I decided it was time to build a new PC. My last system was over three years old, which is a lifetime in the computing world.
I use the PC as a digital audio workstation for recording and also do a fair bit of video editing. Besides that, it's used for Web design and translation, as well as the usual day-to-day stuff. So, it needed to be both powerful and as quiet as I could make it.
I spent a good few months at Silent PC Review researching components and learning about current technologies. That Web site is an absolute goldmine!
Read about what I did to silence the beast
Some pictures of the build process
All the components were bought from Kustom PCs in Ayrshire, Scotland, except for the DVD drive, which came from scan.co.uk. I recommend Kustom PCs very highly and would suggest that scan.co.uk starts offering shipping to its EU partners. Grrrr.
The components I finally chose are:
Well, it turns out that it might not have been the memory after all. It started presenting BSoDs again and so I switched the RAM for 2 GB of Mushkin XP this time, but still I was getting problems. So I swapped out the motherboard for an Asus A8N SLI Premium and the problems went away. I haven't had a blue screen for over two months now and it's wonderful! That said, I'm kinda hankering after a new Mac Pro now. I plan on entering the Mac World by way of a MacBook whenever they make them available with Core2 Duo chips. If, as the rumour mill suggests, they come out with a 12" model, so much the better!
I added a third hard-drive as storage was getting low due to large avi files. I got a 200GB Samsung SpinPoint IDE at the local supermarket. Now I can assign a separate drive for my temp files for audio and video. It seems to have made a positive difference.
The system started to show signs of failure with increasingly frequent BSoDs that seemed to indicate faulty RAM. After many hours of diagnostic testing with the BIOS updated and at default settings, I bit the bullet and shipped the motherboard, CPU and RAM back to Kustom PCs. They tested more Corsair RAM, both Ballistix and vanilla, and got mixed results. Finally they got it stable with PC4000 Ballistix and sent it back to me. I was still getting failures so they kindly sent me some Corsair XMS4000 Pro to test side by side. I didn't want to go another month without my main system (I'm overseas) and was much obliged to Kustom PCs for trusting me with the Corsair. I'm pleased to say that I've had no crashes since I put in the Corsair so I'm sticking with that (even if it does have silly flashing lights on it!) The long and short of it is that there seems to be some system incompatabilty with the Ballistix and motherboard. Beware.
AMD64 3500+ Winchester
I've chosen the 3500+ Winchester as it seems to be in the sweet-spot of performance/price at the moment and I wanted a 90nm processor as they're easier to keep cool. The next 90nm up the ladder, the 3800+, is currently more than double the price of the 3500+.
Asus A8V Deluxe Motherboard
I wanted a motherboard that was fairly flexible in terms of BIOS tweaks and that would fit my chosen CPU heatsink. I'm not a gamer so didn't need PCI-e or SLI and was able to save a bit there.
Antec SLK3000B
This is perhaps the most important bit of the whole system. Keeping things cool and quiet requires good airflow and 120mm fans offer the best solution as they run more slowly than their 80mm counterparts whilst still pushing similar amounts of air, which, of course, means that they are quieter.
Antec cases are highly regarded in the silencing world as they are reasonably priced and, with a few tweaks, provide good airflow. The most recent Antec case to hit the shops at the time of writing is the SLK3000B. This takes the best of the SLK3700AMB and the SLK3700BQE and combines it in a case that comes without a PSU and has vents for the CPU and video card.
The 3700BQE has a less-restrictive rear-fan grill than the 3700AMB, but its hard drive cage is rotated through 90º, which restricts the airflow across the hard drives and through the case.
The 3000B has the rear-fan grill of the 3700BQE and the drive cage of the 3700AMB. And, the fact that it comes without a PSU left me free to choose a really quiet and efficient PSU without having to pay extra for the one supplied with the case.
Nexus NX4090 Ultra Quiet PSU
The most highly-rated PSUs are Seasonics, either the Super Tornado or the Super Silencer, or the S12 which has yet to hit the shops and which may just prove to be THE PSU. However, Seasonic PSUs are difficult to find in the UK and, when you do find them, they're expensive. That made the Nexus the sensible choice. I have a Nexus PSU in my other system and it works well and, more importantly, is quiet.
2 x 512 MB Crucial Ballistix PC4000
I decided that I'd rather go for some higher-rated memory as I would then have more flexibility. Crucial Ballistix has very favourable reviews and 1 GB was the minimum I was willing to settle for. The motherboard supports dual-channel RAM and, thankfully, DIMM 1 is still accessible with the heatsink in situ.
2 x Samsung SpinPoint 160 GB SATA
The Samsung SpinPoints are very well regarded for their silent running, although be careful with the motors: they come with one of either a JVC or Nidec motor; it's the Nidecs that are quiet. I had actually considered a 74 GB Raptor for the OS and applications, but was put off by many reasons (cost, noise, heat).
Although I have two identical drives, I've chosen not to use a RAID array; I don't believe I would see any performance gain in a RAID 0 setting and I do regular backups over my network anyway, so RAID 1 would needlessly use the other drive.
Connect 3D Radeon 9600
This is basically a reasonably-priced, passively-cooled 128 MB graphics card. As I said, I'm not a gamer so a low-end card is fine, and it's passively cooled so there is no need to go modifying the heatsink.
Thermalright XP-120 with orange Nexus 22.8dBA 120mm Case Fan
The king of the coolers! The XP-120 takes a 120mm fan and is aluminium so is not as heavy as some of the copper ones on the market. Testing done by SPCR shows that this is the best cooler available today, however, as it is a tad on the large side, it does not fit all motherboards.
Aerocool CoolPanel, Zalman Fanmate, Nexus 120mm fans
I bought three orange Nexus 120mm (Yate Loon) fans: one for the front of the case, one for the rear and one for the CPU heatsink.
For the fan controller, I chose the Aerocool CoolPanel as it doubles as a multimedia cardreader and provides Firewire and USB sockets as well as an LCD displaying fan speed and temperatures.
The two case fans are attached to the fan controller and the heatsink fan has its own Zalman Fanmate.
As the Nexus fans have solid corners, many people take a hacksaw or dremel to remove the corners in order that it will fit better into the fan-retention clips on the XP-120 heatsink, however, I found that it was secure enough without having to do that. (see picture here: Fan-retention clip)
LG 4163B
I wanted a dual-layer writer that supported all three formats. As far as I know, LG is the only manufacturer to offer such a thing. I did spend some time on cdfreaks.com and also learned there that the LG 4163B does bitsetting, which was important to me, as my standalone player is very choosy about what it plays. It is also one of the more quiet writers, although that wasn't quite so important as I don't plan on doing any recording whilst writing disks.