[Disiskurt]

EDIT: All parts for the comp are bought, so I won't need any more help expect for my dilemma below. The parts are as follows:

Antec Sonata w/ 380W Truepower PS
AMD Athlon64 3400+ (Socket 754)
Asus K8V SE Deluxe motherboard
Seagate 160 GB IDE HD ($50 after rebate, forget SATA)
Rosewill 1 GB (1x1GB) RAM
E-MU 1212M
Lite-On DVD/CD-RW Drive
NEC 3520A DVD Burner
Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis (256 MB)
Powercolor ATI Pro Theater 550 (TV Tuner)
Zalman CNPS7700-AlCu Heatsink/Fan

Thanks again to everyone who helped me with some of the tips (especially buying a Seagate from Outpost and processor/mb combos at TigerDirect, which saved me lot of money!)

The only concern as of now is CPU cooling. I feel the Zalman's massive size/weight could compromise the safety of my motherboard, since it only connects on two screws and is well above the limit of how much weight that should be put on a motherboard. I'd have to treat the case incredibly delicately to prevent any damage, and that would be a major inconvenience with moving back and forth from college for the next 4 years. Plus I doubt I'd get any warranty coverage for that kind of damage, so I've decided to bite the bullet and draw away from silent computing...in favor of QUIET computing. My current top candidate is the Thermaltake Silent Boost K8 80mm Ball Cooling Fan/Heatsink. Other suggestions that you may think are better would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[mshan]

Good places to shop are http://www.newegg.com, http://www.chiefvalue.com (maybe the same ownership as NewEgg, just compare prices) and http://www.zipzoomfly.com for hardware components.

I also like http://www.SVC.com for little things like cables, accessories, etc. Excellent prices and low shipping costs.

If you want to multitask, a hyperthreaded Intel P4 is probably a good choice, though what you are doing won't realy strain a computer. I own an Asus A7N8X v2. Deluxe and love it's great combination of stability, reliability, and mucher lower cost than Intel. This was my first computer build and I learned a lot at http://www.amdforums.com.

http://www.silentpcreview.com is also a great resource.

Lite-On SOHC-5232k is a nice complement to your NEC DVD burner. Good DVD ripping abilities and superb CD writing abilities. And fast, too.

And that 300w Fortron FSP300-60PN at NewEgg.com is probably all the power you really need. It's a quality power supply that's very conservatively rated. I replaced the Antec TruePower 380S in my Antec Sonata with a Coolmax Taurus 400W power supply and the thing is essentially silent in the computer case. Not as well built as the Antec, but I don't really strain my system so it's got plenty of power and stability for my needs.

Antec Sonata is a stylish and quiet computer case if you don't put a lot of high power, heat producing components in it. Antec Aria is a stylish small form factor computer case, but you will need a mATX mobo then (also very limited upgradability). Both already include quality and pretty quiet power supplies. A new Antec Sonata II computer case has been announced (better airflow and cpu duct; maybe has new Truepower 2.0 psu with 120mm bottom feeding fan?) so you may be able to find the Antec Sonata I at closeout prices sometime.

Hope this helps!

P. S. - if you buy quality used components, you can probably do you the core system for about $400, give or take (e. g. you can easily get a quality Nforce2 mobo - Asus A7N8X v2 Deluxe or Abit NFS-7S, a mobile AMD Athlon XP 2400+, 2500+, or 2600+ for $120 shipped on various computer forums because all of the gamers have moved on to Athlon 64). Toss in a Zalman CNPS 7000B AlCu from Amazon.com for $28 shipped and get some PC3200 memory with Winbond CH5 or BH5 chips - on it and you're home free. I would just get the much cheaper CH5 chips for the Asus because it can only overclock to about 220 fsb; if you were to get the Abit, the more expensive BH5 may give you more overclocking headroom. Unlike Intel's P4, AMD's Nforce mobos don't really benefit from dual channel memory - maybe 3% performance boost, unless you are using integrated graphics, in which case you will see a very substantial performance gain, so I would just get a 1 x 512 MB memory stick. You can always add another 512 MB stick if you find out you're more of an avid gamer than you initially thought). If you're willing to risk rebates, there are always a lot of cheap after rebates at various retailers and websites - look at http://www.techbargains.com

Also, I don't know much about this video card and whether it's compatible with the above mobos, but the Nvidia Ti-4200 seems to be a well respected, but rather old gamer's video card. I just upgraded from a Radeon 9000 video card to a ATI Radeon 9700 Pro because people seem to be dumping these cards for some reason (Nvidia 6600GT?). Got mine for $100 shipped, replaced the cooler with an Artic Cooling VGA Silencer rev. 3 and am very happy.

