silent DAW upgrade advice needed

geoffroy · Post by **geoffroy** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 11:53 pm

Hello

I need to upgrade my DAW and would like it even more quiet

My current configuration :
- a Antec Super Lanboy case : his front fan is quite silent
- a silent 420 W PSU
- two old hard drives which are not silent
- a DVD writer which I don't use often so noise is not a problem
- a Matrix Millenium G400 graphic card
- an Athlon XP 1800+ CPU
- can't remember the name of the motherboard
- a silent fan on top of the Athlon XP 1800+ (I changed it, can't remember its name)
- an old Iiyama vision master pro 410 monitor

So I think I should only change :
- the motherboard : I guess there are motherboards that can control the speed of the CPU fan and the case fan. Are there any ?
- the CPU : I'd prefer to go with Intel as I had heating problems with the Athlon.
- the memory : 3Go is the maximum accepted by Windows XP right ?
- the graphic card : I need one, cheap, fanless (I NEVER play games) but with two screens output
- the hard drives : can I get only one which would be very quiet ?
- I'd get a flat screen

1) What components would you recommend ?
2) can I keep the silent fan that is on top of my Athlon XP1800+ to put it on my new CPU ?
3) can I keep my silent PSU ?

Many thanks for your help, and sorry for my poor english

Geoffroy

FlorisNielssen · Post by **FlorisNielssen** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:02 am

For your digital audio workstation:
Yes you can use 1 disk. Of course you can. But, it depends on how much storage you have now.
Samsung Spinpoints are very quiet drives. (Up to 1GB)
Western Digital has the new Green Power drives. More quiet, but slower (5400RMP). Also up to 1GB.
It depends on your storage needs...

Yes, Windows XP supports up to 3GB.

If you change your CPU to Intel you need a different motherboard. There are a lot motherboards that can control a fan (come to think of it, it might be hard to find one that doesn't).
Intel offers the most powerfull CPU's these days. You could go with a E8400. If you do, change the stock heatsink. The stock one is loud. You can use a Scythe Ninja for example. Very powerful, good with low airflow.