I'm not sure about your Antec case/psu specs (what are the models?), but I'm pretty sure that the psu is not very quiet. Antec PSU have an "S" version, a quieter type than their standard one. I don't think your's is one of them. But even if it were, they are not very quiet anywayrs. It would probabl...

If you get a fan controller, you can reduce the speed of your fans. Although you can accomplish the same thing if you rewire it yourself...there is a lot of information here on how to do it. Take a look at the articles. I still doubt you need that many fans. What sort of components do you have? Just...

oh, and what CPU do you plan on getting?

Welcome to SPCR forums!

Your system looks good. Though I don't think you need that many fans...one 120mm exaust fan and perhaps and another fan for the drive (any size) is all you should need.

I'd go with the ALCU CPU heatsink (the CU model offers little if any advantage).

M-Audio's Revolution 7.1 card is supposed to support EAX, so it should work with your games. It probably doesn't have all the features of the Audigy line, but the sound quality will be no comparison.

Of course this way you can only get 5V or 7V (unless of course you put a resister in the cable).

You can also do it by swapping the wires in the 4-pin molex connector. I'm guessing that the fan connected within something like a extension (with a female and male molex connector at each end). All you need to do is swap the yellow wire with the red one. This will end up giving the fan 5V. You don'...

Thanks HammerSandwich! I think that really cleared things up. Made a lot of sense to me at least. I didn't realize that DACs were capable of such compicated algorithms (or at least some approximation of them). sthayashi, I hope that answers your question about the differences btw DACs and whether th...

sthayashi, I have to disagree with higher frequencies being easier to handle than lower one. Consider a 44 Hz sound. When digitalized at 44 kHz, each wave would have been sampled 1000 times, giving a pretty accurate representation. However, if you double the frequency, you now only have half as many...

Al, You've reach the limits of my knowledge...and I'm not really certain what 128x oversampling does. But I have a feeling that it is used in the AD (analog to digital) stage only, and not relavent in this case. But even DACs that oversample/upsample when doing DA don't entirely fix the problem. The...

Digital audio works by sampling the amplitude of the sound at regular intervals. In order to accurately reproduce a sound, your sample needs to at least contain the upper and lower peaks of the sound. The time btw these peaks is going to be half the period of the sound. Hence, in order to reproduce ...

Yes, there is definately an audible difference in those sampling frequencies. It can even be mathematically shown that there can be differences. For instance, a 44 kHz sampling (found on regular audio cds) can only produce at most 22 kHz, but this is only in a ideal situation. Once you factor in the...

Mike, I agree that deciding btw the noise of devices is far easier than music. However, I don't believe that noise can be definitively quantified either. For one thing, noise from different setups will always be at different frequencies. Hence, different people will pick up more of each range, and n...

sthayashi PMed me about USB sound cards a few days ago, and what started as comparison of the different devices has grown into something else... I don't think that either of us are very sure of what our discussion has become. All I know is that it has become rather philosophical. I would say that, i...

Well, I've never been a big fan of USB audio solutions. I much prefer a PCI based solution with an seperate DAC...but of course this will cost more... I use an Audiophile 2496 PCI card hooked up to a Art DI/O DAC. If you want to use USB though, I would suggest the original Sonica (not the theatre mo...

If you want real sound, get something made by M-Audio or Terratec. All the Creative sound cards really distort the sound. Their chips only handle 48kHz, and as virtually everything is natively in 44.1 kHz, get distorted when the sound card tries to upsample them. M-audio and Terratec cards on the ot...

Interesting idea...but considering that there are substantially more car accidents than house fires, the box would have to be very well protected against fire and maybe flood. (maybe in a water tight, fire repellant cage). Plus, a safer place in the car might be the rear passenger seats rather than ...

Ephemeral,

Hum, what is Evercool's service like? will they cover the shipping both ways? If not, there is little point given the price of the fan itself. I bought the fan from directron, and I believe that they only cover the return shipping (like most places).

Well, I did some further experimenting and found that if I pushed the hub back in, the noise went down...but not completely silent... However, when the fan is at a particular angle, there is no audible mechanical noise. But this angle is not constant...it can vary from time to time, although most of...

If you are looking for info on speed as well as noise, why don't you use a combination of searching here, and on other more general review sites. I'm sure comparitive benchmarks of 2.5" drives exist somewhere. Just cross reference the reviews, and come up with your own conclusions.

Well, I tried adjusting the Evercool, but had little success...

I first pushed the fan until it touched the plastic spokes. There was a small pop when I did this. Next, I pulled the fan and spokes apart. This created a slightly louder pop.

But the fan wasn't any quieter afterwards...

So are all the diodes IN4001? What about using resister in place of the diodes?

Looks good. Although, I would consider going with the AlCu version of the Zalman 7000. There have been little evidence to support that the Cu version is significantly cooler, andI would rather avoid the increased weight. Also, why not get a quiet hard drive to replace your existing one? Perhaps one ...

Ya...I've sort of given up on this...

Instead, I'm moving the machine to another room. It's simpler to just tread another cat 5 wire throught the walls. The machine is headless anyway (I just VNC into it).

Thanks for the help anyways, at least I learned something.

Well, unpluging the fan after the machine doesn't work...it shuts down immediately. And stopping the fan (by sticking a pen into the fan) also shuts down the machine immediately...This is really annoying me... So it would seem that the dell does require a certain RPM in order to work. Unfortunately,...

Well, I don't know for sure that "some other" fan will solve the problem. The dell could require that the fan report a high enough RPM value for it to accept the fan. I don't see why my PSU's fan speed reporting doesn't work if that 's not the case. The error message when I use the PSU's sensor is d...

Thanks for the advice. The thing is that the dell's connector is not a standard three pin molex connector...The motherboard has a 3 pin male connector that also has a sort of locking mechanism. The usual fan connectors don't fit in it. When I tested it the other day, I had to remove the pins from th...

What if you tried moving the HD to the rear of the case, under the PCI cards? I know mounting it here would be a little difficult, but it should be possible (I've seen people do similar things). This way, you won't have the fan blowing hot air towards the drive.

Hum, that I guess it is possible that the PSU's fan is not spinning fast enough to satisfy the Dell...I tried powering on the machine a number of times, but it didn't help. The first time, it boots up and reports a fan error, every subsequent attempt just fails immediately (power off after just a se...

cmcquistion,

I have a 2.8 P4, 7000AlCu, 3700BQE...so it's pretty similar to your setup. I'm really interested in how you have the fans controlled...but I don't really understand how you use the diodes or the terminal strip...are you using them to simply to reduce the voltage?