 

[mshan]

An example of the bargains available with used Nforce mobos:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...&enterthread=y

 

[AdamWill]

It's pretty hard to build a machine you won't be happy with performance-wise, these days. I mean, I ran my CPU at 900MHz for a couple of days last week my mistake (down from the usual 2.2GHz, don't ask why, long story) and hardly even *noticed*. I built a machine for my partner at Christmas, cost CAN$450 in an Antec Aria case (would've been $330 in a crappy case), and with an extra 256MB of RAM I could in all honesty happily use it as my main box. Power just is not an issue in computers any more unless you're doing something crazy.

So focus on reliability, looks, size and sound. Reliability is easy - check the forums. Price is never a guide to reliability, there are $150 motherboard which crash like hell and are incompatible with all sorts of stuff, and $50 ones which never ever die. Find the cheapest damn motherboard you can with good reviews and be happy with it. Same goes for CPUs, just buy the cheapest flipping thing you can find - in the Intel world at the moment that's a Celeron D 2.4GHz, which costs under $80 and is fast enough for anyone at stock but overclocks to 3.6GHz with zero hassle. In the AMD world it's the Sempron 2400+, which costs $50, doesn't overclock quite as well but again is more than fast enough anyway. There's just no reason to buy a faster CPU. If you start considering it, slap yourself.

For hard disks, reliability is a crap shoot, you can't pick any brand with certainty, so go on noise and get a Seagate or a Samsung. But whatever you buy, back it up. Drives have already been covered. Any other bit of hardware is trivial and is not going to cause reliability issues. For graphics card I'd agree that a second hand GF4 TI4200 is a very solid choice, as would be a 6600 non-GT (current generation) or something like a 5600 Ultra (previous generation). Don't spend more than $100, given your situation.

Which brings us down to noise and looks. This is really where you should spend your money on a PC these days, IMHO. Get yourself a nice case, Antec is always a safe choice, or if you want to go for flair, get a Shuttle. The Antec Aria is a nice little mini-system as has been described, but if you don't actually need to save space a full-size case is easier to build in and can be made quieter. BUY GOOD COOLING AND BUY GOOD FANS. Swiftech, Thermalright and Zalman make damn good, reasonably priced heatsinks. Buy a good one - something in the $30-$50 - range from one of those brands, and put a big, quiet fan on it. I cool my moderately overclocked Athlon 2500+ with a Vantec Stealth 80mm case fan on a Thermalright ALX-800. It gets a little toasty (57 degrees as I write this), but hey, it works and it's quiet as heck. Get one case fan, put it on the back of the case blowing out, and probably make it a Panaflo L1A - excellent build quality, quiet as anything.

Hope that helped

 

[mshan]

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=380455

The Leadtek Winfast 2000 XP Deluxe is a nice TV tuner / capture card and this seller is offering it at a great price (see NewEgg.com for a lot of positive customer reviews).

I used to own one of these and they have a truly delightfully simple interface. Onboard tuner has so so reception (if you've got a cable TV connection, it works really well). Only has 8 bit video decoders, so picture (especially recorded one) can be a little grainy. But you can essentially use any video codec you want to record programs.

I've upgraded to an ATI HDTV Wonder and love it. These seems to have a lot of driver incompatability problems with various hardware, and whether you get stuttering or not will depend on how strong a digital and or HDTV signal you get. Seemed to work flawlessly with my Asus A7N8X v2. Deluxe and my Radeon 9000. Haven't tried it with the Radeon 9700 (currently using an Asus P4C800E rev. 2 Deluxe Intel mobo). They retail for $200, but you can find them for $100 shipped because a lot of people can't get them to work with their hardware or they get unacceptable stuttering because of signal quality problems where they live. Just note that it's best to get an ATI branded (i.e. built by ATI, rather than by some other company) video card; I read somewhere that ATI used the 9600XT with this HDTV tuner card.

Hope this helps!

