I am going to be putting all this inside a Nexus Breeze case, initially with the supplied 350W PSU and just the 120CM case floor fan:-

AMD (Newcastle) Athlon 64 3500+/2.2ghz L2-512kb Box 939pin

Asus A8V Deluxe Socket-939 VIA/KT800Pro - ATX Sound Gb-Lan IEEE1394 USB2 800FSB WiFi Retail Box

Kingston 512 DDR400 PC3200 Cl3 Memory module x 2

Seagate ST3160023A 160GB 7200rpm 8mb Cache Barracuda 7200.7 Plus - OEM

LG 52x32x52x IDE DRIVE - OEM

Liteon 16x DVD R/RW Dual Layer Internal IDE OEM

Additional to this I already have a 9700 pro that I intend to house there - this I shall be buying the Zalman VGA cooler (model c) for complete, I think, with the optional fan.

I shall replace the stock CPU cooler with the Zalman7000 AlCu.

Does anyone know if the optional fan for the AGP cooler comes with a fanmate? I really cannot decide if I want to spend any more on a fancy fan controller - I am hoping to more or less "set and forget".

Oh and one other thing - I am quite interested in SATA but worried if I load up with more drives power could be an issue plus concerned at noise of SATA - although I would NOT be getting raptors or anything - more like another Seagate at same capacity for fast programatic access.

All opinions welcome - I may well be comitting soon, itchy to move to the 64 bit platform now AMD have cut some prices!

You probably should look into getting a Winchester rather than a Newcastle as most of the reports are showing lower power consumption on the order of 20% to 25%.

I am just concerned for the Winchester and 90nm I would end up postponing further.... or paying more - had some problems finding availability for the Newcastle even with recent pricing changes (plus I guess I could always change later since I spent out for the 939 socket?)

I think I read another post here that the 90 nM technology was rather "cutting edge" and that made me assume it would be a much more expensive processor - no idea if true or false, but I did check my etailer and they had no Winchesters listed at all.

One final thought on my proposed purchases - and a much more minor detail than the processor choice (which I admit is key, and unfortunately I may not have time to research enough and suspect UK availability will determine given my "itchy fingers!")...

The last detail question that I thought of is that I think I read somewhere here cool and quiet and fanmates might conflict - so given that a fanmate comes with my CPU cooler will I need it there or will it interfere? Could I sensibly use the CPU fanmate with my additional fan on the heatsinked 9700 pro? Or is it best to include an extra fanmate in my order? or if I am doing that should I really go crazy and get a full blown controller incase I wish to also control my case fan and even anything else in future?

I recently got a 120 GB Seagate 7200.7 drive. X I would not recomend it for a quiet system.
Its most annoying habit is a tendancy to periodically do some fairly noisy procedure, even if nothing is accessing the drive. Not sure which is louder most of the time - my Maxtors vs this Seagate. But the Seagate shure is more anoying because it's noise changes, where the Maxtors don't.

But maybe Seagate has fixed this problem, or maybe you have muffling plans. I got the Seagate because of their 5 year warranty, but am not happy with the noise. Just thought I would pass along the experiences.

<BUMP> Just wondering is anyone had any comments on tha ASUS board? I am aware of the "curse of ASUS" for undervolting, but not sure how relevant it is with cool n quiet AMD64 systems? Also biased towards ASUS because (undervolting aside) my A7V8X-X has served me well - an this bundle looks like good value with the wifi included etc etc...

Anyway, shall try to research discs more - anyone opinions on quietness front regarding SATA versus IDE?

I thought I better bump, because quite likely I MAY send in my purchases tomorrow - all depends when I get paid and how things look on my credit card!

Well, I'll answer on the undervolting part with my Abit board which also doesn't allow undervolting in the BIOS.

I did manage undervolting using the correct ClockGen program for the relevant chip. My CPU runs stable 2200MHz at 1.25V. And I practically disabled Cool & Quiet in the BIOS. CnQ does not stop the CPU fan (at least on my Abit) and already I run it slow enough that stopping it wouldn't make any difference anyway. At 1.25V at full power, idle temps are 30C, light use 35C. With CnQ enabled idle is 25C at 1.1V & 1100 MHz, light use around 28C. However, when it swithces to heavy use, it jumps up to the full 1.5V which is just plain too hot, not to mention occasionally crashing the computer. I couldn't get MBM to run the ClockGen from the commandline either. I certainly won't bother with CnQ for 5C at idle. A board that allowed undervolting would have been much nicer.

Undervolting aside, Asus boards do usually pack a nice batch of goodies.

I am holding back on this order presently - precisely because I cannot find a supplier who can ship any AMD64 939 socket 3400's (the Winchesters) in the UK - it seems even though we are into the third quarter now there is zero availability here! Of course if anyone knows better I should be very grateful to know where to place my order!

I "think" I have found a supplier of winchesters! Below is the order I am thinking about placing - comes in around the £700 mark, which allows me the budget for my case extra and maybe a PSU if I need it or am too lazy to move my current Tagan 480 around !

Abit AV8 3RD Eye (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-053-AB)

AMD Athlon 64 3500 Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-101-AM)

Zalman CNPS7000B-Alcu Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler - Retail (HS-008-ZA)

Crucial 1GB (2x512MB) DDR PC3200 Ballistix Dual Channel Kit (MY-033-CR)

Sony CRX320E 52x32x52x16 CDRW/DVD Combi Drive (Black) - OEM (CD-025-SO)
NEC ND3500 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-012-NE)

Samsung SpinPoint P SP1213N 120GB ATA-133 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-008-SA) (two off)

Any comments and critiques most welcome, but it is starting to feel about right for me now....

