Sony VGX-XL3 - Page 106

REPLY: Hello Oliver (and Francis),

Oliver, I'm glad to hear that you are finding the settings that work best for your LCD monitor; and the really nice thing about Catalyst Control Center is that if you ever really mess things up you can click/select the "defaults" button to go back to the "factory setups", and start over.

It's good that you were able to find the remnants of drivers from your old Sony/NVidia card and dispose of those. Francis, for your video card replacement it's best to remove all of those associated video and audio passthrough drivers before you begin your replacement (i.e., before you shutdown the computer. I read an article about a year ago which noted old driver remnants as one of the leading 'issues' with video/graphics card replacements, so always good to just start with a clean machine.

Interestingly enough, NVidia recommends removing its drivers and utilities in Control Panel. I haven't done it that way, but can't see any harm -- off hand -- in removing the NVidia and associated Signatel drivers/applications in Control Panel (Programs & Features) and THEN going into Device Manager and searching to see if anything remains which needs removal before shutting down and pulling the power cable to begin the cards swap-out.

A couple of tidbits came to mind when reading Oliver's post:
Tidbit a). If ever you have a glitch with the Catalyst Software Suite (driver issue, utility, access, etc.) reloading the software may not "fix" the issue. If a driver gets messed up or conflicted it tends to remain conflicted right through a reload of the software,or even an upgrade of the software.

I have found through personal experience that what works is to just uninstall everything, pop in the Sapphire CD, and start fresh. Remove all of the associated drivers in Device Manager -- same process as noted before; ): "Display Adapters": ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series; "Sound, video and game controllers": AMD High Definition Audio Device
remember to select "Show hidden devices" from the drop-down menu under "view" to be sure to uninstall the drivers which begin with AMD and ATi prefix.

Then start fresh with the CD software suite which came with the card. After all is restored to a fresh install state, then go to the AMD site and download a fresh copy of the most current Catalyst Software Suite for your card series, and your version of Windows, and make the upgrade.

Tidbit b). Oliver, I have suffered some of the same scaling and image issues you described in your post, on my own 720p LCD HDTV. What I have found works by far the best for my LCD is selecting the "Native Resolution" of the LCD in "Basic" mode, rather than selecting 720p" which forces a non-native line resolution setup. I got a much clearer, brighter, deeper colors display in "Basic" native resolution that I was able to achieve for 720p, no matter how much I tweaked the settings.

To give that a try, if you wish, first look at the literature/specs for your LCD to re-confirm the native resolution for your monitor (e.g., mine is 1360 x 768).

Then open Catalyst Control Center, select "Desktop Management > Desktop Properties > then scroll to the "Basic" option (rather than "HDTV") and select your native resolution as recommended for your LCD model.

For my set the appearance differences are greatly improved using the Sapphire "defaults" and native resolution settings rather than forcing 720p. I don't have a clue WHY this is the case, but hey, whatever works!

If you want to give it a try to see if you get similar display quality improvements, I suggest starting with the Sapphire card "defaults" setting and then set for your LCD's native resolution. It's the only resolution setting I use now, for all viewing scenarios, and I haven't messed with 720p or 1080i in months.

Cheers!
Robert.

Upscaling through HDMI? You mean as a fact of hardware?

Beats me. I never had reason to even ponder that, may I ask why it's important?

Because both the ATI avermedia (or whatever it's called) driver, and for that matter TMT on its own, both upscale wonderfully and in the background and invisibly. I stopped buying Blu-Rays because with the notable exception of "Planet Earth," my BRDs don't look appreciably better than a DVD on the XL3.

REPLY: Hi Jeff. Well, yes, I think I mean a combination of hardware/firmware and how it interracts with the DVD playback software applications. Probably mostly the video graphics card video processing.

Why it's important? Well, that's sort of trivial, really. Beyond general curiosity, it is that the free-standing Sony "up-scaling" progressive-scan DVD player sits atop my VGX-XL2, and if the "up-scaling" of DVD feature is redundant to what the XL2 is providing, then I can move that free-standing DVD player to another room.

