After plugging the eSATA in, take a look at the settings for defragmenting and indexing. Make sure neither of them will try to do their thing on that drive. I think that they won't do so with a USB drive. But, they'll probably treat an eSATA as a regular drive and try to work with it.

From what I read eSATA ports on Abit IP35 Pro motherboard are controlled by JMicron controller. I've got all drivers installed correctly and everything because if I boot machine with eSATA drive already powered on Vista sees it. I just tried hot plugging eSATA drive in and doing "Scan for hardware ...

I'm not familiar with the systems you're running. But if your eSATA port is off of an Intel chipset, then I believe you have to have AHCI or RAID (AHCI appears to be a sort of subset of RAID -- but they both activate hot-swapping on the drives) set up in the BIOS instead of plain old IDE mode. If RA...

Wow, that IS a nice case. I just skimmed through their instructions for putting the guts of an XBox into it. Ugh. Just taking the XBox apart looks miserable. It sure would be nice if Lian Li and Microsoft worked a deal where you could buy the unassembled parts of an XBox in kit form for that case.

Take a look at The LCD Thread

Dave Lessnau

Yep. It's been a while since I did the research, but I believe that's the sole PWM fan review on the site. That review and the comments in the forums are why I chose that PWM fan. Still, I went into the process knowing I wanted a PWM fan. Having only one fan review and no comparisons is not a very c...

But, how do we KNOW that PWM makes fans noisier? There's anecdotal reports for specific fans. But, we don't know how things REALLY are. For instance, for all I can tell from the sound, my Scythe Kama PWM 120mm CPU fan could be on Mars. I hear nothing that I can ascribe specifically to it: no whirrin...

When I run CPUID's HWMonitor program, I get the following: http://members.cox.net/dalessnau/CPUID%20Hardware%20Monitor%20Screen.png I don't understand the 1st line of the Voltages section: "+2.5V" which is running at 1.09V. What is this line? I recognize the 3.3V, 5V, and 12V lines and even the CPU ...

Sorry. I was just commenting on DDR2/DDR3 RAM pricing from what I was seeing for my own use. Since the OP wants far more performance than I'm researching, I didn't want to bring up anything more than the relative RAM costs. As you and Mats noted, my stuff just doesn't apply here.

Ci7 is not affordable. The slowest model will cost 266 USD IIRC. S1366 motherboards are expensive, and DDR3 RAM is expensive... I'm not sure DDR3 is expensive anymore. I'm slowly putting together a system from on-sale parts and was aiming at DDR2 because of the expense of DDR3. But, I just noticed ...

Intel's latest Extreme Series motherboard, the DP45SG apparently hit the streets a couple of weeks back and I can find no reviews on it. Has anyone seen anything that talks about its power consumption?

Depending on how much trouble you're willing to go through, you might just leave the Antec Tricool fan there and try it out. On the machine I'm currently using, I started out with it and was generally satisfied (heck, since I was just coming from a jet-engine of a computer, I was ecstatic with it). ...

Those 6-32 and M3 screws are troublesome. With these aging eyes, I can barely tell the difference. I was recently playing around with an Antec Solo and finally had to sit down and physically sort all the provided screws into little plastic sandwich bags. I wish these case builders (and I guess the c...

Since there's essentially nothing on Comp-U-Plus on these forums, I thought I'd pass along that they were fine. I got an order acknowledgment from them promptly and a "charged my credit card" notice shortly thereafter. No problem. The next notice I received was 2 days later when they sent me an emai...

So, one day after I took the gamble on Comp-U-Plus, Newegg (my preferred vendor) put a $40 instant rebate on their Antec Solo and is selling it for $59.99 with free shipping (almost $9 cheaper in-toto):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811129018

Darn space aliens.

I've never ordered from Comp-U-Plus before and don't really see anything specific to them on these forums, so I can't vouch for how good they are. But, they're currently selling the Antec Solo for $48.50. Shipping was $18.95 for me. So, the total is $67.45. I'll update this thread with how things go.

After an instant rebate of $40, Newegg has the SeaSonic S12 II SS-430GB 430W Power Supply for $64.99. You still have to pay shipping, though. Here's the link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817151033

I'm using (and love) the Ergotron LX Desk Mount Arm. According to Ergotron's web site, your display is compatible and all you have to do is: "Remove pedestal stand and attach Ergotron mounting solution with fasteners from display."

If you just want to see the various hardware readings, you can try CPUID's Hardware Monitor:

http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

I don't know what chair the OP is talking about. But, here's a nice one.

I think it's a symptom of it being the weekend. Normally, when I order from Newegg, I get an immediate confirmation email and the order shows up instantly in their system. This time, no email and the order appeared, disappeared, and then re-appeared. I was mostly worried because of the whopping-grea...

Well, my order has re-appeared on their system. Hopefully, all is well.

I'm worried about this. I ordered it, but didn't get an email confirmation. It didn't show up in Newegg's standard Order Status area under My Account. But, it did show up if I searched on the SO number from the Order Confirmation page I printed from their site (step 1 of 5). Now, though (about 4 hou...

I don't know why, but this morning, Newegg dropped the price of the ECS N9600GT-512MX-P (9600GT with the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1) from the $175 ballpark down to $94.99:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814134040

Any chance of a link to a how to: I looked into this a few times and it wasnt anything like as easy as it should have been I've built the UBCD4Win several times on CD/DVD without problem. Never on USB, though. Here's a link to their How to Build the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows FAQ and here are a f...

This is not precisely booting XP, but take a look here:

http://www.ubcd4win.com/

With that, you use your XP image to make a bootable recovery CD. With the newer versions, you can put that image onto a usb flash drive. Take a look at their forums in the USB Booting Support area.

Dave Lessnau

I haven't built the system yet. Most of the parts are sitting in boxes strewn about me. I'm waiting for the heatsink and fans (to be delivered today) and then I'm off to the races. I'll keep an eye on the temperatures. Thanks for the responses.

The GA-EP35-DS4 comes with Gigabyte's "Silent-Pipe" cooling system. With a side-blowing CPU heatsink/fan (TRUE), is it necessary to have some kind of northbridge fan? Or, is the regular case circulation enough to move the heat off the Silent-Pipe sytem?

As Bluefront said, Intel is not in the HSF business. But, I go the opposite way from there: instead of dumping corporate resources down the HSF hole, why don't they license a heatsink from a company actually in the business? Maybe they don't want to do that with their low-end line. But, with the Ext...

I didn't know motherboards came with built in speakers these days. So, I took a look at various pictures of (what I assume to be) the OP's motherboard: http://www.hardware.info/en-US/productdb/bGNkapiTmJrK/viewphoto/1 I can't see any speaker anywhere. Can someone point it out? Also, the specs on tha...