Here's something to think about. The AnandTech Forums actually eat up more in bandwidth costs than the advertising on the Forums actually brings in, by a good amount. Because of the nature of the Forums, they actually eat up more bandwidth than the main site in spite of the fact that the main site does more traffic. In the business world, when something isn't making money but is rather losing money on a consistent basis that is almost a given that you kill that part of the company off - yet the forums are still around and I personally go up to Pittsburgh along with Jason Clark almost every quarter to perform upgrades/maintanence on the servers just to make sure that the Forums are running as quickly as possible. So why on earth do I keep them around? Because, personally I like them and I do like to provide you all with a place where you can feel welcome and really feel like you're a part of the family because you are.
If it weren't for advertising on the main site, there would be no Forums. I am currently working on some value added features that would help branch out the AnandTech business model to take care of things like the Forums. If you call that greedy, try spending close to a quarter million dollars a year just to keep a community running because you actually care for it not because it's bringing in a profit.
Sorry if I'm coming off a bit too passionate about this but what can I say, I've put the past four years of my life into this and I am quite passionate about it.
Take care,
Anand