After writing my previous post today, I started looking for "up-scaling" info not specific to the XL* systems. I found an interesting article on Ask.com which suggests (to me, anyway) that given the internals of our VGX-XL* systems hardware, and the Sapphire HD video cards providing the video out processing, and the HDMI out to the HDTV, .... it almost certainly IS "up-scaling DVD. And as noted, I can't see any diference at all in the DVD image quality from the XL2 vs. the Sony DVD player.

So, I think I'll move the "redundant" up-scaling DVD player to the den, and then I won't have to buy one for that room (which doubles as a guest room from time to time).

Here's the link/URL for that Ask.com article that I found:
http://hometheater.about.com/od/home...vidupscale.htm

Point #5, under "Points to remember" (near the bottom of the page) is especially interesting. I had no idea that HDTVs are also designed to "up-scale".

I'm glad you made that comment about Blu-ray, first, Jeff. I completely agree with you. I have rented a couple of Blu-ray disks that were sort of "special" films. But I haven't bought any. DVD looks pretty good on these machines, so I haven't really seen any point to focus on Blu-ray.

Cheers!
Robert.

I haven't done anything radical - just upgraded the RAM to 2MB, added a larger HDD, and installed Windows 7 (32bit Home Premium). I was one of the first to buy the XL1's when Sony first stated selling them. It worked well in the early days, but eventually, XP MCE started giving me trouble, and then the XL1B started to go south. I was going to junk this baby when my XL1B died, but the upgrade to W7 gave this PC a new lease on life. I then connected it to my Windows Home Server, running MyMovies, and I had a fully-functional HTPC again. I was running a MSI GT210 GPU for a while, and it worked well, but wasn't quite up to the task of playing Blu-Ray or bitstreaming HD Audio. The Zotac GT520 solved those problems. Frankly, I no longer feel the urge to replace my XL1 anymore. I love the design, and it just plain works. I have it connected to a Denon AVR-1712 and Samsung UN60D6000 HDTV.

The Saphire 5450 arrived. I uninstalled the nvidia drivers. I physicaly removedt he nvidia card and installed the 5450. Next I installed CCC.

All working. There are a lot of settings in CCC. I'll have to see what they are.

went to msconfig to stop Club Vaio from starting up and discovered several nvidia drivers set to startup I disabled them

Disabled Sigmatel in the bios where it's called Azalia. Avermedia and spdif dissappeared fro device manager. I enabled Sigmatel again as it controls the line-in and line-out.


@ Robert: Couldn't see a screen printed number on the motherboard. The is a sticker with a long string of numbers but there so tiny I couldn't work out 6,B,8,5

Have a read of this

http://pcplus.techradar.com/2010/11/19/geek-feng-shui/

Thanks, I followed your guide and it has improved my display, I found that my tv is also 1366x768. I will keep this set up until I get a 1080p tv, I just cant justify it, whilst my tv is working fine.


Great stuff, how is it running? have you ran the windows experience index? and have you over clocked it?
I am interested if our cards get the similar scores, I want to make sure, I don't have any driver issues.

Cheers, Oliver

Not at XL301. I'll check the windows experience although I don't have much faith in it. My suspicious mode thinks it's just Microsoft giving a plug to hardware vendors, we see low numbers and upgrade.

I ran the auto tune in CCC.

I have 3Dmark and other benchmarking tools and will try those


Edit Graphics 4.7, Gaming graphics 5.2 windows experience

Update:

My system consists of 1 TV (Sony Bravia), 1 Cable Box (UPC), 1 A/V Reciever (Onkyo), 1 BD Player (Sony), 1 VGX-XL301 (Sony), 1 Turntable (Sony), 1 VCR (Philips), 1 Broadband Router (UPC).

I've upgraded the VGX-XL301, to 4GB of RAM, a second hard drive (1TB) and the Sapphire Radeon HD5450.

