WiFi Card: Intel Wifi Link 5100 The main reason for choosing this card was the fact that it is the only chip I found completely compatible with Linux with no caveats. If there are other options available, EG: USB 2.0 attached wifi cards that are solid enough to function and broadcast for a WiFi acc...

This knowledge base article may help:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889249
(although it basically says "It's the CPU's fault. Go tell AMD")

In my opinion, you are wasting your sister's money on the case and PSU. A Solo or Mini P180 are more than "good enough" and are not very cramped - and you said that system will be set up only once and running 5 years after, so why is that a concern? Also, if you can't find a at least very decent PSU...

First I would mod the graphics card. The X1600 is a very low power part, so just slap an Accelero S2 (cheaper than the S1 R2) on it and run it passively. But the PSU is probably the main culprit, however quality PSUs tend to be expensive. You might want to try a fan swap, but be warned - due to the ...

I have to agree with RBBOT - why test with Turboboost disabled? I guess the power figures would fluctuate quite a bit then. However, a short comparison table for one CPU with Turbo mode would be nice. That reminds me of my good old 486DX with the "Turbo" Button on the case - 33Mhz instead of 16... ...

I am using almost exactly the same configuration (only difference are the drives) without problems under Win7 RC. So it should not be a general problem with your hardware configuration. The Northbridge is fine with similar CPU temps. My initial suspect would be a faulty MB. However before sending th...

Before you go buying a new board, I would rather try and get a quiet, undervolted 80mm fan and somehow attach that to the northbridge - it should be possible, and should cool well enough. There are also aftermarket northbridge coolers, it might be worth a search on google if one fits ;) Regarding in...

A Netbook without SSD? Why would I buy that? It just does not make sense to me to put a HDD into something that is supposed to be carried around in unusual places (my EEE 900A spends quite some time in jacket pockets, e.g.) and will probably be beaten up a couple of times (the aforementioned Netbook...

In my P182 I've got two 120mm 1600RPM S-Flex as intakes and then two 120mm 1200RPM ones as exhausts, providing airflow for a lightly overclocked E8400, 2x2GB of 1066 RAM and a stock GeForce 8800 GTS 512. They keep my rig cool and quiet in idle and are no earsore at full blast. Full blast is certain...

How are people running SP3 on netbooks wiht small 4 GB and 8 GB drives? Linux ;) 3.6GB with a pretty much full install. Image manipulation software (Hugin, Gimp, Imagemagick), development (gcc/gfortran, subversion+rapidsvn, gdb, Sun Studio, NetBeans, vim^^), Text/Layout creation/manipulation (OpenO...

Sorry, I meant the site in the very first post :) The c't is behind a paywall... (I'm German by birth :)) Me too. Err, and actually I fail to see why your translation is better ;) I'd love to see some more reviews of the new be quiet! fans, though. Oh, and "over here" (Europe) Scythe fans are much c...

I doubt that site is very reliable. It reads like an advertisement, and then there are gems like Durch spezielle Bauteile und eine neue Motorengeneration soll es weder elektrische noch magnetische Geräusche geben. which translates roughly (too early for me to worry about style) to Electrical and ma...

Such a waste of money since this case still looks a lot like a computer. With a DVD drive installed it would look even worse. And that display on the front is junk. It looks terrible -- you will never find somthing like that on premium audio gear. Well, you could rip out that front and replace it w...

If you're not set on the Ph II X3, you might want to have a look at the recently reviewed mini-ITX Silverstone SG05/6 cases. If you go e.g. for a decent ~65W Dual Core (which will serve well enough in games) and a HD 4770, you have enough power for all current games and most future ones, a extremely...

Looks very good.
Personally I like the AM3 X3 BE better than the X4 920 (Overclocking potential, less power consumption), but I assume you have carefully considered your usage scenarios? Or is the UD4 significantly cheaper than the UD4P?

The GPU temp is perfectly fine, no need to worry. The HDDs seem to be running a bit hot. What is the room temperature? How many HDDs do you have?
Anyway, just for the HDDs a 800RPM SlipStream should be sufficient imO. To be safe, you can always get another 1200 + a Zalman FanMate and test.

First: Very nice cases, and very nice review! But... Yeah, these cases were actively in the lab for weeks, and it was hard in the end to keep track of all the data! Like the HD4770? Because on page 4 you say you installed a 4770 ("Video Cards tried"), however there is no data to be found. Or am I mi...

35C maximum operating temperature means the maximum temperature of the room, not the temperature inside the case. Naturally, the CPU will be somewhat hotter than 35C when it's working. Errr... No. You misunderstood me. Maximum operating temperature means the environment of the box, not the room. My...

*looks at the Mac Mini specifications*
35C maximum operation temperature? That seems rather low for something that might be in a confined environment/in direct sunlight/...

Neil? You might want some more of that coffee :) I was hoping to find a Nexus VALUE 430, since it seems to be by far the most silent PSU (unless fanless), but it isn't available in Sweden and the distributor is phasing out Nexus(...) On topic: I had a BeQuiet! for a couple of years (2006-2008 if mem...

I don't see the need for variable case fans unless you have an extreme difference in temps from idle to load (like with a very hot video card) making it impossible to get all the heat out at low fan speeds. There are also seasonal variations in temperature (up to 15C where I'm living right now). Al...

But you can't save the whole OS back to disk upon an unexpected power failure. This is a recipe for needing to reinstall the OS if anything goes wrong and it doesn't get saved to disk when something changes, or gets saved in an inconsistent way. But how many changes to your OS do you make during a ...

Also, do you really want a Quad Core? On an AM3 platform, you could go with the X3, which consumes "only" 95W and is thus easier to cool quietly. Misleading, the x3 is rated to use UP TO 95 under theoretical peak. In reality all CPU's at stock use less (usually alot less) than its TDP. Actually, un...

Well, there is a good reason. Lose power and you lose the contents of your RAM, which would mean you lose your apps if stored only in RAM. If you're willing to have your apps stored in RAM for speed but backed-up to hard-drive for persistence, you could install them on the HD, fire them up and keep...

Note for those guys that are curious how effective a SSD would be: You might want to give Puppy Linux a spin. Just install it to a USB drive and boot from that. Upon boot, it copies it's data into RAM and runs from there, which means you have even faster access times than a SSD. Btw, if you have eno...

PWMs only make sense if you want them to speed up sometimes. But if you can get away with SlipStream 800's or undervolted 1200s temperature wise, there is no reason to go PWM. It is also quite hard to find good PWM fans, the only SPCR-reviewed ones that I am aware of are the S-Flex, which are inferi...

Pictures of the OEM and the "Real" version.
They do look different.

[edit] It does not seem to be only the mounting system, at least to me the fins on the Retail version seem to be quite a bit thicker than on the OEM product. Larger fin surface -> better cooling.

kater wrote: On the other hand, it already has the L2 Pro so most ppl will not have to change it to another cooler.

I think the OEM version and the retail version of the L2 Pro are not quite the same. But there's no sure way to tell until SPCR reviews them...

I'm now seriously contemplating a NAS box but as some video files are over 5GB I understood they will not store due to file limitations. Is that true? Should be no problem if you use any decent file system (NTFS on the Windows side, essentially anything on the Linux side) Re the serial port. I use ...

Yes to all questions.