SunnyDoc

If your hardware wasn't powered up at the time of your leak and you truly dried the card thoroughly, I wouldn't think the leak caused any issues depending upon the severity of the leak. Your cause for concern would be any residue left over from hard water or coolant after it dries. In this case, if your video card is possibly the problem, pull it and replace it with an older card that is known to work. Run it through some similar situations that your current card is freezing up on and see if the freezing still occurs. If it doesn't, then you've isolated the issue. It would also help to minimize your system by pulling all non-essential hardware. Test it, then slowly start to replace cards until you find it locking up again. Testing a motherboard is a challenge. You can replace it with a working motherboard and see if the lockups still continue, but if you are anything like me, you don't keep a geek-cache of hardware laying around. (Disclaimer: I'm not saying this cache is a bad thing, I'm fully aware that I too am a geek, it's just an affectionate title) Ultimately; look at the silver lining -- EXCUSE TO UPGRADE!!! PS: Even though only 1 of your cards got wet, it doesn't rule out static electricity damage to those components. Although it's a safe bet that those cards remain undamaged, it doesn't hurt to rule them out.

I never had audio issues with CoD4, although I did with COD:WAW. My resolution, if you wanna call it that, was to scrap the on board audio. It's not the cheapest resolution, but not having audio driver updates since 2007 provides a unique challenge I wasn't prepared to handle any longer. With Windows 7 upcoming, I doubt my issues would get easier. With that said, one of the features I really like about vista is the ability to specify the audio output of each application. If this was a feature before, I'm possibly quite blind. Setting my little 16bit USB headset to handle voice chat applications like Ventrilo/Teamspeak/Xfire/Skype and have my speakers handle sounds from primary applications. Anyway; I know it's not always feasible to go running out and buy new hardware when current stuff isn't behaving properly. It just seemed to be an up hill battle I wasn't prepared to make moving forward.

PS: Bad drivers does not mean it's an issue with Vista. Vista doesn't write your drivers, your manufacturers do. Thus, it's bad driver support from the manufacturer, not the other way around.

You can make your own. It shouldn't be too hard as you don't really need to be too savy with a soldering iron to get it done. From any of the 4 pin molex connectors coming out of the power supply, run 2 20 awg wires from them down into your side panel fan. On mine, I have a red wire coming from the yellow pins on the molex connector and a black from a black ping right beside the yellow. They run into their corresponding colors once they meet the fan connection. I would siggest going out and purchasing a Y connector for one of the molex connections and pairing the wires with it. That way, you can disconnect the fan whenever you need to. If you want, I can take a picture and show you want I mean. That aside, Thermaltake does offer the ability to order the entire side panel if I'm not mistaken.

Gr4vitas: I'm actually kind of curious as to the issues you were having with Vista. You were reluctant to say specifically, which is why I'm curious. Ultimately; the question is a bit of a trap (being a tad transparent on my part). You say you anticipate Windows 7 and will be on board when it launches to give it an honest run at things to see if they hype is all that it's meant to be. I've played with the beta (x64) and I do like it, but I haven't adopted it as a primary OS so it kind of sits unused for the most part. Perhaps I'll change that in the future... but I digress. The point that I'm eluding to is that Windows 7, at it's core, is exactly that in which has already been said. It's Vista 'refined' -- although I don't agree -- but it's still an adequate comparison. The basis of any issue in which you are having at present with Vista, may very well be around come Win7. Sound drivers giving issue? Probably still going to be happening (my on board sound drivers haven't updated since 2006!) Graphics issues? I'm running latest 182.08 without issue on my 8800GTS (I'm a little late on this thread, these drivers just released March 03, 2009). I think, albeit a little blunt, the common vista issues you seem to be having are, unfortunately, yourself. You may want to heed the advice of giving Vista a bit longer than a day to identify and perhaps rectify the issues you are having. Your alternative being, at this point, to endure these issues come Windows 7. PS: 4Ghz Quad on Air? What're your temps running at?

Hello! I recently purchased, and received today, the Thermaltake Armor+ MX case to replace my old ghetto case that was barely holding everything together. After a couple reviews and a recent sale, I decided that it was the case I wanted to get without breaking the bank. After setting everything up and running the cables how I wanted them, I turned it on and much to my disappointment, it seems louder than my previous case. This is not to say that my hand-me-down old case was junk, it.. nm... off topic. Anyway, loud. The case had advertised that the front/rear fans ran at 17dba while the side, 23cm fan ran at 17dba with no fan speed control built in. As it stands now, the side fan seems to be running louder than the front/rear 120mm fans -- I'd say upwards of 5 - 8dba louder. It seems like I'm nitpicking the sound, which to be honest, I'm not. My concern would be if the fan was faulty and not running properly, it may inherently break down sooner. My options of consideration at this point are to RMA the side panel through Thermaltake (I've contacted them and they said this is an option) or install a fan controller and reduce the speed during idle times and turn it up during peak loads. Anyone with the chassis, or experience with the chassis, does this sound like a noise level I should be experiencing? As an aside -- my overclocked Q6600 @ 3.0Ghz (333.95 x 9.0) is running 35/35/28/32 with minimal applications running. I fear that reducing the side panel fan speed will affect my core temps and defeat the purpose of the controller. My heatsink is the Zalman CNPS9700 (similar -- mines the copper version) if that's helpful at all. I'd assume that the heatsink would be providing the highest amount of cooling to the processor and the side panel intake would only, if slowed, affect the cores by a few degrees.