It is feasible to do, and I wouldn't imagine it causing issues with the overclock as the whole system is staying the same and you are just switching the case. Quite suprised OcUK won't supply you with a P182 as standard instead of the Antec Nine Hundred. You shouldn't have any issues with airflow that I'd imagine as long as you have the fans set at the correct amount and place them properly. For that I would get an additional 120mm fan with your build and use it for an insake - as the P182 only comes with 2 exhaust and 1 HDD/PSU 120mm cooler, so get an additional one and preferably with a "Zalman Fan Mate" so you can control it's noise and airflow levels. If you were after a fan then I would get either an Akasa Amber 120mm, or a Scythe S-FLEX 1200RPM 120mm.MarkPW said:
The OcUK system would be very stable at default settings, so I wouldn't worry there. The difference in the overclock will not matter a great deal unless you are using applications that are going to stress the CPU a lot - such as Folding@Home / Video encoding etc. Also I wasn't aware that you were running your business from the machine. In that case I would NOT recommend the overclocked machine, whether you buy the overclocked one or whether you got the parts and overclocked yourself. It can lead to instabilities eventually and I wouldn't want to see you loose your business machine for the sake of having the PC run a bit faster.MarkPW said:
That's a hard one to say. I wouldn't imagine the highest setting but I'm not sure how they configure the system setup in relation to the fan placements and which they have as intakes / exhausts. I wouldn't imagine they would all be set to high though as your ears would bleed.
The overclock would reduce the lifespan of the components but you're talking 15 years instead of 20 years on the CPU which isn't a worry as I'm sure you'd upgrade again by thenMarkPW said:It's an online business so it doesn't depend on my machine, although if the overclock could greatly increase the chances of it going pop sooner then I'm probably better with stock speeds. That said, the overclock is so tempting especially since I do video editing.
. The main concern was keeping the computer stable for a long period of time with an overclock, and I don't think it will stay stable for 1 - 2 years with an overclock on it and my concern was that you would have all your business documents on the machine. I would really see how you go Mark regarding the overclock. You may find you get the machine and it's REALLY fast for even your video encoding and you find yourself not even needing the overclock and are enjoying the fast speeds, very low noise and very cool components.It's really unfortunate and quite bizarre why they won't change the case. The P182 does have less cooling but it's not actually bad cooling. Maybe their is another reason but they can't say, could be they just have a contract with Antec or someone for a large supply of those cases or they have agreed to get them at a lower cost if they use them on their pre-built systems. Not saying that is the reason, but it could be something like that. The OcUK support is really good however and I would consider that issue to be a one-off.MarkPW said:
I would really just build the machine yourself if I had to pick one or the another. For the money you are paying you should be getting exactly what you want from a computer. Even if it means paying something £30 - £40 to come around to your house and put everything together for you if you really don't have the time. Regarding the fan issue... You can place an intake fan in the P182 without having to remove the middle hard drive bay. The problem is that you HAVE to remove the middle hard drive bay due to the size of the graphics card. This is the same with any high end graphics card at the moment because they are so big. You'll still have space for 4 hard drives however and with the addition of something like a Thermaltake iCage at a later point you can make that 7 hard drive slots. The case as mentioned does only come with 3x 120mm fans and neither of those are an intake fan so I would really recommend getting an additional 120mm fan with a Zalman Fan Mate so you can have a quiet and good cooling intake solution in the case.MarkPW said:
Yes
The reason I chose the GeIL was to keep further under the budget where possible, but that Ballistix RAM would be better for you if you can afford the extra for it.The Pioneer DVR-212D supports 12x DVD-RAM read and write. The Pioneer is also a higher quality drive, supporting more media better and also better build quality I find after having used a couple of each of them drives in the past.MarkPW said:
In the spec I listed there are two Akasa fans, one is 92mm and one is 120mm. The 120mm is for the Thermalright Ultra Xtreme 120 (and yes it's the best air cooler available at the moment). The 92mm is for the Thermalright HR-03 which is an aftermarket cooler for your graphics card. They both fit onto their respective coolers very easily using small metal clips.MarkPW said:
If you want out and out rock solid performance then you cannot beat Seasonic. They are really expensive though, and I don't think they are modular which is going to be a nightmare in the P182. Enermax PSU's are very nice as well, and something like the Liberty 620W would be nice but again very expensive. I would still recommend the Corsair 620W PSU but if you are not comfortable with buying it, then I would go for the Seasonic M12 Modular 600W power supply (it's about £15 extra than the Corsair).MarkPW said:
If you used a Thermaltake iCage in that case then you would only have room for 1 5.25" drive bay. However if you only need 4 hard drive spaces then this won't be a problem and you will have 4x 5.25" drive bays. In respects of a card read, this one is very nice combo of a card reader and a floppy drive in one which fits nicely into the P182's 3.5" bay.MarkPW said:
Ah so you need something with basically a 5.25" drive bay panel so you can control the treble and bass levels from that? If so then it might be difficult to do with a P182 due to the case's door panel.MarkPW said:
Not really no unless you need more than 4 hard drives, and even then you can wing it a little. By that I mean place a hard drive or two in the empty area where the middle bay ways. I've done this before for a while and it works fine, it kinda just lies there and also gets cooled from the intake fan. It saves clogging up a 5.25" drive bay.
