In my previous post I discussed my initial impressions of the Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11. In this post I continue my review, focusing on fan speed and noise. This is the second post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11. Summary: - High fan speed and noise while under load. - Fan never returns to silent operation after load is removed. - Need DXVA capable player for video playback. [Update: 26 May 2010] I tested the Beta BIOS, and it produced significantly better results. Effectively the new BIOS runs the CPU at 65C vs. 50C, as such you may be able to achieve the same results with the current BIOS by simply changing the CPU temperature threshold to 65C. ...

I am sharing my experiences and first impressions of the Zotac ZBOXHD-ID11-U mini PC. In the coming days I will connect the device to my home theater, and review the behavior running Windows Media Center, XBMC, and Media-Portal. This is the first post in a series of posts related to the Zotac ZBOX ZBOXHD-ID11. Summary: - To enter the BIOS, cold boot and press DEL. - To select a boot device, cold boot and press F11. - To enable Aero, run the Windows Experience Index assessment. - To improve performance, install updated drivers from the hardware vendor site. - To correct HDMI audio output, install updated drivers from the hardware vendor site. - To reduce fan noise, change the BIOS temperature thresholds. - The fan is loud and the box runs hot. ...

I previously wrote about my impressions of the DroboPro, and in case I was not clear, I was not impressed. I recently read the announcement of the new QNAP TS-859 Pro, and from the literature it seemed like a great device, high performance, feature rich, and power saving. The TS-859 Pro is now available, and I compared it with the DroboPro, and against a regular W2K8R2 file server. ...

I recently replaced my DELL monitors with NEC monitors. The primary reason why I replaced DELL with NEC is color reproduction, I could never quite get the wide gamut DELL’s to look right. I chose the NEC MultiSync 90 series monitors because they have excellent color reproduction, and are reasonably affordable. The alternative would have been EIZO ColorEdge monitors, but they are significantly more expensive. Since I had a hard time calibrating the wide color gamut DELL monitors in the past, it was very important that the NEC monitors be correctly calibrated. ...

I recently built a new home theater PC using an Intel DP45SG motherboard and a Lian-Li PC-C33B case. I am replacing my existing HTPC that appears to be not quite compatible with Windows 7. The existing machine uses a Lian-Li PC-C31B case, Intel DG33TL motherboard, and ATI Sapphire HD 2600XT video card. I started documenting the new machine installation, but the new case was on backorder, and I had all components except the new case, so I tried the HD 5750 card in the old machine. ...

In this post I am describing, and partly reviewing, my experience using a DroboPro over iSCSI. I have been aware of the Drobo storage devices for some time now, but never used one or knew anybody that owned one. Recently a coworker’s large home RAID system had a controller failure, and after recovering the data, he migrated to a DroboPro using iSCSI. After he told me how quiet the device is, and how little power it uses, I wanted to try one out myself. ...

In my previous post I talked about Western Digital RE4-GP 2TB drive problems. In this post I present my test results for 2TB drives from Seagate and Hitachi. The test setup is the same as for the RE4-GP testing, except that I only tested 4 drives from each manufacturer. Unlike the enterprise class WD RE4-GP and Hitachi Ultrastar A7K2000 drives, the Seagate Barracuda LP drive is a desktop drive. The equivalent should have been a Seagate Constellation ES drive, but as far as I know the 2TB drives are not yet available. ...

In my previous two posts I described my research into the power saving features of various enterprise class RAID controllers. In this post I detail the results of my testing of the Western Digital RE4-GP enterprise class “green” drives when used with hardware RAID controllers from Adaptec, Areca, and LSI. To summarize, the RE4-GP drive fails with a variety of problems, Adaptec, Areca, and LSI acknowledge the problem and lay blame on WD, yet WD insists there are no known problems with the RE4-GP drives. ...

This post continues from my last post on power saving RAID controllers. It turns out the Adaptec 5 series controllers are not that workstation friendly. I was testing with Western Digital drives; 1TB Caviar Black WD1001FALS, 2TB Caviar Green WD20EADS, and 1TB RE3 WD1002FBYS. I also wanted to test with the new 2TB RE4-GP WD2002FYPS drives, but they are on backorder. I found that the Caviar Black WD1001FALS and Caviar Green WD20EADS drives were just dropping out of the array for no apparent reason, yet they were still listed in ASM as if nothing was wrong. ...

In my last post I discussed the calibration of my DELL 2408WFP monitors. After calibration, and changing the monitor settings, the monitors looked pretty good, but I later found that the monitor colors looked all weird again. It turns out that the monitors reverted to their default settings, invalidating the calibration. It seems to me that as soon as my PC goes to sleep, or the monitors go into power saving mode, or power off, that on turning back on they revert to default settings. ...