Wasn't there an Alpha heatsink that was over 1kg? I remember seeing pictures of it years ago.
My friend has a Zalman copper flower cool and it somehow worked itself loose when he was moving it around. He heard a clunk noise when he picked it up. Luckily nothing was damaged and it worked after he reapplied the thermal paste and reinstalled it.

I thought the snaps were screwed to the board (which you had to remove the motherboard to install), and the heatsink then screws in the snaps. This should be easy to change in/out.

I got the AlCu version because it was cheap and lighter. It only weighs about 450 grams, which is about the max spec for Intel boards.

I wish it were. This is one of those where I'll have to remove the motherboard to install it. Replacing the $69 CPU is technically easier

Oops! Confusing it with the Intel version of the cooler again, sorry!

I thought the snaps were screwed to the board (which you had to remove the motherboard to install), and the heatsink then screws in the snaps. This should be easy to change in/out.

Ooo, if that's the way it works, then I'll have to install it now then. As long as I don't have to remove the board every time I move my computer

Holy crap! I should get credit for at least half of the hardware portion of the A+ certification just for installing this fan! I mean really, I had to disconnect all components, dismount the motherboard, and get a little too aggressive with a screwdriver right near the processor. By that I mean that the threads on one of the mounting brackets wasn't drilled very well, and it took a good amount of force to get it in there.

But now that all is said and done, the HSF is mounted, it is enormous, there is actually about a centimeter of clearance between it and the PSU shelf, and at its lowest setting, the fan is absolutely silent. What's more, I was able to test CPU temperatures using the supplied motherboard monitor before and after the installation. With the stock CPU fan, I was getting an idle temperature of 54C. Now, even after a game of GTA Vice City, the temp is about 40C. When Windows starts it's only 36C. That's all at the high fan speed, though. Still, the low speed starts the temp at about 39-40C.

Thanks for the help, everyone!

Yay!

My limited experience and that of others I know (perhaps a dozen of us that geekfest (err, LAN party?) 3 or 4 times a year is that no one has ever hurt their computer by transporting it in the car. And almost all of us have AMD's. I really wouldn't worry about it. (Yeah, famous last words, hope I didn't jinx myself). If you're really worried, what about sliding a piece of stiff non-cunductive non-absorbent closed cell foam underneath it. So even if it does want to bounce it has no where to go? But seriously, even with a lot of weight, it's spread around really well...

BTW I have a Thermalright AX-7 and 80mm fan, maybe not as big as yours but somewhat heavy as well (if that lends any merit to my successes moving this PC everywhere). http://www.svc.com/thaxsoco.html

Glad to see you've got it working! Those are pretty good temps you're getting there !

Thanks! I'm very happy with it! As far as I can tell, it really is silent. The loudest thing in my case now is the video card fan.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to make my hard drives quieter? Is that even possible without buying new drives? Aside from the video card the disks are the last things that make noise in my case (PSU is silent, case fans seem to be as well).

I got one of these for my video card it works great.

Some HDD have a silent mode you can enable. My maxtor on does and it is very quiet after setting it to silent.

My maxtor on does and it is very quiet after setting it to silent.

My new 250Gb Maxtor drives are essentially inaudible, even without setting them into quiet mode.

The Seagate Barracudas are very quiet, too.

Hmm, I wonder if my Western Digitals have that option...

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to make my hard drives quieter? Is that even possible without buying new drives?

Yes, you can try this. It supposedly works very well, effectively silencing your HD with +/- 10dB. (which is about 3x less noisy). Just be very sure to get a Smart Drive, and NOT a Silent Drive. The Silent Drive is about the same thing, except that that thing doesn't dissapate the heat effectively with 7200RPM drives, and thus "cooks" the HD.
The Smart Drive however, is very good at keeping the HD silent AND cool, even with 7200 RPM drives!
Review here. (this is a review of the first generation Smart Drive, that's no longer for sale. It's successor, the Smart Drive 2002 is even better)

Thanks! That looks like a very cool product. At $60, however, I might have to wait on it a while. I'd need to buy two or even three of them! At that point I could buy a very large silent hard drive

But that looks like a good solution. I have no problems using 5.25" bays, as I've got 5 out of 6 of them available I would worry about heat, though. Right now the drives are sitting in front of the front fans. I doubt I have much airflow at the top of the case...