I'm 110% sure that the Seasonic and Corsair power supplies would be powerful enough for that machine in listed in the specification. 800W+ PSU's are a massive overkill, and unless you run an SLI system with 8800 Ultras or 2900 XT's with a watercooling setup, quad core CPU and a massive overclock on both the CPU and graphics then you don't need one. There was a surge of power supply madness not long ago and we started to see ludicriously high wattage power supplies such as 1000w, 1500w and even 2000w. This was largely due to Nvidia, ATI and some other places saying people need a 600 - 800w PSU to power midrange 8000 series or 2900 series graphics cards which was just not the case, it only was the case to have a 800W+ when you need 2 of them with lots of other items in the machine (ie. watercooling, lots of hard drives etc).MarkPW said:
X-FI Xtreme Music/Gamer/Audio cards use the "THX Setup Console" which controls most of the sound features. It comes on the driver CD and does feature bass control of the speakers, as well as stuff like sound levels from inparticular speakers and also styles of sound (such as stuff with echo's and so forth). If you wanted to spend less then just pick up an "Xtreme Gamer" or "Xtreme Music" OEM which are about £51 each the last time I looked and are great cards.MarkPW said:
MarkPW said:
Looks excellent, and nothing missed
The only thing is 32Bit OS with 4GB of RAM but I've mentioned on that below.Yeah you'll be fine overclocking on the Corsair, the power that provides is above what your system will use so you'll have some nice headroom for a bit of overclocking should you want too.MarkPW said:
Personally I always prefered Razer's designs. They were a lot more elegenant and I found that Logitechs kinda over did it a bit with colour and fake "dints" in the casing. But I do prefer the shape of the G5 better to the Deathadder. The Deathadder is also a little bit more picky on the types of surface it's on and some people find that the mouse moves by itself if it's on anything but a matte surface. I'd still go with the Deathadder though if it was me picking.MarkPW said:
For your needs you'd be looking at Raid1 if you wanted RAID. This is basically two drives that are mirrored and you only see one drive, it just basically keeps you safe if one of the drives dies, then you can just boot of the other whilst the dead drive is replaced then you can re-add it back to the array and be all set again. I wouldn't opt for something like Raid0 as the fault tollerance is nil and it's quite flakey and dodgy to run a business with even if it does increase performance a lot. The next thing up would be Raid 5 which is like Raid1 but has increased performance and also is 3 drives so better fault tollerance. After that it's Raid 0+1 which is 4 drivers and Raid0 and Raid1 together so you get exceptional speed and excellent fault tollerance... but need 4 drives.MarkPW said:
Yes, there will be enough space. Remember that in the P182 you can route all the power cables, sata cables and IDE cables around the back of the motherboard and do not need to drag them through the main machine area so it really helps on space requirements. They'll also fit together fine and you won't find any problems fitting the TR120 Extreme on the Abit IP35 Pro and/or fitting a 8800 GTX with a HR-03 in with it. The only possibly thing I can think of is that the HR-03 will have to go on in one direction only, which is the main heatsink below the card as opposed to above as it might hit the CPU cooler, but that's not a problem since it's the prefered direction to install it.MarkPW said:
The 8800 GTX has 2x DVI connections so yes if your monitor has a DVI port then I would use a DVI cable, otherwise the card should also come with a couple of DVI->VGA convertors so you can change the cable to a VGA cable should you need too.MarkPW said:
Vista x64 is a great operating system, I've used it before but personally has some minor driver issues so moved back to XP. Photoshop works fine in Vista x64 as I use it myself quite often for web development and I didn't run into any problems using CS3 in Vista. All of the new kit you are getting also has Vista x64 drivers so you should be perfectly fine to get it. Also, as you mentioned, you are getting 4GB of RAM and using a 64Bit OS helps to get you all your memory space as the 32Bit OS's will only seen 3GB - 3.5GB of addressable memory space. If you are feeling a little bit uncomforable about using Photoshop CS3 in Vista x64 though, or any other programs as I'm not sure what else you'll be using, then you could always just stick with 32bit. You'll still be able to use a large potion of the RAM and will be happy in the knowledge you'll not run into any problems with 64bit.MarkPW said:
Not a problem! Prefer you got all your questions answered so if you have more feel free to askMarkPW said:
That is for the front panel of the case, you can plug the audio / microphone connectors from the front panel into that port and then plug headphones and microphones into the front of the case instead of having to drape them around the back. It's not essential and I personally don't use this feature but some do so it's kinda optional.
As PhillyDee correctly states, the 3 extra studs are for different sized motherboards. On the actual backplate of the motherboard area there is a normal full sized ATX layout and you get 3 additional motherboard mounting screws to screw in if you use a non-full sized ATX board, your board however is full sized, so don't screw them in or you might have problems with your motherboard being shorted when you boot.MarkPW said:
