advice on case (first-time builder)

[Hazel]

Hi all,

I've decided to upgrade my PC and thought I'd finally bite the bullet
and build my own but I could do with a little advice.
Mostly I'm having trouble choosing a midi case: looking at dabs.com you
can get 400w atx midi cases for anything from £20 to £200 (about
$30-$300 i think). I don't really have much idea about the differences
here. Can anyone recommend a good quality (but cheap ;-) ) case? Or at
least what to look out for?

I also would quite like to hear any comments/suggenstions on my proposed
system:

Case?

MSI K8N Neo Platinum motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 3000 processor (separate fan probably thermaltake)

Crucial 512mb PC3200 DDR memory (possibly x2)

ATI Radeon 9600XT 128mb graphics card (I do like gaming, so let me know
if this is not a good choice)

160gb western digital caviar hard drive

LG dvd+/-rw dual format

Undecided about modem - need it to be linux compatible

logitech wireless mouse and keyboard

17" TFT screen probably benq or prolite




Thanks in advance for any advice or comments,

Hazel

 

[JAD]

cases can be just that, a box with trays, or a modded out 300$ spectacle,
however the Power supply these days is more important.

 

[SteveH]

Hi all,

I've decided to upgrade my PC and thought I'd finally bite the bullet and
build my own but I could do with a little advice.
Mostly I'm having trouble choosing a midi case: looking at dabs.com you
can get 400w atx midi cases for anything from £20 to £200 (about $30-$300
i think). I don't really have much idea about the differences here. Can
anyone recommend a good quality (but cheap ;-) ) case? Or at least what to
look out for?

I also would quite like to hear any comments/suggenstions on my proposed
system:

Case?

MSI K8N Neo Platinum motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 3000 processor (separate fan probably thermaltake)

Crucial 512mb PC3200 DDR memory (possibly x2)

ATI Radeon 9600XT 128mb graphics card (I do like gaming, so let me know if
this is not a good choice)

160gb western digital caviar hard drive

LG dvd+/-rw dual format

Undecided about modem - need it to be linux compatible

logitech wireless mouse and keyboard

17" TFT screen probably benq or prolite




Thanks in advance for any advice or comments,

Hazel

If you don't mind spending a few quid, bearing in mind you are getting
quality, then you can't go far wrong with the Antec Sonata:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Antec_Cases.html

It's nicely made, and more importantly comes with a decent quality PSU which
should be well capable of powering what you want.

HTH
SteveH

 

[petermcmillan_uk]

If you don't mind spending a few quid, bearing in mind you are getting
quality, then you can't go far wrong with the Antec Sonata:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Antec_Cases.html

It's nicely made, and more importantly comes with a decent quality PSU which
should be well capable of powering what you want.

Wow, that looks amazing! I've got my computer down to just a quiet PSU
fan,
and an 18db 120mm fan. It'd be nice to make it a bit quieter though, I
wonder whether a new case, or case moddification, will be the answer?

I'm not too keen on the Antec PSU's though. I've heard a lot of
stories of them blowing up, and it's also just happened to somebody I
know. They had flames comming out of the back.

 

[Ruel Smith]

I've decided to upgrade my PC and thought I'd finally bite the bullet
and build my own but I could do with a little advice.
Mostly I'm having trouble choosing a midi case: looking at dabs.com you
can get 400w atx midi cases for anything from £20 to £200 (about
$30-$300 i think). I don't really have much idea about the differences
here. Can anyone recommend a good quality (but cheap ;-) ) case? Or at
least what to look out for?

The biggest difference is the power supply. First off, power supplies are
probably the most overlooked, yet most critical part of the whole system.
If your power supply isn't up to snuff, strange things start happening, and
mostly go misdiagnosed because the lack of juice makes another part seem to
fail, when it was, in fact, a lack of power to the component.

Power supplies very greatly in quality. Some 400 watt power supplies have
wide fluctuations in voltage, and carry few amps on the precious +12V line.
A quality power supply, like an Antec TruePower series returns to within 3%
of the stated voltage in less than 1ms. Other, lesser, cheaper power
supplies, though rated at the same wattage, may return to within 7 or 8% of
the stated voltage, and take longer than 1ms to do so.

I buy Antec power supplies exclusively, and usually get a case with power
supply for a better bargain.

There are other differences too. First, some cases, like Lian Li,
CoolerMaster, and others are made of aluminum. This makes them more
expensive. They are great in the fact that they're so light, and they look
great. However, scratch one and it looks terrible.

Second, some cases have drive rails that let you attach the drives to little
rails the click in place and make drive removal and installation a snap.
Some have removable motherboard trays that let you install everything and
just slid it in place. Some offer other gadgets too. The more stuff a case
has, naturally, the more expensive it is.

