Recent content by malfeasance

That's what I needed to know, thanks for the input.

So, I decided to drop in a Q9550 to upgrade my aging E6420 from a couple years back. I knew going to a quad core - with a higher TDP than the C2D - would result in higher temps, but I wanted to see if the mine are reasonable or if I just need a better cooler. The patient: Zalman 7700CNPS...

Thanks for the advice. I'll have to crunch the numbers on the budget and decide whether I want to take the plunge and move on up to the I7 platform. Thanks again.

I would save yourself the hassle and just increase her RAM to the max that board will support, 2GB would be a good improvement. 4GB might be overkill, but definite "future proofing" that will accommodate any future needs.

I am currently running an Asus P5B (vanilla), an E6420( OC'd to 2.8 and cooled by a Zalman CNPS7700Cu cooler), OCZ SLI-Ready 4 x 1GB PC2 6400 and an Asus EAH4850, powered by an Antec 2 SmartPower 500W PSU. I like my current rig, but am looking to the future as certain parts are beginning to...

From my limited experience with it a few years back, my old Dell Optiplex GX300 would take that same combination of 128's and 256's, so long as they were all the same speed.YMMV

Excellent, I'd hate to let 2GG of RAM fall by the way side. I had tried to use it in an Asus P5B with no joy, but still wanted to keep that older proc and RAM running with a decent video card. I'll check the linkage and see what will work best and still be somewhat upgradeable. Not so worried...

I've got 2x 1GB sticks of PC2-3200, yes DDR2 400 MHz, that I took out of an older machine that was running an Intel I915 chipset. Is there anything I can do to use this RAM with a newer, preferably C2D, processor, or should I try and sell it off. When I look for mobo's on the Egg, it doesn't...

Actually, I've been thinking of slapping together a 120mm push/pull with the reserator to move air up and over the fins. I've seen others who have suggested/tried using clear plexi to create a shroud around the Reserator to improve the overall cooling. At least this way, my less...

The Reserator works pretty well for cooling with almost zero noise. However, the cooling performance is greatly enhanced if you provide some active air circulation over the fins. I have one cooling a 3.2 Prescott and an ATI 9800Pro 256 and it will get up to about 50 C in a warm room, 28-30 C. I...

I almost went with that zalman cooler, but it didn't look like it was gonna fit in the aria with their funky psu. I would like to know which case you're using with that zalman, as I'm considering another build fairly soon. Thanks.

Just an FYI, but Prescott and "really small case" don't really work well together. I had the stock HSF on a 3.2 Prescott in an antec Aria case, and it sounded like a damn hair dryer trying to keep that thing cool, at idle. Depending on which Prescott you get, it'll dissipate around 84-104 watts...

If you want to have those drives internal in a fairly decent size/looking case, the CheckerCube isn't a bad way to go. You can also use a normal optical drive, rather than a slimline version that a lot of mini-itx cases need. The CheckerCube also has 2 pci slots so you can add a second nic if...

The speed of the hd on the IDE bus won't really affect your gaming, other than load times. Even if you had a SATA drive, the boost in speed is negligible 150MB/s vs 133MB/s. The memory speed isn't tied to the hard drive, only to the speed of the FSB. The mode that the memory is operating in, be...

Dual channel simply gives you twice the memory bandwidth when you use matched pairs, something like 6.4GB/s vs 3.2GB/s. This is different from dual processors, which I think is what you are referring to when you say "no software takes advantage of it." The dual channel memory will make a...