They do however have Molex -> ATX12V 4pin cables. Would using one of these be fine? is there any difference in whats coming down the ATX12V 4pin cable, and the Molex cable? the molex -> 12V converter isnt a good idea on ATX v2.0+ power supplies. It is fine on older power supplies though. The atx 2....

SPCR did testing on hard drives to see how much they actually draw and the majority never peak above 9 Watts. So all of the hard drives will only add up to 27 watts, far less than your processor or graphics card.

You have a nice looking setup however as it has been pointed out, it is much, much harder to build a silent system from a P4. A dual core athlon will perform just as well and put out half the heat. I would recommend an athlon x2 4200+ (or 3800+) with an asus a8n sli premium with a scythe ninja and t...

the phantom will be fine with either setup, especially in the P180. the antec's set to medium and wired for 7V or wired for 12V and set to low will probably be fairly good (especially given what you are coming from :lol: ) Personally i would spring for the Asus since the quality is better overall (b...

I'd say definately go with the smartpower II.

i was able to route the main ATX cable very neatly out the little hole and tuck it in next to the hard drive and optical cages. As far as the 12V connector goes, i cut it before beginning and made a custom lead so i could tuck it back and away, so i can't tell you about that. Worst case scenario tho...

i haven't gotten by a8n premium yet, but i did a mock layout with a board that has the same connector positioning and had no problem.

not from the outside. If you cracked open the psu and figured out how the measured the temperature im sure you could figure it out somehow.

assuming that you mean the Sonata II is your new case, you dont have a problem. The new Sonata II's feature the Antec SmartPower II power supply. The new Power Supplies have two 80mm the exterior of which (the one you can see) only starts spinning once the temperature gets high enough. Read the SPCR...

I have a P180 and a Smart Power II 500W and i can affirm that the cables are plenty long to reach where they need to go.

The new IBM Thinkpad T43's can be confiured with a 128mb ATI FireGL graphics chip.

Asus A8N-SLI Premium.
Good performance and a silent heatpipe cooler on the northbridge.

CONGRATULATIONS.

I'm about 4 months away from joining.

SPCR did a review of an earlier version of the board based on a i915 chipset
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article233-page1.html

Well the antec smartpower II 500W is modular and has 4 SATA connectors.
The phantom 500 is passive and has 4 connectors.
and the whole true power II line has 4 connectors (but they arent modular or fanless)
Additionally the seasonic S12 430, 500, and 600 watt models all have 4 SATA connectors.

the zalman would likley fit, but it would be a good idea to get a board like the asus a8n-sli premium which has two spaces between the card slots so there is more room for the cooler.

if you look at asus's website they specifically designate when a board supports the amd x2 (such as the a8n-sli series) there is no such designation under the a8v deluxe.

the board you posted is a Via K8T800 chipset, which does not support dual core CPU's. To my knowledge there is only one board that meets all your requirements: the ASRock 939Dual-Sata . unfortunately the nforce4 chipset (which is far and away the best chipset available for AMD chips) is PCI-Express ...

hmm, thats too bad. I think you will have trouble finding an appropriate psu, simply because server psu's were never designed to be quiet. I think your best shot right now is going to be a fan swap.

well depending on how comfortable you are with building your own power supply cables, you could use an Antec Smartpower II 500W and simply build your own 8-pin Mobo cable. (or use a converter that turns 2 molexes into an EPS 12V connector).

just use a zalman nb47j northbridge heatsink

the 3800b is the same as the 3000b but it also includes an antec smartpower II 400W power supply. You can see the spcr review of the smartpower II at http://www.silentpcreview.com/article260-page1.html. (To give you the basic gist, it works great for lower powered systems, but the fans ramp up when ...

replace the 80mm and 120mm fans with Nexus Real Silent fans and dump the CPU cooler and replace it with an XP-90 with a 92mm nexus.

how much are you looking to spend. if you've got the money i'd recommend a p180 (spcr edition of course :lol:) and an antec phantom 350. if you are trying to save money an antec slk-3000b and a seasonic 330/380 is the way to go (you only need the 330 but the 380 is like bucks more so you might as we...

if you are comfortable building your own: shuttle zen st62k

otherwise a dell optiplex series (their business line) here

in practice the northwood 2.8 has a tdp of 89 watts tops versus about 130 for a dual core prescott.
also the 3.2ghz prescott the person on htpc news was using has a tdp of 84 watts.

knutinh, First, i wish you the best of luck in keeping that setup cool and quiet, you'll need it. second, everyone, stop attacking people because they make their own decisions. for knutinh the extra performance boost was highest on his list of priorities. Other people (myself included) would have go...

1. wim: quiet you, little dogs kick ass. I have a similar dog and he is the greatest dog ever.

2: acaurora, nice, but take off those case badges and that wiring, oh how it pains me to see such a rats nest.

One note about modern dell desktops. They are very quiet, at idle. Once you put them under load, that CPU fan goes to full blast and that is one loud mother fudger of a fan, (i'd say around 40-50db). I have a dell i bought for my parents and under load it is at least 2-3x as loud as the 4 computers ...

the hitachi's are not very quiet compared to other available drives
given what you have said i would recommend the Western Digital JD series. Some people have had issues with the drives whining, but mine has been fine and they performed well during the SPCR review.