Not bad, AZBrandon. I've been seriously considering a Mobile Athlon XP, especially if I could use 8rdavcore to change clock settings without rebooting. I had to bump my Celeron voltage to at least 1.9V to get it to run at 850MHz. Unfortunately, it's permanent - I have a mobo with no OC settings, and...

A centrino laptop... Ah, but then I would have to pay more for a system that's less customized to my needs. That, and I just really enjoy putting systems together myself. :) So I hope to assemble one that uses laptop components (2.5" HDDs, slim DVD, etc.) in a small, desktop-style case My current P...

I'm trying to figure out what kind of system would use the least amount of energy while encoding DivX movies. A faster system would require less time to encode (obviously), but a slower system uses less power per unit time, leading to the question - what kind of setup would use the fewest watt-hours...

Further googling produced this thread from BareboneCenter.de describing (in German) how one user got his Shuttle SN45G w/ XP 2000+ to automatically scale (without stability problems) from 400 to 1600MHz using 8rdavcore - not bad for an SFF PC! Here's the babelfish translation: My solution: Test syst...

I'm looking to do the same thing. A system that could scale way down (~300MHz?) for power savings and back up again (1.5GHz or more?) for DivX-encoding speed would be ideal. 8rdavcore claims that it supports the Shuttle SN45G, and Shuttle's manual says it can go down to 1.1V vcore, so I was thinking...

Mike: I'd love to have a wind generator, but I'm severely space-challenged and I live in government housing. A small-ish solar panel is a lot less visually (& audibly) intrusive than a wind generator.

I'm in northwest WY.

I did SETI@home while I was in college and my computer was on 24/7, so I can understand the desire to get that extra little bit of speed. Now that my computer isn't on all the time, though, there isn't much point. Really, I'm more concerned about power consumption. I hope to run my computer off a so...

You all have turned this into a fascinating thread...thanks for all the responses! I certainly understand all the things that have been mentioned - the "muscle car" effect, the itch to tinker, the challenge of putting together a machine that's both quiet and powerful. When I was in college, I had se...

When I used the word 'freaks', I meant it in the most endearing way possible. After all, I'm one too. I love to tinker for that little bit extra. I feel that itch. But my priorities are different, so I go for a different set of features/specs. Thanks for the honest response. I'd love to hear anyone ...

My current PC is a home-built Celeron 566 overclocked to 850 MHz in a micro-ATX case with 384 MB RAM. I use it primarily for playing media (DVDs, DivX, MP3s) and storing pictures, with occasional Office app use. The only times I find myself waiting for it to finish anything are while it encodes MP3s...

Thanks again bomba, but I'm hoping to use a Via Epia mini-ITX board, and those don't have SATA RAID (yet!).

If anyone happens to know which USB 2.0 or Firewire wires to connect to a switch, please post here.

Thanks bomba, it's good to know that I could go the SATA route if I had to. But I'm trying to build something really small (no PCI cards), so I'd rather take the performance hit of USB 2.0 or Firewire.

I saw that thread, but he's looking for something that can't be switched while powered on. Not that useful for what I want to do - have a laptop HDD for the OS and switchable 3.5" HDD and optical drives for other storage.

I'd like to build switches into my next computer so I can turn off HDDs or optical drives when not in use (for both power consumption and silence reasons). As far as I know, the only way to have hot-pluggable drives (short of expensive server hardware) is USB or Firewire, so I'm planning on either g...