Ah, U D man.

So 6600gt consumes ~18w idle and ~48w load. That's better; roughly equivalent to the 5700 ultra in terms of power usage, and only about 20% more than the cool-ish 6800.

It seems wrong to me that the 6600gt would draw almost exactly the same amount of power as the 6800gt. In other words, I don't trust my own numbers I just made up. Anyone care to comment?

Agree, this was a poorly thought out poll/thread.

Very cool PSU mod! My suggestions. Warning: money spending ahead. 1) I'd swap out that 4400 for a Radeon 9600 pro ($90). That will cut the watts dissipated from your video card in HALF, from 40w load to under 20w load-- see sticky in VGA forum for details. It will also perform better (not ohmygod so...

Update on the 6600gt. Per this techreport power consumption chart , the 6600gt consumes +15w more under full load than the 6800 (non-gt). I assume the systems were identical in both cases, except for the video card, so that should be an accurate number. If we add that to our xbit labs chart, then th...

Those temps you're showing for load are far from the actual temps. The reason is because the temperature is dropping like a rock once the test finishes; you need to run something windowed that allows you to monitor the temperature at the same time--this is why I use RTHDRIBL. Agreed. I was recently...

That excellent Xbit labs "nvidia vs. ATI power consumption" article had missing images. I emailed the editor, and she was nice enough to fix it (after two emails, though). The article contains video card power consumption data I haven't seen anywhere else.. so I am mirroring it on my webserver just ...

Have you heard a samsung spinpoint? If so, how would you compare the WD3200JB noise levels?

See other thread here.

The same amount of heat is generated no matter WHAT you use to cool the card.. active, passive, or even a banana.* Physics at work! First law of thermodynamics: energy is never created or destroyed, it can only be converted to different forms. So, the heat is the same, it's just a question of where ...

Also consider that the 6600gt mentioned in this thread is sold passive out of the box, so even vendors think this is possible..

Pic:



Not very large, either!

maybe passive cooling would do the trick? I was wondering the same thing. The 6600gt is the next logical step up from the 9600xt, which definitely CAN be cooled passively . Try it! As long as you're monitoring temps, I doubt anything bad will happen.. particularly considering my 6800gt has a "core ...

http://www.siliconacoustics.com/noisema ... oller.html

?

NOTE: THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ATI VOLTAGE "TICKING" ISSUE. As far as I know. I installed the NV Silencer 5 on my GeForce 6800gt about six months ago. It works great and I think it's in the same noise ballpark as the older VGA Silencer on "low". Not quite, but close. Great product, directly p...

that would work if the hdd:s were mounted horizontal instread of vertical.

It works fine horizontally, too. You might get slightly better results vertically, but cooling HDDs just doesn't take that much airflow.

Now if you had four 10,000rpm Raptors in there..

BTW here's a quick little photo mockup of the HDD mod I performed on my V2000: http://www.wise-ebusiness.com/images/lian_li_hdd_mod.jpg Personally, I think this makes a LOT more sense than the way the case is shipped: 1) drill out the rivets holding that PSU/HDD divider in place (very very easy), th...

Inspired by daba's shoelace HDD decoupling, I revisted my own V2000 case and realized that.. I can unscrew the plastic HDD retaining clips! There's only a single small philips screw holding the plastic clips in place, and it's near the front. After removing the clips from the rightmost side, I was a...

FWIW there does appear to be a semi-direct correlation between heat and noise per StorageReview:

http://www.storagereview.com/articles/2 ... 14C_6.html

I am encouraged by the low temperature readings, which are a lot less subjective than the sound observations.

I desperately need to reduce the # of drives in my HTPC and I am "stuck" at 3x160gb with the Samsung Spinpoints. I wonder if this drive is truly as quiet as a spinpoint? http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/20050217/wd3200jb-07.html Indeed, it looks like Western Digital can keep its promises regardi...

Like in "I can play newest games, i really don't need faster card". Probably-- depends what resolution you want to play at. At 1024x768, with normal settings, the 9600xt should be playable for even the newest games. The other alternative is the GeForce 6600gt which is now available in AGP versions ...

I have the same case, and I have a suggestion. I recommend drilling out the rivets on the bottom panel that divides the PSU from the HDDs, and removing the panel completely. This way, the bottom is one large continuous area, and you can cool the HDDs using the airflow from the PSU; the front fan can...

ATI 9100 (8500) now. I now 9600xt is faster, but it is fast enough? 9600xt is TONS faster than the 8500. Look here: http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20031229/vga-charts-03.html More than 2x faster than the 8500. Newer version of the charts: http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/...

I'll post further results once I mount the ZM-17 on this card, but I think the XT might be at the limits of what small-ish passive heatsinks can cool. It's definitely no 9600 pro.. Update: the ZM-17 kicks much ass over the stock heatsink. http://www.wesleyc.com/pics/zm17cu.jpg With the ZM-17 instal...

Is there really a big difference between analog (DSUB15) and digital (DVI)? Yes, not huge, but definitely visible. And I know because I have a total of 3 LCDs in front of me right now-- 2 of them are identical but hooked up through DVI and VGA respectively. No question that the DVI display is just ...

While it is not electrically conductive, the compound is very slightly capacitive Capacative, conductive, whatever. I don't know squat about electronics. All I know is, people have blown their stuff up with arctic silver, and I've read about it on these very forums. Plus, IMO, arctic silver is a PI...

I strongly urge people NOT to buy pastes that are electrically conductive. You can find threads here from people who have blown up their stuff using the electrically conductive pastes!

FWIW: if, like me, you own this AOpen i855GMEm mainboard and want to use the onboard audio via SPDIF connection, you'll need this bracket adapter: http://store.myaopen.com/aosco.html It sucks that we have to pay $15 + shipping beyond what we already paid for this expensive mobo, just to get optical ...

3) the heat in the power supply would cause it to ramp up beyond minimum Isn't this guaranteed to happen with the setup you're describing? I think you need one more low-rpm 120mm fan in there, particularly with that scythe. Relying on the PSU to do ALL the heat evacuation from the case is kind of a...

My research indicates that the main advantage of the 9600xt over the pro is that it is about 50% faster in DX9 pixel shaders , plus the obvious +100mhz core clock bump. Memory speeds are the same. It also has on-die temp monitoring sensors. http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2003q4/radeon-9600xt/inde...

I recently purchased a refurb 128mb 9600xt from Newegg for $105. This is the first 9600 XT I've used-- prior to this, I owned a9600 pro and 9600 vanilla cards, both of which are trivially easy to cool with a very basic passive heatsink like the zalman ZM-17 . There's a long thread documenting my pow...

Oh no! What were Thermaltake thinking?!!

Isn't this Thermaltake's corporate slogan?

When I think crazy and half-baked, I think Thermaltake.*

* The silent boost is pretty good for the money, though