Spec check, check spec

ALienBC

ALienBC

ALienBC

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Joined
16 Jan 2003
Posts
170
You gotta checkulate to speculate. Or something. Anyway, after a lot of thought since my last post I've decided to stop thinking and go a bit mental.

How's this looking:

CA-058-AN Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower Case - No PSU (CA-058-AN) £55.30
CA-025-EN Enermax Liberty 500W ELT500AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-025-EN) £59.95

MB-152-AS Asus P5W DH Deluxe WiFi (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-152-AS) £134.95
CP-135-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (CP-135-IN) £107.95

HS-003-SY Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler (Socket 478, 754, 939, 940, LGA755) (HS-003-SY) £31.95
MY-108-CS Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-108-CS)£159.95
FG-024-AK Akasa AK-183-L2B Amber Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan - 3 pin (FG-024-AK) £9.95

HD-078-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-078-SE) £59.95
HD-002-MI Mitsumi FA 404M 7in1 USB 2.0 Floppy & Media Drive - Black (HD-002-MI) £11.95

GX-123-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X TOXIC 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-123-SP) £269.95
MO-009-DE Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor - Midnight Grey (MO-009-DE) £524.95

CB-004-GE Akasa Rounded Ultra ATA133/100/66 IDE Cable (0.45m) - Black (CB-004-GE) £2.95
CB-031-GE Akasa Rounded Floppy Cable (0.45m) - Black (CB-031-GE) £1.95
CB-053-GE Akasa SATA-2 45cm Silver Data Cable (CB-053-GE) £3.50

OS-002-MS Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition inc. SP2 - OEM - 1Pk (E85-04026) (OS-002-MS) £81.95
SW-003-MS Microsoft Office 2003 Small Business Edition - OEM (SW-003-MS)
£140.95

Subtotal £1,658.10
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £24.95
VAT £294.54
Total £1,977.59

Uses: digital content creation, esp. 3d and sound (I'll have to get a proper soundcard somewhere else, by the looks of it). Gaming & work (it's going thru the books, hence the monitor :) Want it to be as quiet, quiet quiet as possible. Have already got DVD stuff.

Main thing that puzzles me is the motherboard: I don't want any bios hassles with the CPU. That board's ten quid cheaper on This Week Only at the moment, but I guess that'll change today (and maybe some other option will come up, who knows...)

Also, I'd prefer to go Nvidia (prefer their drivers, and generally have had less hassles with geforce cards) but apparently the x1900s outperform them and are quieter...?

Cheers...
abc
 
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Rrright.. well that's a fiver saved on cables, then. Ta :]

Main thing that attracted me to that motherboard was the heatpipe arrangement. There's not much point trying to build a silent system if the motherboard's covered in whiney lil' 40mms. Would you recommend the DS3? I'm not that fussed about clocking - not yet anyway - but I suppose it might be nice in the future. Main concern is stability, featureset and noise.

abc
 
The DS3 is a good board, but the DS4 has the silent heat pipe system. It's also a 965P chipset meaning it'll work better with the E6300 you've got your eye on.
 
'tis done! I've ordered an even more ridiculous pile of gear, which'll be here tomorrow I hope. I decided it wouldn't be a proper conroe unless, well, it was actually a conroe. And as my current CPU is 1.8ghz it didn't feel like a step up (even though it would have been, of course). Anyway, assuming I can remember how to build systems I'm expecting to be blown away by this lil' lot:

Enermax Liberty 620W
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS4
Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.40GHz (1066FSB)
Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24" Widescreen LCD Monitor
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition
Microsoft Office 2003 Small Business Edition
Akasa AK-183-L2B Amber Ultra Quiet 120mm Fan
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB)
Scythe Ninja Plus Heatpipe CPU Cooler
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 XT-X TOXIC 512MB
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II)
Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower Case - No PSU

Thanks for your help!
abc
 
Just a quick post cos I've put the above together now... first impressions:

Case good, for the most part. Three speed case fan is pretty silent and it's all pretty well-built. Except the front: what's the point of carbonite padding (or whatever it's called) inside the case when there are gaps around installed optical drives, and gaps around the side panel - so looking through the front I can see out the sides...Hmm :)

Conroe... er, yeh, seems fast enough I guess. A tad over 6000 in 3dmark06 @ 1280x1024... no idea if that's quick or not. Windows stuff seems ok but I think I need to sort out the throttling issue in the bios. There are occasional bizarre pauses...

Toxic x1900... slightly disappointing. It's not as loud as my old 6600gt but calling that pump "silent" is taking the michael. It's not loud but it's a constant rattley sort of noise, like a hard disk seeking. But all the time. Bit annoying, that.

Mobo seems good: no 40mm fans, at last :)

Scythe... jeeepers that's a big heatsink. Installing the fan was a right pain in the neck, and in this case there's barely enough room to do so. Once it was in, though... nice and cool, and quiet.

So the gfx might have been a poor choice (in the few simple games I've tried it laughs at any level of detail and res, but that pump's gonna drive me mad).

The 24inch Dell simply rocks ;)

abc
 
Hmm, sorry to hear about the toxic X1900. How come you didn't just get a normal X1900XT? Did all the rumours about the fan put you off. It's a load of rubbish, atleast I think it is. The only time I hear it is when I turn the pc on, it spins at 100% for all of 2 seconds, after that, I don't hear it.
 
Yeh, the many complaints about the noise. Plus I thought a bit of lazy liquid cooling would be fun. It's loads quieter than my last gfx card so I spose I shouldn't complain tooo much. I'm just a perfectionist :) Maybe I can retrofit a different cooling solution at some point.

Oh, there was one other thing... the Enermax psu doesn't actually fit very well in the Solo case. Well it fits, but the case has a little flange that manages to get in the way of the PSU's fan grill slightly, while at the same time providing no support for the PSU itself. So the thing's just held on by 4 screws, which seems ok, but for something that heavy I'd prefer a bit more support. Maybe it's an odd shape or something. Not a big problem, but like I said, perfectionist :)

abc
 
I had a little bit of trouble fitting my Tagan Easycon in the Lian Li PC7+, I had the pull the housing guard a little just to slot it through. It's cool now though.
 
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