Hello. I need help!
I'm usually hanging around toms hardware, but this time I'm afraid I need something other than overclocking. Posting in the newcommer room, cause I am a noob at my current task!

I am to build a pc for a customer that has to be quiet and decently fast. On top of that it needs usb's on top or upper front.

I need a chassis and cpu cooler suggestion for the system.


The shopping list would look like this :
Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R
Sapphire HD4350 (passive)
WD green WD10EADS
Core i5-750 (not going to overclock for a change)
Corsair VX550 (unless it's loud?)
8gb Corsair XMS3 1333c9
generic sata dvdrw


Some time around May or so I built an i7-920 system that was meant to be reasonably silent as well. But I failed misserably! I bought a hugely expensive Lian li chassis with rubber things on the harddrives and all, but it couldn't shut the cheetah (15k rpm drive) up at all, and worst of all the ocz psu was insanely loud. I don't want to make such a mistake again! I replaced all fans in the system with pwm controlled arctic cooling ones, but it didn't take away much of the noise back then.

What do I do about this system?

Can't really speak for the suggestion about a case that'll meet your needs or a CPU cooler for the i5 (though I'd expect you could check out the Recommended Heatsinks as a start to see what general recommended coolers are (SPCR standard test system is LGA775, but I would expect the general results to carry over and be useful)).

As for the VX550, the VX450 review was positive, and both the VX450 and TX650 are recommended PSUs, so the VX550 should be just as good as either of the others (unless it's an odd model that's not a Seasonic-built or something, in which case it'd be harder to say).

According to Corsair the VX550 is a Channel Well OEM: XMSYellowBeard @ Tom's Hardware It might not be as good as Seasonic units but better value.

But it still uses the same fan as the TX650, as seen in the HardOCP review. It should be fairly quiet considering it's 80 Plus certified.

what is 80 plus certified?

A power supply that is certified as 80 Plus means that it is at least 80% efficient between 20 percent and full output. So, a 400watt PSU that is at least 80% efficient between 80watts output and full (400watt) output (at a certain room temperature) gets that certification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS#Efficiency_level_certifications