[pHaestus]

"70dB screaming Delta fans.. bring em on if I can get 1C cooler die temp" seems a common sentiment.

I doubt that anyone in this forum uses the EHEs for anything other than heatsink testing. Maybe on hardforums or xtremesystems? I was wondering the other day after a week of listening to a 92mm Tornado if anyone actually ran them all the time. I can't imagine that personally.

"If I had to run my CPU at 60C and non-overclocked and could have a nearly silent system, I'd go for it. "

You can get die temperatures well below 60C with overclocked tbreds and bartons using water, an Eheim 1048, a big heatercore, and 2 120mm L1As at 6V. That's "nearly silent" and not decreasing the life of your system either.

And I am glad that you brought up laptops. If in the Zalman case you are restricted in video card and CPU choice by what won't get so hot it melts, then why not just buy a laptop? I have never had any complaints about the noise levels of my thinkpad, and the new t40s have fast CPUs, mobility 9600s and all the trimmings. When you add a $1000CAD case to the cost of a desktop then I suspect higher end notebooks start to become competitive. For that matter the new Apple G5s are pretty quiet and not that much more expensive than PCs...