Basic Stats:
Intel P4 Northwood - 3.06GHz / Asus P4R800-V Deluxe
Antec Phantom 350 PSU / Sonata Case
2x512mb Kingston HyperX (2-2-2-6)
Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu, on a Fanmate 1 diet
2x120mm Nexus / Yate Loon fans
2x200GB Seagate Baracuda 7200.6 SATA (Raid 1) / 1x120GB, 1x80GB Western Digital Caviar IDE
Hauppauge PVR-250 TV capture card
Plextor PX-712A DVD-RW (nice and quiet)
ATI 9800 Pro(128meg), with ZM80C-HP
Sunbeam Rheobus Fan Controller
Asus Wireless Card

Nice to see I'm not the only one whose cablegami skills are lacking! Seriously though, nice work. That LSI 2 thing is neat - I wish the Aerocool coolpanel I just got showed % CPU usage - that would be useful.

I should be following you soon with some pics of my first attempt at a self-build: Antec SLK3000B as in my sig file.

Thanks for posting.

Shouldn't that be raid1? raid0 actually lowers the MTBF.

Yeah it must be... people always seem to get those confused.
Raid 0 is striping without fault tolerance (in fact, half the fault tollerance of a single drive as the probability of a failure is doubled).
Raid 1 is mirroring with fault tolerance, but you only get to use 50% of the storage capacity.

Nice build though.
I'm still deciding whether to get an LCD panel or not...

You should rest your case on squash balls (cut in half), that would reduce vibrations better but still elevate your case off the carpet.

Try tucking some of the drive cables into that space above the HDD's. Wedging more cables behind the LIS panel should allow you to tidy the RAM area a bit easier.

hth

Yes, you are correct on the Raid. The 2 200 giggers are mirrored. I keep getting them confused too.

Squash balls on top of the carpet? That might be taking it a little too far. I was just looking for airflow, vibration is pretty well non-existant. (good enough for me anyway).

I'm fooling around on and off, taping up the Antec holes in the cases sides. I sit to the left of the machine, so the door taped off helps block any noise transmission. The holes on the right side seem to flow the air directly over the ram, then the CPU and out the PSU.

Will fool around this weekend cleaning up the cable mess. True there's room under the drives, but no cables are routed in that general direction to start with. Behind the drives is already crammed with 4 power lines, 2 SATA and a double ended IDE cable. I tell ya, just release the clips on the drive carrier and they pop right out all by themselves..

I made a 4pin molex to 2pin adaptor, pluged the front LEDs to the adaptor, then plugged that into my mobo's HDD activity. So when there is HDD activity the front LEDs flash. It's pretty cool, but probably more annoying than just beeing on 24/7. I'm thinking up a way to turn them on and off and yet still be hooked to the HDD activity.

How did you cut the back grill, what tools?

Well, the Sonata's rear grill is already very open to begin with, so with a small pair of wire cutters, I snipped the grill out very easily (and without any small metal bits flying off and getting into places they shouldn't be)

I had the whole works apart yesterday to do a wiring clean-up. I'll post some new pics tomorrow. It's a lot cleaner looking than before. I'll get some close-ups of the backside to show what I did,

OK, as promised, a pic of the rear. The Sonata grill was very easy to clip out with regular (hobby size) diagonal clippers. You can get in really tight to the edge, so what's left on the case is really not that sharp. It should still have a wire grill like the PSU, to save me from the occasional knuckle cutting on the fan. Yes, my external cable management skills still leave a bit to be desired... I know.


Inside, it still isn't as clean and pure as some other boxes I've seen, but you have no idea just how much wiring is already stuffed (neatly) behind the drive bays (top to bottom) The wires that I really couldn't do anything with were the SATA cables, and that IDE that covers the 2 CD Drives. Would it be advisable to remove the CD-RW and use the DVD-RW for everything? Can a drive be over-used?

Oh, also shifted the HD's around, to the raid is up-top in the better airflow, the rarely used back-up drive on the bottom where it's safe.

Raid now runs at 37 degrees (down 2 degrees over the bottom mounted position out of the airflow), the 2 media/storage/backup drives humm along at 31-34.

Is there any known software (like dTemp) that can handle temp and SMART reading of raid drives? I heard that dtemp wasn't to be trusted on raids (although the touch-test basically confirms that the raid is definitely running hotter than the other 2 drives)

The cable management is looking alot better now.
It must be hard to manage all those cables with so many drives.
If i were you, i'd ditch the cd drive.
Just use the dvd drive.

Actually the hard drive cables aren't that hard to hide, their IDE cable comes off the mobo, and right in behind them. The power cables are routed right in behind the works too.

I'll see if I can find a proper single-ended (round) ide cable to replace that fat one servicing the 2 CD drives currently.

Actually, it's easier to manage ribbon cables. Try it

Hi wooglin!
I am bulding a new DAW system with this Sonata Case.
Also I want to use the acoustic absorption mat from Akasa (PAX.mate).

Check this link about the asorption mat :
http://www.bit-tech.net/review/136/2

It cames with:

2 sheets of 40 x 35cm
2 sheets of 40 x 18cm

But because Antec Sonata only lets you open one side of the case,
do you think there´s space to put one sheet under the motherboard?
The sheets are 4mm.

filete: Yes, you can likely slide a sheet of this behind the M/B tray in a Sonata. Or maybe even glue one on the tray below the M/B (I haven't tried that and general advice here is to avoid having the M/B touch any sound dampening material for security reasons). But before you go and buy some, be sure to see what MikeC has to say about Paxmate (the part on Paxmate is halfway down that page).

Oh, and Welcome to SPCR!!.

PS: If you search the Cases & Damping forum, you'll find lots of discussions about different materials. A few favorites are melamine foam, roofer's tape and AcoustiPack.

Yes, I decided not to go that way!
I have checked AcoustiPack™ Pre-cut Kit for the Antec Sonata here:
http://www.acoustiproducts.com/en/acoustipack_precut.asp#APAntecSon

But buy it with postage, will be around 90 Euros, and compared that I paid 120 Euros for the Sonata, I don´t think I going to invest in any at this time...

Sorry, wooglin, for drifting off-topic here. I'll make it short.
filete: In Europe check out the damping kit from BeQuiet! I discussed here. A location info in your profile would have helped.
Feel free to post further questions about damping materials to the thread I linked above.

Melamine sheets do wonders to hdd whine, even when not backed with a acoustic barrier. And it's infinitely easier to cut it to shape than open-cell foam

updated pics, Waiting eagerly for a P180...

With 4 hard drives, you probably want to look into some suspension. With the Sonata's (and BQE's) sideways drive cage, it's fairly simple to do. Just string up some elastic, Stretch Magic, or mini Bungee Cords across the bays. You'll be amazed by the resonance it cuts down on.

I can honestly say though, that with the exception of a bit of resonance from having the HD's fan mounted pretty rigidly, that the Zalman makes the most noise in my system. I think I got blessed with some lucky hard drives, as the seek noise on the 'cudas are very low, even more-so on the WD120 that does PVR duty.

I'm considering upgrading to the Thermalright XP-120, but it might be a moot point... the motherboard hiss is just slightly quieter than the Zalman AlCu in there now.

Then again, I'm pretty happy with it as is now... (except I still really want that P180) I'm happy with quiet, trying to make it silent might end up driving me nuts and broke.

edit: also if I were to go the suspension route... lets just say that with all the cables going on back there, it might not be too pretty.