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.
