should use 8-pin if available, but 4-pin if not.

Try sprinkling baby powder on the bottom of the shoes. That ought to work, at least until it all rubs off.

P.S.: careful, don't slip!

With the fastest partition at the end, how do you leave the beginning empty? I have always used one partition so I don't know if that fastest part you speak of is in the first partition or not. The fastest part of the disk is the "beginning." If you start with a new, unformatted disk (or delete all...

You'd have to reformat and erase the disk completely in order to change your partition setup.

Short stroking means only using part of the drive. A hard drive's first partition is always at its outer edge, which is the fastest part of the disk. By short stroking, you avoid using the slower inner parts of the disk, which have the lowest throughput. Only using the outer part of the disk also me...

Throw a Nexus Value 430 in there upside-down and you're golden.

15W less power for $115 more is very unimpressive.

edit: nevermind. I don't know.

Who do we think we are? How dare we come along and in the course of a mere few hundred years, pull out ~half of the useful fossil fuels from the earth and burn it? The earth spent millions of years creating that stash, and we sent it up in smoke in record time. What audacity.