Help choosing case and CPU cooler

In previous builds, silence has been king for me. I equipped my Antec P160 with a Sunbeam Rheostat, cooled my Athlon 64 with a Freezer Pro 64 and chose a passively-cooled graphics card.

This time though, I want to strike a balance between quiet and powerful. I've been looking at various cases and just can't make my mind up. There are positive reviews of the Antec 1200, but it seems like it would be overkill for me. I'm leaning toward the P182, but it's pretty expensive. Is there actually anything wrong with the Antec 300? That's less than half the price but still has a few fans and doesn't look too bad. Or of course any other suggestions I may not have thought of are welcome.

Also, I've looked on SPCR and seen that the Freezer Pro isn't actually rated as highly as some of its competitors. The Thermalright HR-01 and Ultra 120 Extreme are rated highly, as is the Xigmatek HDT-S1283. If anyone has experience of any of those, I'd very much appreciate some advice. Including whether it would fit into either of the cases above. :)

In case it's any help, the rest of my system so far is:
Samsung 320GB F1 for system drive
Samsung 1TB F1 for data
Asus P5Q Pro
4GB OCZ DDR2
Pioneer DVR-216BK DVD-RW
Corsair HX620 PSU

Still trying to decide on the following:
Q6600 vs E8400
HD4870 512MB vs HD4870 1GB
Dial-up modem just in case...(?)
22" vs 24" TFT

Cheers guys...

CPU cooler wise the Thermalright's are exactly as quiet as the fan you put on them :) I have used a Ultra 90 and a Ultima 90 both with quiet fans and cooling performance has been excellent (water cool now so they get to sit in a box looking pretty!). My brother uses the Xigmatek 1283 to cool his Phenom 9750 keeps everything nice and cool, for £20 it is a good price although if you want a bolt through kit to go with it then you will be looking at £25 anf the Ultima 90 only costs £24 and yes you will need a fan for the Ultima but if quiet is really important to you you would probably not use the included fan in the Xigmatek anyway, although it is quiet enough, it doesn't react to direct voltage control very well so unless you happen to have a PWM fan controller you have little control over the fan speed.

Case wise the antec 300 is very good and exceptional for the money, alternatives you may like to consider are the Antec Solo (good quiet case) and the coolermaster CM690.

Finally if it was me I would go for the following,

Q6600
HD4870 512MB (Unless the 1GB is the same price or literally a few £ more, I have yet to see any compelling evidence to show that the extra frame buffer helps performance overly)
Dial up, nah I don't think so!
Monitor will really depend on how much space you have, what panel technology you are after and how much you want to spend. Almost all 22" monitors are TN panels, you could also consider a 20" screen (as the resolution is the same but smaller pixels give a sharper image), if yu want to go for 24" then it will all come down to budget with VA and IPS panels starting at ~£300.

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Originally Posted by Numenor

In previous builds, silence has been king for me. I equipped my Antec P160 with a Sunbeam Rheostat, cooled my Athlon 64 with a Freezer Pro 64 and chose a passively-cooled graphics card.

This time though, I want to strike a balance between quiet and powerful. I've been looking at various cases and just can't make my mind up. There are positive reviews of the Antec 1200, but it seems like it would be overkill for me. I'm leaning toward the P182, but it's pretty expensive. Is there actually anything wrong with the Antec 300? That's less than half the price but still has a few fans and doesn't look too bad. Or of course any other suggestions I may not have thought of are welcome.

