Cool new look for an old System

GWillow

GWillow

GWillow

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16 Jun 2003
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818
Location
Romney Marsh, Kent
competed - 'Cooler' new look for an old System

Hi all,

quick summary of my setup

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
Athlon XP 3200 Barton
Zalman CNPS7000A CPU Cooler
Radeon 9800Pro
Audigy 2
2 * 512Mb Crucial PC3200 DDR
NEC ND-3520A DVD-RW
PlexWrite CD-RW 16/10/40
1 * Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 200Gb SATA 8mb Cache H/D
Enermax Noisetaker 485W PSU
Full tower case (can't remember name but iss bright blue)

Basically cooling is as above and both sides left off the case (which sits under an open window).

Just recently this has proved to much for the old girl so I'm looking at an upgrade (currently at 42C idle).

I quite like the look of the Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming case and read some good writeups on it.

Would this be ok with my rig and with a future upgrade to a core2duo in a couple of months? I did read some posts about people saying there wasn't much space inside.

Any opinions ?

Also, would the Asrock 775DUAL-VSTA motherboard and an Intel CPU Core 2 Duo E6600 be good as a straight replacement for my m/b & cpu (is there a new version of the E6600 coming out soon?).

Thanks in advance for any advice, especially about the case.

Willow

P.S. I don't plan to overclock at all.
 
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I was kinda hoping on not spending too much (the wife doesn't know yet ;) ), the Antec would be towards the top end limit. What I liked about it was the fact that it came with the fans included so I didn't have to buy any extra to the case.
 
By PC7 I assume you mean this

What fan setup would you recommend getting with this, are the ones that come with it suffient, and are they quiet. The reason I don't have fans on mine at the moment is that they were too noisy (having the sides off seems ok at the moment).
 
OK, that gives me something to read up on on the forum tomorrow (the cases you mentioned and some fans (120mm?) - I don't know much about this side of PC's..

Thanks for your help
 
I tend to agree with you, I think I'll go for the Zen and put the £30 saving towards a new m/b (Asrock dual PCI/AGP thingy).

However, I'm still willing to be convinced into a different direction.
 
OK, if I was to push the boat out and go for the PC7 would I need to buy any fans or are the ones that come with it adequate?
 
Thanks Yewen, that was a superb post and really made things clear.

It certainly sounds like the Zen will cater for my needs, as I'm used to a 'normal' tower with currently no cooling (and has been this way for a few years now) I don't think I need to spend the extra money on the ultimate low cost case (PC7+).

My setup is never going to be state of the art and I'm not into overclocking so I just need something to house and cool a stock PC which will, in time, have more powerful components in it (just probably not leading edge components)

In fact the £30 saving will go towards my slow upgrade to the big world of 64bit, the saving will almost buy me an Asrock Dual-VSTA m/b (needed as I can't afford to upgrade my AGP graphics card yet).

Thanks everyone for all your valuable input on this, this 'newby' has been well and truely educated in this area.

Willow
 
The deed is done, I've ordered the Zen, won't turn up till next week unfortunately.

Yewen, I'll let you know how I get on. This time I might even try to tidy the cabling away a bit. My current machine is a bit like a birds nest inside at the moment.

Thanks for the offer of help (hopefully I won't need it :D ).

What's wrong with the first picture then?
 
Yewen said:
Just get back to us with how you find the case, getting feedback on things you have recommend people allows you to advise others that little bit better next time. :)
Click to expand...

I have now removed my PC from the old case (a JeanTech I think) and put it into the Zen.

The install process was pretty straight forward, took all the components out, gave them a good 'dusting', decided I didn't need to fit a couple of things into the new case (like an Extra CD-RW and a serial port) and put them into the Zen. Had a bit of a shuffle around of some of the cards (firewire card, USB ports etc).

This is the old and new together.
pic2.JPG


and this is the new arrangement.
pic1.JPG

(those eagle eyed folk out there may spot a 'deliberate mistake' (that was corrected after the photo was taken)

The cpu temp (idle) is pretty much the same as before(43c), remember I had no cooling on mine but did have the sides off but the m/b temp has gone down from 28 to 24. I haven't tried it at load yet (all these temp are at stock).

I don't know if the front comes off the case but it might have made it slightly easier to put the hard drive into it, this had to be loaded from inside the case.

One thing I will say is that the machine is now extremelly quiet

Never having been one for tidying the inside of the case I dare say that some will have some comments about the state of this one. I have tried to keep the cables from resembling a birds nest in front of the fans (as it used to).

Next step now is to convince the wife I need a Core2Duo, new mobo and a new graphics card, after all, it will play her minesweeper and spider solitair quicker. :D
 
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