[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgrossklass All Asus socket 939 boards are named A8... (socket 754 stuff is K8...). K8 was the codename for the Hammer core (Opteron, Athlon64), as the original Athlon was the K7. That board has got a tiny high-rpm northbridge howler, do you really want this? It probably wouldn't be very audible if you were using two 7800GTX cards or whatnot, but since you stated you don't need much graphics power anyway and I guess you could use quiet operation, one of those boards with a heatpipe conducting heat away from the northbridge would be better. (BTW, stay away from the plain NF4, this still had some kind of PCI issues, which are fixed in NF4 Ultra or SLI.) BTW: If you're not a gamer, why get such an oversized rig? I mean, hey, I've got a dual 500 MHz Coppermine PIII system with 704 megs of oldschool SDRAM and a Deskstar T7K250 attached to a Promise Ultra100TX2 here, and the only thing that really is dog slow is MP3 encoding and such. If I weren't insisting on staying with dual-core in the future (plus a new system should be yet quieter and no more power hungry at that - very tough requirements, mind you), a lowly socket 754 Sempron 3000+ or such based system would do fine. The money saved could go towards quiet associated components, and a good sound card in your case.

How do you mean an 'oversized rig', in terms of it being overkill? I fundamentally disagree with PCs ever being too powerful. In 18 months time its specs will be run-of-the-mill.

I can't see the mainboard ever is going to bother me. It'd have to cause my system to crash and lock-up like ME...and if it did this computer has a 3-year warranty, so I could change it for free.

Playing games is not the zenith of what a PC does.


edit - LOLOL, being told I've gone overboard on head-fi!!

A friend of mine had that exact board, he got the premium one for Xmas.

 

[Cyrilix]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chri5peed How do you mean an 'oversized rig', in terms of it being overkill? I fundamentally disagree with PCs ever being too powerful. In 18 months time its specs will be run-of-the-mill. I can't see the mainboard ever is going to bother me. It'd have to cause my system to crash and lock-up like ME...and if it did this computer has a 3-year warranty, so I could change it for free. Playing games is not the zenith of what a PC does. edit - LOLOL, being told I've gone overboard on head-fi!! A friend of mine had that exact board, he got the premium one for Xmas.

At the very least, a non-gamer does not need expensive video cards.

A good cpu is always good and will always be useful...but video cards...integrated works well if you don't play games. In fact, integrated works too well for that purpose, even.

 

[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyrilix At the very least, a non-gamer does not need expensive video cards. A good cpu is always good and will always be useful...but video cards...integrated works well if you don't play games. In fact, integrated works too well for that purpose, even.

Well, I am disabled so playing games is pretty impossible.

There is a graphics card with this computer but it is the stock one, you can't not have one, same as you have to have a floppy drive. It says its in delivery on the website.

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyrilix A good cpu is always good and will always be useful...but video cards...integrated works well if you don't play games. In fact, integrated works too well for that purpose, even.

However, better don't ask about the VGA signal quality in most cases... (And are they already offering DVI these days?)

Yeah, a fast CPU isn't bad if one needs it, but it's yet more important that the human interface is right. With a crappy old 17" CRT and some $5 junk keyboard it won't be much fun. Now with 2 24" widescreens and a Model M, that's nice.

(A single 19" with SXGA rez and PVA panel is plenty for me though - a higher resolution won't be of much use when your eyes are the bottleneck. In my case even "eyes" in plural is overstating it.) Funny enough, mice are pretty much hit and miss, and more advanced rodents may not actually work out better for one's hands. I'm using a slightly older Logitech M-BJ69 OEM mouse, which fits me better than the MX310 I once tried (now that's an impossible shape) and the MS Intelli Optical at my second comp (basically nice, but too high). Seems I need these beasts to be rather flat, otherwise my wrist will hurt after a while.

 

[Chri5peed]

So What is this 'Tiny High-RPM Northbridge howler'?

Even if it would be derogatory to me the way you typed your post suggests it was on the K7 board anyway?
I have read a good 5 or 6 reviews, gotten the same number of experts opinions and they all said that board is great, no mention of this Northbridge thing?

