Oh, I didn't realise only some pwm controllers made a noise. I thought they all buzzed/clicked when turned down. When I first put this system together I messed around with the fan voltage levels to get the noise/heat balance and never heard any buzz or clicks from the unit or the 3 Nexus fans it con...

I have one of those and it makes absolutely no noise. That means it must use resistors right?

You should be fine to just unplug the fan.

I unplugged the fan on my 9600xt and haven't had any problems. If you can monitor the temps of your gpu, check what you get after a couple of hours stress then unplug the fan and repeat. I imagine the temp will go up ~5c but thats fine.

That should be a pretty good system. I doubt you'll have any problems with the mobo and ram. The only concern I would have is the noise of that Raptor; sure its fast but it might get annoying. Do you really need that extra speed or would you be better off with more storage space and a quieter system?

You could try looking in the classifieds of some computer magazines. I pick up Micro Mart from time to time and it has a fairly extensive private ads section. If your newsagent doesn't have it WH Smiths will. You can always have a quick glance through the other magazines to see if they have a classi...

WARNING: This is all off the top of my head so some parts may be wrong! Case: Any of the recommended here will be great. Antec 3700BQE is a decent flavour for out-of-the-box quietness. CPU: Athlon64 are far better than P4 for gaming and alot cheaper. Probably best to go for a Socket 939 3200+. HSF: ...

Jonestown, when exactly would you be getting your CPU. I'm getting an SLK-900a within two weeks to be used on a Barton 2800. I could run it on a 80L1A at whatever voltage. I'd happily mail you temps and any info you wanted if its before you get yours. Like others have already said, you'd probably be...

I wondered this recently and came to the conclusion that since there are no BTX cases available (even in production?) it will be at least a year before they're common. Even after that it would be two years or more before ATX cases disappeared from the shelves. Will you still be using that system in ...

You can buy the case from SavRow with various modifications for £90 to £150 ($140 - $230!). It comes with Noiseblocker SX2Pro Blacksilent fans. Not sure about specifics but Noiseblocker apparently make very good fans. The case has been available under other guises for far less money so it may be w...

The supplied PSU should be enough to power your system however it may struggle if you overclock the processor, use a gig of ram and get an nVidia 6800. As you probably know the power needs of the 6800 varies from model to model so it really depends on your exact configuration. I would personally try...

If you're going aluminium, for a similar sort of money I would expect the Akasa Eclipse-62 to be a better case. A few key features: Slide-out mirror finish stainless motherboard tray 1.2mm thick chassis plates 4 x 5.25" external bays 2 x 3.5" removable external bays 5 x 3.5" removable internal bays ...

I am thinking of using an Akasa Fan Control Pro (AK-FC-03) to control four 80L1A's. Of course, these fans do not have rpm monitoring so I am wondering whether the controller would think the fans weren't spinning and sound the alarm. If it would, can the fan speed alarm can be disabled (without mutil...

I got a Samsung SP1614N (160G, 8MB cache) instead of a Seagate and I couldn't be happier. As far as I can tell there is no idle noise and very little seek noise either. I have had older Seagates in 'brand' PC's and they were far louder than the samsung. From what i've read the samsungs outperform an...