I will not be using the AverMedia cards and may remove them. My turntable plays through the XL301 via Line in and Line out. I can also record LPs to the hard drive using Sonic Stage.

The graphics card works well although I have not tried it with Netflix yet.

Interesting facts: 10 power leads and approx 22 or more interconnects. That's equivalent to about 5 entangled octopuses.

After several months of looking for a cosmetically perfect XL* system for my "XL4 conversion" project, UPS has managed to destroy my purchase in shipment; crunched the front door assembly and broke off the silver left-side panel. And something is rattling around inside the case, as well. I'm not even going to look, nor am I going to unpack the two XL1B disk changers. The whole kit-and-caboodle is going back to UPS.

So I'm back to square one, restarting my search.

Good thing I didn't go ahead and order any of the replacement internal components. Who knows how long it will be before I find another perfect XL. Sheesh.

Cheers!
Robert.

>PC2-5300, DDR2, 240 pin, 667MHz, 1.8V, CAS 5, non-registered/non-ECC

Mega ouch!

My eSATA enclosure for my public drive died and I moved it back inside the XL3, meaning I had to give up my little 4GB SSD board I was using for my swapfile. I hate swapfiles and wish I had enough RAM not to need one anymore.

What's the current thinking on > 4GB for 64-bit Win7? Bearing in mind that I current have (3) 1GB and (1) 512MB, would I get (based on today's Newegg prices, PC2-5300, DDR2, 240 pin, 667MHz, 1.8V, CAS 5, non-registered/non-ECC right?)

$48 for 2x2GB to replace the 512MB and one of the 1GB (6GB total)
$71 for 1x4GB to replace the 512MB (7GB total)
$96 for 4x2GB to replace all the RAM (8GB total)
$142 for 2x4GB to replace the 512MB and one of the 1GB (10GB total)


or some other combination (16GB is not an option unless I can do it for under $200)? The last choice is where I'm leaning but I'd like to be closer to $100 shipped - shy of that I'm thinking the second choice because I could always add another 4GB later when the prices drop - ideas?

EDIT: I'm sure that somehow I ordered the wrong thing and I will be disappointed, but I found this on Amazon and ordered it...it sure likes like the right thing, $110 for 8GB (10GB total) and free shipping so I hope this is the "right stuff"...

REPLY: Jeff, as noted in earlier posts the Intel literature about the P965 + ICH8DH chipset (the chipset in your XL3) suggests it only supports 8GB maximum of RAM on two channels (i.e., 4GB per channel). You are proposing to use 10GB, including 8GB on one channel. I don't see that working, do you?
Given that limitation, for best performance I would go for four (4) matched 2GB dimms, in the best system-clock cycles pairing recommended for your XL3:
http://www.intel.com/cd/products/ser...ets/288795.htm
http://www.intel.com/content/www/ph/...ml?wapkw=(ICH8)

Here's a good whitepaper on the P965 chipset. Note that although it will support 8GB maximum using DDR2 533 or 667 dimms, it will only support 4GB maximum memory if you install DDR2 800 dimms (see: 3.1 "Memory Technology Supported"):
http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/whitepaper/313207.pdf

Cheers!
Robert.

PS. This is what Crucial recommends for your XL3 system
http://www.crucial.com/store/listpar...System&Cat=RAM
Newegg currently has about a dozen 2GB dimm options meeting those specs., beginning at about $25 per 2GB stick (including .99 shipping per stick)

PPS. Jeff, I'm curious about your use of three (3) 1GB DIMM sticks and one (1) 512MB DIMM stick in your XL3 system. Isn't the SONY/ASUStek motherboard in the XL3 system, with the Intel P965 + ICH8DH chipset, configured with four (4) memory DIMM slots on two channels? With dual-channel memory support there is an advantage to installing memory in matched pairs because this will increase your memory bandwidth and performance. I'm surprised you weren't running four (4) matched 1GB DIMMS to max out your supported memory when you were running Vista 32-bit. What am I missing?

