From what I've seen, this is dependent on the motherboard. I've used mostly Gigabyte boards as of late and they have an offset voltage you can apply to the CPU. So it will drop the voltage by 0.1V from the normal voltage at both idle and load. But if your board only has a single CPU voltage setting,...

... But since this stuff is addictive :mrgreen: and there is a chance that I change my mind tomorrow I still have a question: even if I change the fan to one with less RPM, wouldn't the fan control of the PSU regulate it back towards the same RPM that I have now with the SuperRed? So in that case t...

I've used a couple Scythe GentleTyphoons in some fan swaps for PSUs and have been very happy with them. They're quiet, have low starting voltages, and are ball bearing. I believe they move less air than other fans at the same rpm, but are also quieter at those rpms. So if you tend to push the PSU a ...

... I tweaked the snot out of BIOS settings, shut off everything I wasn't using, underclocked it to 2.93GHz, and got it down to 46W while sitting in the BIOS. I ran a Fedora Live CD from an external DVD drive, powered seperately, rechecked the power. Surprisingly it was only 33W idle with the OS ru...

IN WIN BM650.AD160TBL I just picked up one of these a month ago. It looked interesting. I haven't been able to do much with it yet but I'm planning on either using it for my HTPC (replacing my Antec NSK-1480) or for a new PC for my in-laws. What I liked about it is it's size. It's pretty shallow an...

Sandy Bridge, Part 2: Intel DH67BL & Asus P8H67-M EVO H67 Motherboards SPCRs review included the Asus board where the EPU utility undervolts the CPU by about 0.05V at idle and 0.8V under load. I would guess that you can probably undervolt more. But like withe the Clarkdale CPUs, there's little to n...

Small 24 Pin to 20 Pin ATX Converter Adapter for HP Slimline Oh wow, it looks like someone actually makes an adapter for the small ATX power connector on the RM112 now. It's listed under HP but I believe HP and Dell use the same connector. I might have to pick one up just to to make sure. I was als...

The more powerful picoPSUs (150, 160) are designed for newer systems and use the 24pin ATX connector and have the 4pin P4 connector. They run off 12V and I believe just pass the 12V from the brick. The lower powered picoPSUs can still be used for this, you just need a molex->P4 adapter which are eas...

@BillyBuerger I looked around on eBay, but i could not find the exact model. However i found two which appear very similar: Dell L305P-00 PS-6311-2DF2 and L375-P00 . Do you know if one of these is similar to yout unit? Dell makes other PSUs that are the same size but not as efficient. The first one...

CES 2011: Lucid's Virtu combines Sandy Bridge and discrete graphics features Will we finally have the ability to use onboard graphics for simple things and a separate GPU for gaming on a desktop? I've been waiting for nVidia to deploy their Optimus stuff on the desktop in vain for a while now. Hope...

Great, now I want one. :D Seriously, thank you for the review! How loud is the PSU with the fan replacement? Is it standard size except for the slight increase in height? I believe I'm using a Yate Loon 92mm low-speed ball-bearing fan. It runs very slow and I don't believe it's ever ramped up. So I...

BillyBuerger, which Optiplex systems did the H255E-00's come from? Also, brilliant work! =D I got them of ebay and not out of any specific system. So I'm not sure where they would originally have come from. I've also seem the H255E listed as PW115. But I think other models that aren't 80+ silver al...

According to WD , the limit is 2.19 TB (2,199,023,255,552 bytes), which means that the actual limit in Windows is 2,199,023,255,552 / (1024^3) = 2048 GB, while a 2 TB drive gives you 1862 GB, so you'll only get 185 GB more. (someone correct me if I'm wrong here) Ug, I hate the confusion caused by d...

Seasonic X650 for $110 and free shipping. Comes with a free crappy case too. Which actually is a bit of a deterrent if you ask me. That case doesn't even look like it would be good for parts. But that's a great deal on the PSU.

