Speccing Out New Box - Case/PSU Recommendations

Hi,
I'm speccing out a new desktop box for myself and so far have the following components:

• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
• Athlon X2 4200+
• Thermalright XP-120
• Vantec 120mm stealth
• 2x Geil 1GB PC3200
• 2x Western Digital Caviar 250GB SATA-II 7200rpm
• NEC ND4550 DVD writer
• XFX GeForece 7800GT (may buy a second one of these as I have a 2405FPW, hence the SLI motherboard)

What case/psu would you recommend to put this lot in? It goes under the desk so I don't much care about looks but quieter is better. Also, is the on-board sound on the A8N good enough? I have a 7.1 setup that has been running from an Audigy 2 so that's the quality that I'm used to. Finally, anywhere that I've missed the boat and should be replacing components?

Thanks for any advice.

Cheers,
Jim.

Right, Case, I'm am massive fan of my Gigabyte Aurora 3D. It has Dual rear 120mm fans and a 120mm front intake as well as a side vent so cooling is fantastic. There is stacks of space inside to work and outside it looks awesome. I honestly can't think of a better case, almost all my mates run them now, we reckon they're worth about 3-4C on cooling.

PSU, I've been really impressed with my Hiper and I know a lot of people have been too. The modualr design makes installation really easy and it looks fantastic, the power it puts out is really solid and its fantasically stable. For the price it really is exceptional and the packing it comes in (a toolbox!!!) is an added bonus.

On the sound: I wasn't that impressed with the onboard sound, mine was broken (to be fair I probably bust it when I installed it), I ended up getting an X-Fi Xtreme Music and haven't looked back. the sound quality really is awesome. Everything is soo much crisper and realer. The surround system is waaay more immersive than anything I've ever heard before.

I think the rest of your rig looks rock solid, I might suggest a Zalman CNPS9500 instead of the Thermalright purely because my mates XP-120 broke and permanently damaged his 7800GTX. The Zalman is also really easy to install (I mean idiot proof, you don't even need to remove the mobo) and depending which review you look at its as good or better.

Good Luck!

The onboard sound is a drain on your CPU to drive. Would seem a shame to spend all that money on the CPU and graphics and then have the sound drag it down.

I bought an OEM Audigy card for about 17 quid for basically that reason; the quality of the Asus onboard sound was good enough already for use with some damned nice Sennheiser headphones.

i totally agree with RavenNight the Hiper modular PSU's are amazing. Its not just good on the eye its modular so you only need what cables you require. Its nice and powerful to so should be good with your system and the toolbox aint bad :mrgreen:

Great; thanks for all the replies. The Hiper does indeed look like a nice PSU so I'll be grabbing one of those.

I assume that with the Zalman CNPS9500 I don't need a separate fan as it comes with the product, yes?

The Gigabyte case also looks special; I'll be adding that to the list.

One thing that I did notice - the A8N-SLI Deluxe is SATA I. As I'm buying SATA-II drives does it make sense to either downgrade the drives or upgrade the motherboard to the A8N32-SLI Deluxe?

The Zalman comes with its own fan, and its almost completely silent at full blast. I'm not sure about whether it supports SATA 2, on the website it supports SATA 3GB/s and it says hte same in the manual. But Scan lists it as supporting SATA II, so I reckon your safe with the Deluxe, the major disadvantage with the A8N32 is that it robs you of the PCI slots if you use double width cards.

SATA 3GB/s = SATA II . There was some kerfuffle with naming it SATA II as the poeple who came up with SATA weren't asked if it could be called SATA II ( or something) I have SATA 3GB/s on my AN8-Ultra and it runs SATA II drives :)

Yep I'm running Sata II drives on the Asus no prob, not 100% sure if I get full transfer speeds but its pretty damn fast!

Great; thanks for all the help and clarifications. Now I just need to purcahse all of the relevant bits and pieces and put them together, which should be the easy bit :)


Cheers,
Jim.

Good luck! Let us know how you get on!