Absurd Singularity

Despite Apple's switch to Intel processors and the existence of programs like Parallels that has proven to be a big step up from the old Virtual PC days, I still prefer to keep an actual PC around for .NET development purposes and whatever else might pop up that I can't or don't want to handle on my MacBook Pro. With my ol' PC desktop getting a bit long in the tooth, it was time for an upgrade.

After spending a few weeks researching components with our IT guy at work, Phil, who was also in the mood to build a new system, I spec'ed out a unit that was as small, quiet and reasonably powerful as possible without breaking the bank. Small form factor (SFF) PCs have been around for a couple of years now but I've never paid much attention to them since they were generally underpowered and underequipped, a necessity because of their size (or lack thereof). But advances in computer technology marches on of course and with Intel's breakthrough in processors that run with less power and heat than the previous generation Pentium 4's, good SFFs are pretty viable now.

Those of you who pay attention will realize, wait a minute, you actually set up a BYO system with an Intel chip? *sigh* Unfortunately, yes. I used to be an AMD proponent and preferred the Athlon series over Pentium just because. David and Goliath type thing. Didn't hurt that the Athlon series was actually very good. Unfortunately, AMD hasn't been keeping up with the Joneses lately and they've got absolutely zip right now that can compete with Intel's Core 2 Duo line. If they had, I would have gone with them again. Unfortunately, in this case, pragmatism prevailed and I stepped over to the Dark Side.

What I eventually wound up with was a nice, sleek, compact and quiet desktop system that churns out more than enough power and performance for my current and future needs. I eventually wound up not building the system myself since Phil's a master at this kind of stuff and it was fun to watch him do his thing. He really knows how to layout a clean and relatively uncluttered interior. So the specs are:

• Silverstone SG01-BW Black Aluminum MicroATX case
• Silverstone SST-ST60F 600 Watt Modular Supply + SST-PP03 short cable set
• Silverstone SST-NT06-Lite Fanless CPU Cooler
• ASUS P5B-VM DO motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 "Conroe" 2.13Ghz
• 2GB Gskill DDR2 800 RAM
• XFX GeForce 8800GTS 320MB PCI-E
• 2x 150GB Western Digital Raptor 10000RPM SATA drives running RAID 0
• D-Link DWA-542 Rangebooster N wireless adapter
• LITE-ON LightScribe Black 20X DVD±R Burner with 12X DVD-RAM write Black IDE

I love all the Silverstone products. The case, power supply and heat sink makes an awesome low noise combination. Even though this setup only has 2 fewer fans than my old tower, they're more efficient and lower speed so comparing fan noise between the two is like night and day. The case comes with one intake and one outtake fan only. The intake one pulls double duty as it's actually attached to the hard drive cage so it draws in air from outside which then gets pushed over the drives. There's a hole for another output fan which I filled with an Arctic Cooling 80mm PWM fan which is practically silent. The last fan is actually the 120mm fan in the power supply. The thing that's most cool about the Silverstone combo is that because of the smaller amount of space you have inside, the CPU heatsink doesn't have it's own fan sitting on top like most do. Instead, when installed properly, the top of the heatsink sits right under the bottom of the power supply with just the tiniest gap inbetween. So the power supply's fan doubles as the heat sink fan. Very, very cool. Works awesome with a relatively low-power, low-heat processor like the 2.13Ghz C2D. Not sure how well it'd work with the top end C2D though.

The SST-PP03 short cable set was also invaluable in this case. The default cables that come with the power supply were meant for regular-sized ATX cases so in a MicroATX case like this is way, waaayy too long. The short cable set really help a lot in this case where interior space is in much shorter supply.

But with case fan noise pretty much at a minimum, the components that make the most noise are actually the Raptor hard drives. The crunching sounds they make while accessing/writing is pretty noticeable. Guess that's the price you pay for speed. Oh and I guess the optical drive is pretty loud when it's spun up to max speed. But that's rarely used so not a big issue.

We only ran into a few nigglin' issues while getting everything up and running. Took us awhile to get Vista to work since the P5B-VM DO motherboard is so new that the current BIOS didn't support it well. A later beta BIOS release fixed the issue but since it's beta, it has its own issues as well. But at least Vista is running. Not that I run it much anyway. Since Visual Studio 2003 doesn't work on it, I'm still running WinXP SP2 as my main OS. And the second ongoing issue is that the over-clocking capability of this motherboard seems to be pretty crappy. I've only been able to up my CPU to 2.27Ghz before the machine refuses to POST. There's something odd about that. Will definitely have to research it.

But overall I'm quite happy with this setup. My old desktop has now been relegated to pulling server/data storage duty and is sitting monitor-less next to my entertainment center in the living room. The high-speed fan noise doesn't bother me as much down there. And now our study is a much quieter and cooler place with this new unit. I'll try to keep this one cleaner on a more regular basis but no promises. ;-p

As for Phil, he wound up building his SFF around a Thermaltake case and with top of the line CPU and graphics card and eventually also turned to water-cooling. He's such a nut. ;-)