 

[Disiskurt]

Thank you both very much for the help, I really and truly appreciate you time. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Case/PS:
*The Aria would be a sweet machine to build into, but unfortunetly they (along with all other sff cases it appears,) 1 CD drive bay. This conflicts with my plan to get two so that I can do direct CD/DVD burning. External drives are expensive and I don't know how well they work, so I think I'll stick with Antec's other offerings*

I'm down to two cases:
Antec SLK3700AMB
Antec Sonata

Both cases caught my eye because of the # of reviews for each on Newegg (and both avg 5 stars on the ratings.) It seems like all I'd be getting for the extra $35 for the Sonata is a slightly better PS and a better looking case, which I'm not terribly sure is worth it.

Sound card:
I've decided to buy an e-mu 1212m new for $150 shipped on an ebay auction, so that's finally out of the way.

CD/DVD Drives:
I've decided to stick with the NEC 3250A DVD Burner. In addition, I think I'll go with mshan's suggestion of the Lite-on SOHC-5235K. However, I could save $14.50 by going with this Lite-on CD/DVD reader instead. I probably won't cheap out, but it's just a thought.

Video Card:
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduc...145-076&DEPA=1
Any opinions on this card? It has a good # of reviews compared to cards with 256 MB in that price range (at Newegg.)
I still might go with the Ti 4200, prices are very cheap on eBay. I think that the 6600 and 5600 are too rich for my tastes.

Processor/Motherboard:
This is still my main problem. I still can't seem to figure out what would be considered a good, balanced processor/mobo setup. I know I've gotten a good amount of info already, but I have some trouble deciphering it

Heatsink:
Will be determined based on my mobo.

RAM:
I'll probably go with 512 MB, either with 2x256 or one 512 stick. Can anyone vouch for a specific brand, or does it not really matter?

Hard Drive:
I think I'll go with the Hitachi 250 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA HD. At $132.50, it's only $.52/GB, which is tops from what I saw on Newegg with capacities between 200-300 GB. Plus I think Hitachi is a pretty reputable brand, not on the level of Seagate, but the prices are much more reasonable.

Video Card:
Still need to do some more research here (though I do have my eye on Powercolor's TV tuner, but that may be a little pricey.)




Any suggestions at all, please let me know. Thanks again.

 

[ogewo]

Didn't see it mentioned... Pricegrabber is a great resource.

I've built a PC with the Sonata and it's a super high quality case. Not as quiet as I had hoped, but buy super quiet fans, maybe pasively cool cpu and vid card, and you'll be ok.

 

[roadtonowhere08]

As far as the mobo proc issue, I will say that a DFI nForce3 250GB mobo and AMD Athlon64 3000+ is HARD to beat. Down the line, if you need to get a little more juice out of it, that mobo will overclock to the sun and back

It's what I have in my system, and I SWEAR by it. The only drawback is that DFI has not go Cool and Quiet to run perfectly yet, although they are working on it. I tried the Abit NF8 (two actually), but inductor whining drove me NUTS, but I have sharp ears and a silent system.

As far as heatsink, go with either a thermalright XP120 or Zalman 7000Cu/Al. They are hard to beat as far as good quiet cooling goes.

RAM is all about Crucial, Corsair (get what you can afford, none of that crazy fast stuff), Kingston, and Mushkin

I would go either the Samsung or Seagate route with HD's. Quietest bar none. After all, you are getting the EMU 1212M, you want it to be as quiet as possible so you can enjoy the music.

Video cards are hard, I have been out of the scene since the ATI9800 days. I hear good things about the NVidia 6600 series.

Hope it helps

PS: Above ALL, only buy Nexus brand fans if you want a good quiet case. Nothing drives me more nuts than loud fans. You owe it to yourself.

 

[mshan]

Some motherboards are very finicky about the type of memory that they are compatible with. You can usually check the manufacturer's website and also get feedback on this and other computer forums.

I don't know much about video cards, but I think some of those 5000 series Nvidia cards weren't thought of too highly (I read this somewhere so take this comment with a grain of salt).

