This definately goes to say that everybody should have a powerstrip with a switch to turn it off when you're not using your pc. Not doing so is like leaving one [economical] lightbulb on 24/7.

Perkele? I thought this was meant to be your nicest build :lol: Funny you should mention the vandal proof button, I was looking to get one for a decent price too :) I was thinking of vandalising a bus ticket machine to "extract" a couple of those tasty buttons :twisted: If anyone finds some for <10...

I chose the louvers because the case is already huge, and I didn't want to add too much height, and I wanted to keep the airflow as unrestricted as possible, in any case, if I find too much noise is escaping from the top, it's not too hard to add on a muffler. I don't think too much stuff will be fa...

Nice setup, so if I get this right all the air is coming from the bottom and the top? You could maybe try to suspend the hdd in the case somewhere... (personally I couldn't live with a hd that's not in the case :lol: everything needs to be integrated :twisted: ) Nice frog too, looks poisonous to me 8)

Well I'm certainly not the first to want to make a wooden case :lol: But it just offers you more flexibility, in particular I wanted: -car-style air filters -only 120mm fans -space to easily suspend [enclosed] hard drives -good airflow I used these principles in this case: -positive pressure: makes ...

I haven't seen one in person, but from looking at the pics it looks like the M2N has a 4 phase VRM.

It's performance has been reviewed at Hardware.fr , apparently decent performance. One worry is that they didn't find it to be exceptionally silent (as you would expect from a drive that has dethroned the P80), they said it was "relatively discrete, but not silent" and found it comparable to the sea...

For the design issues, I'm having a bit of difficulty visualising your setup, but intakes at the sides sounds like a good idea since you're probably going to be sitting with the HTPC facing you, and at a reasonable distance, right? So sound won't go in your direction. The dust problems can be solved...

Welcome to SPCR A sonic tower sounds like a bit of overkill to me, why not try removing the fan on the stock heatsink first? Same for a PSU, just remove the fan. Having some (even minimal) airflow will be much more effective than none, and with a good fan, it won't add much noise (probably less tha...

Just another minor input: save the trouble of putting the VF900 at 7v, 5v will be just fine, have a look at the recent SPCR Review

Welcome to SPCR! That's a pretty low powered system: 350W, even ATX1.3, is more than enough. All SPCR'ers use Samsungs, and if you're looking for a 250GB drive, why look elsewhere? The Seagates aren't as good as they used to be in the good ol' Barracuda IV days, and Samsung is currently the silent ...

You might want to consider not leaving the front wide open because not only will it let air in, but it will let noise out... Your choice if you find the noise acceptable, I guess for HTPC's it doesn't matter quite as much. For making cases out of wood, (Top secret: I'm actually working on one this s...

Nice setup, I like the duron undervolting exercise :D Next step would be a more efficient PSU, perhaps the picoPSU can be put to good use here. Is that a 7200 or a 5400rpm drive, it's not getting much airflow (over the outside of the case)... Depending on your distro, Linux can run on less than that...

I built a pc for my brother with a Athlon64 3200+ (@2.39GHz), a 7800GT (@512/1170 MHz) and 2GB of Kingston valueram, and apparently it plays BF2 at maximum settings fine.
It'll probably work fine at stock speeds too.

Edit: max eye candy at 1280x1024, that is (which is what I supposed you meant)

A bit of a mean comment: Instead of buying the ATX extension, you could of probably got a motherboard with a decent layout for only a bit more money

Ever since I built a machine with the same mobo, I have been permanently looking at the photos of motherboards before I buy them

Just a couple of things that spring to mind: -The A8N-SLI Deluxe will need a northbridge heatsink (will it interfere with the card?) -Maxtor HD's are louder than the Samsung equivalent -Geforce 7900GTX will be needing an aftermarket HSF -NEC DVD is noisy, if that bothers you (LG, Plextor and Samsung...

I see what you mean when you said you did it to prove people wrong

Also seems to flagrantly contradict those that think that complicated pathways are a waste of time!

Like jaganath said, current intel processors are nearly never worth it if you care about silence. For the graphics card, if you're going for a low-end card like the 6500, you might as well go for integrated graphics (unless you need it for something fancy). Seagate hard drives are not as quiet as sa...

Or would it really be the final solution? I think that at least some of us will always just keep on pushing the envelope

2 * 1024x768 @75Hz Good ol' 17" CRT's, but since they: -both display colours far from perfectly, and what's more with a different tone -use a sick amount of power -take up space -look ugly -aren't practical for gaming (although I only do that about 0.5% of the time) -the one makes an annoying high p...

Can't help but notice that every time there were better temps (for the CPU or GPU) the power consumption was tangibly lower. This can't be only because of the respective VRM's also running hotter (less efficiently), can it? Is this to say that if you want to make a pc with the lowest possible power ...

First of all Welcome to SPCR! Next, IMHO the A8N32-SLI is overkill for nearly everybody except for crazy overclockers and guys with a really serious SLI setup, not to mention that it's two chipsets make it a powersucker. A8R32-MVP is a bit more reasonable, but I would still rather go for a A8R-MVP, ...

I'm dissapointed with the 7600GS, I thought it would be cooler - cool enough to make a truly passive gaming PC with a core duo and picoPSU....

When you cut out a section of your nissan filter's frame, do you just "compress" the filter paper or do you also cut out some of that? (from your photo the folds look tighter, that's why I ask) I'm currently waiting for the next time I go to a certain supermarket (it's quite a distance away) that I ...

mmmm fil-ter

Some clean work there!

Thanks frostedflakes , I missed that one, so basically the D 805 can be a cool CPU if undervolted, according to the estimate on the extreme psu calculator it should be cooler than a stock A64 3200+ if you undervolt it to 1.1v... (ok I know that most A64's are way below the official max TDP, but it's...

Tom's just put out an arcticle about a Pentium D 805 overclocked to 4 GHz . That's quite some overclocking exploit, but us sensible people here know that it produces a ridiculous amount of heat, uses up too much electricity and is actually too powerful for the average person's every day needs :D Wha...

I don't think that you'll keep the same cooling performance if you stick the layers together two by two, you are losing a lot of surface area, even if it is partly compensated by better airflow... If you want to stick new fins on, I would suggest you solder them on - better heat conduction than glue...

To me the PC-101 looks like a nice case, and a good concept, but it is still shrouded in mystery...

EDIT: I just noticed it's on the SPCR upcoming reviews list...

It was just mentioned here