Its PSU time! (Buying Advice)

Boys and Girls,

I know some of you don't enjoy these types of posts, and theres a PC one already, but I couldnt find it and it was very diverse.

Thus, here is a wee new one, I guess I will use it for all of my very near future questions regarding my upgrade.

Basically, I am at present looking to buy a new PC Case. The current one I have is not bad in itself, sturdy aluminium chassis case without the cheap sheet innards, its all good.

However, my father being an airconditioning engineer, we experimented on it with various types of fan systems, holes cut into it, mounted side and top extractors with dust grills and industrial sound padding on the walls and whatnot.

It turned into a beast.

However, its getting knocked about when I keep having to move to and from uni, and some of the drive bay screws have been used so much the threads have either gone, or the caps have been turned so much theyre pretty much fused in there full time now.

I am wanting to buy a new case, but not a generic £10-£20 one.

I want to go a step or two above that, nothing too ridiculous, but something a bit nicer and friendlier.

I was thinking along the lines of a Thermaltake Tsunami or Soprano, but don't actually know much regarding cases.

I know it is kinda petty to worry so much about them, but the case itself if quite important to me, I do like to clean it around often when its dusty, and it sits quite obviosuly in my room. Aesthetically I am a tart too, so I want a good looking case as well :P

Any tips of current cases you guys have or recommend is appreciated a lot! I know LS has a Coolermaster or Thermaltake Wave one, infact he has a pair, I think those are what he has, they look great, but do they do the job?

Thanks in advance,

Dan


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/09/2007 06:01PM by danm.

What is a notch above the current one? Give us a rough budget and we'll see what we can do.

Apparently the AKASA Zen is pretty good value, if not much of a looker - it's certainly not aluminium - £28+del

A lot higher up the scale, the Antec P180 is still a beast of a case, even if it's getting a touch older now. Still looks the part mind - £82+del

The AKASA Eclipse-62 is similar, though entirely substance over aesthetics - £85+del

Then there's Lian Li, my personal favourite cases, perhaps along with Silverstone. A cheapish and reserved style one, the Lian Li PC-7 SE-B II - £69+del

Or you could pull out all the stops with the stunning Lian Li A10B - £152+del

I like my full tower cases (cases with 6 or so optical drive bays), and would personally get the Lian Li PC-V2100B Plus II, but if I was after a 'standard' ATX-sized case, I'd get the A10B - I doubt you'd be willing to spend that sort of cash on a case though

Middle of the lot, apparently the Jeantech Phong II is a really good case for the cash. Looks a bit in-your-face for my liking mind - £50 from... PC World...

//edit: OK, those links really didn't work. Corrected



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2007 08:27PM by gav.

while this is here, can u get media centre cases that u can fit standard ATX bits in? don't wanna sacrifice my nice PSU!!

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Team Japan Owner - GPGNC

The Silverstone Grandia GD01B-MXR comes with an LCD which no doubt bumps the price up to £140, which isn't cheap by any standard. Still, classic case and looks the part.

The SilverStone LC03B appears to be at least a very similar chassis without the LCDs and stuff installed. Doesn't look quite as sleek, but is cleaner, and is a much more respectable £82.

There's no end of Silverstone 'desktop' ATX cases at Scan.co.uk Go nuts.

I went for a proper HTPC with a MicroATX setup, based around a barebone Elonex Artisan, such as in the picture below but without the gubbins on top. Stuck an Intel Core Duo mobile CPU in, and was running on the integrated graphics (Intel 945G), but have just bought a low-profile nV 7100GS for it - should be plenty enough for media. Small cases can be quite hot, but this only has 2 very slow moving fans which are placed right next to the CPU heatsink and take air out through the PSU. Works well, and is truely silent.

danm Wrote:
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> I was thinking along the lines of a Thermaltake
> Tsunami

I got the Tsunami recently for a new PC build. It's a good case with a lot of nice small features, such as rubber gromits that the hard disks mount on which really do cut down on vibrations. 2 x 7200 rpm disks and 2x 10,000 rpm disks in the drive cage operate totally silently.

