mfc2 wrote:
I am planning on building my own system soon and it looks like I will end up with a configuration similar to yours. The motherboards I am considering are the following:
-Asus K8V Deluxe
-Asus K8V SE Deluxe
-Asus K8N-E Deluxe
-Aopen AK86-L
Why did you choose the Asus K8N-E Deluxe? I have not seen a lot of information on how it compares to the others. Not as many stores sell it, and it is more expensive.
To be honest, I used to be kind of an Intel fan. And to be even more honest, I even didn't know any good reasons for voting against AMD...I just thought a P4 stands for POWER...
Now that my main objective is not only to get a powerful system but a powerful AND silent one, I learnt about the qualities of the AMD CPUs and especially about the Cool'n'Quiet technology.
And you are right, it's not easy to obtain valid "real life" information and comparisons including the Asus K8N-E Deluxe.
However, it is said to support the Cool'n'Qiet-Technology as well and I read articles about the chipset (NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb), which led me to believe that this would be a good choice.
I contacted a silentpc components dealer here in Germany to ask for further advice and comments and to check if they maybe would build such a system for me...maybe they'll come up with a different suggestion.
Or I'll stick to my plans to do it myself. However, I am a bit worried about components not really being 100% compatible, as you hear a lot about "wrong" memory modules and such.
And I am still wondering/thinking about
1.
the graphics card (do I really need that model or isn't a quieter one sufficient?)
2.
an extra (external) controller for temperature and fan speed (as I am not reylly 100% sure if I really unterstand who will control what in this silent pc)
3.
how to install MS XP Prof. on a RAID Level 1 system "from scratch"...