the coolermasters are definitely great fans. i have to chime in though and say that i got two blue-uv 120mm coolermasters from svc (suf-s12-eb), and they both exhibited bearing noise, still audible at 5 volts from 1 metre away. the noise is much quieter than the motor noise from my panaflos and nmbs...

here's the official site. sure are ugly (to me anyway).

eh, if they ever go under $10 i'll get one.

i noticed in new abit/asus board's manuals that the fan headers are safe up to 8 watts (!). can't remember what board that was, but it sure surprised me.

the coolermaster is a very nice fan, it won't trouble a motherboard fan header at all. it draws less power than many 80mm fans.

maybe it's a batch thing, or how the fans were shipped/stored for different vendors. where'd you get yours from? well if anyone's looking to buy a 120mm blue uv coolermaster, grab it from somewhere other than svc. i got two that are completely identical in terms of motor noise. nothing bad by any me...

heh i guess my sound likening could use some work :) the coolermasters make no noise when i spin them by hand. when powered up, at any voltage, there is a continuous and unaltering metallic rattling sound, i guess it's the bearings but the only other ball-bearing fan i have that sounds similar is my...

don't get me wrong, the coolermasters are great fans. i advise people to get them on a bunch of forums - quiet stock speed (well, quiet enough for most), cheap, rpm output, no mess no fuss. other common options like evercools, globes or yate loons all require undervolting to reach similar levels of ...

well there's an interesting thought - what do current popular psu's (seasonic ss, tornado, s12, fortron aurora, blue storm, etc.) do once the temperature gets too high? what will happen if i jam a pencil in my psu fan and sit my computer in a corner folding for days? i'd hope that some kind of tempe...

i just got a pair of 120mm coolermaster blue uv's from svc. they're pretty nice fans for the price, but both of mine are identical in terms of sound - a continuous rattling sound (like dragging a twig over the bumps of a corrugated tin shed), can still be heard at from 1 metre away at 5 volts, actua...

replying to my own post here, they sure look a lot like this model from some mob called cofan. seems that's the usa branch of cofan korea.

has anyone else had any experience with cofan? are they a rebadger or a manufacturer?

i picked up one of these dual-ball-bearing "t&t" mw-925m12b fans for $2.50 from here . the specs seem accurate - it's definitely pushing some air at 12 volts, however it starts reliably at 4.8 volts and i only hear a slight hum/buzz alongside the air noise from it at that speed. certainly quieter th...

and thanks to cpuz, here's the rs480m2 clockgen.

use at your own risk!

there are a number of rs480 boards coming that use the uli southbridge (giving azalia audio and sata ii/ncq) and ati's upcoming sb450 will add those features too, though it seems none of the boards bar the sapphire and an unpurchasable jetway will allow overclocking, at least that's what i've been r...

there are many, many, many more companies that have stock heatsink extrusion designs you can look through - google for "heat sink catalog" or "heatsink catalog" (both without the quotes) and you'll see a bunch of designs you can look at. i've been trying to find someone who has already designed a he...

but it's going to be a bit limited. from this xtremesystems post by the author of clockgen: Actually no fine tuning is possible on this PLL. In fact it is there, but does not work :( Anyway, there are predefined clock settings that can be choosen : With spread : the max FSB is 220MHz, with AGP = 73 ...

i'd strongly consider the zalman vf700 over the nv silencer. i don't own either myself, however the general opinion i've formed based on reading posts on the topic has put the zalman above the silencer in terms of cooling per unit noise.

perhaps someone else can chime in that has used both?

you could go with a powmax fancard for a pci-slot-mounted 80mm fan blowing at the card. then you could just remove the 40mm fan altogether. or, you could go the cheaper more flexible route and bend one of the pci-slot covers 90 degrees into the case and mount a fan on it, like so: http://www.silentp...

edit: dupe post

as far as power supply fan swaps go, i'm too timid to go with low-flow fans. i'd go with a 12v ball-bearing temperature-controlled model, like a coolermaster daf-b82 ($6, 1000-2500 rpm from 23-50 degrees c) or nmb 3110kl-04w-b66 ($3, 1200-3600 rpm, degree range = ??). but i'm a girlie-man like that....

for the inwin case you picked (or any inwin case it seems) you can get it cheaper from techonweb - here's the c720t for $40 plus $15 shipping, beats newegg by $10 or so. techonweb has great scores over at resellerratings.com too. i haven't purchased from them before, but it's where i'm planning on g...

i was happy when i learned about the eqs rs480 boards being released, however (like almost every other manufacturer) there was no provision for overclocking. right now i've got a checklist of 8 or so micro-atx amd motherboards and none of them allow overclocking, bar the foxconn nforce4 with its obn...

default opinion: good choice. cooler: a good choice. but an xp-90 would be a great choice :) ram: might want to avoid a configuration with 4 sticks of ram, that makes winchesters run the memory at 333mhz instead of 400, and also inflicts 2t timing. performance will suffer, but probably not by a huge...

well it might be that quiet (though it'd probably still be 1500+ rpm at 5v, so i doubt it), but such a high-speed motor may make all kinds of grumbling angry noises when run that slow. but if it'll only set you back a dollar or two, why not? i've been meaning to try out a 120mm nmb, the 4715kl-04w-b...

i browsed digikey, newark, mouser, excess-solutions, etc. but none of them had the kind of sinks i was after. the link in my first post has the best i've found so far (see the hs-tws and the few following it, it's almost perfect for mounting two hard drives on). i'm after a finned flat-base sink wit...

your cpu is fine, the integrated heat spreader is doing its job of protecting the cpu well! the cpu die itself is actually only the size of your fingernail or so, right in the middle of the processor's package. those scratches are around the corners of the package far away from the cpu die itself, t...

that's not good news at all. hopefully it's fixable with a bios update.

after googling a bit it seems the k890pro ethernet issue is a very common one..

have you considered the soltek k890pro? passive chipset design (the via chipsets put out far less heat than nforce3/4), seems to have all the ports you're after, about the only thing it couldn't do is run clockgen for changing htt inside windows. regular multiplier/voltage changes using the usual wi...

the nforce4 chipset just seems to put out so much heat (compared to via/ati) that i'm purposely avoiding it. if 90% of mobo manufacturers are too scared to passively cool it, i don't want to either. as for motherboards supporting e-revision chips out-of-the-box, we won't know for sure until they sho...

well here's an odd thought.. what about setting up white (or pink.. what's the most non-intrusive? brown?) noise generators around a computer or all around the computer's room to raise the ambient noise floor. i wonder if it's possible to fool the ears in that fashion - if you raise your room's ambi...

maybe i missed something, but i don't remember hearing anything about a 250gb 5400 rpm drive coming from samsung. "ha250jc" as the product code? eh?

just wondering if there were any chain stores likely to carry heatsinks that could be useful for modding (hard drives, vga cards, etc.). stuff like this , that i can actually get my hands on and measure. i'm pretty disappointed with the non-computing heatsinks i've found by googling, perhaps i'm mis...