Recent content by Banderon

I meant, he said that his isn't as noisy or hot as some others...

Which one do you have?

I'm putting together an HTPC/gaming system running an E8500, 4GB DDR2, on a mATX board. I'm currently trying to choose between a HD4870 1gig, and a GTX 260 Core 216 (they're both in the $170ish range) for my graphics card... any advice is welcome.

Hi all. I'm putting together an HTPC/Gaming system. I'd like to plop it into a mATX HTPC case, the cheaper the better. I only need room for 2 HDs, 1 optical, and a full-sized graphic card. I wanted to use an Antec earthwatts EA380 380W as my PSU, so I need a case that's made for an...

I've actually been looking at the ASUS P5Q-EM. It has what I need, but it's a bit overkill. I guess it's nice to have room for expansion... but I'd still prefer something a little cheaper and toned down, just as long as it satisfies my immediate requirements since I'm not really planning on...

I understand that the AMD route would be a much better option for a vanilla HTPC, but I also want to be able to game on it, too. I'm aiming to play mostly in 1920x1080, or at least as high a 16:9 res as I can while still getting decent framerates at mid/high quality in most games. So yes...

I'm putting together an HTPC, and I'm having a lot of trouble finding a motherboard. I need a mATX mobo for a Core 2 Duo w/ 1x PCIe2.0 x16 slot and 2+ SATA ports that support RAID0 (or even just JBOD). I've looked around, and AMD has some very nice mATX boards, but there doesn't seem to...

Very good comments, all of these. I'll address the simplest first: to fit things, I was going to use flexible risers and link those to the splitter risers. While I certainly care about function the most, looks and style does matter to me. I was even considering having the actual PC system...

Something similar, yes... but not that. "ABKPCIEXPUP connects to the Intel Adaptive Slot on the Intel Entry Server Platform SR1425BK1-E 1 x expansion slot." That doesn't connect to an actual PCIe slot, but rather to a proprietary expansion slot.

I've been looking into building a file server. I'm planning on buying a low-power miniITX board with one PCIe x16 slot, and onboard GigE. I'm going to throw a x4 (maybe x8) RAID card into the x16 slot and run a lovely 8-drive RAID5. The RAID will be putting out a lot of speed, more than...

for the price range you mentioned, with speed being the primary issue, the largest you'll be able to get is 500GB. Samsung's 500GB variant of the SpinPoint F1 is the fastest drive you can get, with average transfer rates around 90MB/s, and peaks at over 115MB/s. after that, the next best...

Ok, how about I ask a different question. Do riser cards have an impact on the cards attached through them? Do they cause any sort of disruption at all?

i'm planning on setting up an HTPC with a 4-drive RAID5 via a PCIe x4 card. i want the PC itself to be in a nice, small case, and to be as cool/quiet as possible. for this reason, i think my best option is to house the drives in a seperate enclosure. i've been thinking about using multilane...

I don't know if this would degrade the PCIe signal, but.. http://www.orbitmicro.com/global/images/759_pl.jpg

Most pics of 3 (and ALL pics of 4) card setups I've seen have been using single-slot-height cards because (as I understand it) the height of 2-slot cards makes it impossible to fit 3-4 PCIe x16 connectors on a motherboard and still grant each with an extra slot of space beneath it for each...