"Or you can build a quiet computer..." Yes, but: => the last step from quiet to silent can be more than some pocketbooks can manage => why not use our brains to develop a cool way to manipulate our environment => how about doing active noise cancelling inside the PC case => Yes, SPCR is about silent...

My experiences with AMD CPU mainboards mostly has been that any type of CPU core voltage or speed tinkering prevents Cool'n'Quiet from automatically undervolting and underclocking the CPU during idle.

Perhaps someone out there knows for sure about your Gigabyte GA-790XTA-UD4.

"I don't understand why I need a 400 watt power supply" If you add another 30W for all the other heat sources in your chassis to the 45W + 75W then you have 150W. An efficient 400W PS will have robust enough components to handle the high intake temperatures of your minimal air flow system without ra...

"not feasible to do on a PC" What if you were sitting inside a surround sound speaker setup? The addition of a microphone at the PC operators location and sound cancelling software could nullify a significant percentage of noises. By listening to the ambient noise from the microphone location and th...

"a few thousand dollars"

Active Noise Cancellation is commonly used in Headphones which sell for under $US100. It should be cheap'n'easy to do this for a PC as it already has a microphone input and a speaker output.

!?! OOPS ??!?

When you said GA-790XTA-UD4 and HD 5750, I assumed a gaming scenario. Your heat and power requirements problem are solved if you change to something like a ASUS M4A785-M.

So please tell us, exactly what are your requirements.

"a single cooling fan" A General Statement: With a standard ATX mini-Tower chassis, with the PS at the top, then you might be able to accomplish your noise requirements with only the PS fan if you have a sufficiently low wattage passive cooled video card and a sufficiently low wattage passive passiv...

With todays technology, a hot gaming system can't be silent while gaming. It can be reasonably quiet and non-annoying at idle. It can be very, very quiet during S3 sleep state. PWM fans are a good way to easily achieve quiet operation at idle and still supply cooling power at full load. Here are som...

"about upgrading to this?"

That's BS!!!. So is the price.

With that hardware set I would guess that your most effective power reduction possibility would be to under clock and/or under volt the video card.

I am guessing that this system will use more than 150W at full gaming load. Your biggest trouble areas will probably be the 12V connectors turning to "crispy critters" before the year is out. As the connections deteriorate from silver to tan to black the system will become increasingly unreliable. U...

I use only one fan in the upper chamber of my P180 case. The top fan position is blocked off and air enters through the filter on the lower front and exits through the upper rear fan position. This single fan does double duty by both getting the heat away from the E2220 CPU and moving room air throu...

All modern mainboards provide PWM technology for temperatue based speed control of the CPU fan. This is a very powerful tool to reduce the noise at idle. The CPU fan control can operate 2 low current fans with a Y-adapter. It is possible to use the CPU fan control to operate the chassis fan(s) which...

"danimal" Thanks for the link. I learned a lot. I already knew that: --> for computer displays, CRT's can be better than LCD's --> a good used professional quality 22" CRT display is only around CAN$25 --> for TV's, plasma can be better than LCD --> Plasma TV's cost a lot of money and CRT TV's can b...

Modern TV's are more efficent than my old technology 36" CRT TV. I see modern digital flat panel TV's being more efficient mainly in 2 ways. Firstly the LED's (and LASER's which are not commercialized yet) develope more accurate and larger color gamut more efficiently than traditional digital panel ...

Okay, let's put some numbers on the energy costs of 125 W vs 250 W for Calgary, Alberta, Canada where electricity currently costs approximately 12.5 cents/KWhr. 12.5 cents/KWhr * 8 KWhr = $1.00 8000 Whr / 125 W = 64 hours 64 hours / 7 days = 9.14 hours/day So if you watch that much TV then you could...

Great review Mike.

...Wishful thinking...
I'd like to see a side-by-side objective and subjective comparison with an affordable TV like the LG 50PQ20 50-in. 720p Plasma HDTV at Costco for $859.99 .

Sometimes electronics equipment make strange noises before they "smoke". Perhaps yours will make smoke very soon and then you can get a replacement.

"high pitch sound to it"
If there is a metallic scraping element to the noise then probably the bearing is bad. If you have had the drive for a very short time your vendor may have an over the counter swap policy otherwise it would be RMA time...

If your card is dead perhaps you can find a used replacement card at a used computer parts shop for 5-10 pounds. Possibly you could find a card the Accelero will fit on...

A common CAT5e cable run can carry 2 100BaseTX circuits. First you would have to determine if any of your wired locations are suitable for the coverage you want and then you can use an inexpensive switch at the wiring hub.

Relocating the router and and exploring with a laptop running inSSIDer would be some cheap fun.

inSSIDer is a free Wi-Fi network scanner for Windows Vista and Windows XP.

www.metageek.net/products/inssider

"an overkill of a 4850" =>For the price of a Sapphire 4670 Passive perhaps you should consider swaping the mainboard for a IGP model with HTPC capabilities. "hopefully drop the internal temp of the case a little" =>Perhaps the CPU fan will be adequate with cooler air. "For the PSU (VX550)" =>Have yo...

teejay: => depending on your reverse fan system configuration instead of drawing room temperature air past the vicinity of the mainboard components you could be blasting them with CPU heated air => if you don't also reverse the PS fan then some of the intake air will be preheeated by the PS and I su...

I use only one fan in the upper chamber of my P180 case. The upper chamber has only a GA-945GCMX-S2 mainboard e/w IGP and E2220 CPU. The Scythe 120mm PWM fan does double duty by both getting the heat away from the CPU and moving room air through the chassis. The fan is mounted on the Scythe Ninja on...

my research is continuing... > FSX is way-way-way-KOOL. > more powerful CPU's and FXD's help, but looks like we will have to go with a mild OC of the budget CPU > the 9800GT is out and the GTS 250 is in > I can't find out if I can connect 2 analog displays to the GTS 250 > the Matrox TripleHead Anal...

AZBrandon - thanks for your input. The automatic overclocking of the i5/i7 CPU seemed easy, but the price ramps up very fast'n'steep. My research showed that more L2 cache and more cores did little for performance vs the $$$ increase. A mild overclock of this budget CPU seems the best performance bo...

Please, if you have Flight Simulator X experience your advice will be appreciated. A good buddy wants me to custom build a new system for him. His main deal is Flight Simulator X. I've searched the net and mostly got the usual conflicting junk <DUH!!!>. It seems to me that in spite of the program be...

A hot gaming system can't be silent while gaming. It can be reasonably quiet and non-annoying at idle. PWM fans are an good way to easily achieve quiet operation at idle and still supply cooling power at full load. = put fans on the Ninja and the Accelero = fans on the front of the chassis are easil...

A flexible solution for only slightly more $ would be based on a Asus Eee PC 1005HA and a USB port(s) plus VGA port based docking station setup.