Which case to get?

[MarkW]

I am putting together a new computer that will have a ASUS motherboard
and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 chip. As well, I'll be using a NVidea 7800
graphics card. I want to make sure the case has plenty cooling and as
well room for expansion and adding multiple drives for future HD-DVD,
Blu-Ray, whatever. I have looked at Antec cases but not any others.
Any idea of which cases I should look at? Thanks for any help.

 

[Bob]

I am putting together a new computer that will have a ASUS motherboard
and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 chip. As well, I'll be using a NVidea 7800
graphics card. I want to make sure the case has plenty cooling and as
well room for expansion and adding multiple drives for future HD-DVD,
Blu-Ray, whatever. I have looked at Antec cases but not any others.
Any idea of which cases I should look at? Thanks for any help.

Buy a case without a PSU, and then buy a PSU that meets your strictest
specifications.

Then add several fans (at least 3-4 more) in strategic locations
(front, side, back, disk bays) - Panaflo are recommended
(http://www.drectron.com/80l1a.html).

Then get a replacement heat sink for that processor - Zalman 7700 is
recommended (http://www.directron.com/cnps7700cu.html). I assume it
will fit your CPU, but if not then there are comparable solutions.

You can get an OEM processor instead of the retail box version and use
the savings to pay for the new heat sink. However the warranty may not
be the same, so be sure to burn it in right away.

Antec makes some really sexy cases, but you have to make them work.

 

[Harkhof]

Buy a case without a PSU, and then buy a PSU that meets your strictest
specifications.

Then add several fans (at least 3-4 more) in strategic locations

Be sure to evenly distribute your "inflow" and "outflow" air. If one or the
other is out of balance, you will not acheive proper air flow and heat
removal.



<snip>

 

[Bob]

Be sure to evenly distribute your "inflow" and "outflow" air. If one or the
other is out of balance, you will not acheive proper air flow and heat
removal.

It has been my understanding that there are enough natural openings in
the sheet metal to let air in or out without having to balance the
fans. However there is a balance in terms of creating air tunnels. For
example, one front fan should be placed to the side opposite the
mainboard and it must be blowing inward, so that air will flow over
the mainboard. The rear fan should be blowing outward just like the
PSU fan. That creates a wind tunnel of sorts. The other front fan
should be blowing inward over the drive bays. Finally the side fan
should be blowing inward to assist in the cooling of the CPU and
mainboard.

That's what I have been told by people who build computers for a
living.

 

[S.Heenan]

I am putting together a new computer that will have a ASUS motherboard
and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 chip. As well, I'll be using a NVidea 7800
graphics card. I want to make sure the case has plenty cooling and as
well room for expansion and adding multiple drives for future HD-DVD,
Blu-Ray, whatever. I have looked at Antec cases but not any others.
Any idea of which cases I should look at? Thanks for any help.

Antec sell fine cases, which are actually manufactured by Chenming.
http://www.chenmingusa.com/product.htm

Also, look at Lian Li and Coolermaster cases.

http://lian-li.com/main.htm

http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

I am putting together a new computer that will have a ASUS motherboard
and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 chip. As well, I'll be using a NVidea 7800
graphics card. I want to make sure the case has plenty cooling and as
well room for expansion and adding multiple drives for future HD-DVD,
Blu-Ray, whatever. I have looked at Antec cases but not any others.
Any idea of which cases I should look at? Thanks for any help.

My X2 4400+ system is in a Thermaltake VB1000BWS Soprano ATX, it's a very
nice toolless case with good cooling. The BWS has a side fan right above
the CPU which helps keep the processor cool. I'm using a Thermaltake A1838
CPU cooler and an Enermax EG565P-FMA REV.2.0 ATX 535W supply. Got the
whole thing from MonarchComputer.

The CPU temperature is running 35C with no load, 43C with both processors
running flat out.

 

[Bob]

The CPU temperature is running 35C with no load, 43C with both processors
running flat out.

Rip a DVD with DVD Shrink running full bore and see what the cpu temp
is.

 

[John McGaw]

I am putting together a new computer that will have a ASUS motherboard
and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 chip. As well, I'll be using a NVidea 7800
graphics card. I want to make sure the case has plenty cooling and as
well room for expansion and adding multiple drives for future HD-DVD,
Blu-Ray, whatever. I have looked at Antec cases but not any others.
Any idea of which cases I should look at? Thanks for any help.

I just built an Athlon 64 3500+ system in an Antec Sonata II case and
can highly recommend it. My system stays very cool and, more
importantly, very quiet despite having 5 hard drives. Having the front
drive cage full meant adding an additional 120mm fan in the provided
location on the cage itself but that and the rear 120mm fan run at the
lowest available speed.

Even during my overclocking experiments, postponed now until I buy some
serious OCZ memory, the CPU never exceeded 55C using the stock boxed CPU
heatsink/fan and that was while it idled along at ~2000RPM while running
the CPU at 100% capacity with 15% OC. I'd think that even with a hotter
video card (mine is only a Radeon X700) and slightly more CPU heat there
should be no reason to suffer the noise that a bunch of added
small-diameter fans would cause. And no reason to ugly up the case by
perforating it unnecessarily either.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Rip a DVD with DVD Shrink running full bore and see what the cpu temp
is.

