when I purchased mine a few months ago, I got the following:
- MSI P6N motherboard (does both SATA and 4xIDE, firewire, quad-core capable, onboard 7.1 surround sound, takes many different types & speeds of RAM
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (the lowest model with 4MB cache at the time, it's a big performance jump in some applications compared with similar speed with less cache)
- Mushkin DDR2 6400, 2 x 1 GB, 800MHz (2 identical sticks can run in dual mode, so operate faster than a single large(er) stick)
- 2 x Samsung Spinpoint 500GB SATA (large, speedy, and quiet)
- Seasonic S12 Energy Plus 550W PSU. *very* quiet, high-efficiency (=less wasted heat) Not a very well known name, but they do manufacture most of the Antec PSU's in their factories as well.
- Antec Solo case (looks slick, with sound-deadening panels and suspension mounted harddrives for less vibration noise
- couple of antec tri-speed casefans, running at their lowest speed setting
- Also got a different CPU fan to keep the noise down further
the motherboad supported smart cpu fan settings, so I could set it to keep the CPU temp at a specific level (I picked 45C) It will then spin the CPU fan as slowly as it need to keep that temperature, as opposed to going full-speed and knocking of another of couple of degrees. Now my main CPU fan typically only does 300RPM, which means it's pretty much silent. If it gets busy and warms up, then the fan spins a little faster to try to keep the temperature at 45C.
I went with an ATI X1650XT video adapter, which IIRC is very close to the 7600GT performance wise. DEfinitely not top of the line, but it was in a price range that I was willing to pay, plus it was the fastest passively cooled video card I could find. (no VGA fan = less noise again)
At this point the loudest component in my machine by far is the DVD drive. It's kind of refreshing to need to look at your power light to see if your PC is actually on when you're sitting right next to it, instead of my old Pc where I could hear it loudly from the other side of the room.
- MSI P6N motherboard (does both SATA and 4xIDE, firewire, quad-core capable, onboard 7.1 surround sound, takes many different types & speeds of RAM
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (the lowest model with 4MB cache at the time, it's a big performance jump in some applications compared with similar speed with less cache)
- Mushkin DDR2 6400, 2 x 1 GB, 800MHz (2 identical sticks can run in dual mode, so operate faster than a single large(er) stick)
- 2 x Samsung Spinpoint 500GB SATA (large, speedy, and quiet)
- Seasonic S12 Energy Plus 550W PSU. *very* quiet, high-efficiency (=less wasted heat) Not a very well known name, but they do manufacture most of the Antec PSU's in their factories as well.
- Antec Solo case (looks slick, with sound-deadening panels and suspension mounted harddrives for less vibration noise
- couple of antec tri-speed casefans, running at their lowest speed setting
- Also got a different CPU fan to keep the noise down further
the motherboad supported smart cpu fan settings, so I could set it to keep the CPU temp at a specific level (I picked 45C) It will then spin the CPU fan as slowly as it need to keep that temperature, as opposed to going full-speed and knocking of another of couple of degrees. Now my main CPU fan typically only does 300RPM, which means it's pretty much silent. If it gets busy and warms up, then the fan spins a little faster to try to keep the temperature at 45C.
I went with an ATI X1650XT video adapter, which IIRC is very close to the 7600GT performance wise. DEfinitely not top of the line, but it was in a price range that I was willing to pay, plus it was the fastest passively cooled video card I could find. (no VGA fan = less noise again)
At this point the loudest component in my machine by far is the DVD drive. It's kind of refreshing to need to look at your power light to see if your PC is actually on when you're sitting right next to it, instead of my old Pc where I could hear it loudly from the other side of the room.