I'm into budget computing...your proposed system is actually pretty high powered stuff by my standards. None of my machines have more than 512megs of RAM, and I mostly use the relatively heavyweight KDE desktop environment (Debian 4.0 GNU/Linux). You don't say what sort of development you intend to ...

Remove the rear fan rather than turn it down. You want to only have intake fans. Whether the PSU fan ramps up unacceptably depends on various factors. Most of us here on SPCR have noise reduction as a major goal. As such, we like to have as little airflow as required to keep the components cool enou...

I wouldn't worry about "balancing". If you're going to do positive pressure with a filter, then you should really just look at the intakes--more intake area is better. Since the intakes will be restricted by the filters anyway, you don't have to worry about adequate exhaust area. On the slim chance ...

It was a Antec sx 635. With one exhaust and the stock power supply which ran exhaust at high speed all the time. When the power supply failed and I put in a new quiet one, I quickly realized how negative the pressure was, it was causing air to stall in the power supply even though it was turning an...

You've placed the processor at the "start" of the airflow chain, meaning that CPU warmed air will be cooling other components. This is not really a good idea. If you flip your layout upside-down, then CPU warmed air will immediately leave the case, and the PSU will receive cool fresh air. An efficie...

Mainly, I do it because it's fun.

I started off quieting down my computers because excessive computer noise was really bugging me, but really that's only enough of a reason to make ONE quiet computer. My only real explanation for my...umm...dozenth build is that it's fun.

Well I have had plenty of 2.5" drive failures. However, I got most of my 2.5" drives second hand, and given the abuse I put them through I really don't know what to attribute the failures to. In any case, I mostly don't use Windows so the failures are certainly not due to anything Windows does. Sinc...

I generally use a "U-turn" airflow plan where air first travels forward before bending upward and then ultimately back out the rear. The obvious way to accomplish this is with a partial internal partition. A sufficiently large video card can act as this partition, but few video cards fill out the fu...

Roughly speaking, airflow is bottlenecked by the cross section of minimum area. A good rule of thumb is that you want at least as much total intake area as the total exhaust area. Most computer cases fail to follow this rule of thumb, and as a result the intake is too restrictive. The P180 has inade...

I perfectly understand the desire to not spend any money on an old computer. I work mostly with old "junk" computers, so I've gotten skilled with extreme budget modding. The basic tools you need to undervolt fans to 80mm are some electrical wire, electrical tape or shrinkwrapping, and something to s...

There's nothing wrong with cooling a system with 80mm fans! When underfolted, two 80mm fans can provide about as much airflow for as little noise as a single 120mm fan--which is plenty for your system. Rather than try and buy some fancy fans, you could start with just modifying what you've already g...

For a hardware vulture like me, 120mm fans are in practice quieter than 92mm fans. Why? Law of averages--I pull lots of 80mm fans, a reasonable number of 120mm fans, and very few 92mm fans. There are better chances of finding a very quiet 120mm fan simply because there are more of them. But then, th...

The only slimline PS2 model I've ever seen features a tiny whiny fan which produces a pathetic amount of airflow. While it's not as loud as a jet engine, the noise is irritatingly high pitched. The original "fat" PS2 features a much larger fan. The "fat" PS2 can be easily modified to take an undervo...

I don't know about a 9600, but I modified my old Radeon 7200 in a similar fashion. It took some force to twist off the old heatsink--be careful! Then, I applied a good deal of thermal paste I had left over from CPU coolers (probably far too much paste). The northbridge chipset heatsink I used came o...

I'd be surprised if it has any significant role within a fanned system. The proof is in the pudding--actually measuring a significant temperature difference between a computer on its side vs upright.

I just don't have the sort of hot running computer hardware that would be necessary to make a meaningful test.

While I wouldn't call the 200mm fan noisy (not at the level I'm undervolting it at), I absolutely know I don't need it. My file server has similar hardware as my main workstation and HTPC--which is cooled just fine with a single severely undervolted 80mm fan. (The HTPC gets no benefit from the chimn...

I just did a simple test of my Antec 900 system. It's in more or less stock configuration, but with fans undervolted below the Tricool's normal minimum settings. The PSU is fanless, so it acts as a de facto intake. Whether the case was on the side or upright, the CPU temperature was 40C. If the stac...

Actually, no. I'm really Q and I honestly thought you could just change the universal constant of gravity.

Bluefront, there are NOT a bunch of variables involved. Rotating a computer case by 90 degrees or 180 degrees changes exactly one variable--the direction of gravity. Why bother doing it, when we all "know" that the case will be most efficient when the exhausts are higher up than the intakes? The who...

Issac....there is simply no good way I can think of, to build a case that would have equal potential airflow through it top to bottom, or bottom to top. I think the original experiment I proposed.....a Ninja with the fan on the top or the bottom....would be a better test. Bluefront, you fundamental...

Well then, your rig simply has nothing to say about whether or not there's any benefit from the chimney effect.

I've been to the Pantheon when it was raining. Rain enters the top. Also, it's cooler on the inside than the outside--a natural effect of shade. Well I cannot flip the case over to check what happens[...]The exhaust in that mode, would get sucked back into the intake. That's why I suggested testing ...

That's a nice theory, but how much of a difference in temperatures do you get if you rotate the machine 90 degrees onto its side? (If you go a full 180 degrees to upside-down, then you may get recirculation of warm air from the exhaust wafting upward to the intake.)

I'm the one who tried the light bulb chimney experiment, and the effect was simply too pathetically weak to be worthwhile. A single silent undervolted 80mm fan provides more airflow, with less power consumption. IMHO, at the small scales of a computer case, the only place for the "hot air rises" the...

I've had 100% success with running slot-1 CPUs fanless just by removing the fan. However, my fastest slot-1 CPU was only 564Mhz (550Mhz, slightly overclocked). For serious cooling, look at VGA card coolers. If you remove the plastic bits and the stock heatsink, you'll notice that a slot-1 CPU is rea...

Automatix and ntfs-3g are also available for Debian, if one cares to use it. But in any case, as much as I love Linux and support it, I'm still not clear on what benefit is imagined. Regardless of what OS the file server is using, viruses and trojans will still be run on the client machines and they...

Assuming cost isn't an issue (e.g. you already paid for a copy of Windows for the server), then I'm not sure there's a compelling reason to prefer Linux over Windows for a basic file server. Whether the file server is running Windows or Linux, it isn't actually going to be "running" any programs so ...

I personally haven't run into a situation where alsaconf didn't work at least temporarily (sometimes it seems like rebooting makes the computer "forget" the alsaconf settings). Doing a search on "nforce 430 sound" reveals a bunch of hits for various Linux distributions. No doubt many of those hits a...

I find that when I install Debian Etch on a system, sometimes sound doesn't work. Sometimes, it actually IS working, but the volume defaults to zero (why? No idea...running gmix or kmix to change the volume fixes that.) Other times, the sound card just isn't configured at all. That's when I log into...