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Thread: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

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    Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    Building a new machine, the aim is for it to be close to silent and my case choice has come down to one of these two. I very much like the styling of both, there is nothing to choose in the price so it's down to which one is more suitable. I'm leaning towards the Silverstone Fortress currently due to it being significantly lighter, but does anyone have a strong opinion one way or the other? The styling/cooling of the P183 might be just ahread, but the weight saving on the silverstone may sway me.

    Any advice welcome, thanks!

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    well imo both do look as good as eachother although the p183 is the more commonly chosen case.

    What hardware do you intend to put in there?

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    The spec I'm looking at I posted here and took some advice: http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...0-exc-vat.html

    Code:
    Intel Core i7 920 D0 Stepping (SLBEJ) 2.66Ghz			218.25
    Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R Intel X58 Express Socket 1366 Motherboard	136.71
    nVidia GeForce GTX 275 896MB PCI-E 2.0 Ret			173.8
    OCZ 6GB PC3-12800 DDR3 1600Mhz Platinum Triple Channel (3x2GB)	73.95
    OCZ 120GB Vertex Series SATA II 2.5 SSD Solid State Drive	269.95
    1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 SATA2 7200RPM 32MB cache		61.95
    Cooler Master Sileo 500 Black Silent Case			56.86
    525W Enermax MODU82+						68.68
    Xigmatek HDT-S1283						25.99
    Xigmatek Crossbow ACK-I7361					5.49
    People seemed to be not liking the case, it is a bit of an ugly thing and I would prefer a full aluminium one so I'm probably going to extend my budget a bit, and from my research it's come down to these 2 cases.

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    If you would prefer full alluminium then the silverstone is the only choice of those two.. P182(and i Guess P183) is all steel and plastic.

    For myself I think I would get the antec but I'd need to think hard whether I got the P182 or P183.
    It's a lovely strurdy, quiet and stealthy looking case (In P182 guise anyway). THe silverstone has every potential to be very quiet, the big 180mm fans are probably great but possibly hard to replace if they aren't up to your noise standards.

    I'd actually be inclined to get an AMD machine based on your budget, the CPU will be hard to tell the difference and the money saved would afford you an even better graphics card. If the machine is for gaming it's the best way to split your budget.

    You could also get a P180 mini if you did that and used a uATX motherboard

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    I'd say toss a coin! Both are good, though I have only seen the Antec - which to me was a great case, solid, quiet - pretty much all you'd want.

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    I guess I'll get the Silverstone then due to it being aluminium and the weight difference.

    What's the reason for suggesting AMD out of interest? My budget basically extends as much as I need it to, but I want to get good value price/performance whilst having it last me a fair while, my previous one coped fairly well with only a few upgrades for the best part of 5 years. I could get a better graphics card as it is, but I don't think i'd see much advantage getting a 280/285 and I think the 295 is overpriced and too power hungry and noisy for a quiet pc, since I plan to overclock the graphics card and CPU anyway hence going for the D0, I'd expect to hit 3.8 without issue and may push it further.

    I haven't really considered AMD due to everything I've read about Intel and the i7's seemingly thrashing them in performance and power consumption, but if there is a compelling argument I'd take a look.

    Won't be going the uATX route again, it wasn't terrible but it did limit my upgrade choices this time if I'd wanted to reuse my case, instead it'll probably end up as a £130 doorstop which is a shame.

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    As a little addendum, I'm looking for all round system performance not simply gaming, I dabble in many things and large file manipulation, photoshop, video editing, video encoding, etc. are all possible uses.

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    I think the key to AMD's game is the fact they are leaving you with a realistic upgrade path. I'm not sure what's going on with Intel but I seem to remember that the i7 socket might not last very long where AMD's will continue to support upgrades.

    The other thing to consider here is games don't need all that i7 has to offer, yes it is the fastest chip but it's like buying a ferrari for driving through 30mph limits to the shops.. It will probably continue to be like this for some time as games are more and more graphically restricted not CPU.

