Power Supply: Seasonic S12-380
Mainboard: ABIT AW-8
Processor: Intel 920 / Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Memory: 2gb DDR2-667 (1gb x2)
Hard Drives: System: 80gb SATA2. Captures: 250gb SATA2
Video: ATI x800xl / Arctic Cooling ATI Silencer 5
Video Input: Pinnacle AV/DV Deluxe Video input card
Sound: Realtek HD audio
ODD: Dual Plextor SA-716 16x DVD-R/DL
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Home w/ SP2
I built it myself from parts I chose for quietness, sufficient power for video editing, stability and minimal power use. (as it runs 24/7). It performs extremely well for everything I've tried using it for.
This computer is quiet enough to sleep nearby, and is capable of very good Render times for my video work.
The Case is an Antec Sonata, which comes with an excellent 380w power supply already installed.
This case looks great, is very quiet and is easy to work with. The drives are all easy to remove, and the side cover also removes and install easily. I replaced the 120mm Antec case fan with a much quieter 120mm Nexus fan.
Antec power supplies are reliable, but tend to lack efficiency at lower power levels (idle). I chose to replace it with a more efficient, quieter and better cooling Seasonic S12-380. The Seasonic uses Active Power Factor Correction for very high efficiency and a very broad input voltage range. (100-250v) The S12 series is a further improvement upon the already excellent Super Tornado series.
As the video editing software I use seems to prefer Intel based systems, I chose the 920 model for its Dual Core design, the 2mb x2 L2 cache and the new cooler running Presler core. Even so, the Presler Pentium 4 generates a bit of heat under load, so I installed an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7pro CPU cooler. This runs very cool, and makes very little noise. (Aprox 26C at idle- 800 rpm fan speed!)
The mainboard I chose is the ABIT AW-8. This board is know for its speed and stability, and very helpful ABIT uGURU system, which monitors and controls various functions such as CPU temp, fan speeds, overclocking, etc without using any CPU resources to do so. This mainboard uses Abits q-otes heatpipe cooling system for the northbridge chip which works extremely well but leaves no room for Legacy Parallel and Serial Ports. The performance and stability has been even better than my previous AG-8, which was already incredible.
The onboard Audio is the Realtec HD audio, which isn't actually onboard! It's on Abits own proprietary mini-soundcard. This Audio system does use some CPU resources, but is much less intrusive than previous Realtek solutions. It actually gives me far better results than my previous Audigy2zs.
For this computer, I carried over my excellent ATI Radeon x800xl Video Card with an Arctic Cooling ATI silencer 5. The standard ATI heatsink fan isn't actually too loud on the x800 series and is speed controlled but I like the Arctic Cooling direct heat exhaust where the hot air blows out of the computer.
The Hard Drives are both SATA2. The system drive is a Hitachi 80gb, and the Captures/Auxilliary Files drive is a Samsung 250gb. Both are quiet, but not quite as quiet as my old Samsung 160s.
The floppy is still just an old FDD... but I upgraded my Optical drive to dual Plextor SA-716 DVD burners. These both use SATA interfaces and can burn 2 DVDs at once with no disk errors.
The total cost? CHEAP. You couldn't buy a computer as quiet, powerful and efficient as this one for what I paid. Many comparable computers are cheaper, but are noisy power hogs that actually seem slower! Most "OEM" dual-core systems have minimal graphics, such as the infamous x300SE, inadequate and inefficient power supplies, LOUD fans, poor airflow, an absolute TON of Bloatware and really cheap Optical drives. On the other hand, many now offer HD audio, adequate memory and OPTIONAL high grade video cards, so you COULD theoretically buy one like mine from one of the major manufacturers. Kind of. Probably a LOT louder and not as fast though.
My system = aprox $1500 including XP Home FULL.
A well-known manufacturer that rhymes with "Bell"= $1912 NOT including dual DVD burners. (not available) But they do give you a "free" 17" monitor.
You would have to completely reinstall and configure Windows on it to get any decent performance, but it would be roughly comparable.
Oh well.
Hugz, Keri
