Motherboard and case for SFF

[~J~]

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.

 

[~J~]

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?

 

[~J~]

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.

 

[~J~]

Just for your info, you can actually fit 3 HDDs in the aria, I have 2 in there currently and its working perfectly well

Doh! Now you've thrown me again!

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?