The only slightly annoying things are the two fans it comes with aren't the quietest things (easily put right though) and getting the PSU in was a bit fiddly as well.

I'd recommend it though.

hmm, had no idea cases could be so expensive. *starts saving for a silverstone LC10B*

_______________________________________________________

Team Japan Owner - GPGNC

If you're looking for advice on budget cases, HTPC or otherwise, you're probably best waiting on someone else to respond. I paid £200 for my case

It's similar to a monitor - once you've bought a case, that's generally it - there's little to go wrong, and chances are it'll last you many, many upgrades, so buying what you can is normally best. Of course, unlike monitors there's little in cases - you're looking at airflow, aesthetics, layout and checking the connectors to the motherboard to make sure they suit. Still, I prefer to spend a lot of money once and just leave it at that.

you're right gav. got a budget case now, and it does the job, but i've decided that my PC needs have changed, so i want a media centre (i have my laptop for doing work)

_______________________________________________________

Team Japan Owner - GPGNC

in addition to the cases gav already mentioned, i really adore this one: [www.antec.com]

it's quite simple ,elegant and has some nice features like the hard drive suspension system already built in. also the price is good imho (about 80-90 euros here in germany iirc) compared to the lian-lis.

Here's the best case, ever



Never again will the cat bug you when you're using the PC - it will simply be sucked up

sweet jesus LOL

looks like a new definition of "sound onboard"...vroomvrooom


also here's a nice review of the antec solo: [www.silentpcreview.com]

and some more basics and recommendations (including the antec p180):[www.silentpcreview.com]

excellent help guys! thanks a lot, i now have some ideas on what to go for in the next few weeks.

my next posts will involve my choice in motherboard upgrades and processor combinations, but i shall leave it for a moment... amd thinking e6600 core 2 duo but am unsure of price drops for now.

i shant upgrade until the end of summer, so no doubt there will be some sort of drop.


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

I bought a case Gav recommended to me, 3 weeks later one of the special sliders fell off lol!

But seriously, in my experiance the less fancy sliders and openings the better tbh

Rams Wrote:
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> I bought a case Gav recommended to me, 3 weeks
> later one of the special sliders fell off lol!
>
> But seriously, in my experiance the less fancy
> sliders and openings the better tbh

:D

That must have been a while ago...? Which case?

I think it's this one, I'm sure I paid about £50 though at the time... bastards.

[www.overclockers.co.uk]

Ah yeah. The one I bought is still going strong - even getting pummelled by kids constantly. I think I recommended this one to Graham too, though I've not seen it. It did come across a little flimsy if treated poorly, but it seemed to cope OK with what I threw at it. Shame yours hasn't.

RIght thanks for the help on the first thing I wanted to suss out...case wise!

I've now convincingly had my birthday come around exactly as my brother and I have experienced my computer actually dying.

We have suspected for a while that the motherboard may have had a crack or a chip somewhere (no pun intended :P lol).

Asus A7N8X-E Delxue. It is the evil of all evils in terms of faults and errors, ram compatability issues and whatnot. It has been a horrible experience.

However, I have had so many errors and problems I have had enough, and am going to upgrade for peace of mind.

I was running an XP3200+ Barton Core - so any new upgrade is going to be pretty significant. The time I bought these was in May 2004, which I am told is quite a while ago and an upgrade could be good.

I am an architecture student working mostly with cad packages and graphics, ie, A1 sized presentations and some 3d modelling/rendering.

I do not really play games, perhaps the odd Battlefield 2 Online Multiplayer, and upcoming HOWC.net rFactor races online in the league. Other than that, gaming isnt a necessity. The current PC ran games fine, and I was happy with that.

I haven't researched PC's since I built the last one, so I am far behind on the latest reccomendations.

My brother suggested some AMD64 3500 something or another cant remember the name exactly.

