Motherboard and case for SFF

~J~

~J~

~J~

Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2003
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I'm thinking of taking the essentials from my current tower and placing them in a SFF, obviously there's a couple of things that will need changing, mainly the motherboard.

I haven't a clue how to tell if a motherboard will fit in a SFF case, and would love some recommendations based on a 'desirable' criteria.

I've read about the Shuttle cases not been very reliable, shame because they look nice and the AOpen, Asus ones I think look tacky. The Aria looks gorgeous, but I hear a few bad things about it's noise. I'm not after a near-silent solution, but seeing as the SFF will be on my desk, and I work through the early hours, it'd be nice to have a nice 'quiet' system.

Rubustness of the case is also pretty high. Another reason for stepping down to SFF is I sometimes need to take my PC onsite, so a good strong case that can stand been placed on various desks would also be nice.

The motherboard criteria I'd like to have is...

SPDIF sound, DVI output, PCI-E.

Any recommendations I'd appreciate it.
 
I can certainly say the aria is awesome in terms of build quality, and it looks fantastic too.

The only reason its noisy is because of the stock 120mm fam in the psu. It doesn't push much air and is very loud. I replaced mine with a 120mm akasa amber (which are very quiet) - and then 7v'd it to make it basically silent.

If you couple the 7v'd psu fan with a silent cpu heatsink solution, and 7v a case fan, I'm sure your pc would be really very quiet. Any micro atx motherboard would fit the aria.

Other case to consider is the silverstone sugo.
 
Thanks for the reply.

Think I'll probably go for the Aria then, with the A8N-VM CSM motherboard as that supports DVI/VGA, doesn't have SPDIF but I can sort that out with a soundcard.

Replacing the fan seems a good idea (don't know how hard it is as I've never done it), but certainly a serious consideration.

Would you recommend some better cooling as I'll be placing 2 hard-drives in the case?
 
The way the aria is, you *can* fit 3 HDDs in, but I would'nt recommend it in terms of cooling.

What I would say is if you mount the 2 HDDs vertically (there are mounting points for this) either side of the DVD drive, then you can fit an 80 or possibly even a 92mm fan slung underneath the DVD to improve airflow.

Replacing the psu fan is dead easy - but be VERY careful not to touch any of the capacitors in there - in fact I would recommend you do the mod before doing anything else so that there's no risk. Its very easy - the supplied fan is a 2 pin job, with the 3rd pin (used for speed monitoring) coming out of the PSU, to be plugged into a fan header on the motherboard. THe 2 pin connector is within the psu, and can simply be unplugged.

What I did (to keep things simple) was just replace the fan, and run the new fan's 3 pin plug out of the psu, 7v it, and plug it into the fan header on the motherboard. Avoids any hassle with 3 -> 2 pin adapters.

The main problem with the antec aria is that the PSU's underside i close to the cpu heatsink, so airflow sn't great. I recommend you search for a motherboard where the cpu socket is further away from the I/O plate, as then it will be clear of the psu.

Otherwise, if you don't want the card reader at the front, you could pull it out and mod the case so the PSU sits at the front. Actually with 2 HDDs I don't know how easy that would be, or possible.


Anyway, I can certainly recommend the case, but I would wait for some user opinions on the Sugo, as that looks like a good 'un too.
 
The Sugo is a beauty, exceptionally well made, and pretty good value too now the prices have come down from the original £150-ish silliness.

THE downside for me was the two 5.25" optical bays which meant to get everything I wanted in there, I ended up spending hundreds of pounds on laptop drives and cradles to hold them. You can have 3 optical drives, a floppy drive and a card reader in a Sugo with no problems, but it does cost a bit.

Using the laptop drives also solved the other big issue with the Sugo (and almost all the other microATX sized SFF cases - the distance between the PSU and the optical drives. Slot-loading laptop optical drives are quite literally half the length of the tray-types and you can use the longest PSU's (eg. Hiper Type R) without any problems at all.

I like the Aria (it was my original MicroATX SFF case) but the fact that you can only fit 1 optical drive and no floppy was an absolute killer for me. The build process is also a pain in the proverbial.

The Aspire X-QPack is a great case, but the PSU would have to have improved markedly to get me to buy another for the prices they are asking now. For £30 without the PSU it would be decent value in my opinion.

The Silverstone TJ-08 answers all of my SFF questions, but doesn't look the part - so all my hopes are now resting on the Lian-Li V300b, which could just be the good looking, quiet, relatively spacious piece of kit I'm after.
 
I can add a vote in for the Sugo myself. Ive just built myself one with a Dual Core intel and ASRock S775Twins motherboard. Its not a top end Mobo, but does all that i need it for.

The case itself is really nice, slightly bigger than a Shuttle to work with, so things fit in nice. I did want 3 HDDs in there as well, was the only sticking point for me, but in the end i just consolidated 3 into 2 by buying a much bigger second drive.

Im using only 1 5.25, so i could put a HDD in the spare one, but will see how it goes for now.

I got it built, but cant use it yet. Im waiting for the PSU to arrive on Monday then i will be able to see if i can live with it as a desktop replacement :)
 
Cheers for the responses.

Whilst the Aria looks visually more appealing, I gotta look at the practical side of things.

At the moment I have 3 hard drives, 2 160Gb Samsung Spin point in RAID1 and a Maxtor 120Gb which I use as my data drive for work, backups, etc.

I don't use the RAID1 to it's full potential, and so I could have a dedicated 'system' drive of 160Gb (one of the Spinpoints) and the other 160Gb and the datadrive (which would result in a 40Gb increase [or near of] and a SATA drive instead of the current 120Gb IDE).

So it's critical that I can install 2 hard drives.

I 'could' use an external enclosure like one of those IcyBoxs, however last year I lost 6 years of work and personal files due to one of them blowing up my only backup, so I'm kinda reluctant to have an external enclosure.

But I'll certainly look at Sugo ones if it means I can have the two hard-drives without much hassle then it's a definate plus-vote.

Thanks again for the feedback, it's appreciated.
 
hogfather said:
Just for your info, you can actually fit 3 HDDs in the aria, I have 2 in there currently and its working perfectly well :)
Click to expand...

Doh! Now you've thrown me again! :p

OK, couple of questions then before I purchase at the end of this week.

Do I need to remove the card reader in the Area to get the drives in?
If I do want to go down the 3-drive route, any sacrifices I need to make, or any special parts (low CPU fan, different PSU etc).
Is it easy to do? Software I'm a wizz, Hardware it wizzes on me :(
Any piccies of yours to look at?
 
hogfather said:
Just for your info, you can actually fit 3 HDDs in the aria, I have 2 in there currently and its working perfectly well :)
Click to expand...

Not with any sort of normal performance / functionalty though.

I have a Zalman 7000CU cooler on the mp CPU in there, that stops the use of one side. My X800, X-Mystique and TV card take up the space the other one needs. So, I just run mine with the one 160GB samsung, and another 160GB in an IcyBox.
 
Its true that having 3 HDDs will limit your cpu fan size, but I found the PSU is the limiting point before this becomes a problem.

I have a 9700 pro in mine, and the gfx card isn't in line with the hard drive anyway, though perhaps if you have a double slot cooler it might do.

I'll see if I can take a few shots this evening for ya :)

EDIT: ahh, you've got the pci slots filled, which explains your problem. Oops. My PCI slots only have a wqireless card in em, so.
 
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