A better solution is to use a cheap universal power adapter. These have a switch that lets you adjust the voltage between 3v and 12v. Thus, you can control airflow vs noise. It's also really easy to connect up the power, because the tip had a couple holes you just put wires into.

I have no idea what he thinks his point is, or what he's going on about.

"Future googlers"? Yeah, I'm sure that someone a year or two from now is going to find a component list for a sub $350 computer from today REALLY USEFUL.

Buying cheap works for me since I have no desire to ever sell my old hardware. I like to get at least a "doubled" perceived performance when I upgrade, and it looks like we're not quite there yet. Maybe in another year or two. In the meantime, my 1.8ghz Socket 754 Sempron machines are adequate. I de...

Old thread, but I'll chime in anyway--I also advocate positive pressure setups. Some of my rigs are positive pressure; some are negative pressure. The latter tend to be minor modifications of normal ATX layouts, with low power old CPUs so the heat of the CPU can acceptably be flushed out through the...

Every mod I've posted on this forum is a ghetto mod. Off the top of my head: Hard drive suspension--use either a plastic bottle or just some cardboard to make a tube. Poke four holes in the side of the tube so you can mount the hard drive within the tube. Wrap the tube in bubble-wrap. Simply place t...

First off, the SSD format may be abandoned before we ever see $10 SSDs. (Note that $10 is still too expensive for me to switch; I already have cheaper and faster.) Second, there's no guarantee that a "commodity item being manufactured by the millions" will ever reach $10 levels. The 3.5" hard drive ...

That'll be nice if/when it happens (I'm still waiting for it to happen with Compact Flash). In the meantime, I don't have to wait. I already have my desired combination of cheap/superfast/silent for the OS drive.

Thanks for the explanation. I suppose NewEgg is reputable enough that they wouldn't shaft their customers with high density RAM? I'm guessing that if it were a problem, there would be a lot more complaints about it in the customer reviews (there was one customer review which sounds like a high densi...

BTW, the reason I did NOT suggest diskless netbooting is because my experience is that network access makes noise (at least on some mobos). On my cheap mobos, diskless netbooting is much noisier than using a well enclosed 2.5" drive. But even an enclosed 2.5" drive involves the mobo's I/O hardware, ...

No I wasn't confused. I just question the practicality of a traditional old school ramdisk when SSD is the alternative. It's certainly a practical alternative from my perspective. It's much cheaper and much faster. My RAMboot technique can of course be adapted to load up the image from a cheap slow...

I have an ECS NForce-3A socket 754 motherboard. It has an nvidia chipset, and two RAM slots. I'm considering an upgrade to 2gigs of RAM, the maximum this mobo can take, using this: WINTEC 2 x 1GB DDR 400 However, I'm confused on a couple issues. 1) As I understand it, many DDR motherboards including...

It could be either the PSU or motherboard electronics. Sometimes, this buzzing/screeching can be incredible. I don't know how to fix it other than to replace the PSU and/or mobo.

Oh wait. I think I figured out the source of the confusion. I was talking about a "ramdisk" in the sense of a software feature. The RAM that's used is simply system memory on the motherboard; typically cheap DDR2 RAM. I think you're thinking of something like Cenatek's Rocket Drive or the Gigabyte i...

Umm...there's no reason why the OS partition needs to be a clean fresh install with no software installed. If it's possible to boot up Windows XP after copying it over to a ramdisk, then you'd simply install Windows XP and then whatever drivers and software are desired. When doing testing, the data ...

Is it possible to get Windows XP to boot after copying the entire OS into a ramdisk? If so, then this would be the least expensive solution, as well as the highest performance.

I can say definitively that Windows XP CAN spin down the OS drive. I'm currently doing some work on an old Windows XP machine with just one hard drive, and it certainly spins down that drive after some minutes of inactivity. Naturally, this depends on if there's any software running that periodicall...

I like my old 40gig Western Digital Scorpio, but I don't know whether current WD Scorpio's still measure up (or current ones may be even better, for all I know).

It turned out the PSU wasn't exactly silent. It's far from noisy but with the harddrives disconnected, it was the loudest part in the system. So I fiddled around a bit and tried different fans. I had a Scythe 120mm fan that came with a Ninja, and it was absolutely silent! Unfortunately I couldn't u...

kittle wrote:But when/if I get one i want to mount it in such a way that I HEAR the seek noises but no annoying whine.

You can hook up the motherboard's hard drive light header to the PC Speaker, if you want.

Oh, one other thing. My preference is to put the ATX mobo upside-down compared to what you have. This puts the ports on the top, which I find more convenient.

Your layout looks almost exactly like a build someone did here before, where he mounted his PC on a wall (so the cables were dangling underneath, and bundled into a neat bundle). That build used fans, though. Still, there will be some shared concerns. In particular, it is "fun" to get the power cabl...

I'd count on using nuts and bolts. The stock clips don't inspire much confidence for reuse...at least in my experience. When I put one of the stock heatsinks back on (after using a VGA cooler for a while), I used nuts and bolts. Worked like a charm. As for whether you can really run it fanless with ...

My opinion is that the PS3 is just plain loud, under any circumstances. I'd never use it instead of an HTPC (customized by myself for silence, of course).

First off, you CAN destroy the CPU by attempting to remove/install a heatsink and making a mistake. The P3 processors lack the heatspreader of P4 processors. The CPU die is thus unprotected and pretty easy to damage. Second, that yellow stuff is certainly thermal paste of some sort. While the primar...

I can see this drive being an important development for a wide range of professional/semi-pro users. This is incredible performance/value for video editing, digital photos, and software development. These applications will honestly benefit from the combination of capacity and sustained speed in the ...

He's using a stock CPU heatsink/fan, and a random "0$" PSU. And expects it to be "*extremely* quiet".

On the one hand, it's sad and laughable. On the other hand, who cares? A typical office environment has no need for a silent computer, and stock parts will usually not be unacceptably loud.

I'm not too serious about exotica right now, just if there is a one stop article on the subject, can you please give me the link? If not, the suggestion is valid and SPCR needs a piece on "the ultimate silent cheap PC" complete with parts list and dBA specs. I don't wanna hear about $400 cases, tha...

Well, I aggravated everyone. Sorry! I keep trying to get off the GHz kick. How many times have I gotta say, we don't care? I know about CPUs, thanks. Indirectly you confirm my claim of top end bias at SPCR. Who said I am looking for the latest hottest chip....? Put bluntly, you don't know what you'...

Basically a fancy overpriced non-case. DIY version = box fan, dowel rod cut into four pieces, and a sheet of cardboard. A DIY version would be four long all-thread bolts, along with 16 nuts. 8 nuts secure the motherboard to the middles of the bolts. The other 8 nuts provide places to secure strings...

Dave2, look. I've been there and done that. Do a search in the SPCR General Gallery for my name (IsaacKuo). Most of my own entries are titled "Single Fan Madness", and most of the entries I comment on are on the lower end of the scale. Thinking outside the box? Hah. We've been there and done that. A...