 

[iSleipnir]

A NOTE TO PSU BUYERS: Silent PC Review recently did a study that found that even the best system out there will only draw near 200W power. This means that you don't need a 400W or greater powersupply. I admit, I have a 400w nexus in my computer and I feel silly now that I know this. My next upgrade will be a new psu, I was looking at the S12 330 but I'm still not sure. I'm going to wait, I think until they come out with a quieter revision. They added a new fan that is louder than the previous revision. Anyway, I just though people should know this.

 

[MikoLayer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iSleipnir A NOTE TO PSU BUYERS: Silent PC Review recently did a study that found that even the best system out there will only draw near 200W power. This means that you don't need a 400W or greater powersupply. I admit, I have a 400w nexus in my computer and I feel silly now that I know this. My next upgrade will be a new psu, I was looking at the S12 330 but I'm still not sure. I'm going to wait, I think until they come out with a quieter revision. They added a new fan that is louder than the previous revision. Anyway, I just though people should know this.

hmmm wonder if I should upgrade after all... I am guessing S12 may have better filtering, but oh well

 

[Cyrilix]

No one looks at total Wattage these days. It's all about your +12V rail and how many amps you have on that specific rail for a high-end PC. I don't really care how many W my PSU has as long as it has at least 30A nominal, 35A load (for a minute or less). I have an OCZ Powerstream 520W. It has what I need, and more, is quiet, and has tweakable rails (I use a DFI board with VX RAM for overclocking so I overvolt my 3.3V rail to around 3.5V). It works well, and allows me to use more than 3.2V on the RAM without having to switch a jumper that may cause more headaches.

 

[maarek99]

Funny how a shuttle 300w is running this system:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread....post1028845261

And the 250w shuttle psu's are known to be total tanks that can power very big systems. So aa... marketing's a bitch. Those power calculators on the internet are totally ridiculous.

 

[vafan13]

http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com

5 Year Warrenty and the best quality of all the PSUs Ive ever used (which is quite a few, as I've been building computers since I was 13.)

 

[Cyrilix]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vafan13 http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com 5 Year Warrenty and the best quality of all the PSUs Ive ever used (which is quite a few, as I've been building computers since I was 13.)

For cheaper alternatives, get the OCZ Powerstream and Antec Truepower power supplies.

 

[sgrossklass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chri5peed So What is this 'Tiny High-RPM Northbridge howler'?

An approx. 2.5 cm dia. high-rpm fan on the northbridge (or so it said in a review of the A8N-SLI; up to 8500 rpm or so). You don't want one of those noisy little buggers in a *quiet* system, plus these things are likely to fail and not easily replaced in this case (as I understood the review, the northbridge is right between the two graphics card slots or such, and the fan size isn't all that common except in notebooks). Keep in mind that reviews of SLI boards are likely to be done with two noisy at least middle-class graphics cards installed, so the fan probably won't be audible in these circumstances. Anyway, I don't like buying ticking timebombs, and northbridge (along with graphics card) fans certainly are.

 

[Patu]

I haven't even thought this before. But I think I'm fine with my 370W BeQuiet! PSU. It's not passive but it's totally noiseless.

 

[Chri5peed]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgrossklass An approx. 2.5 cm dia. high-rpm fan on the northbridge (or so it said in a review of the A8N-SLI; up to 8500 rpm or so)

Lol, that means my system has 7 fans! We can all sit by the PC in the summer! Not too bothered by noise as long as its not causing a nuisance in the next room?

Plus, as I said, my system comes with a 3 year warranty.

So it can break all it likes, plus like I said to someone while my components might be okay now, I doubt you'll even be able to buy them in 3 years, so I'll have to be upgraded.

 

[iSleipnir]

I would say if you NEED to get a new psu look at the S12 series by seasonic. They have been very popular around SPCR and those guys know what they are doing. THe loudest component in my computer is my psu. Like I said its a Nexus 400 and at the time I bought it was a top rated psu. Now its at the bottom. Also efficiency has a lot to do with it. If you have a 330watt psu that runs at 80% efficiency that means you have 264watts of actual power and 66watts generated into heat. The less heat generaed, the slower the fan can run and the quieter the whole thing will be. Anyway, thats my primer on psu's.