Hiya!

Long time no new system, but I'm finally done with my new machine. Since my old Socket 939 motherboard blew up, I was forced into upgrading slightly earlier than intended. The upgrade was a slow upgrade, done in several steps, and in fact some of the components have still been kept (case, fans & psu). Everything else is now one year old or newer.

Here's the list of components:

Case: Antec NSK-2400 This one fits nicely into my hifi component rack. Since the computers main purpose is a playback device for HD movies and FLAC audio, it's preferred that it lines up nicely with the rest of the components. Also, it is relatively small, µATX at the biggest, and I don't have a lot of room.

PSU: Antec NeoHE 500 I've had this for quite some time. It uses a low speed 80mm fan for straight through design, although with the layout of the NSK-2400 using the separate PSU chamber, it really doesn't matter which layout the PSU is.

Cooling: 2 Yate Loon D12SL Low noise 120mm fans, which are run at 7V using a 5.25" bay Sunbeam fan controller.

Mobo: Zotac H55-ITX An ITX motherboard with Socket 1156, HDMI and 6+1 sata ports. Almost exactly what I need for high storage density with low computing power and power consumption. ITX means I can fit more hard drives in the space where the µATX motherboard would usually be.

CPU: Intel Core i3-530 The most basic Core i3 (at the time of purchase). Has on-chip graphics fast enough for 10 year old games, which is about the newest I'll ever play. fast enough to play 1080p movies, and most importantly allows dual-head screens without needing a dedicated video card.

Heatsink: Scythe Mini-Ninja Perfect for passive airflow nestled right up to the case exhaust fans, and still short enough to fit in the NSK-2400

RAM: OCZ 2x2GB DDR-3 Well, it's 4GB of memory, enough for me.

SSD: OCZ Vertex 2 Extended 60GB Very high speed for a system disk, and enough space at a very reasonable price.

HDDs: 9TB internal, 1TB external 5 internal hard drives, consisting of 3 Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB drives and 2 Samsung HD154UI 1.5TB drives. While these Samsungs are to be replaced with 2TB drives to make 10TB internal, I currently have a 1TB Western Digital Element external drive to bring the total up to 10TB.


Pictures:

As you can see, I used 2 L-shaped pieces of aluminum held apart by threaded rods, to soft mount 3 extra hard drives to. Drives are decoupled using the standard Antec grommets.















Here are the temperatures I'm getting:



System is very quiet (especially now that I finally got rid of the stock HSF on the CPU), sure you can hear the drives a bit, but it's hardly noticable at 2m distance. with 10TB of storage, I'm not looking for silent, but I'm happy with quiet.

nice!

This looks astonishing. Good thing nobody told you that this can only hold 2 hard disks.

Thanks!



Thanks! Yes, I never listen to the haters

Interestingly, I had the same GigaByte 8600GTS (also my second passive gigabyte) as you did, before my upgrade, but we obviously came to very different priorities for our upgrade paths. I decided more storage was a lot more important than more graphics performance.

My original hope was to manage to switch to onboard graphics and retain equal performace as the 8600GTS had, but that was unfortunately not quite successful, given as I had to upgrade fast, having blown my last computer up (not literally). It will still do CS:S at 30fps on 1920x1200, which is still playable. So it's just barely enough graphics for me. Mostly however the computer does a good job serving and playing high resolution digital media.

CPU temps go to about 50C when playing 1080p movies, but for some reason CPUID recorded a 67C max temp - I'm not really sure under which circumstances this would have come about though. Prim95 puts me up to around 85C if I keep the fans on low, but I don't see myself ever doing anything nearly as stressful for the CPU on this machine. Under normal usage I've never seen it go over 67C sofar, which is good enough for me.

Well, I'm up to 2560x1600 now, so I doubt I can keep it fanless in the next build. Gigabyte didn't even try making a proper 6850, what a letdown. By the way, I'd be happy to rid you of that Minja any time.

If you knew the trouble I went through to get that!!

First I tried to buy it new - no luck.

Then I posted a search in a local forum trying to buy one - specifically Rev B, so it would fit to my socket.

I bought one for a much higher price than some of the Rev As for sale. When it finally got there, it turns out it was a Rev A. I got reimbursed the price for an adapter for Socket 1156 mounting.

I purchased an adapter from the cheapest shop. When I got it, it turned out it was an adapter for a different type of Scythe heatsinks. By the time I noticed this it was too late to return.

So I ordered another adapter, this time the correct type, from the same shop. Week later I get an email saying they no longer stock this type.

So I ordered it again from a different shop, significantly more expensive, and then finally got it. At this point I didn't care about the money any more, I just wanted my damn passive heatsink!

So in conclusion: You can pry my Minja from my cold dead hands!

I've been for many years considering a 30", but I just haven't been able to justify the spending yet. Maybe someday - but at the moment I'm spending my money more on the hearing aspect than the seeing aspect. If I ever did get a 30", I'd just game at 1280x800 - I really don't care about picture quality on games, the big monitor would only be for more workspace.

Kinda was expecting that. Oh, well.


Well, I thought I broke my 24", so there. Fortunately, the big buy did pay for itself, as it's used for work, not just games/movies. Oh, and the family that got the old one is very happy, as apparently it was only malfunctioning, and it isn't any more...


Conquer everything now is my motto.