My personal experience: + sends 12V to all fans at startup and gradually lowers to the set level + 4 discrete temperature readings + looks (personal) - limited voltage range (7-12V) which is too high for many fans (my 1500 rpm 120mm Papst fans run at 900rpm minimum) - temperature sensors break easil...

burcakb: was the damage to your mobo visible (the burnt out pathways)? That way, acaurora would have something to look for. acaurora: do you have any spare machines/parts to test out the various parts? If you do I'd put the Corsairs in a box on a shelf just to keep them safe while you're testing eve...

I've had some good experiences with sharkoon luminous keyboards; I have the small one and it is very quiet (and convenient for LAN parties due to size & illumination, but that's another matter). The keys on the keyboards in this series are more like notebook keys than regular ones though, so you'll ...

I am also in the process of convincing myself

Becks: Could you (or anyone else) elaborate on the PWM issue with 120mm fans? Could not find much info on this in the forums other than it being mentioned a few times. Will the fans emit extra noise?

rperezlo: where did you order in Europe?

I assume those temps are with the zalman at full speed. 50C under load is still quite on the safe side IMO, especially when OC'd. I wouldn't add a second fan to the bracket: it will hardly improve airflow for the cpu heatsink and the northbridge usually can do without directed airflow. It's a sure w...

In general, firewire has the same speed and less cpu usage than USB2, so if your mobo supports it I'd go for a firewire+usb device. Besides that, any model without fan is probably OK.

Things that spring to mind: have you tried replacing the Zalman fan with a quieter one? The Zalman fans are not very highly regarded around here when it comes to quiet operation. Have you modded the Sonata bezel already? What's your case fan configuration & psu? What kind of temperatures are you get...

Never used circle cutters like that on anything but wood, so no experience there. Tin snips seem to work fine for most people... I tend to use my dremel a lot and the snips for the big cuts, but that's just a personal thing. Those hole cutters have been discussed here someplace too, perhaps in the g...

I painted parts separately using different methods, to see what would work best. The first side panel I painted using regular black glossy paint & a brush. You don't want to go there... way too thick & irregular. Ended up sanding the panel down almost to bare metal, which I didn't do at first. After...

Just spray-painted parts of my case, using the following link as a guide: http://linear1.org/gm/archives/00000156.php . I didn't follow their exact method (too thorough for me) but it was a useful guideline. A few things I ran across: Automotive paint works a lot better than regular paint. Using the...

If I remember correctly, you can manually alter the sizes of the target partitions on the new drive with Ghost 2003 prior to the cloning. You can choose any size as long as it's bigger than the original. That way you won't end up with a too-large C-partition (if there is such a thing). Btw, Norton G...

Measure carefully before cutting out the 120mm hole in the back though; I've just made the same cut in a no-brand case (well, it's a Q-tec and I consider that no-brand :)). It's an extremely tight fit, to the point where the fan stayed in place even without screws. Because of the tight fit the fan f...

Of all the temperatures in a PC, the case temp is the most useless. There's so much variability in its implementation that its results are almost meaningless. Had some first-hand experience with this yesterday: installed a slightly-better-than-stock cooler in an existing system (AMD 2500+ in a Sona...

I don't know if they will be included on the CD (there is little use for them there, so my guess is no). There is a "make RAID driver disk" in the "driver" section of the installation CD that comes with the mainboard. Using this option you can create the necessary floppy to run Windows XP/2000 inst...

Those noise ratings are the ones the manufacturers state. Past experience has shown many members here those are not always accurate, to say the very least. I've owned quite a few "branded-as-silent" products and have been disappointed by most of em. There is one thing I learned here: when it comes t...

3. how to install MS XP Prof. on a RAID Level 1 system "from scratch"... Not too difficult... first you configure the RAID set using the bios menu (mobo bios or hdd controller, check your manual). If Windows XP installation does not detect your raid array - which it probably won't - you need a driv...

At some point in time I matched an Athlon XP1600+ to a brand-new GeForce FX5600ultra (well, it was brand-new some time ago) and used that setup for all of five days before upgrading the cpu. Framerates in NFS underground and BF1942 (like I said, it was some time ago) were almost identical to my old ...

Have a similar experience with a fan blowing in from the side of my case (Lian-Li 6089A): it's a 120mm aluminium fan which I put in after installing a Zalman PSU and a new videocard, which together raised the case temp about 5 C. It didn't really lower case temps at all, 1-2 degs at most, no matter ...