Just to clarify, the arrow pointing parallel to the fan casing shows you which direction the fan rotates in. The other arrow shows you which direction the air goes.

A floppy?
Blimey, don't even worry about it.

I would imagine it draws half an amp if that, and that's being extremely generous. It's only got a tiny little stepping motor. I imagine the real draw could be measure in milliamps.

Don't worry, Seagate are still reckoned to be good. Opinion here simply suggests that Samsung are slightly quieter. Samsung drives also support AAM which allows you to sacrafice some seek performance in order to lower noise when the drive is in use if you want. Seagate don't support it due to an ong...

Just posting to second the GeForce 6600GT suggestion. They really are very good cards for the money.

I'm in the process of building my new system - trust me, modding the nexus fans is really easy. It took me 10 minutes with a hacksaw. The way I did it was on each corner make 5 cuts: 2 directly across the "tube" that you want to remove, at the edges where it meets the fan casing. 2 diagonally from t...

Another option you can consider is downloading speedfan (search for it on google, should come right up). It is often used by people here to control fan speeds on motherboards that support the ability, but it also does the same as MBM5 and will read out system stats like temperatures. Worth a try to ...

Ouch.
Whoever designed that board didn't think it through too well...!

Ohh, interesting... I may yet change my mind then

Well due to my mostly positive experience with Asus I'd like to stick with them if I can. Many sites in the UK list the expected delivery of the A8N-E as sometime this month, and are still accepting preorders. This is the first I've heard of it not being produced, and if there was any official word ...

The other option is just to cut a section out of the corners of the fan.
You, a hacksaw, and a couple of minutes - job well done

http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/pro ... &model=262

Five, that's FIVE onboard fans before you've even put the heatsink on. Arrrgh!

*runs a mile*

Just a guess, but if the PSU checks out ok then it sounds as if you maybe didn't mount the heatsink on the CPU properly? Those zalmans can be tricky... If you didn't, then the processor would get very hot very fast, you'd smell the thermal paste starting to cook, and then the motherboard would step ...

I've said it in other threads and I'll say it in this one: wait for the A8N-E! :) It has no fans onboard, chipset is passively cooled, the area around the processor socket looks all but identical to the A8N-SLI if you look at leaked photos on google so there'll be room for the XP-120, and it won't b...

I don't know much about the case or the board, but nForce4 certainly seems to be favoured. CPU: Good choice RAM: Great choice - Ballistix consistantly beats all the other, much more expensive premium brands on the A64 platform. HDD: Most here would recommend the Samsung Spinpoint P80 series over the...

Yeah it must be... people always seem to get those confused. Raid 0 is striping without fault tolerance (in fact, half the fault tollerance of a single drive as the probability of a failure is doubled). Raid 1 is mirroring with fault tolerance, but you only get to use 50% of the storage capacity. Ni...

I imagine it's because that would disrupt the operation of the heatpipes.
I don't know an awful lot about them, but from what i've read the tube shape seems to be integral to how they work...

I would reiterate the suggestion to check your RAM voltage. As well as burcakb's point, it should be noted that some manufacturers (particularly the performance lines) have non-standard recommended settings. For example, most Corsair memory and the Crucial Ballistix line recommend operation at 2.8v ...

Yeah this is something I've never quite got, I don't think I understand dB ratings all that well. For example, in Adobe Audition (audio editor) you can set the vertical scale (which measures amplitude) to dB - and it runs from negative infinity at the centre where it's quietest to 0dB at the outside...

Well, I think counting air convection is taking it a bit far, even for SPCR!
I'm fine with the definition of a passive PSU as noiseless. It's not just TT who use that definition.

As I said though, I agree that their other products are far from accurate in terms of noise ratings.

Ah. Well as I should be ordering mine at the end of feb/beginning of march I doubt I'll get one of those, but there you go.

What sort of performance do you require? My plan is to get a GeForce 6600GT. You can get them from Gigabyte with factory fitted passive cooling, although I won't be doing that as I require two DVI-I ports which Gigabyte don't do. I will be fitting a ZM80D-HP to mine. I have a plan for dealing with t...

I wouldn't hit too hard on Asus for the BIOS issues. Most motherboards when brand new have faults in the BIOS - it's not uncommon to see 3 or 4 update revisions in the first couple of weeks with many manufacturers. Asus have a reputation for quality of components, which I can't really argue with. I ...

Looks like it's the 3520 then.

Thanks for the feedback!

With the wonders of Froogle , I have found this site . They are an audio professional's site but they also stock a couple (literally!) of quiet PC bits, one of which is Acoustipack deluxe. They also stock it a good £7-10 cheaper than other sites, including delivery. Thought I'd point it out in case ...

How is it at 1x for movie playback?
My current drive, a LiteOn (*spit* *hawk*) clicks and whirs even then, which is somewhat offputting...

I thought all PCI-e cards had no external power connector...?

I've seen the 3500A recommended as a quiet DVD writer... however, i was wondering if anyone's had any experience with the 3520A? It's a newer model and I'm not sure what NEC's plans are (phase out the 3500 in favour of the 3520, or run with both) but its a lot faster at rewriting and also supports t...

That's awesome, great to see some mainstream coverage.
Hopefully a few people will click the SPCR link in the article and get converted, hehe.

I dislike anything that tracks where I go or what I do.
And so far as I know all anti-spyware tools remove alexa, as that's exactly what it is...

Unfortunately there's no real way to tell yet, although we can guess. A8N-SLI http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socket939/a8nsli-d/a8nsli-d_l.jpg A8N-E http://www.tt-hardware.com/img/news4/news170904_1dujour.gif As you can see, the processor area is very similar, and thermalright's website says the XP...