Also, are you sure your really need 250 GB of storage. You can get a lot of quality brand 160 GB hard drive for $50 - $60 after rebate (Hitachi 160 GB IDE drive is currently $50 after rebate at Outpost.com. Seagate 160 IDE hard drive is often $50 after rebate at Outpost.com). There is really no practical speed increase with SATA, unless you are transferring very large files, and installation of Windows on a SATA drive isn't plug and play like it is with IDE drives. Hitachi SATA drives are supposed to be great for RAID-o arrays because they supposedly scale very well, but again unless you are doing something like video editing, you won't see much gain except large games may load faster. If you really need that much storage, it may be better to get a single 80 GB IDE hard drive as the system drive (you probably dont' even need 40 GB as a storage drive, but they aren't much more expensive than 80 GB drives currently) and get a large storage drive (SATA may be ok because it free's up an IDE controller) for storage.

As others have said, noise may end up being a more important annoyance than not having the fastest system available in real world uses, especially if your computer case is fairly close to your listening position.

This is a new black, power supply less version of the Antec SLK-3700, which now has cpu and gpu vents:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...X0DER&v=glance

Stock power supply in Antec SLK3700 has a bottom 92 mm and 80 mm exhaust fan and is fairly quiet, but probalby needs to be replaced (stock power supply in Antec Sonata is quiet, but usually ends up being the loudest component in a silent pc rig and needs to be replaced). I think Amazon has the SLK3700AMB for $69 shipped; occaisionally it's on sale for $65 shipped at NewEgg.

Overall, given that you are going to be going to college and do a little gaming, Athlon 64 and some sort of Nvidia 6600 GT series video card may end up being the smartest long term investment because you will have a lot of extra power that you just might find yourself using as you use your computer more and more. Maybe ask around in Anandtech's hardware forum. If you're willing to use used components, I'm guessing you can stay under $750.

I own both the Antec Sonata and the Antec SLK3700AMB. I like the ergonomics (front panel audio connections, etc) and styling of the Antec Sonata a lot more than the SLK3700AMB. I think that if you are going to use fairly quiet components and ones that don't generate a lot of heat, the Antec Sonata is a fabulous choice; it just takes some work and planning to essentially silence the case. The SLK3700AMB has much, much better airflow and silent pc potential, but you have to be much more careful about selecting really quiet components as it doesn't contain noise as well as the Sonata. There is a black 3700AMB clone at http://www.coolcases.com/catalog/cas...6a-fp-fkff.htm that is more expensive, but includes two very quiet Globe 120 fans and a quality power supply that's actually very quiet (not silent, though). I own all three and my personal choice would be to wait for the new Antec Sonata II to be released (better airflow, cpu duct, possible a much quieter TruePower 2.0 power supply with bottom feeding 120 mm fan). http://forums.silentpcreview.com/vie...8160&start=180

I would also post your complete system for review at http://www.silentpcreview.com for evaluation of noise before you actually buy components.

Hope this helps!

 

[mshan]

A few more thoughts:

Windows XP Pro (with service pack 2 already slipstreamed on the disk)
- given that you are on a college campus (high speed internet access?, free wireless access?, networked computing?), XP Pro may be a better choice than XP Home
- you may also be eligible for an educational version of Windows at a discount from your college:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...&enterthread=y

LAN parties
- if you find yourself becoming more of a gamer, portability of your computer case may become important. I know nothing about gaming, but perhaps others can chime in on good choices for light weight gaming computer cases?

Quiet vs. Silent Computing
- the guys at Silent PC Review are really pushing the envelope on truly silent computing. If your dorm room has a fairly high noise floor, you may only really need quiet, rather than silent, computer parts. The character of the noise (is it benign and does it fade into background noise easily) would probably be more important than absolute silence of computer parts (and a lot cheaper).

Hope some college based Head-Fi'ers can also chime in.

 

[TooNice]

On a side note, the Hitachi 7k250 (both 160GB and 250GB) flavor are top performers amongst 7200RPM drives. Not the most quiet though.
(In the UK, we don't get rebates etc. so 250GB drives tends to provide the best cost/capacity ratio right now)

As far as I know all Hitachi 7k250 comes in IDE and SATA flavor.

Performance, it doesn't really make a difference. On paper, the SATA version might even be slightly disadvantaged because the drive itself is natively IDE, and the SATA version uses an onboard IDE-to-SATA bridge.

That was my reason for going IDE when I bought my drive. But I kinda regret that now. IDE will be phased out in due time, and IDE cables are just nasty once you get a taste of the much thinner SATA cables.

The choice of video card will very much depends on how much, and what sort of games you play. At the lower (not bottom) end, even a Radeon 9600XT will run UT2004 well enough if you aren't too demanding.

