PSU Supportd Active Fan Control?? 2 Optical Drives with sound??

[matt_hobson]

I am finalising the bits for a new PC - but have 2 questions:

1) My PSU CWT 450W supports "Active Fan Control". My Motherboard Abit IC7 - Max3 supports "Hardware monitoring: Including Fan speeds, Voltages, System environment temperature".

Does this mean that the motherboard will control the speed of the fan on the PSU...or the one on the motherboard itself...or one(if i get one) for over the CPU? Will i need to buy any extra cables for this "monitoring"?

2) I will have 1* DVD/RW and 1* CD/RW. How are the Sound Cards set up so that they will allow me to have sound output from both drives onto the Sound Card? (I think there needs to be some kind of header input port) - I have heard that with Win XP you dont need to hook it up to the header port - is this true? If so then how is it physically done

[mike_w]

2) If you're talking about that little cable that runs from the CD drive to the sound card, I haven't put it on and with Windows 2000 I can use use CDs etc without a problem.

[LayZeh]

1) The PSU itself will have a temperature sensor that monitors continously the strain that the PSU is under, the fans will be adjusted with respect to the strain the PSU is under. Obviously the more strain it's under the more heat it will produce and the higher the speed the fans will run. The motherboard has no say in the speed the PSU fans run in the model you've mentioned.

[directhex]

windows will do digital audio from cd drives, without any need for the cd audio cable.

msdos (95, 98, me) are somewhat spottier in their support for that.

[matt_hobson]

Thanks guys,

Sorry to be a complete idiot - I assume that i will have 2 optical sound cables (1 from CD/RW, 1 from DVD/RW), but how does it all actually work then?

I assume that the Sound Card will have just the 1 slot for the Sound cable from an optical drive?

Should the sound cables both go on the motherboard?

Should one go on the motherboard and one on the Sound Card?

[directhex]

if you use a sound card, it will usually only have ONE input connector for an msdos-style analog CD Audio connector, but may have an additional connector marked Aux. A motherboard will also only have the one connector (and usually no Aux).

It's somewhat easier just to use a version of Windows released in the last 4 years (2K, XP), so you don't have to bother with a CD audio cable

[matt_hobson]

Thanks,

I will be using Windows XP so i shouldnt have a problem. Just want to make sure everything will be ok.

This may be a very silly question... but if you dont use the CD audio cables - then how does the sound get to the sound card

Will the sound travel down the IDE cable

If so is it better to connect one drive to the sound card with the audio cables(whichever i would want to use more for audio), and leave one down its IDE cable?

[BUFF]

Thanks,



This may be a very silly question... but if you dont use the CD audio cables - then how does the sound get to the sound card

Will the sound travel down the IDE cable

Correct, it goes down the IDE.

[matt_hobson]

thanks

Would it be better to go straight to Soundcard for the optical drive i use more. As i will be using my CD/RW for most things (games, work, music etc,) and the DVD RW just for creating DVD's (i have another DVD Player), shall i plug the sound cable from the CD RW to the soundcard for "better" quality or is the difference negligible/better through IDE?

[directhex]

quality will be better via IDE - the cd data is downloaded via the cable, interpreted, deciphered, and ultimately played, all on the PC. with the sound cable, it is sent (via analog) to the sound card and just played back. and those little analog cables aren't usually of the highest quality...

[matt_hobson]

OK, so my best bet is not to use the audio cables at all, just plug the IDE cables in then?

Cheers guys for all the help