Oh shoot. I'm lucky. I have gotten stuff from China and Russia and no damage. The stuff from Russia came tied with thin, dirty brown twine like we used to have here years ago. I ordered 3 metres of plastic trunking from France which got slightly damaged on the way. it was on the back against the wall so it didn't show.


Don't know enough about American prices to comment, only that they are a lot less than ours.

For those of us using the on-board Intel RAID controller there is an Intel driver update available. If your current installed driver is still 8.9.0.1023 or earlier, this updates to driver 10.8.0.1003 for support of "High-capacity & fault-tolerant SATA RAID 5 arrays, high-performance & fault-tolerant SATA RAID 10 arrays, high-performance SATA RAID 0 arrays & redundant SATA RAID 1 arrays on select Intel® 5 Series, 4 Series, 3 Series, 965, 975X, 955X and 945 chipset-based platforms...."

First run the "Intel Driver Update Utility" to identify and confirm current relevant driver updates for your system:
http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect?iid=dc_iduu

At the bottom of the results list under "RAID" you will see if the driver 10.8.0.1003 update is applicable for your system. If it is, you can either download the 12.27MB "multi-language" driver from the link on the results page, or use the 6.89MB "English only" driver down-loadable from the following page:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...eng&iid=dc_rss

Paraphrasing the immortal line from "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" ...

The new RAID volume setup and management interface with driver version 10.8.0.1003 is much improved and very user friendly, and runs in the tray with a taskbar icon for access. And the RAID tutorial in the "Help" tab of the user interface is the best written description of RAID 0, 1, 5 & 10 array alternatives that I have read. This update is a winner!

The tutorial also describes that the update now supports volumes greater than 2GB, so long as the system drive is not included in the RAID volume and the RAID volume does not use MBR mode (looks ideal for supporting three (3) 1.5TB or 2TB HDDs in a RAID5 array, for a total of 3TB or 4TB storage volume with full data redundancy protection).


WARNING! WARNING WILL ROBINSON! : Be sure to follow the instructions in the READ ME file for installation. Read the whole file. Don't blame me if you don't follow instructions and "screw the pooch". I'm just the messenger (and not adverse to reporting you to the ASPCA!).

The driver update should be installed after the operating system has been installed. "F6" and RAID BIOS configurations need to be performed prior to installation of this driver.

IMPORTANT: If you forgot to enable ACHI & Matrix RAID in the BIOS prior to upgrading the operating system from Vista to Windows 7 don't do it now, or "Hello blue screen of death"

On THAT parting note ....

Cheers!
Robert.

AMD has issued its latest update to the Catalyst Software Suite for their RADEON cards (Sapphire, etc.). Version 12.1 at 107MB file size.

If you decide to install the update, be sure to verify your correct series card and OS for your download, and grab the entire suite, not the individual drivers. Here's the link/URL:
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Cheers!
Robert.

Yeah oh crap, I knew there was some reason I wasn't going to like my upgrade choice...

First off, my "Mega Ouch!" comment was supposed to be directed towards Ren's UPS crunching situation and I managed to screw that up with an errant cut-n-paste. Hope you get that straightened out, or at least somehow turn a profit on it.

Okay, as I explained somewhere in this thread, it is not true that the XL3 requires matched memory in pairs. I know some sources say that, but it simply isn't true. That is not to say that there aren't some combinations that won't work, but it is a false statement as an empirical rule.

The reason I went for 3x1 + .5GB was that, since I had already experimentally proven that the XL3 would run fine with mixed RAM , I did not want to exceed the theoretical 3.7something limit on ADDRESSABLE memory just in case something unforeseen would object - conflicting memory locations or shadow video RAM or something previously unimaginable. This was back when we were first starting to experiment with pushing the 32-bit RAM limit, WPBGuy had shown up from TGB with 8GB of RAM and 64-bit Windows and created a stir. As it turned out, of course, you can install 4GB of RAM in an XL with nothing untoward happening at all, so my worry was unfounded.