 

[morphine]

Since others have seemingly covered most of the bases I'll only chime in about vid card and RAM.

In terms of RAM, XP is a giant ram hog and most applications these days just eat it up. I would go with 1G at the minimum. If you go with 512 I feel it'll definitely be the bottleneck of your system. Corsair is what I use but my friend uses Crucial to great effect.

For Vid card if you're not doing to be doing much gaming then no reason to pick up anything higher than a TI. I personally have a 9800pro with an upgraded cooler and the thing still sounds incredibly loud. If you can try to pick up the nicest card that still uses nonfan cooling.

m

 

[dbwinger]

I have the NEC DVD burner and I am very happy with it so far. Cdfreaks.com forums have a ton of info on that model.

I have the Antec SLK3700 case and I love it. Having 2 120mm fans is great as I can slow them down a little and still push a lot of air.

A good site to check out online retailers before you buy from them is resellerratings.com. I have ordered a few times from Newegg.com and price and service have always been good.

I have two Seagate hard drives and I like them because they are very quiet. Their performance may not be as good as other brands, but being quiet is my main priority as I leave my computer on while I sleep.

I plays the Sims 2 frequently on my Radeon 9000 pro and it holds it own, but gets bogged down slightly when a lot of action is going on. Nothing to bothersome, but noticeable at times.

 

[AdamWill]

I still say go with a Seagate or Samsung drive, for noise reasons. Noisy drives are *really* bloody annoying when you want a quiet system. I had a noisy WD before my last Seagate, it drove me up the wall. Drop the capacity if necessary for price reasons, you can always burn off to DVD if you fill it up. Or just buy a second drive later.

CPU / motherboard - an Athlon 64 3000+ is just overpowered. I can't really recommend it for a 'normal use' system in good conscience, especially on a budget. If you've got the money and you like big numbers, what the hey. Otherwise, a Sempron setup will save you a lot of money ($100 or so) and be easier to cool. In my humble opinion, the CPU stopped being the bottleneck for performance in a desktop system two or three years ago. RAM and hard disk are the important components now. I don't think anything beyond a 2400+ CPU will be necessary for anything but specialised tasks for another three or four years. The machine I'm typing this on is my work machine. It's a 600MHz Celeron. I'm running three IE windows, three Excel windows, telnet, Outlook and a notepad. It's perfectly fine, because it's got a decent hard disk and 384MB of RAM. I doubt I'd even notice a difference if someone swapped out the CPU for a 3GHz monster.

The Sonata case is a popular choice, high quality, and easy to modify for silence.

That gfx card looks OK - yes, the 5000 series was initially a bit crappy, but that's a very late card in the series and by the time they got to the late revisions they were more or less on top of the problem. I doubt its noise level would be high, but I can't say for sure; you could always get an aftermarket cooler if it's a problem. It won't be the best performer ever, but it'd manage anything pre-2004 fine, and would chug out Doom3 and Half-Life 2 OK if you keep to modest resolutions, I guess.

RAM, I wouldn't worry about brands too much; the important thing is, buy it somewhere with a good return policy. Try it out, if it works, you're golden. If it doesn't, send it back, THEN start worrying about brands

. For the first try, just get something cheap. I've always bought generic RAM and never had a problem (even on nforce2 boards, which are notoriously finicky about RAM).

I guess my overall advice is a counterpoint to the others who've replied. I used to be a performance nut, try and get the fastest CPU, gfx card and RAM I could for the money; I just don't think that makes sense any more. Especially with a limited budget, you should prioritise reliability and noise for your money. All just my opinion, though

.

 

[TooNice]

I can't speak for noise, since I am one not to worry too because my system as a whole is noisy enough for me not to notice HD noise most of the time

(I cannot afford the bleeding edge, but I kinda try to compromise when necessary - but sound is admitedly one of my last priority)

Regarding RAM, 512MB is fine. I run 1GB, but I've used plenty of system with 512MB or less, and its perfectly fine. And its something you can always upgrade later (not hard to do, not time consuming, or anything).

Regarding the CPU... I wouldn't call *anything* "overpowered" as long as its classified as a desktop CPU anyway.

I like to recommend Barton 2500+ or XP Mobile 2500+ since you can overclock those to mad level without excessive cooling... And they are good at stock anyway. That said, I don't think those will be around for that much longer, so it might be worth taking the leap into the A64s.