PS - may well move over to the MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum-54G now... like the idea of Nforce chipset plus wi-fi... unless anyone knows anything bad?

Isn't there a firmware update for this problem?


I wouldn't buy the Zalman vga fan for the heatpipe VGA cooler (if you still intend to do that) but get another, quieter fan with a fanmate or something. Just rig up some way to suspend it, I've done that with really long tie wraps in one build and a DIY metal bracket in another (DIM actually since I did it myself ). Or get an Arctic Cooling VGA silencer if it is compatible. Since the Nexus Breeze appears somewhat airflow-challenged outtake-wise that certainly wouldn't hurt.


SATA is nice for a new system because of the cabling and it's probably more future-proof but there are no real benefits besides that at the moment, unless you want to use raid (which many new boards have on-board). It should not be noisier than PATA, but I would definitely try to keep the number of hard drives as low as possible, especially since the Breeze does not really allow for good hdd cooling or decoupling.


Never had a problem with MSI or Abit. Both have a noisy NB fan that needs to be taken care of though. Are you sure you don't want to wait a bit longer for the nForce4 boards? All depending on whether you actually need 10 usb ports of course... and whether you can bring yourself to waiting even longer

I'm a total newbie, but I was also considering the Nexus Breeze with a similar component array to what MainframeGuy is proposing. I'm now concerned with the fact that all of the heat generated inside the Breeze case must go through the psu (which is the only exhaust). It would seem that this would make it very difficult for the psu to maintain temp without cranking the fan way up. Any thoughts?

thanks for the comprehesive feedback!


I have revised my order plan to add a Arctic VGA silencer cooler because I think that is going to work better for my 9700 pro in the Nexus case, even saves a little money too.... Also upped the drives to 160GB but sticking with ATA for now.

Hopefully once I'm brave enough to place the order it will be shipping next week or thereabouts - I'll no doubt post on my build and experiences, esp with the case/PSU temps and noise.

Well, even though I loved my Abit board when I received it and it is DEFINITELY a very high-quality board, attention given to every component, layout, box contents, etc, I'm extremely p**ssed off with the uGuru and a bit less by the K8T800 Pro chipset. You might reconsider getting an nForce chipset board.

Interesting topic for I just today (10/26) received my new Asus A8V Deluxe socket 939 motherboad with AMD 3400+ chip.
It's going into a Fong Kai case (thanks silentpc review) along with a SilenX Pro PSU some zalman fans and 1gig of Cosair PC3200 RAM.
The case is on it's way and should be here by the end of the week.

Many asked the mainframe the purpose of his computer... myself it was just to build a quiet computer which would serve me faithfully for a number of years. Which this one will. I play no games and don't see myself ever doing the overclocking thing.

Mainframe by the way... I too am going to use a 9700 VGA Pro for my graphics card. The ASUS user guide which came with the motherboard specifically mentions the 9700 Pro VGA card. They say if the cards serial number is xx-xxxxx-30 or later it's OK to use for "Optimal perfomance and overclocking stability".

In fact my final research led me to make a few changes - so this is what the final order looks like:-

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-027-MS)

AMD Athlon 64 3500 Winchester 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (CP-101-AM)

x 2 - Crucial Ballistix PC-4000 BL6464Z505 512MB DDR (MY-016-CR)

x 2 - Samsung SpinPoint P SP1614N 160GB ATA-133 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-009-SA)

Sony CRX320E 52x32x52x16 CDRW/DVD Combi Drive (Black) - OEM (CD-025-SO)

NEC ND3500 16x DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-012-NE)

OcUK Value Floppy Drive - Black (HD-001-OK)

Zalman CNPS7000B-Alcu Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler - Retail (HS-008-ZA)

Arctic Cooling Rev.4 ATI 1 (9600/9700/9800) VGA Silencer (HS-002-AR)

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) (AC-000-AC)

Nexus Breeze Case with 350W Nexus PSU

As you can see I changed my MoBo and VGA cooler - infact going with the Nforce3 chipset just as Burcakb mentioned! I decided I did not need wifi with my mobo (CAT5 is right here anyway) although MSI do make a wireless edition of that board too..... I am hoping I will not need a fan controller on the Arctic and that it's noise will be damped by the case on my 9700pro - wel will seet about that.

Also slightly nervous if the 350 PSU will be entirely adequate (unsure of quality) but if there is a problem I have a Tagan 480 in another less demanding rig and will just have to go to the trouble of swapping them around.

I shall make another thread to give my feelings on the Nexus Breeze case when the order ships - next week probably, so building in November I hope!

Just to add to TeeJay's sage advice,

Not only are the two drives noisier, but under Windows the practical speed benefit of a RAID0 configuration is negligible !!! The magazine "MaximumPC" did some nice benchmarks to evidence this point.

I actually have my order filled now - am about to assemble the beast.

I did go with the two 160 drives, but simply as IDE and this because I want enough space for all my needs (video gets BIG!).

My board will enable sata later as and when there are benefits to be had - hopefully I have a little bit of "future proof" with this build, because it sure cost me enough!