Next, I completely ignore all recommendations of maximum RAM on sites like Memory4Less or, for that matter, manufacturers' sites like Crucial. The reason is simple: I don't know if they are making recommendations on what the theoretical capability is, or on what the stock OEM configuration was.

If in fact you cannot load more than 8GB into an XL3 then I will have to ditch all my existing RAM (goodbye 10gigs!) and load all the RAM into just one bank, leaving the other bank empty. And if each bank can handle only 4GB at a time, that means I'll have to put one 4GB in each bank and find my "dummy" 0GB spacers (boy I hope I didn't thown those out).

BTW although I would not have bought them because they are price-prohibitive anyway, I see that would can buy SINGLE 8GB memory card of this type, so I'm really glad I didn't get one or especially two of those!

So, provided that this is in fact at least the correct and working memory, I'm still not disappointed for $110, I would have had to had spent less than $27.50 a pop for (4) 2GB modules to be ahead of the game and that's not much more that what they're selling for and this way I get to experiment to see what's really possible. And who knows? They said 1080p was impossible on an XL, maybe this will work. Worst case is I toss my existing RAM (or offer it to somebody here) and put one 4GB and one dummy in each bank and lose a couple dollars.

If it makes it through POST, I'll run a long-term memory checker. I just realized: I have no memory checker that can access more than 4GB - I've never needed one before!

Ren, the XL3 allows (4) SATA drives, one of which is used by the Blu-Ray leaving (3).

My primary drive (SSD) must be one of those, the XL3 has major problems booting from a daughterboard, so that leaves (2).

I previously had a LaCie expansion card with two eSATA and no internal SATA ports. That was completely fubar'd under Windows 7 so I replaced it with a card with (1) internal and (1) external, yeilding (3) available internals. That let me connect my public drive to the external, one of my JFSA drives to the card's internal, and one to the motherboard; leaving exactly one motherboard port for my little swapfile.

Since for the moment I have no working external eSATA enclosure, when I moved my public drive back to the XL3, something had to go.

I decided to increase my RAM and try to eliminate the need to a swapfile because
a) I hate to give up eSATA completely because it's a lot faster to do backups than USB and I couldn't find a card with both reliable eSATA and multiple internal SATA; and
b) even with the improvements in solid-state reliability, the fact is that a swapfile rewrites data constantly in the same disk location and increases the likelihood of failure (load balancing helps, and my newest main drive does TRIM; but even that only identifies and locks out bad bits, it does nothing to prevent them in the first place)

So I figure that the best option is to simply have enough RAM to virtually preclude running out of memory in the first place.

Robert and Jeff,

Just a note on my upgrades. I put in the Sapphire HD 5450. While I had the case open, I put in a 1TB hard drive and also two sticks of memory, each 1 Gb. They were spare sticks I had and turned out to have the exact same timings as the original two sticks.

Robert, I couldn't get any useful numbers for you from the motherboard.


Watched Netflix last night and everything went well.

Cheers!
Robert.

REPLY: Excellent, Francis! I'm pleased for your results. It's sounds like the HD5450 cards, for you and Oliver, really fit the bill.

And don't fret not being able to find the Sony P/N and Sony/ASUStek model numbers on the motherboard. One of these days someone on our discussion thread will do a more 'invasive' upgrade of a US spec XL3 or a UK spec XL301, or 302 model, and we can confirm those numbers then. I do appreciate your remembering to look for those for me, Francis. Thank you.

Cheers!
Robert.

Cheers!
Robert.

"A Dell Pickle" Noooooooooooooooooooo

Ok, the first glitch shown up after installing the HD 5450. As I installed a new hard drive as well I can't say for definite it is the graphics card is the culprit.

If the screen saver kicks in, when I go back to the main screen I get no audio and my A/V receiver says HDMI pass through.

