Aria or Shuttle?

[stromgald]

I'm looking to build a new SFF PC. I just recently built an AMD 3200+ system in a SLK3000B with alot of help from SPCR and it works great, but isn't exactly portable. After doing some pricing on Newegg and other places it seems that the Aria is cheaper, but I'm worried about noise. I'm trying to keep this as inexpensive as possible, since I just got a new computer not too long ago. Here's what I got so far:

AMD Athlon 3000+ (Winchester)
Samsung SP0812C 80MB HDD
NEC 3520A DVD Burner
Gigabyte GV-NX66128DP GeForce6600 (passively cooled) for the Aria
Gigabyte Radeon 9600 Pro (passively cooled) for the Shuttle

For the Aria case I'll probably get the MSI RS480M2-IL for the motherboard. The Shuttle I'm looking at is the SN95G5 with the nVidia nForce3 Ultra. I'd like to get the Aria if its not going to howl, and if I can find a heatsink that will fit under that PSU. The Shuttle would be more expensive and have a weaker graphics card since it'll have to be AGP and good AGP cards seem more expensive now. But, I might make the sacrifice if the noise will be intolerable. This thing will most likely be in my bedroom when I travel, so it'd better be quiet!

[LBadvance]

Just to give u a heads up. The SN95G5 has a lot of incompatibilty issues with a lot of hardware. U need to be careful of what hardware to pick.

Why not get the ST20G5. It uses ATI's new chipset and has PCI-E

[bobo5195]

ive got sn95g5 the same as your after with a maxtor 160gb diamondmax 9 and a 130nm 3500+.

Cooling is good enough and uniform through out the case (=12 c over ambient) but its far from quiet.

The noise from the psu is v annoying the rear fan is almost inaudible, makes no difference of you swith it off but the stupid psu...

[jjm052]

As you can see from my sig I own an Antec Aria 'The worlds quietest pc' it certainly ain't, in fact its possibly the noisiest I've ever encountered!!!
To be honest the only way of getting a quiet SFF is to use onboard graphics, mod the PSU fan and run a low power AMD or Pentium M processor(and finding a HSF that'l fit). Otherwise, and I sugggest you do, ditch the whole SFF idea and get a proper case.
Sorry if thats not what you wanna hear but thats the truth.

Regards
James

[Mats]

A newer version of the Aria is on the way, but I don't know when it will show up though.

[cjpark]

I haven't tried one of these, but they look promising.
http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/aspire/

Doubt it'll be amazing out of the box but I'm sure with a few mods and some quiet cooling it could be alright.

Also you could consider a qbic. If you get a quiet video card then you can make it reasonable quiet and with a few other mods it could be very quiet.

[brmecham]

To be honest the only way of getting a quiet SFF is to use onboard graphics, mod the PSU fan and run a low power AMD or Pentium M processor(and finding a HSF that'l fit).

Actually I've made my Shuttle XPC SB83G5 silent! with a Pentium 4 3 GHz, and TWO 200 GB Seagate Hard Drives... - it's on my desk in front of me and I can't hear it from where I sit. I've added a 92mm fan under the hard drive cage, replaced the chipset fan with a passive zalman heatsink and replaced the 92mm ICE fan with a Panaflo. (even with the stock shuttle 92mm fan it's reasonably quiet)

I am not using onboard graphics. I was using a passively cooled Sapphire X600PRO and now an XFX GF6600, Passively cooled: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814150090 XFX PVT43PUD Video Card - XFX Geforce 6600 256MB 128-bit DDR PCI-Express x16 Video Card

I use this for video editing and moderate gaming

I'll post pics soon.

[Sake]

A newer version of the Aria is on the way, but I don't know when it will show up though.

Any update/link on the new Aria??