You didn't mention what case you plan to use, or what kind of cooling the PSU will have (convection or airflow from fans other than its own). The Phantom 500 fan is actually temperature controlled. (There have been some misleading statements about this on SPCR) It starts spinning (at least mine does...

Look here for a comprehensive list of Conroe motherboards.

Can you take a picture of the mounting rails. Or meansurement, I get someone to take measurements of the caps on the P5B. Thanks :) I can't get a measurement without taking my whole system apart. The capacitors near the CPU on my motherboard are about 0.4" tall (estimate, not measured, again a comp...

Take a look at the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 or GA-965P-DQ6 . If you put a Thermalright XP-120 on the CPU with a quiet 120mm fan blowing up, then duct the hot air to the outside of the case, you'd have an extremely quiet and well-cooled system... I'm gonna take a look for those boards for sure, about CP...

I ran a Phantom 500 fanless in the bottom of my P180 for a while (with the disks in the upper chamber) and it worked fine. But in the end, after many experiments, I put the disks back in the bottom chamber with the Phantom, and installed a Nexus 120mm fan with an NMT-3 controller in the middle. This...

For those who have a Ninja. do you see any clearence issues with this motherboard (Asus P5B Deluxe). I was a bit worried about the capacitor so close to the socket and maybe spacing between the fan and the yellow memory slot. There's a very big problem. The 775 adaptors that come with the Ninja can...

Take a look at the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4 or GA-965P-DQ6. If you put a Thermalright XP-120 on the CPU with a quiet 120mm fan blowing up, then duct the hot air to the outside of the case, you'd have an extremely quiet and well-cooled system...

I'm concerned about what you said about the hard disk. I suppose I'd have to buy a temperature sensor and attach it to the HD to see exactly how hot it is. I think the limit for my HD is 55C. Perhaps I'll get an automatic fan control with sensors and attach one to the HD. Rereading this quote I rea...

6xSATA really limits your choices. 4xSATA + 2xPATA is much more common.

A quick search on Newegg turned up this one (Abit AW8-MAX):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813127209

You'd have to add a cheap video card. An 805D CPU would be adequate.

I'm concerned about what you said about the hard disk. I suppose I'd have to buy a temperature sensor and attach it to the HD to see exactly how hot it is. I think the limit for my HD is 55C. Perhaps I'll get an automatic fan control with sensors and attach one to the HD. No need. All modern disks ...

A couple of notes about the VM-101. As pointed out above, it is big: unnecessarily so. Is it really "unnecessarily" big? If you want better cooling you have to have either better airflow or better surface area, or ideally both. There is a trade-off here, and size is it. Yes, it's unnecessary. The h...

As summer approached, I became concerned about the high temperatures of my video card, a Gigabyte GV-RX80L256V with its stock passive cooler ducted to the motherboard fan. When running ATI Tool, the GPU temperature would climb above 120*C in about 10 minutes. Not good. On a lark, I thought I would t...

I documented installing a Kama Bay in the top three slots of a P180 here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article595-page2.html

To summarize: you need to drill some holes to mount the retention tabs, and bend them a bit.

When I saw the photo of the copper ninja, my first thought was "how heavy is that thing??"

Nice to see the Scythe folks have a sense of humor. The placard under the copper ninja says imprisoned for serial killing of motherboards due to its sheer weight.

Aerocool makes the VM-101, another entirely passive card cooler. Unlike the Zalman, it doesn't take up room for a PCI slot. There's hasn't been as much feedback on these forums as the Zalmans though. It may or may not cause space conflicts with your MB chipset due to its size. There have been repor...

I read the 2 articles you mention but I must admit the amount of work required is a bit daunting to say the least. Althought the end result is just what I'm after. I've been building my own systems a long time (work as an NT admin) but its only recently that I've started to want a silent machine. A...

mai9 wrote:so, my conclusion is that the cpu is at 37ºC and that 71ºC (which sometimes moves to 70 and sometimes 72) is.... well, I don't know.

There's a good chance the 70C sensor is for the VRM. Those babies run HOT, up to 165C.

Hello, I would try using a razor blade to separate the back plate from the sticky foam. Then peeling off the foam might be possible -- or at least a lot easier? This is the technique I used once (before realizing that there was no good reason to glue it down in the first place -- doh! ). It took ma...

Does the V-Tuner2 show the card's temps? The V-Tuner2 that came with my ATI-based card doesn't show temperatures. It can adjust the GPU and GRAM clocks, but this needs to be done manually every reboot. ATITool works better: it shows temperatures, and can be configured to set the clocks automaticall...

I have two SP2004C drives in the stock P180 cage, and it works very well. No vibration noise, motor noise audible only within about 2 feet, and seek noise quieter than a can of Diet Coke sizzling. Certainly much quieter than my laptop disk.

In open air, the static pressure is nearly zero I don't think that can be true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_pressure Well, you're right, I was being sloppy. It is the static pressure difference on the two sides of the fan is nearly zero (ie, until the fan is ducted and has to overcome imped...

On my P180 the PCI blanks buzzed even when screwed down. The fix was simple: a bit of tape on the tongue (non-screw) end to provide positive seating.

Have to add one thing to the above long post; some of the stuff are very theoretical. In reality, most waves will not hit perpendicular to the surface of the absorber. The angled waves will have higher absorption and in general most absorbers show higher effeciency than the theoretical predictions....

I don't think you can get a C-stepping 930. The way the recent repricing was done suggests that both the 920 and the 930 are going away, and it's only 940 and above that are C-step chips. The Presler (9xx) is about 30% cooler than the Smithfield (8xx) at similar clocks and voltages, but still a very...

You're changing is the static pressure substantially on one side of the fan by adding impedance. This changes the amount of work the fan has to do, which of course changes its efficiency and the amount of turbulance. In open air, the static pressure difference on the two sides of the fan is nearly z...

I might prefer to have the HD down in the P180's HD/PS compartment, but the third fan header isn't controllable on the A8R, so I'd have to live with a fan that's either too loud or potentially too slow to cool the drive adequately during a defrag. If you put the disks and a slow fan (like a Nexus) ...

You also have to keep in mind the Wall Street Wise. Intel's stock price is in the toilet almost entirely because of market share loss. This is more important to analysts than margins or price wars. If Intel can grab back market share with prices that are lower than technical comparisons would sugges...

The simplest mod of all will improve your airflow: remove the slatted front doors. Just pop them open and depress the tab by the top hinge. The filters remain in place, and look okay.

It looks like you have two single-bay air filters/inlets in the bottom 5" bays. What are those?

BTW I also use it in combination with a Pentium D and now get temperatures of 50 idle, 65-70 stressed. As cmthomson says these are pretty normal, but I can't believe that. Intel specifies a temperature of 69 degrees, so 80 can't be good for the lifespan. And the Ninja should be able to cool it a lo...

You can mount the Ninja either way. That is, the rails of the 775 converter can be vertical (the typical direction), or horizontal. The only difference is the orientation of the heat sink clips, and their potential interference with a fan mounted directly to the Ninja. The heatsink itself is square,...