Will keep all of you updated

Hi Francis,

I haven't had any issues since installing my hd5450 except a few nvidia driver issues (driver sweeper sorted me out) and the settings (sorted thanks to Roberts helpful post)

I have my hd5450 set to max in the overdrive menu on ccc but this should make it less stable so I doubt itis anything to do with that.
I was going to list my spec in my signature but it seems its against forum rules?! So I will list it here...

xl301 running Windows 7 32bit, 4gig Ram, Radion hd5450 and e6700 @2.66 GHz CPU.

Do you have the same audio drivers as me? When I hover my curser over the sound icon in the bottom left it says "AMD HDMI Output" In device manager under sound video and game controllers, I have AMD High Def Audio Device with driver version 7.12.0.7704 and HD audio device with driver from Microsoft version 6.1.7601.17514

Don't know if that helps at all? Please let us know how you resolve it

Oliver

EDIT: I forgot to say that my audio is through HDMI to my TV

After reading here about noisy power supplies I am sure mine is loader than it should be, my vaio is defiantly not as quiet as Id like.

I would like to ask for advice to keep our systems as quiet as possible, I plan to remove the top off my vaio, hover everywhere (carefuly) and use a straw to blow dust away from the hard to reach places and fans. Then I plan to use a very small amount of WD40 on the ball bearing parts of the fans. Finally I plan to use dampners (cheap foam furniture pads) anywhere that I think might help, like the HD maybe.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Also my keyboard annoying misses letters while I'm typing and loses connection alot whilst using it, I have to press ramdon buttons to get it connected again.
I do sit around 8 foot away from the PC, have my PC near to ground and have furniture in the way between the keyboard and PC, but, is there any way to improve the signal at all? Does anyone else have this problem at all?

These are my only 2 issue with the PC so I hope I can fix/improve them.

I havn't been able to repeat the above, which is good news.

I decided to install Win 7 x64 on my second hard drive. The installation went well except after each restart the BIOS screen stopped at the CPU line. I had to switch off the xl301 and back on. The boot sequence completed and I get a dual boot for Win 7 and Vista. As has been mentioned in the thread, the eject button on the dvd player doesent work. As I'm going to use win 7 for netflix, I won't need the drive. Of course the Win 7 installation will be in the drive but if I boot to Vista I'll be able to remove it.

I'm on my quod core at the moment, I'll check device manager tomorrow

REPLY: Hello Oliver and all,

Don't spray WD40 anywhere near your PC!!!
If you ever have to lubricate a PC component, remove the component from the case, clean it and use a tiny, sparing amount of the appropriate, non-conductive type for the component.
But I personally wouldn't lubricate ANYTHING. If it needs lubrication, ...replace it.
I would replace a PC fan, rather than lubricating a PC fan. All you are going to accomplish with using lubricants on non-sealed moving parts inside a PC case is to create greasy dust and dirt magnets. Soon dust won't be your problem anymore because sludge will cause your moving components to seize up.
To counter Nike's advice "Just don't do it!"

Don't use a straw to blow off dust inside a PC!!!
If you want to kill your PC, that's a very good way to kill it. Your breath is far too moist and you will blow conductive spittle moisture all over your components and printed circuits.
Use cans of "moisture free" "CFC free" non-conductive pressurized air (such as NORAZZA, for example) which are made for removing dust from electronics.

Because noise reduction is your goal, before beginning your big dust off, I suggest doing a pre-cleaning evaluation of the sources of noise using a "Mechanics Stethoscope" before you start cleaning.

"A what?", you may ask.

A "Mechanics Stethoscope" is a just a non-conductive 3' to 4' length of 1/4" plastic tubing; available at any hardware or pet/aquarium supply store. It will allow you to identify the sources of noise in a running PC with all the devices active, and even under load (such as burning a DVD).
By determining the point-sources of noise inside the case with your "Mechanics Stethoscope" you can then shut-down, disconnect power, and do your thorough (but GENTLE) cleaning; giving extra attention to the noise sources.

