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So for the past few months I have slowly been collecting hardware for my windows 7 system, my goals were to have an affordable small, quiet, powerful, energy efficient system - sounds easy, right?
Old parts I used are a 6 month old Samsung F1 Hard drive, and an LG DVD-+RW.
My first purchase was Windows 7 from Amazon for £45 - bargain tbh.
My second purchase was the Silverstone SG03 case from Scan for £80. I considered the Silverstone SG01 which is slightly smaller but after much research discovered it had awful air flow, meaning the system would run pretty hot, and when you combine that with 2 80mm fans, it's going to be noisy. The Lian Li V350b was also considered, I am a huge fan of Lian Li build quality, but it was just too big for me in the end, I wanted something significantly smaller. I also decided to spray paint the mesh with Halfords spray paint, grey primer with a Monza blue.
The Silverstone SG03 case supports two 120mm fans at the front, providing excellent air flow throughout the case. The case comes with 1 fan, which had I known how great it was, I probably wouldn't have bought two Noctua P12s for £30.
The 120mm Noctua P12 fans are not as quiet as I was led to believe by various sites and people on various forums. At full speed its anything from quiet but the airflow is fantastic - as you would probably expect for all that noise. Had I known this I would have actually bought a pair of Scythes instead.
I ended up buying an Akasa Fan Control JR which represents great value for money for £9, even though it doesnt match the same silver colour of my case. With the fan controller I managed to reduce the noise significantly to a point where it's still producing great airflow but at the same time almost silent.
I also bought a Coolermaster black aluminium bezel for £3, it's the type where you have to stick on, it was a little tricky and could have certainly been designed better, but it works.
The initial PSU was an Enermax 425w Modu82+ for £45. Such a small case needs a modular PSU, all the extra wires would block the airflow inside the case. This was a brilliant PSU, it was quieter than I expected. I own a Corsair HX series PSU, which is also quiet, but this thing didn't make a noise. The awesomeness was short lived as it blew up on me; Ebuyer didn't have any more in stock so they credited my account with £54, which was odd but I didn't complain, and I took a gamble on a Coolermaster 500w Silent Pro-M.
The gamble paid off, it's a little quieter than my Corsair, but not as quiet as the Enermax that blew upOne of the downsides are the cables, they are all the same length with no variation of connectors on the same cable, i.e. one cable has all SATA connectors, one cable all 4-pin, annoying.
The motherboard, CPU and RAM combination was tricky, I didn't want a CPU which was rated higher than 95w, but I wanted something which could hold its own for a few years to come. I wanted DDR3 memory and wanted a CPU heatsink which could fit in my case (<75mm in height) and be quiet. In the end I had to decide between a Core i5 system with a Corsair H50 CPU cooler or an AM3 system with a Scythe Shuriken cooler. I finally decided on the AMD system as it was almost £100 cheaper.
I bought a 95w Phenom II X4 945 (£125), an ASUS 785G motherboard (£68) supporting 1.5v DDR3 memory, so my DDR3 choice was limited. I went for some non fancy 4GB DDR3 1333mhz memory from Crucial (£55) as the Scythe Shurikens (£24) heat pipes goes over the memory slots, had it had tall heat spreaders this would be a problem.
The most difficult thing for me to choose was a graphics card, a good 4890 with non-reference cooling was slightly out of my price range, while a 4870 was just too power hungry and ran too hot, the 4850s were looking to be my choice, but then I thought I may as well go for a 4770 as it produces less heat and uses less power and is not far off the 4850 performance. As I was preparing myself to order a 4770 news was out the ATI HD 5770 was being released in a few days, so I waited.
A few days later the HD 5770s were out I went to Ebuyer and they had some in stock for £121, but they also had the Sapphires on pre-order for £111, so I placed my order
The card is superb, its been able to hand everything I have thrown at it without any problems on my 22" monitor.
I also bought a Razer Deathadder mouse, my previous mouse was a Logitech G5, I cant choose between them, the Deathadder has a better scroll wheel with 2 side buttons instead of one but I do miss the ability to change the mouse speed on the go from my Logitech G5.
I bought a Razer Goliathus mouse pad, its something I can easily give 10/10, its was £10 and its so smooth and accurate, I love it, much better than my old Raptor pad, and it wont wear down your mouse feet.
My Razer Reclusa Keyboard is a bit of a hit and miss, Its better than my Microsoft Digital Media Pro keyboard, I love the backlight on the keys - but I can't turn them off during the day, surely I am missing something? It has plenty of customisable buttons and macro options, perfect for gamers, however one of the scrollable wheels is rather useless, or maybe it's me, but I haven't been able to change it to zoom, instead of scroll. Another let down is the big plastic thing at the top of the keyboard, it just doesn't do anything for me, its good thing its under my desk. Overall its a solid keyboard, well built, the wrist pad is very nice and soft, it oozes quality. 8/10
The Build/Impressions/Advice/Temps/Noise
Building the case took longer than I thought, overall the Silverstone SG03 was very easy to work with, it's very clever in the way it uses its space, the aluminium is thinner than I expected, and the side panel doesn't fit as snugly as its suppose to, leaving about a 2mm gap exposing the silver inside from an angle, maybe mine is faulty?
Where the Silverstone SG03 excels is the cooling, I just cannot believe how great it is. I have had my system for over a week now, and the highest temperature my CPU has recorded is 44c while it idles at 34c! I am sure the Scythe Shuriken and my Noctua P12s deserve some credit for pushing the air around, but the case is very well designed to maximise this.
The hard drive bays on the SG03 are cleverly designed, but beware, it's a little tricky to fit them in without the cables getting in the way of the steel plate that fits across the case, ideally a normal 3.5" drive on the left and a 2.5" with a bay converter on the right would be best IMO.
My graphics card idles at 50c with the fan speed at 35%, the highest I have seen it go is 55c, with the fan speed at 45%. The Sapphire HD 5770 is very very quiet when under 40% which is the majority of the time, and when I am playing games it can reach 45% which is noticeable, but doesn't bother me at all, as the in game sound drowns it out.
If you guys have any questions let me know, here are some more shots of my system.
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Originally Posted by UseItNow
