Alternative to Antec P180

We've finally ditched IBM as a source of our company PCs and are building our own 'Developer workstations' (why don't suppliers like Scan/Komplett do something for this market?)

The first self-built machine was based on the Antec P180 as it offers so much, particularly expandability, but, when coupled with a seasonic PSU it was a rather expensive percentage of the budget!

I've been considering alternatives and have been wondering what the opinion is on the Antec Sonata II which comes with a quality PSU. The difference in ££ could then be used on other more important things...

Are there any other case alternatives? Think 'professional serious' use rather than gamer- it needs to fit into an office environment!

The full spec of the 'prototye' machine is:
Antec P180
Seasonic s12 430
Asus A8n-SLI
1GB d/c Geil
64 3800x2
Raptor 36gb
Aopen DVD-RW

If it's "professional serious", why are you buying a gamers motherboard (SLI)?

You need to be a little bit more detailed on what you are going to use the PCs for: Word and Internet surfing is a lot different from DTP, web design or video encoding.

I thought 'Developer workstation' was explicit enough, but just to clarify we are a software house developing software solutions. Daily requirements, in addition to common office software (Mail application, Word etc) is running developer software, for example Visiual Studio 2005 and all that it entails eg compiling of code, running of local web server....

My original question was actually with regards to the case, but with reference to the motherboard, SLi is unnecessary, but everything else about the board is right!

Thanks,
Martin

Given what I know about the P180, (used one for my dads machine a month back) i'd say its worth the money for an office environment. Its so ultra quiet and will make building it ideal.

But what Thorsson says is right, you'd be fine just getting the ultra board not the SLI.

TiG

You could try the Akasa Eclipse-62, it seems a good case (review here was 9/10), looks businesslike. Get a couple of quiet 120mm fans and it'll do the job.

I also think you should get 2x1Gb of RAM if you can. It will improve the performance of your system noticeably.

Actually for what you're doing won't a Pentium D system give better value?

Why don't you go for some SFF boxes? I just got an SN25P, and they're silent. IMHO silent is better than monsterously fast.

You've not mentioned a graphics card, and I'd second the use of more RAM if you're doing lots of compiling.

Finally why use a raptor? They're fast, but also really noisy, and quite expensive.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by b0redom

Why don't you go for some SFF boxes? I just got an SN25P, and they're silent. IMHO silent is better than monsterously fast.

You've not mentioned a graphics card, and I'd second the use of more RAM if you're doing lots of compiling.

Finally why use a raptor? They're fast, but also really noisy, and quite expensive.

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Not so great on the expandability front though.
The 36gig Raptors were noisy admittedly, but properly damped 74 or 150gig versions really don't make all the much noise. I've built a fair few pcs with these drives, and been happy with the end result in all cases (and I'm really rather serious about noise).
I'm not sure how the CM stacker would fare in your project.
You mention the Sonata II, but as far as I can see, this wouldn't really be any more suitable than a normal ATX case.
You haven't mentioned silence as a priority, but given some of your setup, is this the case? (Pun not intended!)
If you can give me more details, I should be able to be more helpful in recommending some decent components.

the p180 is a great case i just got one and the phantom 500 psu , listen ....... see silent !