Congratulations, you beat Idontcare to this! Brave man you are, I didn't yet buy an Ivy because I want to delid but felt unsecure. IMO the MX-4 wold have been a better choice, that's what I plan to use. AFAIK the MX-4 is better and supposed to last longer than AS-5. A possible explanation for the un...

Thank you for the replies. The 'rant' by Andyb was quite interesting, I didn't know the EU is that anti-democratic. You see, after enduring many years in a communist regime, many Romanians saw the Western countries and the EU as democracy examples. It turns out it's not what many of us perceived. I ...

@m0002a: It's interesting that US representatives can abuse democracy too, but I think you missed my point. Is there any party in the USA who urges the voters, the people (not the representatives), 'DO NOT VOTE', because that's how that party is going to win? That's after someone in Washington force...

This title may surprise some, but IMO it's justified. I'll try to explain why and hope others will try to explain to me if I'm wrong. For those of you who don't know, a referendum was held on Sunday 29th July in Romania, about the impeachment of the elected President. The referendum followed a const...

After surveying forum posts on Ivy Bridge overheating on various forums, it seems that even people using top heatsinks and fast spinning ( read: loud ) fans are only getting marginal temperature improvements. The only major improvement is by IHS TIM replacement. Since the IHS TIM replacement procedu...

I have some doubts it will work in practice, because the sound of a fan when case or heatsink mounted is different than the sound of the same fan in open air. If it will really work when mounted, something like: noise similar to 600 rpm, but with airflow similar to 1,000 rpm, then I'd be very intere...

edh, thanks for your suggestions, but it seems that for now that software is a bit unreliable with GTX 670, so I'll wait. However, I have bought and just installed an AC Mono Plus on my GTX 670, and here are some results. It idles at 30% fan speed, which is ~900 rpm, not acceptable to me, I want und...

Warning: the reference GTX 670 is incompatible with Thermalright Shaman, as I just discovered by trying to install it. Some of the heatpipes of the Shaman are too close to the PCB and hit the capacitors of the VRM area. So I had to put the stock cooler (EVGA but looks stock) back, and replaced the s...

Ok, this makes sense. Maybe the roundup 7970 / 7950 review at Behardware will help?
http://www.behardware.com/articles/853- ... d-xfx.html

Since you seem interested in high performance / low noise with pre-fitted cooler, maybe this would help: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_670_Direct_Cu_II/ Performance is similar if not better than 7970, power draw a bit lower, cost should be about the same, and noise is relativel...

Meh... so for now Intel sticks to 'it meets quality and reliability expectations'. I understand that they didn't want to use solder, for some technical reasons. But when not-overclocked load temperatures could be 8-11 degrees lower just by using a quality TIM inside the package, which would cost Int...

IMO Intel limited the overclocking potential of the Ivy Bridge CPUs on purpose. They not only used TIM instead of solder, but they used a low quality TIM. Check this article: http://vr-zone.com/articles/ivy-bridge-proven-to-suffer-from-poor-thermal-grease/15844.html After reading this I am consideri...

The Asus has a 6 phase GPU voltage regulation, so it's easier to cool it's VRMs than the reference 4 phase. There is a problem with the heatsink on the VRMs of the reference GTX 670, it's quite tall. Usually those heatsinks aren't two slots tall, but this one is. The best image I found: http://image...

The reference PCB is unbelievably short. Leaks were showing it that short, but I couldn't believe it. Techpowerup has reference, Asus and Palit GTX 670 reviews, including power consumption: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_670/ http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX...

The AC Twin Turbo II should fit in the case, but first check the GPU position on the PCB (I couldn't find an image of your 7850's PCB).
Link to cooler at Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835186052

FWIW my HP 2475 is silent only if brightness is at least 80, otherwise it makes electronic noise.
Since 80 brightness was murdering my eyes, I had to set desktop brightness to minimum from CCC.

I would be cautious about TR Macho on Asus Maximus V gene, since the Macho with fan is 16 cm wide,
and the first PCIE slot is closest to the CPU socket. It might be not possible to put a gfx card in the top slot.
I'm not saying it won't work, just buyer beware.

Before someone happily binge drinks, someone should know - it has been proven that alcohol weakens the immune system and directly kills neurons. Maybe people with less functional neurons live longer, who knows? And if you want the benefits of red wine polyphenols, you can buy grape seed extract or p...

Review of the Jetstream at Techpowerup. For an overclocked card, power draw is low:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Pali ... et_Stream/

Thank you for the answers. I'm not worried about 2W more on the PSU, but 2W more on a 2.5" drive may matter. I suppose that if you have the 830 and live in Dubai, then I shouldn't worry about drive temps in Romania. Not relating to the 830, is your Asus Sabertooth Z77 motherboard noise-free? I am se...

@m0002a: I haven't thought of a 5.25" bay adapter, thank you for the suggestion, this would do too.

@SebRad: I would have preferred to have the case USBs to be USB3, but if there's no guaranteed USB3 kit,
then I won't tinker and risk damage to the new build.

For a new PC that I plan to build I want to use a large SSD, and the Samsung 830 512GB is one of the few that doesn't use Sandforce controllers (although the 830's price is kind of steep). My original choice was Crucial M4 512GB, but the M4 is strangely still unavailable in Bucharest. I am unsure ho...

I plan to build a new PC with Ivy Bridge i7-3770k, and I may reuse a P150 that I already have.
Is it possible to upgrade the front USB ports of the P150 to USB3?
I looked on Antec's website, but they don't seem to have any USB3 upgrade kit.

The Radeon 7870 I would get is from Sapphire, but I only saw one review of the overclock version. It has a metal plate that cools the VRMs and is bolted to the back connector, rigidizing the card. This Sapphire 7870 uses less power than the XFX, but it's still noisy, so you'll need either to tweak t...

In about a month I plan to build myself a new Ivy Bridge based PC, in Antec Solo2 (or I may reuse an old P150). I'd like to know which currently available fans move more air than the included TrueQuiet, at a rpm of about 600. My current PC uses 800 rpm Slipstreams in a Solo, manually controlled and ...

As some people already know, the 7970 / 7950 cards have a bump in the cooler base and preexisting aftermarket coolers don't work on them. In the reviews of the 7870 I saw something that could be a bump in the cooler base, resulting in the same problem. However, Arctic cooling have listed several of ...

It seems that the Asus 7950 DirectCu is having overheat issues due to improper contact to the GPU:
http://www.behardware.com/news/lire/24-02-2012/
My guess is that the direct-touch approach is not working well with the bump in the base.

The tips of the heatpipes don't get so hot, there is a temperature gradient between the bottom and the top of a heatsink. The heatpipes and fins are a lot hotter in the bottom part. As they transfer heat, they become less hot and less effective. That's the dirty secret of heatpipe heatsinks, if it w...

Interesting find, but I also believe that a significant amount of thermal conduction would be lost. It depends how thick is the overall thermal paste layer, I doubt it matters if it's one layer or two. After all, nVidia GPUs (mid to high end) have heatspreaders on them, and they don't overheat too m...

It's not a rumor anymore, but I wouldn't call it 'surrender'. Link to Guru3D's Intel 520 review:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/intel-ser ... sd-review/
Update: Anandtech review link: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5508/inte ... -sandforce