![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_confused.gif)
This time around, I have five solid goals that I am dedicated to meeting. In order:
1. Ultra-rock-solid-stable. This will be up 24x7 for the next several years so stability is paramount. This will be a little trickier than it might otherwise be due to #4.
2. As quiet as possible. This system is in a very spartan and echo-ful room so even the slightest noise is amplified. I would like to go "silent" but that's just not going to happen due to #4.
3. FAST. This pretty much requires overclocking due to #4 but obviously makes #1 and #2 harder
4. As close to $1000 as possible. Every dollar over $1000 has to be fully justified.
5. As cool as possible. I live in AZ so my office room in the summer gets pretty toasty. This makes #1 and #2 harder than I'd like.
I've been doing nearly constant searching in the SPCR and various overclocking forums to narrow my list down... but I still need some direct advice.
First, the components that are pretty set:
Power Supply: Nexus 400W NX4090
Hard Drive: WD SE16 WD3200KS 320GB 3.0Gb/s SATA
Memory: (Corsair|G.Skil|OCZ) PC2-6400
Video Card: XFX nVidia 7600GS 256M 2 DVI
Misc: Firewire 800 card, hardware voice modem
The NX4090 appears to be the undisputed quietest and it has a bottom fan which would help my cooling. The WD drive appears to be the quietest with the Samsung models close behind. I would like to go with PC2-5300 to save money but I'd feel safer with the PC26400 due to the overclocking. I'm not a big gamer so the fanless 7600GS is fine (plus I need the 2 DVIs for my monitors).
Then I move on to the components that I am wavering back and forth and would really appreciate any advice:
CPU: Intel E6300 or E6400
Motherboard: ASUS P5B-E (or Deluxe) or Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3
DVD/RW: Samsung SH-S182M or SH-S183L
Case: Antec P150 or P180B
My goal for the processor is to get as close to 3Ghz as possible while still running ultra-stable and cool. My thinking is that the E6400 might be more stable at 3.2 than the E6300 is at 2.8 (much less more). The E4xxx series won't work at all since I really want the VT extension for my many vmware and Xen instances.
I keep flipping back and forth between the ASUS and Gigabyte. Both are commonly used and are loaded with features. We'll see.
The SH-S183L is mostly a factor since it's SATA and since I'll be running Linux primarily on this system and discovered that both of the motherboards I'm looking at have mediocre IDE support in Linux... well, I'm really hoping that the SATA version will work more transparently. These are pretty much the only ones that regularly come up as "as quiet as you can reasonably expect for an optical drive" in my searches.
I really flip back and forth between the P150 and the P180. The latter is clearly more "advanced"... but it's the same price as the former and the former comes with a power supply (which I would use to replace the screamingly loud PS in a pre-existing system) and dangling hard drive support. Plus, the P150 only comes it white as far as I can tell and nearly all DVD drives are black. Hrm.
Finally, I get to the one component that I absolutely need advice on. The CPU cooler. My tentative plan was to get the Zalman CNPS 7000B-AlCu since it was recommended on EndPCNoise.com and is only $25 or so. But then I start seeing a lot of posts ripping on the 7000 and I further see that it doesn't appear at all in the SPCR recommendations. So now I'm torn.
How good is the 7000B-AlCu after all? Would, say, an Ultra-120 with a Nexus 120 fan or a Ninja with the built-in fan or a Nexus one be noticeably better at fulfilling my goals than the 7000B-AlCu? Or are we talking about roughly the same thing at this level? I mostly ask because the Ultra-120 and Ninja are a decent bit more expensive than the 7000B. I'm willing to pay the extra bit if the 7000B is noticeably louder or can't handle an OC'ed E6400 at 3.2Ghz when the ambient air temp is 29C... but if it can, I'd like to save the money.
Any and ALL advice is appreciated!