View Single Post
Old 31st January 2009
Broodjegehaktmetmayo Broodjegehaktmetmayo is offline
Shell Scout
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 92
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by DrJ View Post
Lots of new posts!

On the grommet comment: in the old days, hard drives were mounted with screws directly into the case. The issue is that hard drives vibrate, and the small drive vibration is coupled through the mounting to the rest of the case. The large flat sides are wonderful resonators. Consequently, the amount of noise the computer makes goes way up.

This bothers me a lot. I like silent computers. Not everyone cares about this, but if you do, you should look to minimize case vibrations induced by the hard drives. One way to do that is to screw the drive to the case (or drive sled) through a flexible grommet. That lessens the amount of vibration that reaches the case. A more extreme, and very effective method, is to suspend the drive with elastic bands. The Solo models derived from the P150 do this, and it works very well. (They also have the soft grommet mounting method too.) The Antec you cited doesn't have suspension, but does have soft mounting.

I've used both the 520W Corsair (made by Seasonic) and the 500W Antec (I don't recall who made this one for Antec). I really like the Corsair. Solid, quiet, detachable cables, and very stable. The 500W performs well enough, but makes an odd noise (coil whine) that is irritating. I probably could have had it replaced, as this is a common power supply defect. I didn't, because the noise did not bother my customer (my wife). They have the reputation for being decent supplies for the price. This one also has fixed cables that you have to put somewhere, so it is less convenient to work with.

So I think either would be fine, but I personally would go for the Corsair. It should add that it has been about a year since I've looked in detail at power supplies, and like disks, the model line-up and the OEM changes. Personally I'd avoid CWT (Channelwell) as an OEM -- not that there is anything wrong with them, I just prefer the Seasonic-derived units overall.

The Solo case you cite is derived from the first case designed expressly for quiet operation. It is fine, and you can often find them on sale for a good price. It has side-mounted drives: if you have the case open, the drives on their sleds pull out towards you, instead of to the back of the case or out the front. That's a nice feature (I have a similar layout on three computers in different cases), but honestly I don't pull drives that often. The rest is OK, and if you like the looks of it, you can build a quiet computer using it. I've just preferred the P150-derived series; I think it looks better, does not have a front door covering the CDs, and it has the drive suspension system.

Antec does often give very good prices on their combined case/power supply packages, so you may well save quite some money going this route.

My observation about SATA drives recently has been that Seagate does not perform quite as well as its competition, but has had longer warranties and some people claim that their error checking is better. Most of my drives are still SCSIs, so I don't follow the SATA drive market that closely. But do trust techreport -- they are very good. So is Vermaden.

Oh, and the PATA DVD-RW I bought seven years ago is still working fine, as is the one I bought 5 years ago. Both have been used heavily, and show no signs of failing.

Rather than despairing over all of the hardware choices, you should rejoice! There are a lot of fine options available to craft a system exactly as you want. This does take some work, but the upside is that you will get a system that is fast, reliable, quiet and will last a long time. You should also be able to overclock you CPUs with the heat sink you are using to get performance that will be comparable to a prebuilt unit at about the same price. What's not to like?
Thank you again very much, DrJ: again, you've helped me to make a decision: I will go for the separate Corsair and the separate Antec case, I will have to check out the P150

What's not to like? I am extremely charmed by FreeBSD (extremely ), and it's sort of frustrating that it costs me so much time (really, way to much) to buy what I consider to be commodities: 'it's only hardware' (I know, this is insulting to the fine hardware engineers that do their utmost best to design quality stuff, and I don't mean to insult them. Yet again, I think I do want to insult the 'marketeers' that make it so complex to choose a piece of hardware, with their 1 zillion different models ). I'd rather have I could quickly buy a PC (as in the old days, where the questions were simple: you want an Intel386SX16 or a 'real' (copro) 386, the Intel386DX33, or even 'a monster', the AMD386DX40, and you want 20MB or 40MB, and 1 MB ram or 4 MB ram, and black and white or color VGA?), and then move on to fun stuff: FreeBSD. Now, it seems picking hardware is more difficult than learning FreeBSD

Btw: don't expect me to, after I have this PC, to post a zillion 'noob' - questions on FBSD: I've bought 2 excellent books around 1 year ago, and I plan to memorize them from begin to end, from left to right, from top to bottom, and then backwards

If only I can get this hardware stuff to be out of the way, and then, let the [s]games[/s] fun begin

Last on my list now: the HDDs. Hopefully somebody can tell me which WD would be the wise choice.

Thanks again DrJ
Reply With Quote