i jsut bought a brand name large tower (ALUMINUM) w/ 450 watt power supply from www.newegg.com for $84. this will be home to my new super duper game machine. i'm going to crank some serious FPS with this one
the noise comes from the fan mostly. some mac computers are built so they don't need a fan, thus they are very quiet. but the mac is like betamax, even though it's a better product, it doesn't appeal to software developers because of certain issues with the company. No software means no users.
Eddy, Did you order the Asus motherboards with the cpu and heatsink and fan already installed on the boards, or did you have to order the heatsink and fans seperately? If you don't mind I will have a few more questions, as I was leaning towards the Asus motherboard.
Kowboy, i did order separately the heat sink and the fan and installed them myself on the motherboard. The PAL8045 heatsink can be ordered without any associated fan but most shops will offer it by default with a "noisy" high airflow DELTA fan (ie a very efficient one for overclocking purpose). Here is a link to an extensive 25 pages review of heatsinks performance recommending this PAL8045 / Papst 8412NGL combination when looking for a low noise system : http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1532&p=4 Be aware as well that PAPST has a lot of different fan models in their 8000 series : the 8412NGL is the one providing the optimum balance between noise/airflow if you use an Athlon in the 1800 - 2000 range. If you would go to the XP2200 - 2800 range, i would recommend the Papst 8412NGML : its Noise level is 19DbA (which is still very quiet), but airflow is up 36 %... Feel free to ask more question on the ASUS board. With this A7V333/XP1900/PAL8045 & Papst Fan set up, I have since 6 months a rock solid Win2k system on both my ultra quiet PCs (not a single system crash or bug message). When building these new PCs, I was targeting first a reliable and low noise system. This combination just did it. Eddy
Anyone seriously contemplating putting your PC in a Closet will definitely encounter "Cable Extension" problems. Forget DVI monitors - can't be done as far as I know ! VGA monitors ok - but not without problems ! BELKIN.......( belkin.com )......sells "BOOSTER BOXES"... for VGA... (and all sorts of cables ).....that will allow the signal to be sent down a longer cable. Good Luck Mouseketeers !
Main sources for noise would be any fans and the hard drive. More fans, the more noise. An AMD based system that badly needs case fans, oversized jumbo cpu fan, throw in a 3D card with it's own fan. Not much you can do it neglect these .. and over time, quiet fans seem to become loud.