First build ever...advice welcomed :)

[The Judge]

Hi guys, been a bit of a frequent visitor to SPCR over the last few months and have read about as much about silent PCs as I am capable of understanding at the moment. I am about ready to bite the bullet and start my build, so I figured I would get your expert advice on things .

Firstly, I live in the UK so this may obviously affect cost issues and availability of components that you may recommend. Secondly, I am not a PC gamer. I have a 360 and don't really envision myself gaming on my PC so I don't need some crazy GPU. I will be wanting to run a dual monitor set-up though.

I do a fair amount of audio work and so will require a fairly high spec computer to handle the strain of certain programs. I don't often buy computers (just bought a new laptop after 6 years!! Lol) either so I would like a degree of future proofing too.

Finally, of course, I am anal about the loudness of my computer (or otherwise I wouldn't be here). This is pretty much one of the major reasons I'm not going with a pre-built machine.

I'd like to keep this machine down to around £1000 as well if possible.

Anyway, here's what I have so far:
Antec P182
Q6600
Asus P5K-E
4GB Corsair XMS2 PC2-6400
* MSI 8600GTS Silent Heatpipe 256mb
* 2 DVD+RW drives probably
* 2 500GB HDDs
* PSU ???

Now this is my first build but I have done a fair amount of reading and I'm not a total 'n00b' when it comes to the internals of a PC. I am a bit unsure of some things though and would love your input. The components I have starred are the ones I'm most in need of advice for.

Firstly, as I said, I'm not a gamer. I had been told to grab an 8800gt as it is pretty much the best bang-for-buck card out at the moment but I figured it's overkill and also not silent. Now reading around I've been seeing people recommend getting the 8600GT over the GTS as it requires less power and so on. Do you guys have any thoughts?

The DVD drives are a bit of a non-issue as I rarely use them but I do need them. The HDDs are a bit of a divisive issue with me though. I require a lot of HDD space (I have a LOT of uncompressed music) but would also like a bit of redundancy. Setting up a RAID configuration can seriously increase the cost of the machine even though HDDs are relatively cheap nowadays. I would be satisfied just backing up to an external HDD until it proves to be too much trouble but that still leaves the question as to how I configure the internal drives.

I have had someone recommend getting a smallish (50gb-100gb) fast running drive for the OS and a slower/a few slower drives for all my data but I'm a tad unsure if that is worth it. Would I be better off just partitioning one of the 500gb drives and having the OS purely on the partition? I really can't say I know the ins and outs of this issue so would love your input.

Finally, the PSU. So many different opinions flying all over the place that I don't know what to think. I used an online PSU calculator and using the above specs, came out with a value of around 350-400W but I fear that is far too low. Recommendations?

Sorry for such a long post. I still have a fair few more questions as to CPU coolers etc but I'll ask about that stuff later when I actually have a configuration set . Thanks in advance.

[Big Pimp Daddy]

I'll try to keep this quick and snappy;
First, put a ninja or some other large cooler on the cpu, not sure if you'll be able to run it fanless, check the forums, lots of people with Q6600s if i remember correctly.
Second, the 8600 is a bit crazy if you're not gaming, just buy the lowest power graphics card you can with two outputs, clearly onboard graphics would be better, but I can't think of any that will let you output to two monitors. Would a (HD?)TV and a monitor be acceptable?
Hard drive, the best option for silence would be a small notebook hard drive for the OS, and a 1TB external hard drive in a cupboard/different room, connected with either gigabit ethernet or external-sata, for your programs and music files.
PSU, the estimate you've got is high if anything, use a proper calculator, there are links to some in the forums. Any 300-400W PSU should do the job, I can personally recommend the Antec NEO HE430, but the Seasonics are supposed to be good too. Again, check the forums and recommended list, go for high efficiency.
www.aria.co.uk
www.ebuyer.co.uk
www.dabs.co.uk
www.scan.co.uk
are all good UK shops, you should easily be able to do that whole system for under 1000, especially if you skip the fancypants graphics card.
Good luck and don't forget to post your rig in the gallery when you're done.
Toodles.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello & welcome to SPCR,

You will want to choose a CPU heatsink -- I think a Scythe Ninja with a Thermalright socket 775 backplate would be great.

You should check the SPCR recommended hard drives list: the Western Digital "Green" for the large storage, and the WD SE-16 for a boot drive (or for storage as well) would be a good place to start.

Are you going to use a 64bit OS? Because if you want to use all 4GB of RAM, you will have to.

As for a PSU, as already mentioned any 300-450 watt unit will be absolutely fine. The Fortron Source "Green" 300watt, or the Corsair VX450, or SeaSonic S12 380 or 430, would be excellent choices.

[sjoukew]

for 4gb ram you do indeed need a 64 bit os, else you can't use more then 2.9gb (or little bit more depending on your hardware).
I would advise an vga card with a decent amount of onboard memory, vista aero eats it, and compiz (linux) likes it too. And the memory on cards isn't that expensive. As long as the chip is midrange and DX9 compatible it will run aero fine.

If you do a lot of audio "things", why haven't you specified a soundcard you will put in the system. Onboard sound is "nice" but not really high quality. What are you aiming for ??

[The Judge]

Cheers guys. Yeah I know I'll need a 64-bit OS but good looking out .

Sjoukew, do you recommend any specific card? To be honest I don't mind really spending up to about £100 on the card and the 8600gts is right at the limit. I want a passively cooled one ideally.

As for the soundcard, I'm not too bothered at the moment. I am thinking of the Maya 44 as a short-term solution but I just really need the main components to get the thing running as I'm using a laptop as my main machine at the moment and it's not all that comfortable.

[sjoukew]

No, no specific cards, but if you like linux, stay far --faaarrrr away from the creative x-fi series, there are no linux drivers, not open source and not closed source from creative.

I also haven't any specific vga card suggestions either, but my guess is that there are some other members whom will have some nice suggestions