I have said to him I like the look of the E6300 Core Duo (notably its performance to price ratings, and customer satisfaction). That currently costs incl vat 107 quid. I am not sure how much prices will drop by in the coming weeks, but as said, I need this pc this week or next to work on my final year projects.

I also liked the look of the ASUS P5V-VM DH Socket 775 Core2Duo ready P4M890 onboard 5.1 audo and VGA mATX (those words exactly haha) at £47 quid including vat. Of course there are cheaper out there, but this isnt quite the budget of budget boards so could hold its own for a bit longer.

I am not sure of gfx cards, andy suggested the Inno3D GeForce 7600GT 256MB TV Out DVI Core 560MHz Memory 700MHz PCI-E at 70 quid.

Ram isnt an issue, I will just reuse the 2gb sticks I already have, as with antec bb case fans and such.

Are there any pointers or significant things I have looked at wrongly here, or any better suggestions?

I want to try and get this built for as low as I can, obviously, without the need to build a beast machine. I know without core 2 duo we worked out a simple upgrade for about 120 quid, but that was of course for a cheaper mobo and processor set.

All advice greatly appreaciated! Thanks


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

you're essentially building the system i have there. it's fine. plus that mobo has quite a few handy gadgets such as built in wireless... is not too bad, BUT if u ever wanna overclock, don't go anywhere near it. there is a more advanced version of the board which has a different chipset and should be a bit better. costs a bit more though... other than that it's quite a good system (i've just had my hard drive fail-don't buy WD hard drives)

_______________________________________________________

Team Japan Owner - GPGNC

danm Wrote:
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> I also liked the look of the ASUS P5V-VM DH Socket
> 775 Core2Duo ready P4M890 onboard 5.1 audo and VGA
> mATX (those words exactly haha) at £47 quid
> including vat. Of course there are cheaper out
> there, but this isnt quite the budget of budget
> boards so could hold its own for a bit longer.

There are no budget boards really - none will last more than any other, within reason - all you really need to look for is that any board satisfies what you want from it. I really would advise against VIA boards though - they've gone horrifically down-hill since about 2001 or so.

I'm going to assume you'll never use the onboard graphics, in which I'd get something like the Asrock CONROE945G-DVI (comes with onboard graphics, but if you can add another card in to replace them if you wish).

If you intend to overclock the chip (and Core 2 Duos will overclock A LOT), then I'd get an ASUS P5B Deluxe (this version comes with WiFi, though there's one elsewhere which has no WiFi for a fiver less or so). Much more expensive, but I'll leave this to you. £125 for this board, and if you get the E6300 or E4300 CPU (both around £100), it WILL overclock beyond the speed of Intel's fastest speed Core 2 Duo - probably up to 3.0GHz and more, though you may need a slightly better cooler (such as a Zalman or an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. It's up to you whether that's better value for money than buying a cheaper motherboard and running it at stock speeds.

For RAM, you won't use the current sticks if they're DDR. All new CPUs (as Athlon64 S939s are now almost impossible to source) now require DDR2, and they're not backwards compatible.

Graphics card's OK, but it really wouldn't be doing any Core 2 Duo justice. They're really not very good compared to the rest of the system. As you said, you don't play many games, but I'd imagine it would start to struggle with games out in a few months. Again, only you can judge that one really. Take a look here to get an idea where things are and what you could expect with some now relatively old game engines: Tomshardware Interactive VGA charts

Finally, frankly, if you're getting a new system, you'd have to be utterly mad to buy an AMD setup for all but the most budget of systems right now. They're decent value for money, but they're left for dead by the Core 2s.

//edit:

harjinator Wrote:
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> i've just had my hard drive fail-don't buy> WD hard drives)

Sorry mate, but I've bought WD drives since I started building PCs, back in 2000, and I've gone through 11. All of those are still working, 9 of which are still in daily use, the remaining 2 sitting in a drawer as spares now. Conversely, I bought 2 Seagate 7200.10s last year, and both are dead. Other than WD, I'd only ever consider Samsung Spinpoints now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2007 09:09PM by gav.