[...] It's when you compare FPM vs cooling in different fans that it stops being as predictable. ie, 285 FPM in Noctua gives worse cooling than 180FPM in Nexus. This suggests something is different about the way the two fans move the air [...] I can think of several reasons for these discrepancies ...

the question is, on a low-impedance cooler, will you get those same results? You present a good point here danimal, but just to play devil's advocate... First of all, taking your example, we're talking about a 2C difference. Second of all, we're talking about 12 dB...not to be crass, but that's f*c...

cpu cooler testing isn't a controlled experiment, because every cpu cooler presents a different impedance to the fan. maybe so, but let's hope that if a heat sink has more impedance, it also has tighter fin spacing, and therefore more surface area. That said, if you use the same fan every time (the...

My biggest gripe with your methodology atm is that is so specific it might be unique. By that I fear the results you are getting are covering a very narrow and almost unpopulated niche: people with high end cpus that buy a heatsink for that cpu use on that cpu at stock settings with a silent fan. I...

This is officially a case for micro ATX. Tough you can fit a ATX board in it by some modding ;) By matx cases u mean like lanboxes or so? Well, most of those cases wont fit big tower coolers, and huge gpu coolers (like accelero's, musashis setsugens etc etc). I didnt want that much restrictions so ...

K i gotta ask.. If your bringing this thing to lans, even only a few times a year..why didn't you go with a mATX form factor? Availability? Price? Beats me because you dont have a large array of HDD's to really use the size of a mid tower. Otherwise, build looks nice. I would seriously consider not ...

Hi,

What cools the HDD's? if anything

Is that case loud? It just seems like theres a lot of metal in there that could be rattling around a little bit with that HDD configuration.

It's obvious you spent a lot of time on cable management, that's always nice to see!

the HDD's are getting very hot to the touch This is super vague...can you get a temp reading from Speedfan? this will help us know if you're subjective measurement is legitimate or not. Trust me, you wont fry them in the process of checking..modern HDD's can operate safely (perhaps slightly too war...

Honestly, I would recommend against the raptor. It's just not necessary, and quite frankly, it's a dying breed. If you want a little extra room, i would stripe with a second 60gb OCZ vertex (Raid0). That will buy you 120gb on extremely fast drives for your OS, applications, and commonly loaded data....

can't wait for computer silencing in 2010!!!!

maitaijim wrote:The side and bottom intakes are filtered.

Thank you. That makes this case far more attractive to me, and will consider it in my HTPC build in a few months.

Just wondering, are the side intakes filtered?

I skimmed the article briefly, but didn't see any filters in the pictures or in captions.

This is a nice case, but I'm kind of anal about filtering the intake air...

THis is an epic HTPC thread. Nice job, and thanks for taking the time to share it with us in such detail. Glancing over it very briefly, i noticed ur HDD temps are really high when playing bluray. I read somewhere that over 50C is harmful to the life of your hard drive. I could be wrong.. Also, I wo...

whoa whoa whoa back up You know you can't "Upgrade" from XP to 7 right? You may have an "upgrade" copy, but here's what that means. It means, you are a current windows user, which you are. I dont know exactly how it works, but somehow you have to have a windows license already to activate the Win7 l...

Hey SPCR staff, First, I just wanna thank you for all your work making great reviews for us silence junkies. I'm going to be building an HTPC in June and was wondering if you could maybe review one or two ITX or mATX htpc cases that you like right now. I feel like case reviews are some of the most u...

since i won't be using those disks 99% of the time the noise won't disturb me even if you're not accessing then, they still make noise. Just spinning alone, (no seek noise) can be very much audible on some drives. When I installed my second drive, the two started producing "hummmm......hummmmmm" so...

Here's a great book on electronics cooling. It's an old one, but still very relevant. It has a lot of information on efficient cooling, and if you can cool your computer efficiently, it can be done very quietly (if not silently). "Cooling Techniques for Electronic Equipment", Dave S. Steinberg, ISBN...

A lot of what makes a computer silent has to do with efficient heat dissipation. It would serve you well to understand how the heat is transferred from chips and dispersed efficiently. Any number of good heat/mass transfer books can provide you with an abundance of information on that which you may ...

Sell those 2 small drives and buy one large storage drive from the SPCR recommended list. by smaller drives he means the hard drives, not the SSD. The SSD is fine for your OS, but you ideally want a nice quiet, slow spinning 1TB drive for data storage. This is preferable over the 2 smaller drives (...

dont even think about going fanless on that CPU. Its more or less, ridiculous. You can achieve inaudible performance by altering the heatsink and fan assembly. It's much better to run a fan slow and inaudible than not at all (moving air cools far better than stagnant air). My first advise to you is ...

thanks so much for reviewing HTPC keyboards. I anticipate being in the market for one in several months, and welcome all HTPC related reviews. Without considering money, i think i value the scroll wheel and better key layout over better connectivity and light weight. But, less money spent on the key...

SSD technology is still in the early stages, and yes, it is changing very quickly. I personally am waiting about 6 months untill i change over to an SSD boot drive simply for monetary reasons. However, if you have the cash, it's been my experiance that the best bang for buck when it comes to SSD's i...

lol this is hood, but I like it. But who needs a media server to be attractive..it can be tucked away in a closet easily..

Cool

I would recommend against it..any upgrade to a new platform would be such a slight difference in performance you probably wouldn't notice it. Parappaman is right, your best bet to give yourself a little boost is a little overclocking. Get an aftermarket heatsink for your processor..and have a little...

If I were in the market for a PWM fan for my CPU, I would pick up one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185049&cm_re=pwm_fan-_-35-185-049-_-Product Its got a max rpm of 1200, and aparently can spin as low as 350RPM for ultra-silent operation. You can set that up in y...

i know alot of people with motherboards that only accept PCI-E x16 1, which prevents them from taking advantage of virtually all modern graphics cards ? NVidia GTX 2xx and the like are x16 2.0 cards, ATI 5xxx are x16 2.1 cards (its throughput speed is the same as 2.0). A motherboard supporting x16 ...

LMFAO..

i actually got a good laugh from that xan. Thanks lol!

Michael Sandstrom wrote:...Amish technology geniuses...

Aren't the words Amish and Technology oximorons?

Wait...why not just buy a nice PWM fan for the CPU? Why fuss around trying to get a 3pin fan to work on the PWM header? With a 4pin, PWM fan, it will just be plug and play...this is how it is designed to work. I'm sure some mobo's will let you change how the header operates, but why complicate thing...

This is almost as rediculous as the idea of pizza hut selling pasta. The first thing that popped into my head was: howwww? BTW: i laugh my ass off everytime I see that commercial...it shows like 10 amish people in this big room putting together heat surges all dressed up in their cute little costume...