Again, I use Antec. They have good quality, nice features, but they're not
the coolest looking cases on the market. Some cases can get downright
tacky, looking like a alien or something. Personally, my case goes under my
desk and doesn't really get looked at much. I prefer the money spent on
internal goodies like quality power supply, rubber isolators for HDD's,
drive rails, quality ball bearing fans, etc.

However, buy what you want. Just make sure you don't get some cheapo power
supply.

I also would quite like to hear any comments/suggenstions on my proposed
system:

Case?

Here's a great case for you:

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15138

Undecided about modem - need it to be linux compatible

Get a true modem, not a WinModem, and you shouldn't have any problems at
all.

BTW, great to know you're a fellow Linux user! What distro? I use SuSE and
Mandrake. I like SuSE the best.

 

[Connected]

I'm not too keen on the Antec PSU's though. I've heard a lot of
stories of them blowing up, and it's also just happened to somebody I
know. They had flames comming out of the back.

First I've heard of this. If you want a good and quiet PSU get a
Zalman.

 

[Papa]

I'm not too keen on the Antec PSU's though. I've heard a lot of
stories of them blowing up, and it's also just happened to somebody I
know. They had flames comming out of the back.

That's a new one on me. In my experience, and from what I've read in a lot
of forums and in technical magazines, the Antec brand is one of the best.

 

[petermcmillan_uk]

First I've heard of this. If you want a good and quiet PSU get a
Zalman.

On overclockers you can get completely silent ones though. I think
they do an Antec Phantom, which is black and passively cooled.
However, you probably would need a case with good air flow. My current
PSU seems very quiet, if I cover up the PSU fan there's no noticable
change in noise. It's an AOpen one which came with my case.

 

[Matt]

To save money, buy the case and PSU as a combo, but buy a _good_
one---not the cheapest. A bad PSU can be a lot of trouble and hard to
diagnose.

Your list of components indicates that an honest 350W supply will be
enough. Use more caution if you think you might want to change to a
high-power graphics card.

Search all the cases at Newegg and sort by votes to find the most
popular combos, and read the reviews there. Use groups.google.com on
this and similar groups to find the specific troubles and successes
associated with various supplies.

 

[Matt]

To save money, buy the case and PSU as a combo, but buy a _good_
one---not the cheapest. A bad PSU can be a lot of trouble and hard to
diagnose.

Your list of components indicates that an honest 350W supply will be
enough. Use more caution if you think you might want to change to a
high-power graphics card.

Search all the cases at Newegg and sort by votes to find the most
popular combos, and read the reviews there. Use groups.google.com on
this and similar groups to find the specific troubles and successes
associated with various supplies.

 

[petermcmillan_uk]

Hi all,

I've decided to upgrade my PC and thought I'd finally bite the bullet

and build my own but I could do with a little advice.
Mostly I'm having trouble choosing a midi case: looking at dabs.com you
can get 400w atx midi cases for anything from £20 to £200 (about
$30-$300 i think). I don't really have much idea about the differences
here. Can anyone recommend a good quality (but cheap ;-) ) case? Or at
least what to look out for?

I also would quite like to hear any comments/suggenstions on my proposed
system:

Case?

MSI K8N Neo Platinum motherboard

A board with dual memory channels would be nice if you can afford it.

AMD Athlon 64 3000 processor (separate fan probably thermaltake)

Crucial 512mb PC3200 DDR memory (possibly x2)

Good memory!

ATI Radeon 9600XT 128mb graphics card (I do like gaming, so let me know
if this is not a good choice)

160gb western digital caviar hard drive

I'd recommend two 80Gb, or 120Gb SATA hard disks and use the RAID on
the motherboard. Disk performance will be twice as fast then.

LG dvd+/-rw dual format

That's what I've got. I've always had LG, and never had any problems.

Undecided about modem - need it to be linux compatible

logitech wireless mouse and keyboard

I don't like wireless mice, or keyboards. The batteries will
eventually go flat, and they are usually heavy.

17" TFT screen probably benq or prolite

I don't know much about these makes, but I'd go for a good one because
you don't want to be getting eye strain.

 

[Hazel]

Get a true modem, not a WinModem, and you shouldn't have any problems at
all.

BTW, great to know you're a fellow Linux user! What distro? I use SuSE and
Mandrake. I like SuSE the best.

Thanks for all the advice. I use Suse 9.2, but I have to confess I
haven't quite got away from Windows. I am dual booting just now so
trying to make sure my new comp is fully compatible with linux is
driving me mad ;-)

I do love linux though

Hazel

 

[Ruel Smith]

Thanks for all the advice. I use Suse 9.2, but I have to confess I
haven't quite got away from Windows. I am dual booting just now so
trying to make sure my new comp is fully compatible with linux is
driving me mad ;-)

I do love linux though

I still occasionally use Windows too. Funny, I have more money invested in
my Windows machine and use it 1/10th the time. I've gotten to the point in
Linux where I don't need to visit Windows much.