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I will second that the Antec 300 is a perfectly fine case, its also smaller then most other cases so is beneficial for anyone who has a normal sized workspace/dask,

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Also, I've looked on SPCR and seen that the Freezer Pro isn't actually rated as highly as some of its competitors. The Thermalright HR-01 and Ultra 120 Extreme are rated highly, as is the Xigmatek HDT-S1283. If anyone has experience of any of those, I'd very much appreciate some advice. Including whether it would fit into either of the cases above. :)

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Sorry cant help here :(

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In case it's any help, the rest of my system so far is:
Samsung 320GB F1 for system drive
Samsung 1TB F1 for data
Asus P5Q Pro
4GB OCZ DDR2
Pioneer DVR-216BK DVD-RW
Corsair HX620 PSU

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Good choice of PSU,
I'm not familiar with OCZ's ram selection but you could also consider Corsair TwinX XMS2 RAM,
Not sure on why you would need the two HDD's,
P5Q Pro is an awesome board,
And imo a DVD-RW is a DVD-RW these days so you cant really go wrong with any you choose,

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Still trying to decide on the following:
Q6600 vs E8400
HD4870 512MB vs HD4870 1GB
Dial-up modem just in case...(?)
22" vs 24" TFT

Cheers guys...

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Well the 22" Vs 24" is all about budget, the prices really start to hike up a lot once you get past the 22" sizes so its really about why you need one over the other, I would say take a look at the Dell 22" monitors as they are superb!

I would Favor the E8400 for over clocking and Gaming and go with the Q6600 if your going to use multi core operation programs.... which there are not that many of for general day to day use,

For the price difference i would go with the 1GB version, Also have you considdered something from the nVidia range or are you strictly ATI?

/Rookie

Thanks for the advice so far guys. I probably should have mentioned the uses of this PC... partly gaming, although I only buy about one or two games a year and don't tend to do FPS ones - GTA4 will be my next purchase. Also I will be running VMware (or similar) to set up test machines for study purposes. And will run Linux about 30-40% of the time.

I've been an AMD CPU + Nvidia GPU user for years, but I'm doing the old switcheroo this time. I was so impressed at the time of the 4870's release that I decided it was the card for me. I know the GTX280 is a bit faster, but not much.

I want a 24" monitor so that I can watch 1080p video on it, and I'm aware that monitor size might have some impact on the graphics card requirement... but I think I should be ok with a 4870. I will probably go for the 1GB version as it's likely to help at 1920x1200. The only factor pushing me toward a 22" monitor is price. But if I can pick up a decent 24" for about 300 quid I might be able to stretch to it.

EDIT: Oh, the DVD drive was chosen due to recommendations which say it's very quiet. My current Liteon sounds like a jet engine. :)

If you want to run VM ware then a quad core is probably a good choice.

If you want to watch 1080p have you considered the 22" 1920*1080 monitors available from BenQ models are E2200HD and M2200HD

http://www.lambda-tek.com/components...c=y#productTop
http://www.lambda-tek.com/components...prodID=1626260

Not sure they have stock yet as they are only just released but the pricing is favourable, oh and they have the resolution wrong on Lambda-tek it is 1920*1080.

Worth thinking about a 1920x1080 monitor I suppose, but would they be properly supported in games? If not I'll definitely have to stick with the 16:10 ratio.

The antec 180 and 182 do have the advantage of double lined panels, instead of just a single sheet of metal it's two sheets sandwiching a sheet of sound damping materal.
It's supposed to give it a good advantage for sound deadening, must admit I've never used one so I don't know how good it is.
Also the front fans are behind the door which also cuts down of the sound from the front fans.

24" PVA panels are available for less than £200, like the Yuraku and similar.

Also, if you want HD: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149662

Dell S2409 24" TFT Monitor 1920x1080 £209.74inc vat & Del.

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Originally Posted by Pob255

The antec 180 and 182 do have the advantage of double lined panels, instead of just a single sheet of metal it's two sheets sandwiching a sheet of sound damping materal.
It's supposed to give it a good advantage for sound deadening, must admit I've never used one so I don't know how good it is.
Also the front fans are behind the door which also cuts down of the sound from the front fans.

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Hmmm yeah... the double lined panels do sound good (no pun intended). But I suspect I'll end up getting peed off with having to open and close the door every time I want to put a disc in. Might be better off going for the 300 after all.

I'm going to have to look into how much support there is for 1920x1080 resolution in games. If it's not well supported I don't want to be limited to using 1680x1050 and not making full use of the screen. Whereas 60-pixel bars top and bottom would go largely unnoticed with HD video.