Invisible wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
> 
>> I'll have to play with the latest beta of 3.7 ... ;)
>>
>> I get the memory, case and video card next week.
> 
> Ah, the waiting game, eh?

Yep, yep... I get to stare at some nice kit for days and days before I 
can assemble it.

> What case did you go for? It's surprisingly hard to find a decent one. 
> (And nearly impossible to tell from a website which cases are the good 
> ones...)

This one:

http://www.overclockercafe.com/Reviews/cases/CoolerMaster_Centurion-590/index.html

This was a difficult search.... I had some, probably unrealistic 
requirements. Lots of cases with the USB, Audio, Firewire (and some 
SATA!) ports on the top of the case. That won't work for me, as the 
computer sits under the desk. So, a top-mounted IO panel was a 
dealbreaker. Of those, many had the front-mounted IO panel near the 
bottom of the case. I've had the unfortunate experience if stepping on a 
USB plug accidentally, shorting out the port, and destroying it. So, I 
wanted one that was front-mounted at the top of the case.

I was leery of the bottom-mounted PSU, which seems to be fairly common, 
mainly for airflow reasons, since it's supposed to act like an exhaust 
it wouldn't do much good on the ground. This one allows the PSU to cool 
itself by pulling air through a vent in the case. I wanted lots of room 
to expand, and lots of ventilation. This case has ventilation in spades, 
and is very expandable. The mesh front allows lots of air to flow in 
from the front.(very important, under the desk is confined, I don't want 
it recirculating hot air that had just been blown out of the case.) The 
filters are a nice touch. Spots for 6 fans. (It can support up to 8, but 
my configuration will allow 7) and a vent behind the processor to give 
the back of the board some air.

There are some drawbacks for the case

1. I'm hoping my power supply has long enough power cables for the 
board, due to the bottom mounted PSU

2. No reset button, and as far as I can tell, no internal speaker, which 
means diagnostic sounds will not be heard, unless the mainboard routes 
these sounds through the mixer. These are minor concerns. I can't 
remember the last time I punched the reset button, except accidentally, 
which generally results in lost data and a string of swear words.

3. The motherboard tray isn't removable. It looks like there's lots of 
room to work, though, so this may not be as bad as it seems, save for 
the fact that I could not find a case that actually had a removable tray.

4. All of the reviews complain about the tool-free mounts. The drive 
mounts don't hold, and with a large and heavy video card the back panel 
mounts are inadequate, but there are screws supplied, so this isn't much 
of a concern.

I'm going to be a bit silly, though. I plan to buy fans with green LED's 
to mount in the front, instead of the standard blue. I like the idea of 
green with this case for some reason.

I plan on adding another cage/fan combo block to get a second front fan, 
and probably mount a fan in the top for exhaust, and the fan over the 
chip as an exhaust.

> The six Dell Precision 7300 systems we just bought are a piece of work. 
> After you spend 20 minutes uncabling all the SATA cables and God know's 
> what else so you can remove the plastic air ducting, you find out why 
> the hell the system is so heavy: The heat sink appears to be a giant 
> lump of solid pig iron. Seems really overkill... (But hey, it's Dell!)

 From what I've seen Dell does a good job cooling their systems. The 
case on my work PC is tiny and cramped, and still keeps the processor 
under 45.

>> LGA is a weird thing, too. The chip has no pins... The board has the 
>> pins.
> 
> I'm familiar. A few months ago I put together our *cough* dual quad-Xeon 
> 2.8 GHz HP rack-mount server. >:-)

Ooooh... nice ;) Did you try POV 3.7 on it? XD

> But hey, that's what "LGA" (and PGA) means.

Yeah, but it doesn't sound weird until you actually look at it ;)


-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message