Im looking for your preferences when building a new SFF. I currently have a 45g which is fine for general web access/work etc but I need something to play games such as HalfLife 2 etc.
Whats best:
AGP or PCI express?
Intel or AMD
64bit does it make a difference?
If you didnt have to worry too much about cash, what SFF would you get? What about the best bang for your pound ?
Cheers for any contributions.
mmmm i am on a sn45g v2 and it's fine for playing hl2
Shuttle SN45G v2
XP 2500 XP-M (2.2gig)
Rad 9800pro
Gig of ram
Thats the basics and it's more then able to play hl2.
Best upgrade would prolly be a new gfx card for you.
Thankfully a number of the new Gen video cards can be bought with either passive or low noise single slot designs. One worry you'd have is when they wrap around to the back of the card, via a heatpipe and removing access to the spare PCI. This happened when I added a Sapphire 9600XT Ultimate. I agree with Apex's spec, I managed 1280x1024 playable in HL2 with a XP 2500+, 9600XT and a gig of ram. Haven't tried Doom3 or Far Cry tho.
Thats my rig btw
and far cry runs lovely on it
The 45g is ok, and agreed a new greaphics card would improve it, but thats gonna be the girlfriends box (once I upgrade).
So if I'm gonna build from scratch do I go AMD/intel pci or agp ? I want to keep it small and quiet.
Cheers
I would go for AMD purely on the cool'n'quiet tech, but Aopen are bringing out a SFF that uses the Pentium M, that should be ultra quiet. overclockers.co.uk will be stocking it. I don't know of any SFF that has PCI-X that doesn't use a noisy P4, all the reviews of the 915 chipset systems show them venting the heat directly outside the case they produces so much. I have a Soltek Qbic EQ3702M with an undervolted 2500+, seasonic replacement psu (the new 250-300watt solteks use them) and a passive cooled 9600XT. Its very quiet, although my mates EQ3802M with an Althon 64 3000+ and passive cooled 9600pro is quieter. I have a Samsung 160gb HD thats pretty quiet, watch out for Seagates some a quiet, some are not do your home work (same goes for the new Samsungs). My plextor DVDRW is super quiet, especially at writing.
Shuttle & Aopen do specific quiet ranges, Solteks are fairly tuneble in the bios.
Check out the reviews, reccomend and forums here: www.silentpcreview.com
A sn45g is certainly not quiet, especially under gaming load. Especially after i fitted 2 more fans!
Not around too often!
Cheers, for the info Ill check it out
It uses standard 80mm fans, no? Why did you need to fit 2 extra fansOriginally Posted by menthel
, and why noisy fans? There seems to be plenty of powerful but quiet fans
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