Dustin1706

240GB NeutronGTX.....Boot 480GB Agility 3 ...........Games drive 512GB Sam 830..........Scratch disk Everything backs up to my server daily. 64GB Vertex 4.......................................Boot 8 x 2TB WD green in 4 raid 1 pairs.......Storage SSD's are fantastic and I've only ever had one die (original vertex), but I still don't trust anything other than raid 1 for storage and even then I back up my most critical data to a 2TB external drive weekly.

Hook me up bro!

I prefer dead quiet fans with an excess of thick radiators. Gives you the best of both worlds. Noctua NFs @ 550 with XSPC RX rads is what I am running right now.

There are now several PSUs that have a fan profile where the fan doesn't kick in at all until ~50% load. This would be ideal for a system where you want complete silence while doing low performance tasks, but still be able to run high power multi-GPU setups. So, if you want it to be passive more of the time you need to go with an oversized PSU. The trade off is that you will be running at a lower efficiency. Don't know what your budget or wattage requirements are, but the Seasonic X1050 and Kingwin LPZ-1000 are passive up to 500 watts. The Corsair AX850 is passive up to almost 200 watts. Manufacturers have a heavy focus on reducing the power used by components right now as the money is in mobile. This will be great for silence freaks as well as we will need less cooling. I am running a Zalman 850-HP right now as it has a large heatsink and has a very low RPM fan. I have been considering a 1200i, but I keep reading posts about people having buzzing/whining/clicking noises.

I love the old EK Supreme HFs, but I just can't get on board with their new "circles design". Swiftech Apogee HD is now my block of choice.

2x 480s and 2x 240s.... Should be dead silent and running cold with sub 500 rpm fans. Just need to wait for the IB-E 2011 chips and the Nvidia 700 series. Damn this is going to be an expensive build... My only complaints are that I wish the window didn't go so far forwards as to show the 5.25 bays and I wish I could use all 4 bays with a rad installed up top. Pretty minor.

I've been impatiently awaiting the arrival of the surface pro. I think it would be so much more useful to me than an android or iOS tablet. however, for around $1000 and with a sub 4 hour battery life..... I think I will just wait for haswell and get an ultrabook instead.

I have a TF700T that I barely use. The only use I can find for it is if I am travelling somewhere and I don't want to bring my laptop and I also use it on flights. If I'm at home, I find that my 17" laptop is much better for most things and If I am at work etc. my Galaxy S3 can handle most of what I need it to do. I think I may get rid of it and get an ultrabook once haswell is available.

Noctua F12s LNA'd and PWM'd to 500 rpm. GT AP-15s and Fractal SSR2s are pretty quiet also and undervolt well.

I've had the back on one of mine come loose and the red dial become disconnected from the pot. If the back is loose just pop it off and make sure it is engaging properly. It will be obvious once the back is off.

I can't remember what it cost, but I bought a family pack of black sleeving from nils (MDPC) I have sleeved several PSUs and still have a ton left. An alternative brand that looks just as good is darkside. http://www.dazmode.com/store/product/5_32_4mm_darkside_high_density_cable_sleeving_-_graphite_1ft/

I've painted a lot of fans and had no issues with balance. Some fans have a circlip or Eclip under the sticker that needs to be removed, some you just push the blades away from the body. If you have fans that need to be pushed apart be very careful not to break off any of the blades. There are several youtube videos on how to do this.

Firefox and chrome both work well. I use chrome so that I can sync bookmarks etc with my android phone and tablet.

Technically, yes it is possible that the paint could cause an unbalance. In practice, I've found that if you are careful with your painting it works just fine. I am a huge silence freak and after trying some 30+ different kinds of fans I finally broke down and started using ugly noctuas. On my now spare PC (built maybe 5 years ago?) I was going for a green/black thing, so I decided to try painting a fan just to see if it would have any affect on noise. Paint will not "tend to puddle" if you go in light coats. The paint had Zero effect on the noise. No vibration, no extra motor noise, nothing. I'm not sure what effect the smoother painted surface has on the airflow, but I suspect very little if any. The first fan I painted was an S12 and I took a few pics while doing it. I've painted several P12s, some cheap nexus's, and some gentle typhoons since. Some fans have an E clip or circlip under the sticker, some you just have to push the blades/hub away from the frame (carefully!) There are vids on youtube on how to do this. I wished I had some matte black when I did this one, but I only had gloss kicking around. Florescent green, then UV active green over top on the blades. ~4 extremely light coats on everything.

It's actually a bit tricky to exactly calculate the resistance needed to reduce your fan to a certain RPM. It's dependent on the amperage of the fan and the resistance of the fan while running. The 5v or 7v mod does work as per silentpcreview, but I prefer to use LNAs myself. Noctua uses 82 ohm resistors in their blue LNAs and ~51 ohms in their black LNAs. It looks like they are 1/2 watt, but the 82 ohm only drops the NF12s(0.09a) to 9v, so 3v x 0.09a = 0.27w. If you want to build your own LNAs, pick up some 25-250 ohm resistors and if you want to drop to 7v or less, make sure you get 1watt resistors.