Caltrops - American McGee's Honda Civic





	[quote name="Ray of Light"]It's time. My budget is pretty flexible, and I'm looking to minimize noise. I'd like you all to pull together, AS A TEAM, and really recommend the shit out of this for me. Here's a rough draft: <ul><li>Case: Lian-Li <a href=http://www.pccasegear.com/prod1749.htm>PC-V2100</a>. I'm not a case fetishist, but no mainstream case will hold more than about 12 drives (and even then, they'd be mounted in a tight, vertical stack that's hard to cool properly). This case has 12 3.5" bays, and can hold 8 more 3.5" drives in the 5.25" bays (using 4-in-3 stackers). It's expensive, though, so if there's a large, quiet case that DOESN'T cost four bills (without power supply!), I'm all ears. <li>CPU: Athlon X2, at whatever speed. This new socket "AM2" model looks like the way to go, do motherboards for it even exist? <li>CPU cooling: what a baffling fucking ordeal. I seek "quiet", "cool", and "cheap", in that order. Watercooling is not an option. Please suggest. <li>Motherboard: PCIe and ECC memory support are the main things. 6-8 (or more) SATA ports would be a plus. Before AM2, the Asus Deluxe that Motherhead recommended was my first choice. Now? See socket-AM2 question above. <li>Memory: 2GB ECC, choice here seems extremely limited. Kingston and Corsair have affordable parts, so I guess I go with them? <li>Power: <a href=http://www.silentpcreview.com/article241-page1.html>Antec 500w fanless</a>. $80 more than the equivalent fanned part from Antec, which seems fair. <li>Video: Undecided. I only play Q3 and online poker. I may play BF2 someday, but no promises. I went with ATI for my current PC and missed the nvidia driver experience, so I'd like to go back to nvidia, IF I CAN. Modest power requirements and low operating noise are more important than performance; it would also be nice if the card wasn't half a square foot in size. I'm looking for the Honda Civic (or entry-level Accord) of video cards here. <li>Storage: WD Raptor SATA 74GB (x2). This is for the system disk, pagefile, and my poker handhistory database. It chafes me to spend so much on so little space, but my attempts to get 10krpm performance from arrays of 7200rpm drives have been universally disappointing; I see no alternative. DO YOU? </ul>[/quote]