A program called Furmark puts some crazy stress on your graphics card.

I'd be interested to see what type of framerates you get.
I really like my 6850, so far.

Wonder how this ranks in terms of speed? Pretty good deal.

Added an MSI board that has VRM cooling and UEFI. I am impressed with my new MSI board. I've personally had bad luck with Asus, which is atypical I'm sure. I tend to stay away from them.

Changed SSD to Zalman S Series based on SPCR testing.

These changes were a zero sum gain to the total price.

This is just a thought exercise at this point. Thinking about: What would enable the most performance and value under this budget? Is it possible to be silent and powerful? This is going to be a single GPU system designed for playable framerates on any game with max settings at resolutions up to 256...

What power supply? Are you adjusting for power supply efficiency? Are you subtracting your 5W envelope from the 50W? The 57 I stated is the power from the wall socket. That's running 2 case fans, a power supply fan, CPU fan, and 2 video card fans, and an optical drive. I'm hoping to get my idle powe...

On their heat test with the fanless heatsink, it looks like the CPU is throttling? I'm not sure why but the temperature drops signficantly several times. It's not normal behavior. An interesting concept, but ultimately it's a waste of money when silent fans are so much more effective, cheaper, and (...

I'm wondering where the limit is as far as underclocking/undervolting the i3-2100. Is there a certain point where it could compete against dual core atom CPUs? Seems like if you could get the power down enough, the performance would destroy a net-top CPU. Probably more expensive though.

I'd be interested to see how the project goes, although the i3-2100 seems like a better choice for a "very low power" system.

I'm wondering, with enough underclocking, how low you can get the voltage? It would still spank something like an Atom, even at a measley 2.0GHz with turbo boost disabled.

I'd go with the i3-2100 but either one would be good. I am dreaming of having an i3-2100 just to play around with, what if you disabled turbo boost, underclocked it to 2.8GHz, wonder how low you could get the voltage? I'm guessing 1.0V would be possible.

Wondering if anyone has converted an old laptop into a desktop PC? You know, once the screen gets old, the case gets cracked, whatever. I'm thinking the combination of mobile CPU, SODIMM ram, and 2.5" drive would be good, and the PICO PSU like power supply to boot. You could also vastly improve the ...

I'm guessing a PICO PSU would be nearly perfect for this sytem, and since it's 96% efficient, would save you a lot of watts.

You could honestly run a Sandy Bridge GPU-less system with a 300W power supply and have plenty of juice left over. Keep in mind that Bridge CPUs can be undervolted and then would not use the full 95 Watts. Hard drives take ~10 Watts max. Depends what graphics card you have, but the 430W power supply...

The key to our success is dumbing everything down! I really hope this is fake, because if it's not, I might have to switch parties....

3.14 is a good approximation, who can't remember that?

Well, just as an experiment, I removed the GAIA from my wife's computer last night. The contact patch was excellent and covered the entire CPU heat spreader. I just applied a thin layer of AS-5 onto the CPU with a razor blade last time. I reinstalled the HS/F and it was kind of a bit more of a pain....

I agree with the above posters. A PICO PSU would be ideal. I would try further undervolting the RAM and CPU, and disabling turbo boost on the CPU. A quad core Sandy Bridge CPU at 2.8 GHz is nothing to sneeze at. You should be able to further drive down power consumption and heat, and get it well int...

Hyper 212 is $35 and has 4 heatpipes Gaia is $30 and has 3 heatpipes http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233082&cm_re=gaia-_-35-233-082-_-Product I liked the mounting system. I have open cornered fans so i guess I'm not used to seeing closed-corner fans. I liked the included bol...

Cool. You should figure a way to mount the power supply in the bottom of your case, instead of the top. I think that would make everything better.

Those load temps are too high though. Maybe you need a fan........

Xigmatec HDT-1283 or "Gaia" D1283 would be acceptable for this. They come with enough fan mounts to "push pull" if you so desire. According to SPCR tests, they are in the elite class for cooling. ETA: I see you already have one. Why not try it on the new one? I am not sure that filling the gaps with...

Heh, see my reply below. And a more effecient PSU, 80 Plus and what not. As I understand, PSUs are much more effective when you're not only drawing 80% of their capacity than if you're drawing 25%. So why are everybody buying 400W PSUs? A full Core i5 2500K system seems to be using about 80 watts at...

I went with an i5-2400 and h67 motherboard because 1) the CPU is cheaper 2) the motherboard is cheaper and I really don't plan on overclocking right now (I guess I really can't). While 4.5 GHz is great, I don't really do anything where that would have much of an impact, and at what voltage/power usa...

I searched- I couldn't find any threads to discuss this in that wouldn't be a NECRO thread because it origionally came out several years ago. So it looks like the GAIA SD1283 is the spiritual successor the the HDT-1283 which is highly regarded. I just bought one and installed it on a socket AM2 moth...

I got an e-mail back from Scythe tech support and they said combine the 775 metal bracket, remove the plastic push pins, and use the steel backing plate, bolts, and nuts from the kit. Well, I spent as much on improving my current Minja as I would have on a new cooler. Noctua 92mm case fan: $19 Scyth...

If you can get an i5-2400 for a good price (Microcenter) it would offer the most value . The i3-2100 is still cheaper and just as fast for most things that don't take full advantage of quad core. I could have gone with the i5-2500k, but it was 20% more for ~6% faster I still think H67 is the way to ...

No one can know for certain what he believes. However, if his behavior is any example of his faith, he doesn't seem much like a Christian. First, there is his upbringing. There is also the way he chose his first church- it was a polical move. Then there is the church itself, which he faithfully atte...

I'm wondering if someone somewhere makes something that I have been thinking about for a while. It would be like a stereo "reciever" (pre-amp and amp) but pared down with just an RCA mini or even just 1 or 2 sets of RCA inputs. 2 amplified channels, decent sound quality, not a lot of power. This is ...

OP: Hope you had a good trip and hope the American people you met made a decent impression on you. Five Guys is usually good quality. Our local Major League Baseball team has good american hot dogs at their venue, Coors Field. All-Beef "Hebrew National". There is a national chain called Sonic that h...

I don't know of any reason why it would. I bought an H67 motherboard, and I'm happy so far.

Good point. I edited my title to be more accurate. Not trying to say "watercooling sux, lol" more like "watercooling isn't automatically better" and there is a distinct difference between "real watercooling" and "watercooling lite"

I think that if AMD isn't able to leap ahead of it's current offerings with the new architecture, they could be sunk, at least in the home market, which is probably shrinking.

MSI H67MA-E45, very small increments and the power consumption dropped dramatically when I undervolted.