That's a Windoze programs, I'd never infect my machine with the Windows
virus. I measured it using a make -j 2 on the Linux kernel, -j 2 runs two
threads and keeps both processors 100% busy. I also got the same
temperature running an NCverilog simulation and a Xilinx place and route
at the same time.

 

[Bob]

That's a Windoze programs, I'd never infect my machine with the Windows
virus.

You are lucky not to have to do anything productive with your computer
- just play around with it.

Unfortunately I have things I must do and Windows is the only
operating system where I can find the applications to do those things.

Maybe someday I will be able to build a computer where all I have to
do is play all day.

 

[NuQ]

You are lucky not to have to do anything productive with your computer
- just play around with it.

Unfortunately I have things I must do and Windows is the only
operating system where I can find the applications to do those things.

Maybe someday I will be able to build a computer where all I have to
do is play all day.

You mean like when you're using DVD Shrink? What kind of work is that?

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

You mean like when you're using DVD Shrink? What kind of work is that?

Maybe he's a pornographer? That would explain why being around a virus
infested system doesn't bother him.

 

[Bob]

You mean like when you're using DVD Shrink? What kind of work is that?

Hard work.

But someone has to do it.

 

[Bob]

Maybe he's a pornographer? That would explain why being around a virus
infested system doesn't bother him.

You're just jealous.

I grew up with Microsoft. I was writing DOS-based Assembly programs
when you were just a dirty look in some penguin's eye. When Novelle
bought S5R4 I was convinced Windows was doomed. But somehow it managed
to survive - and we all lost out.

Actually the NT versions are not too bad - best personal computer
operating system DEC ever wrote. It's Win9X/ME that are the viruses.
Fortunately I never had to deal with them, except one day that I spent
hunting down how to fix a broken password on Win95.

The company I was working for asked me to use Windows and gave me 95,
which I installed and then it locked up. After a day of expletives,
the company gave me NT4 and I have been using it and 2K ever since.

 

[VWWall]

You are lucky not to have to do anything productive with your computer
- just play around with it.

Most games are written for Windows. Probably the best reasom for
keeping it around--just to play around.

Unfortunately I have things I must do and Windows is the only
operating system where I can find the applications to do those things.

What "things to do" do you have that can't be done on Linux? If you
write programs that have to call Win APIs, I can why see you're stuck
with Windows!

Maybe someday I will be able to build a computer where all I have to
do is play all day.

Don't use Linux in that case!

 

[kony]

You are lucky not to have to do anything productive with your computer
- just play around with it.

Unfortunately I have things I must do and Windows is the only
operating system where I can find the applications to do those things.

Maybe someday I will be able to build a computer where all I have to
do is play all day.

What things must you do with windows?
Linux does the vast majority of what the average user needs
to do. It's main detractions are still lack of (universal)
driver support and more difficult setup... and of course the
inevitable learning curve involved, same as when people
first started using windows and with each version change.

 

[Bob]

What "things to do" do you have that can't be done on Linux?

Applications that are written solely for Windows, like certain
commodity trading platforms. So few people use Linux that it is not
worth it to the developer of those applications to port them to Linux.

 

[Bob]

What things must you do with windows?

Run specific applications that are ported only to Windows.

Linux does the vast majority of what the average user needs
to do.

I am not the average user. I have special requirements that platform
developers only provide for Windows.

It's main detractions are still lack of (universal)
driver support and more difficult setup

You left out (universal) applications support.

and of course the
inevitable learning curve involved, same as when people
first started using windows and with each version change.

I am an old BSD hack - no learning curve here.

We had our chance to support UNIX when Novell bought S5E4. But no, we
just had to run Windows. Now we pay the price. The only salvation is
that NT is really DEC VAX VMS, which was one helluva operating system
in its day.

 

[Harkhof]

It has been my understanding that there are enough natural openings in
the sheet metal to let air in or out without having to balance the
fans. However there is a balance in terms of creating air tunnels. For
example, one front fan should be placed to the side opposite the
mainboard and it must be blowing inward, so that air will flow over
the mainboard. The rear fan should be blowing outward just like the
PSU fan. That creates a wind tunnel of sorts. The other front fan
should be blowing inward over the drive bays. Finally the side fan
should be blowing inward to assist in the cooling of the CPU and
mainboard.

That's what I have been told by people who build computers for a
living.

Yes, it is true that the natural openings supply intake air, but if one were
to put 4 case fans in his system with 3 or even all blowing out (or in, not
impossible with the growing number of inexperienced users dabbling...many
may not even think to check airflow direction on the fans they install), the
supply openings may not be adequate to offset the imbalance.

The "basic minimum" fans should always be one at the bottom front, airflow
in and one at the back side top of the case, air flow facing out. And, while
one can situate the larger number of fans to 'exhaust", there must be a
percentage of forced air in, said percentage depending on the "natural
openings" you mention.

Hark

 

[Harkhof]

Maybe he's a pornographer? That would explain why being around a virus
infested system doesn't bother him.

Your asumption that all windows based systems are virus infested are
incorrect. Windows is indeed more vulnerable to such attacks, but one need
only be concious of these vulnerabilities in order to take simple
precautions to protect one's self.

I recognize that most Linux users feel that Linux is invulnerable (and
always will be...) due to it's different structure, but as Linux grows more
mainstream, you can expect to see exploits and viri written especially for
Linux, something you don't really see right now. Enjoy it while you can.

Hark