    In other terms, for the price of an X58 motherboard you could pretty much get the chip, board and RAM for an AMD system and not notice the performance difference.

    Just noticed the next post, the a phenom II quad's are lame ducks compared to i7. They certainly aren't quite a match but again, it's about useable performance and realistic real world performance and imo AMD have that pegged. Yes there is better out there but it's not worth the extra cost imo.

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    Quote Originally Posted by staffsMike View Post
    Just noticed the next post, the a phenom II quad's are lame ducks compared to i7. They certainly aren't quite a match but again, it's about useable performance and realistic real world performance and imo AMD have that pegged. Yes there is better out there but it's not worth the extra cost imo.
    You get better performance per £ with the AMD you mean. i7 really isn't value for money considering the performance you get over the Core 2 range or Phenoms.

    What are you going to be doing with the PC that will require the utmost best peformance?

    Oh yeah the FT01 is a better choice as it's alu and the insides are painted, P183 is bare metal afaik.

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    Yeah thats what I was choking on lol

    Bangs for bucks..

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    Thanks for the advice!

    I'm getting quite swayed, honestly I just discounted the AMD without thought really due to i7 hype I suppose, but I'm definitely going to go for what is most appropriate!

    Any chance you could give me a rough idea of cpu/motherboard/cooler/ram for a nicely performing AMD system, I'll research the prices etc. but if you happen to know a decent setup I could start researching from that'd be a great help. I'd still like to get the clocks up on an AMD I guess to similar level to the intel for gaming performance, 3.5+ ghz if this is viable.

    Cheers!

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    No idea on any of that
    Cooler I can only think of the TRUE + 38mm fan. I'm sure there are others but I haven't seen any recent reviews.

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    3.5GHz looks acheivable with all the current Phenom II range, including the bargain basement X3 710. The X4 940 Black Edition is currently priced @ around £190 inc VAT (btw where did you get the £218 pricing on the i7 920 from? It looks pretty cheap...) and has an unlocked multiplier, but is only available in socket AM2+ package tieing you to DDR2 - if you're looking to go DDR3 for a certain amount of future-proofing then you'll need to look at either the X3 720 - again with an unlocked mulitplier and known to reach 3.8GHz on air cooling, or wait until the end of the month when the new range-topping X4 is rumoured to be released. Don't forget that AM3 processors work in AM2 motherboards, but not vice-versa.

    The motherboard is where you can really win out, with Gigabyte doing 790X boards with SB750 southbridges in both socket AM2+ and AM3: AM2+ version (DDR2) for £96 and AM3 verision (DDR3) for £112.00. This thread contains a picture someone's linked in of X3 720BE overclocking results - both those boards appear in there. As for RAM, I'd just pick your preferred manufacturer and get a 4GB dual channel kit of something with overclocking headroom - you can always add a second 4GB kit later. Be aware that if you're using more than 2 sticks of DDR3-1333 or higher with an AM3 Phenom II the memory will automatically be underclocked to 1066, but since you're going to be overclocking anyway that shouldn't make a vast amount of difference!
    Last edited by scaryjim; 15-04-2009 at 04:11 PM. Reason: ex VAT / inc VAT!

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    J&W or DFI 790GX mobo £90 - £110 (I would have gone for the 780G uATX though).

    X3 720 Black Edition £110 (awesome chip for the money really, tri-core finally makes sense)
    or
    Phenom II 940 Black edition £185 (although there are new chips on the way this month)

    4GB DDR2 ~£40

    6GB DDR3 ~£Can't remember

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    I would disagree with going for the phenom, even though it does offer better bang for buck, its performance doesnt stretch near close enough to the i7 range.

    In terms of an upgrade path then its true the AMD route will server you better, but the i7 has such performance that it will handle anything within the next couple of years, much like the q6600 did/does when there are many newer chips around..

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    Re: Antec P183 or Silverstone Fortress?

    What is going to stretch the phenom II's to the point where you feel you need an upgrade though?

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