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Antec Sonata for power pc?

M

Mongoo

Member
I need to pick out a case and power supply for a video and audio workstaion with a bit of gaming on the side. The system needs to be quiet as possible without comprimising power and cooling to a safe degree. I might overclock, but have never before so thats yet to be for sure.

The system I've got picked out so far is this:

AMD 64 3500+ socet 939 (should I go 90nm?)
MSI K8N Neo2 Motherboard
1-2 Gigs Cosiar Value Ram
2 NEC 3500A DVD burners
2 Hard Drives (Leaning towards Seagate for Noise level)
nVidea 6800 (what manufacture?) (can some one explain the difference between 6800, GT6800, and Ultra GT6800 please?)
RME Hammerfall 96/56 Sound Card
Modem (yet to me decided, any advice would be great. I've got a terrible connection in the boonies)
Floppy Drive (What brand model would you get?)

All this to be powered through a UPS (reccomendations please) with "Pure Sine Wave Output" with enough watts for this computer, a 110Watt multitrack recorder, maybe a monitor and various other rack units. What VA rating do you think I will need to be safe and allow expandability?

After the PSU the power will go though a Art Pro SP4x4 Power Conditioner.

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What I don't yet know is if this case and power supply will be good enough for necessary power and cooling needs. The object is to be quiet as possible with these componets. I don't want to spend and arm and a leg on a case either.

I think I could still change some fans around and add different heatsinks to further quiet and cool this system, no? Any recommendations?

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On a final note, I have noticed some controversy over the new 90nm processors with MSI Motherboards. Overall on a compatibility level, could you tell me anything I need to know or watch out for? I'm actually not very tech savy. I can seem to find my way into computer problems but never the way out, so any nessary information would be greatly appreciated.

I think thats it. Thanks for any and all help.

Mongoo
 
the 380W PSU will be more then enough to power up your system. the sonata is a super quiet case and antec psu's are among the top. antec is the overall best case and psu maker overall for price and performance.

if you want a really quiet cpu cooler, go for the zalman copper cooler, which is like $40ish.

as for compatibility issues with the new 90nm cpu's, you'll need to flash the bios for it to work properly. since you're going with socket 939, you should also think about running the epox motherboard. it overclocks just as well as the msi and epox is a very good brand. you can read reviews about it on anandtech's front page of the site. 🙂
 
Let me ask this then too. Where do I stand as of now with watts? I mean, if 380 Watts is more than I need, how much more can I expand?

Thanks
 
well, lemme tell you what you can do wtih a quality 240W psu. you can run an fx-55, an x800 xt, a sound card, 2gb of ram, 2 raptor drives, and an optical drive.

its hard for me to tell you what else you can run, but i can tell you what the psu can support. raptor drives use up a lot more power then 7200rpm drives. with your system, you will be able to hold up to an fx-55, 6800 ultra, 2gb ram, 2 harddrives, and a couple opticals. the 6800 series are power hungry vs the ati cards, so wtih just ur plain 6800, expect to support up to a couple more harddrives if you want and probably more. hope this helps. 🙂
 
Do you know how much the RME hammerfall 96/52 sound card requires in terms of power? I'm just worried that that coupled with the 6800 will be too much. I don't really know though.
 
Suggest you check out the MSI forums at this address:

http://msihq.designlab.info/

You will find MSI boards need lots of +12V amps. I started with a 350W PSU and it couldn't power my MSI athlon 64 system (wouldn't go for more than a fraction of a second). Installed a 430W and it started right up. There are many tips in these forums (see the sticky notes at the top of each forum) to help you. I read these forums before buildoing my MSI system and the build went relatively pain free.

Best of luck.
 
Originally posted by: rforum
Suggest you check out the MSI forums at this address:

http://msihq.designlab.info/

You will find MSI boards need lots of +12V amps. I started with a 350W PSU and it couldn't power my MSI athlon 64 system (wouldn't go for more than a fraction of a second). Installed a 430W and it started right up. There are many tips in these forums (see the sticky notes at the top of each forum) to help you. I read these forums before buildoing my MSI system and the build went relatively pain free.

Best of luck.
Click to expand...

"350W PSU" means next to nothing. A quality 350W PSU like an Antec will provide more power then many no-name 500W units.
 
I was merely pointing out that MSI boards with Athlon 64's seem to need more power than required with earlier boards and CPU's - this is easily verified if you read the MSI forums and note the number of users who had to buy more powerful PSU's to power their systems. Low powered Antec's have had their share of critics as well. I just mentioned it as something to watch out for.
 
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