I'm looking for some ideas for low to moderate cost/effort upgrades or mods for an Antec Aria. I know that the Aria is a difficult case to quiet down, but I'm hoping to buy a little time until the P180 comes out at which point I'll waterfall the Aria out of my environment. This system is my Windows 2003 server, so it's not generally heavily stressed. Here's the current configuration:
Case: Antec Aria
Board: Intel D865GLCL
Proc: P4 Northwood 2.6 HT
HSF: Zalman 7000 ALCU
RAM: 4x512 Kingston PC3200
Vid: Sapphire 9600XT
HDD: Seagate 200GB PATA/DVD
Optical: Generic 16X DVD
I'm using the Antec supplied PCI slot fan. Right now the noisiest component by far is that annoying Sapphire fan. I have a VF700-CU on the way from Sharka to fix that. I figured that the passive VGA cooling solutions would be a bad choice for the Aria. I have to put the fanmate on the Zalman about midway up to keep the CPU from overheating even at idle. As far as I know I can't undervolt.
Any suggestions/ideas will be welcomed
Not sure if I said it in my previous posts, but thanks to SPCR and the forum members for building up an awesome source of useful information. I've made extensive use of SPCR when planning my latest builds, which I'll document soon.