Linux Rocks!

 

[petermcmillan_uk]

I still occasionally use Windows too. Funny, I have more money invested in
my Windows machine and use it 1/10th the time. I've gotten to the point in
Linux where I don't need to visit Windows much.

Linux Rocks!

I'm still trying to make a complete change of to Linux, but I've just
ordered Windows XP Pro (OEM) (only one copy though ). I'll have my
slow (1GHz C3 Nehemiah) Linux machine, fast (and silent) Windows
machine (1700+, FX5500, Audigy 2 ZS, DVD-RW), and a PII 400 laptop with
Linux. I'm still trying to get Linux configured on both machines
though which is a nightmare. One of the most frustrating things is
that my Windows machine will be considerably quieter than my Linux
machine, and be much faster, which will put me off Linux :-(. Hmm, I
think I will need to rethink this change over :-(

Oh, Hazel IIRC with some serial ATA boards I think there may be some
problems in Linux, but I'm not certain. I also had problems once with
onboard RAID, and needed to disable it to boot Linux.

 

[JAD]

once I played a Linux CD backwards...it emitted satanic messages. Later I
found out something even more terrifying, play it forward and it attempts to
install Linux!

 

[Ruel Smith]

once I played a Linux CD backwards...it emitted satanic messages. Later I
found out something even more terrifying, play it forward and it attempts
to install Linux!

This crap kills me. Why bother to denounce Linux? We're not advocating it
here, just sharing our experience with it. Use Windows if you like. We're
not saying anything bad about it. So why do you bother badmouthing a
competitive OS?

 

[JAD]

it was just a poke.

its sad when you have people apologizing because they use windows. AFA Linux
being competitive, its always been, at best, a nuisance. Not because it
couldn't be, it just has no development strategy, chaotic.
I think we could debate the 'advocating' thing but its not necessary. 9 out
of 10 people attempting the use of Line is back to windows in awhile. too
bad, as 10 years ago we all thought it would go somewhere.....

 

[Ruel Smith]

it was just a poke.

its sad when you have people apologizing because they use windows. AFA
Linux being competitive, its always been, at best, a nuisance. Not because
it couldn't be, it just has no development strategy, chaotic.
I think we could debate the 'advocating' thing but its not necessary. 9
out
of 10 people attempting the use of Line is back to windows in awhile. too
bad, as 10 years ago we all thought it would go somewhere.....

In the Linux groups, it gets tiring to see people jump in and flame Linux,
and most have either never tried it, or made a single attempt a few years
ago without success. It does take a little more patience and some technical
ability to get it up and working properly sometimes. Once it's there,
though, it's pretty nice.

Linux has gotten somewhere. It's been estimated recently that as much as 13%
of the home user market either runs Linux exclusively, dual boots it, or
runs it via Knoppix style live CDs. That's more marketshare than the
Macintosh has. I often wonder if Apple's pricing structure and dedicated
hardware has helped that, since Mac OS X is clearly a better OS from a
usability point.

Now, I'm starting to advocate, I guess...

 

[petermcmillan_uk]

In the Linux groups, it gets tiring to see people jump in and flame Linux,
and most have either never tried it, or made a single attempt a few years
ago without success. It does take a little more patience and some technical
ability to get it up and working properly sometimes. Once it's there,
though, it's pretty nice.

Linux has gotten somewhere. It's been estimated recently that as much as 13%
of the home user market either runs Linux exclusively, dual boots it, or
runs it via Knoppix style live CDs. That's more marketshare than the
Macintosh has. I often wonder if Apple's pricing structure and dedicated
hardware has helped that, since Mac OS X is clearly a better OS from a
usability point.

Now, I'm starting to advocate, I guess...

I dream of the day when I will have Linux setup correctly! I would
certainly say that Windows is better in many ways, although Linux does
have some advantages of the Windows. I think really we need a new OS,
maybe one which has a better development strategy. I don't think Linux
will ever be perfect! MacOS was amazing the last time I used it,
although that was more than 10 years ago :-(

 

[Redmond du Barrymond]

I dream of the day when I will have Linux setup correctly! I would
certainly say that Windows is better in many ways, although Linux does
have some advantages of the Windows. I think really we need a new OS,
maybe one which has a better development strategy. I don't think Linux
will ever be perfect! MacOS was amazing the last time I used it,
although that was more than 10 years ago :-(

MacOS now looks and feels just like Linux to me, although it is based
on BSD, which is another variant of Unix, but then that's what Linux
is, a Unix clone. Personally, I prefer XP, just batten down the
hatches some more.