Here are the steps I recommend:

With your XL* system connected to power but not running

1. Remove the top cover
2. Discharge static electricity by touching the top of your power supply with your hands
3. Wear a pair of non-conductive rubber gloves and startup the PC
4. With the computer fully booted, hold one end of the non-conductive plastic tubing in your ear and slowly and carefully probe every nook and cranny of the inside of the case with the open end of the tubing. The sound/noise is amplified, and localized by being transmitted directly to your ear through the tubing. Don't forget the pair of case fans on the right rear behind the CPU cooling assembly. Make note of all of the noise producers, especially those which are the most obvious audible noise producers.
5. Next, put the PC under load (such as burning a DVD) and do another noise evaluation including the optical drive, power supply and other removable devices while under load.
6. Power down.

You now have a list of "noise culprits" upon which to focus your attention during your GENTLE cleaning operation. (I emphasize GENTLE. Don't aggressively pursue that last grain of dust because the system will just begin collecting dust again the minute you are finished with your cleaning).

Disconnect the power cable and cables to any other peripheral separately powered device (HDMI, Fire-wire, USB, etc) from the rear I/O panel on the XL* system case, and proceed with your GENTLE cleaning.
NOTE: There are some good PC Cleaning tutorials on-line (PC Magazine, How-To-Geek, etc), so no need to re-list those steps here. But I recommend following one or more of those tutorials for cleaning your system. You're only going to do this every couple of years or so it's worth taking the time to do it right.

Be extra careful to avoid introducing sources of moisture and static electricity. And also remember that even house dust can be conductive, so it's a good idea to make sure you are grounded, or at least continually discharge static (touching the top of the power supply), when you touch the interior devices of the PC.

I always wear a ground strap (about $2 at the computer supply store), and/or handle any devices which have printed circuits with rubber gloves.
Many will tell you this is "overkill." And those who say that are also the same people whom are continually trying to trace and rid their own systems of little operational bugs and replacing components and motherboards. Coincidence?

Once your system is clean, and you have double-checked that nothing was dislodged/disconnected by your GENTLE cleaning, repeat the noise evaluation process, again using your "Mechanics Stethoscope", and re-list the devices which require further attention for addressing noise.

The GOOD thing about the noise producers in the XL" systems is that they are all replaceable. The primary culprits are the spinning HDDs, the case fans, the optical drive and the power supply.
If you replace case fan(s), spend a little more and go for quality ultra-quiet ball-bearing type. Fans made for quiet operation note that fact prominently on the packaging. They're relatively cheap anyway, so don't scrimp.
I have read, but cannot confirm, that the PSU cooling fan is also replaceable. To be honest, unless we were all to post the model numbers of our own power supply's I can't even confirm that we all have the same model PSU in our various model XL* systems. I do know that if my power supply turned out to be one of the main noise culprits, I would first crack the cover of mine and try to replace the fan before I would even think of "wandering into the wilderness" trying to track down a replacement 18-pin TFX form-factor PSU (are you familiar with the expression "As rare as hen's teeth"? Well THESE are rarer!)
Replacement optical drives are relatively cheap, and plentiful. New, re-writable slim-line slot-load Blu-ray drives are available for about $100 (US). Re-writable DVD drives are as little as $35 (US).
If you determine that one (or both, if you have a RAID pair) of your HDDs is a noise culprit, that's a different matter. Because of the current shortage, prices are near double what they were before the floods (and projections are they are going to remain spendy for quite a few more months).
Jeff and I have both found, and posted on this thread, that the Samsung SpinPoint drives are noticeably quieter and cooler running that some other manufacturers. Seagate has bought the Samsung HDD division, and it remains unclear what the acquisition means as regards production and labeling of Samsung and Seagate drives.
But if a noisy HDD is a problem, note that HDDs often run noisier before they fail. Replace it before it fails, and try to buy a "quiet HDD", rather than just a cheap HDD.
Compared to current HDD prices, SDD's (solid state drives) are have become relatively more price-attractive for use as System/Boot/Applications drives (and storing your data and media files on a quieter 5400 or 5900 rpm HDD). SDD's have no moving parts, so they are totally silent.

Cheers!
Robert.