You may want to download the Data Lifeguard tool from Western Digital. There may be an acoustic management setting under the ATA management tools (the data sheet doesn't specify).

I used a similar setting for my Maxtor drive. I don't have any spindle noise, but the seek noise was too loud. Going to "quiet" mode supposedly reduces performance, but I don't see a difference, and the drive is much quieter now.

My new 250Gb Maxtor drives are essentially inaudible, even without setting them into quiet mode

Interesting.
I recently upgraded my Tivo with a Maxtor drive.
It was so damn noisy that it sounded like a coffee grinder was continuously at work in my living room!

I pulled it and replaced it with a Western Digital.
Now I have blissful silence (well, nearly).

I guess I should have tried the Maxtor software tweaks first, because
the WD drive was actually 4GB smaller than the Maxtor (though
both were labelled as identical capacity).
This meant that I couldn't use the wacky Tivo backup software to
copy everything onto it; it only handles copying to equal or larger size
drives (in order to avoid messing with the non-standard Tivo filesystem
too much).

So I have a week's worth of unwatched programs sitting on a spare unused drive
on my desk.

But it was worth it to get that extremely noisy Maxtor out of my living room!

Plus now I have two backup drives if a power spike takes one out.
(You'd think it'd be the other components; but when workmen started
yanking my power on and off, it fried a Tivo drive, but the rest of the
Tivo survived just fine.)

/music

Thanks for the idea, it was a good one, but there doesn't appear to be such a tool.

However, when you got me going to the WD site, I happened to see the new 250GB SATA drives That's a size I can use! None of this 30GB nonsense! It's currently $300, but when it comes down I may get one of those and a Smart Drive I can always sell my other drives to my roommate

what is the lowest decibal fan they make for the CPU, motherboard, and power supply?

Well, I suppose you can check out Zalman's line of CPU fans/heatsinks (you're most likely going to have to buy them together). I have this one and can't hear it. Many of them have a speed adjuster so when you're just doing basic desktop stuff you can have it near silent, if audible at all.

What do you mean by motherboard?

And it's not quite recommended that you go replacing your power supply's fan. We want to see you on the board again Zalman sells "silent" power supplies (so they say), like this one.

I know I seem Zalman biased, but the products I've bought from them have been just great. They've served me quite well.

Oops...I actually meant the case fan...I forgot that my new motherboard doesn't have a fan, just a heatsink (it is also called a chipset fan, i think.) What are the decibals for the quietest fans?

Sorry to butt in here so late in a thread but Guschti works for Studer and I saw on the photos on this website about their new Vista desks which have PCs in them. They solved the heat problem by using big heatsinks like this one:

Can those be bought? or does it only come in certain PCs?

They aren't purely for decoration. If you look again you will see that the CPU is covered with a shiny bit of metal and that bit of metal is connected to the right heat sink by some funky new heat pipe...

...this wouldn't work with a P4 I don't think though, these EPIA processors really don't generate much heat (but then they are lots slower than the P4s).

I was wrong of course:

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/hush-atx.asp

Completely fanless 2.8Ghz P4 ATX machine from the same people...

Too bad they won't just sell the case.

Has anyone seen this fan cheaper anywhere else? I found one on Pricewatch a little bit cheaper, but I am skeptical of some of these "no name" companies

I know this thread's half dead, but... just because it needs to be seen:

http://www.colour9.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album17

http://www.colour9.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album98

...this is how you make a very, very quiet PC. I've got it down to one fan (in the power supply), everything else is passively cooled by the big wrought-copper radiator.

It's not the most economical solution (the labour time alone makes it shockingly expensive), but then I've always preferred over-engineering wherever possible :-)

Oh, and I've also water-cooled my server box:

http://www.colour9.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album96

Now I just need to find a way of squeezing the pipework into a mini-ITX case and I can water-cool my MythTV setup...

Gavin