SPCR

Aria or 330P or SN25P or ST20G5?

Which SFF to get?

Biostar 330P looks as if it'll be the quietest of them...

Is the Aria moddable? Can the high noise levels be sorted?

SN25P and ST20G5 .. Can the Northbridge be modded to Zalman Passive?

Whats peoples opinions on these SFFs with regards to noise?

If you really want silence, Aria is your best bet. It's easy to swap the 120mm PSU fan w/ a Nexus 120. I don't have any experience w/ Shuttle, so I can't comment on those.

All the reviews I have read on the Aria show high temps and thus the noise is high because of the temps...

The newer Shuttles aren't very noisy ( P and G series Chassis' )

If you get the aria, buy a micro-atx mobo that supports Pentium-M!!!

Im looking to use it for gaming.

Looking for a socket 939 which i'll shove a Venice core in.

I know gaming and silence are hard to achieve in matx. But i want to have a reasonably quiet system.

There is a new alternative out there for SPCR fans. Out of the box, the Chenming MATX-118 is superior to all of those in terms of noise, cooling design, internal space and functionality; the case fan is a 120mm medium-speed Yate Loon and the 80mm PSU fan is also very quiet. Mine hasn't gotten above 36 degrees and it idles at 28-30. With rubber grommets on the HD I can't hear it farther than a foot or so. No comparison to noisy and cramped SFFs nor to the poor cooling design of the Aria.

You want gaming?
quiet along the way?

SN25P from shuttle or build your own with the Chenming MATX-118
http://www.excaliberpc.com/ChenMing_MAT ... 53498.html

The P chassis was designed to cool a P4 Prescott, so with the AMD version you should be able to run all fans at low speed. Also with an Nforce4 chipset, you will be able to drop in the x2 AMD cpu's in the future.

To get the dual core intel CPU's you need an entirely new chipset I945G chipset in the upcoming P3100 from shuttle. Intel in general is hotter and uses more power = heat meaning more fans and noise.

IF you can find a microATX mobo for the Chenming that is SLI nforce 4, AMD socket 939, that would rock. Cost effective way to bolster your video later. Cost effective meaning $300 now, then $300 later for a 50% boost, versus buying a $500 now and needing something new in a year.

My search at newegg.com for SLI on micro ATX returned "0".


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If you get a Aria with onboard stuff (so no real gaming) for say Office, Internet and HTPC the Aria IS silent. Silent I mean: not audable at 1 o'clock at night without ear on the case.

First time my wife used her new Aria HTPC she turned it off thinking it was not allready turned on. (you see the blue lights.....that means that it is turned on)
For real silence I put in a breezer 120mm instead of default fan.
Rpm change from 1200 to 1000.

Gaming is plausable too, but you need some modding.

As soon as you put a decent gaming videocard in a small case it never will be quiet. Not even with a mobile AMD or P-M.
For that you need at least a small desktop case.