The cards washu recommended are considerably cheaper than the Supermicro card you had trouble with. If the recommendation is sound, this gives the lie to your "buy cheap, buy twice". We are comparing apples and oranges. The cards I recommended are SAS controllers that support expanders, opening up ...

As long as you use a PCIe controller that is atleast semi-recent, even a pcie1x controller will give enough throughput for "casual" use (considering pci-e 2.0 gives you quite good BW even on a 1x link). I see no problems with Washu's recommendations, the point I was trying to get at is that if the O...

Two drives failing in short succession is actually quite normal, especially if you have them in a RAID array which then has to be rebuilt. A RAID array (1,10,5, and to an extent 6) will be very vulnerable to a secondary harddrive failure during rebuild, as the rebuild process is very stressfull on h...

Price is why I recommend looking at ebay, these cards can be had NIB/used but verified good for way less than retail, and they are definently worth it vs buying crappy pci sata controllers. The saying "buy cheap, buy twice" comes to mind in these cases... and by cheap, I mean pci sata controllers th...

Get a cheap IBM M1015 or Supermicro U(2)SAS8 card off ebay, with SAS -> sata breakout cables you have 8 channels with full bandwidth via pci-e 4x/8x and the oppurtunity to use SAS expanders for more ports later.

Oh, it is. Even my noctua S12 made an efficient exhaust fan after I swapped the grille, it didnt do much before. So it's definently worth a try.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/dunk5.1dts/WS2/WNT_8377.jpg Remove that restrictive grille and replace it with a standard wire grille? Like this: http://bilder.wibla.net/albums/monster/DSC_5708_ps.sized.jpg It's a <5 minute job, and will increase airflow :) Edit: I see that I actually commen...

Nice build

I'd love to see some more pictures, and some drive temperature stats

Do you foresee any temperature issues when you populate more drive bays?

HP Elitebook/Probook, Dell latitude, Lenovo T400/500-series would be my recommendation.

Buying an apple is NOT the be all and end all of hardware and software, some would argue that it is quite the opposite...

That value is nothing to worry about. It is just an age indicator, and have little to no correlation with actual drive health.

And Solo is a very bad case if you plan to use your comouter for a while. Its noisy like hell after a year even with clean up. Degrades fast. P180 was a much much better investment. Had both for 5 years. Could you elaborate a bit on this? I have a hard time understanding the logic behind this state...

if thats the original p180, cut holes through to the back panel for cables, then tuck the unused cables behind the tray, and ofcourse run the 24pin + 8pin behind the tray aswell I'd go for the slipstream 1200/1300rpm and run the undervolted, but thats more of a personal preference, the nexus fans wi...

My "pc speaker" setup was around 15500 NOK / $2500 CAD new, but by buying used, it ended up at $1400... Very nice. What gear are you running? Tannoy Sensys DC1, Pioneer VSX-1015K amp and an old MTX Thunder2000 12" in a 30 litre closed box paired with a 250W Zachry mono amp for a little added oomph ...

I recently saw a pair of decent B&W bookshelfs going for less than $100, and a nad 319 going for $200-250, its a larger investment than a pc speaker set, but also liable to last for years, and the sound quality would be miles ahead of a pc speaker set costing the same. My "pc speaker" setup was arou...

Nice review, definently a lot more factual info and proper measurements than pretty much every other pc speaker review I've read the last 10 years. Probably off topic, but I have to say that buying new pc speaker kits today, when you can often find a decent pair of used bookshelf speakers and a smal...

+1

Video card lenght is not a problem at all in the P18x, just remove the 2x3.5" drive bay in the middle (one screw). Other than that, +1 on previous poster on fans, and spend some time wiring up the case properly, remove both side panels to get at the back, thats the main secret for wiring the P18x ne...

Here's another 580 review that mentions (the lack of) fan noise.

Honestly, I think someone finally figured out that noisy stock coolers are a bad thing, and did something proper about it.

You have a performance metric value that goes from 0-255, and a raw value that tells you, usually in HEX, the actual hour count. How the performance value is counted, from 100 to 0, from 255 to 0, or if it varies depending on what goes on (for some values), is up to the manufacturer. I wouldnt worry...

The 580-series use vapor chamber coolers. These are better than the old style stock coolers, and according to the hardocp review , the noise level (subjectively) is far lower than the old 480-series, even under load. If you must have it totally quiet under all circumstances, I would recommend using ...

I'd like to see the original TRUE tested with the rev C mounting hardware.

Just a comment here, I have the EVGA GTS450, and the stock heatsink/fan + bios control is so good that the fan never speeds up to the point where I can hear it, and temps are decent in my P182. Considering that my GTS250 died with the S1rev2 on it, I'm feeling a wee bit sceptical about going all pas...

Remove the cover over the heatsink, it helps a bit.

other than that, the SB will handle <60C without a problem, leave it be

^ The above is a myth that is well propagated by the psu industries to scare you to buy the 1.2kw junk they're pushing (I think the advertising campaign is named after "keep fear alive") - j/k But, buy what you need with some headroom. Anything more actually hurts (since most psu's aren't efficient...

I'd go for atleast a 750, maybe even a 850... sure, its not cheap, but if you skimp on the psu, bad things happen...

I like the concept, especially cherry picking components etc. Not the biggest fan of the fans (pun intended), I would use 1200rpm slipstreams and a small fan controller, so that you could choose wether or not you want ultra quiet (or not) operation. This is mostly nitpicking tho, looking into my own...

450 days sounds like a very insecure centos system

I reboot my workstation whenever I need to (usually after an OS update).

Creative is the only one that has EAX up to the max. Sorry, does EAX offer anything that other software based solutions (OpenAL) doesnt? Creative is cheaper. Their lower quality cards are decently priced, but these are really not good contenders in todays market. I'd much rather buy an asus xonar t...

Na, there's several reasons for why you'd want to have galvanic isolation between the audio source and the amplifier/hi-fi... most hi-fi systems dont use mains ground at all, as it is often a source of ground loops between other components (inducing noise in the speakers). Most recievers suppress ma...

Well, the old fridge had issues ... so it was swapped out soon enough, problem solved.

toslink really shines for short runs from a "noisy" device, you want to use something else for longer runs.