I wish I could, but I don't have a good screen capture program. The AA and filtering and HDR add enough slight blur to the overall look that 16 vs 32 bit isn't even noticeable. It all looks gorgeous and mirror smooth either way. edit: 16 bit color is 65K colors. A 1600*1200 monitor only has 1.92 mil...

I recommend large hair bands. The big thick ones about 1/8th inch thick.

Probably would work passively, though.

I've done it once or twice where the screwdriver knocked off a surface-mount component or made a gouge and nuked a trace. In both cases I fixed it with soldering and some very fine wire-wrapping wire. (30-40awg coated magnet wire, typically). Try to see where the broken trace is - and follow it to t...

*I did drop the bit depth to 16 bits How do you do that? ATITool? ATT? CCC had no impact on the game, of course, and I couldn't find that option in the game settings. Well, I have two tools at my disposal: First is the ATI tool, which I can tweak to 16 bits. This vastly improves HDR and smoke/haze ...

Apparently so...

From that review: 1680*1050 4xFSAA 16XAF That's quite silly, really. If you drop the resolution a notch, or the 16XAF to 4x, you'll not see any meaningful difference. I run far cry 2 at 1204*768 on my old 17 inch monitor with everything at nearly max settings and it's mirror smooth. On an old X1800X...

I 2x... no, 30X this. Dremels cause powdered metal to go everywhere. Think of it as like powdered glass but conductive(just as itchy if it gets in your skin, btw).

IME, airflow over the circuit boards of the drives is the key to a decent lifespan.

Get the 512MB version of the same video card. Trust me, for FEAR and similar games, you'll never notice the difference.

The LG-w1941s(19 inch smaller model) actually does 21W at full brightness. So that their 22 inch is about the same is believable.

I ran across one review of the IFX-14 that used it passively *and* aligned with the opening facing the rear fan. And it was by far the best passive design that they had tested when it was set up this way.(basically the huge middle opening allows loads of air to blow past the two towers(since the are...

What I did was open a drive bay cover for the air intake. If there's significant negative pressure, the air will squeeze its way through the opening at higher velocity and actually cool down. IME, a 3.5 bay cover or two are plenty large enough of an opening. The CPU heatsink, though, should have fin...

The duel core Celerons also might be worth looking into. They now are roughly equal to the original dual core P4s in speed(512K cache, 800fsb, etc).

Q: does anyone know when 32mn process chips will be coming out? A TDP of 20W or so would be amazing.

Temps will be on the high side. After all, it's passive.

I'd still get a Gigabyte motherboard - just not that extreme. The Gigabyte Ultra-Reliable motherboards are very good and run quite a bit cooler than the type without solid state capacitors. GA-EP45T-UD3P (rev. 1.0) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128369 Very good board - not...

http://www.hackint0sh.org/

This site is specifically dedicated to making these work. Better link than the previous one I posted.

I second the raid 1 for important data. WD makes great drives made for raid - their enterprise models - and these are reliable. But they also will die eventually. My record for new drives in the last decade is a bit over two years. Brand seems to make little difference if they are 7200rpm drives. Fo...

My CPU has a 130W TDP - a 3Ghz two core p4(not dual - actual two processors crammed on the die). Hideously hot. My Ninja 2 only is maybe 40-45C at the very bottom and is room temp halfway up the cooling stack.

It's a very efficient cooler if you have enough airflow.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=52467 Read my reply at the bottom concerning PAE and extra memory. If you have a 1GB video card, only a bit over 2 GB will be usable out of that 4GB. Also, you are SOL with an Intel chip as the memory controller won't support PAE correctly(despite...

Enable PAE in the OS (patch/hack). This will allow you to utilize up to 8-32GB of ram.(depends on actual chipset and processor you are using - see below!) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/09/03/road_to_mac_os_x_snow_leopard_64_bits_santa...

Well, it is about 1kg total and that's just at the limit of what the push pin mounts can handle.

I personally have a Ninja plus a Thermalright 775 bolt-through kit. The thing is inexpensive and works well. Most of those monster coolers won't fit in a typical case without some serious modding. Note - if the case is on its side, with the heatsink facing upwards, you don't need the mounting kit - ...

Microsoft has not allowed 4GB memory access, but that was probably due to hardware that only does 32-bit DMA. Any hardware that works in x64 should also allow >4GB in a 32-bit OS using PAE. It *should*, but it's 1000% disabled and with no way to get around it in 32 bit Windows. All other OSes can u...

The problem is with drives that have TLER or similar technology. The Wikipedia article on it explains how raid drives in Windows are generally dropped from a non-responding controller after 8 seconds, requiring a rebuild of the array. Let's say you have a bad sector. Under normal single drive operat...

Ah - this was my problem as well. How do you get past 3.25GB in Windows? You have to give it a huge swapfile. But this has to be in memory as well, which then allows it to go past the 4GB barrier via swapping and caching. The problem is of course, virtual memory/swap is very very slow. So you would ...

Sounds like a perfect Via or Atom with built-in graphics solution.

Top mounted air fans should always be an exhaust as heat rises.

I just use the little orthodontic spacers my son has a ton of...

You can remove it with a tissue and a lot of work, but I found a few Stickies(tm) and a bit of patience made for a nearly factory clean result.

Edit - use the glue section to get up the stuff - lots of little dabs with the adhesive backing.