The fan in the bottom can come out. I take it your talking about removing the metal part that the fan snaps in to? Not sure how removing that would help with noise? And it might help with the overall support of the case. Even without the fan in the bottom, a good fanless PSU will be just fine down t...

Iirc, SPCR found out that the case exhaust fan is more important for keeping a passive VGA heatsink cool. I personally have had fanless video cards get very hot (90-100C) with just a rear exhaust fan. Since I generally have a big HS on the CPU, I don't have much airflow from the CPU and the rear fa...

Are you sure it's the PSU and not something else? Have you tried a different PSU to see if it happens at all there as well? I had a motherboard at the office that did this. It was random as for when it would happen and then it would eventually go away. Sounds similar to your problem. That motherboar...

I would estimate about 40-50W idle and probably 120W under load. So yes, you should be fine with the brick setup you're thinking. Although when you're using that much power, you don't get the same power savings as you would with a lower power system. From my testing, I've seen very similar power eff...

I remember early on in the 80plus thing, there was a PSU on Newegg that said it was 80plus. I don't remember the brand or anything but it looked like a crap PSU with some bling as it's only selling point. Dead giveaway was that it had the 120/240V switch on it meaning it wasn't APFC which is require...

It sounds doable to me. A small fan can be just as quiet if not quieter than a large fan. They just don't move much air. But your system probably won't need much. I see the fractal fan you mention comes with the rubber isolators. I think with those and the Q-fan on the motherboard, it should be able...

Thanks for the review. I have three of the older models in my work PC using the PWM sharing feature to run all of them. 120mm on the front and back of the case and 92mm on the CPU. No problems routing the cables for to all of them. Although the Akassa PWM splitter cable looks really nice. And it's b...

Karl: was this solved? I just got a Dell PE 2900. It came with 8G memory; I bought 4G more, 4 sticks, and put them in. Now the machine is really loud. The fans are on full throttle all the time.... Did you unplug any fans or anything at the same time? One of the tricky things with these Dell server...

Depends on the motherboard. Some can control the fans using either PWM or voltage. I think all the Gigabyte boards I have do this. Default in the BIOS is auto where it detects automatically so that if you plug in a non-PWM fan, it then uses voltage. Although I've also seen a lot of boards where the ...

Quick followup from my previous post. I went an plugged in the Kill-A-Watt to my HTPC. I posted about it here previously although it's out of date. The current parts are as follows... - AMD AII 245 2.9GHz - Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H - 2x2GB DDR3 1.5V (MB reports 1.6V which all my GB boards do :() - ...

My experiences with an AII 245 undervolted was that it was hard to break 40W idle. This was with a gigabyte board that was probably not the most efficient though. The fact that it has an 8-pin CPU power hints at being designed for the more power hungry CPUs. But I would still expect mid 30s idle for...

is the 2TB drive a 3platter one? and so the 1,5TB would be... 2 platter? thanks Yes, the F4 series drives have 667GB platters in them. 3x667GB = 2TB. A two-platter drive would be 2x667GB = 1.33TB. Any 1.5TB would have to be based on three 500GB platters (F3) or else they would have to use 3 platter...

Personally would like to see the Arctic Cooling fans tested in PWM flavour because of the integrated daisy-chaining (1 PWM signal drives multiple fans), which should be tested too for any electrical irregularities. ... I have a handful of their older ones myself in 80, 92 and 120mm sizes. They are ...

Oh, I voted before reading your other poll where you mention only using your primary PC in mind. Although that's kinda hard to do. My primary PC only has a 64GB SSD. But I have 1.8TB of disk space on my server which I have mapped drives to. So where as I only have 64GB in my PC, I at the very least ...

On second thought lets NOT go to Camelot, tis a silly place.

The grail was a good addition. But after getting into the meat of the article, there was too much good stuff that it got forgotten.

That SilenX power supply is almost comical. I can't believe they can get away with charging so much for crap like that. :lol: I know I had a good laugh at it. Kudos to Mike for actually going out and picking up two of these things and letting us see for real what we all expected. Did you feel dirty...