Slashdot Mirror

http://www.pccasegear.com/inde...

I used to buy from AusPC Market a long time ago. These days I normally use PC Case Gear.

For me (and it's very much a personal preference) ...

16:10 seems to fill my field of vision well both vertically and horizontally. With a 16:9 monitor my FOV feels squashed vertically.

I've just had a monitor die and was quite happy to pay a bit extra to get a Samsung S24A450BW 24" 1920x1200 monitor. Hopefully it will arrive today.

BTW, that monitor has several additional reasons to get it over cheaper ones - 3 year replacement for a single defective (dead or stuck) pixel, nearly full adjustment (height , tilt, pivot, but no swivel) and Samsungs amazing "Adaptor On Off 0W mode". I do like how they take the piss out of the "new" idea of having a mechanical on-off switch.

It's going to be a great monitor for Guild Wars 2.

But sometimes, you just want a little silence. For example, if you're building a home-theater PC, you'll want as quiet a system as possible.

Well, that would have been nice to be able to recommend when I wrote this article. I had also recommended an Asus GeForce 6600, albeit one that didn't cost quite as much. For myself (not being an audiophile), the cheaper card works fine as it rarely spins up to any noticable volume while I'm watching TV. I can understand, though, that for others the background noise can be very annoying.

As you can see, the card is actually designed to take advantage of a preexisting CPU cooling fan to blow air over the passive radiator. If you have a standard active cooling mount, then this is an innovative idea. But it does limit your choice of CPU coolers. For one thing, your processor heat sink can't be taller than the bottom of the card.

So what they're saying is that the ASUS Star Ice Jet Engine^W^W CPU Fan isn't going to work with this card? What a shocker. ;-)

(No, I won't let go of it. I've still got mine sitting on my desk, just so I can get all the "What the hell is that?" comments. )

Nvidia's upcoming Release 80 drivers include a number of enhancements for HDTV, including the ability to minimize overscan problems, something which has plagued home-theater PCs for years.

This reminds me, has anyone had any experience with this or any other HDTV-compatible cards that don't cost an arm and a leg? I'm still avoiding HD for now, but it's likely to catch eventually. To date I haven't seen too many inexpensive HDTV tuner cards. Then again, maybe I'm not looking hard enough?

I'm currently looking at the Shuttle SN45G (Athlon XP) or even the SN85G4 (Athlon 64) cases. They both appear to have the CPU near the back and use heat pipes to place the heatsink and fan above the back panel connectors. As shown here and here. I had previously been looking at large heatsinks like the Thermaltake pipe 101 or even the monstrous Thermalright XP-120. But if the Shuttle cases come with their own heatsinks/pipes, then I could still replace the fans with some nice quiet ones, if they aren't quiet enough that is. For video, the nVidia FX-5200 is the quietest fanless video card available, according to one MythTV HOWTO I read. The proprietary nVidia drivers support XvMC, which will take some load off of the CPU.

I'm currently looking at the Shuttle SN45G (Athlon XP) or even the SN85G4 (Athlon 64) cases. They both appear to have the CPU near the back and use heat pipes to place the heatsink and fan above the back panel connectors. As shown here and here. I had previously been looking at large heatsinks like the Thermaltake pipe 101 or even the monstrous Thermalright XP-120. But if the Shuttle cases come with their own heatsinks/pipes, then I could still replace the fans with some nice quiet ones, if they aren't quiet enough that is. For video, the nVidia FX-5200 is the quietest fanless video card available, according to one MythTV HOWTO I read. The proprietary nVidia drivers support XvMC, which will take some load off of the CPU.

I'm currently looking at the Shuttle SN45G (Athlon XP) or even the SN85G4 (Athlon 64) cases. They both appear to have the CPU near the back and use heat pipes to place the heatsink and fan above the back panel connectors. As shown here and here. I had previously been looking at large heatsinks like the Thermaltake pipe 101 or even the monstrous Thermalright XP-120. But if the Shuttle cases come with their own heatsinks/pipes, then I could still replace the fans with some nice quiet ones, if they aren't quiet enough that is. For video, the nVidia FX-5200 is the quietest fanless video card available, according to one MythTV HOWTO I read. The proprietary nVidia drivers support XvMC, which will take some load off of the CPU.

An alternative to carrying the cat in a bag: LAN Gear for kittens ;)

Me? I use Zalman headphones with a logitec webcam microphone duct taped on the right side. But I just use it for gaming. If I had to communicate anything other than "Our base is 0wn3d!" I would probably get something better.

Liquid-cooled PC cases have been around for a while.
Here are some links to other companies that sell them:

Koolance
Ioport
PC Case Gear

And, by the way, here's how to build your own computer water cooler.

That would be cool, however a cooler keyboard mod i've seen is this (scroll down a page or two to the bottom photo).