Gave up on the Antec Aria

[Gravity]

I had the latest Asus board, a wireless card and an ATI 9800 pro in the box, a gig o' ram and a P4 prescott.

The box had many, many spontaneous reboots which were either heat or graphics related. I have given the box to one of my workers who will use onboard vid and LAN so as to not drain the power from the psu.

Bought another sonata though....putting it together now.

Just an fyi.

 

[Rainsford]

Perhaps I've been hitting the pipe, but doesn't it have a 300 Watt power supply? Unless you are doing some strange stuff, I have a hard time seeing that not being enough power. I could be wrong though, but 300 watts seems more than enough for that hardware.

 

[DarkAmeba]

The Aria's PSU is excellent quality and has plenty of watts for that setup not sure what was going on with yours.

 

[TroubledTimeLord]

You might not agree with what Gravity is saying, but I can attest. The heat that comes out of the power supply is extremely warm and the Aria case definitely needs supplemental cooling -- period.

I think the power supply can run all this stuff but can't deal with all the heat generated from the case and all its components. With the power supply's tiny vents, it can't be efficient enough to move enough air out of the case. I have a P4 3.0C setup with a 9500 Pro, 1GB PC3200, 7200RPM HDD, Audigy 2 ZS, and 52x CD-R/RW and I have to run the case with at least one side off. When playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, I have experienced more errors with this setup than my last computer (Athlon XP 1900, 512MB PC2100, 9500 Pro, mid tower case). The CD-ROM especially gets very hot because of the constant access and limited ventilation. I will be getting an Antec 2650-BQE since I will also be buying a more powerful video card and won't trust it inside the Aria.

The Aria will either be sold or I will turn it into an HTPC or some other side project. It's a nice case and I love it, but the heat issue needs to be addressed with a case revision. Oh well, I guess that's the price for early adoption!

 

[Busithoth]

Hmm. I agree that the airflow could/should be improved on this case, but I haven't had any of these problems with mine, and I've got two hard drives in there.

My DigiDice had the crappiest power supply I've ever used.

 

[Dman877]

There's a simple must-mod on the aria. Whichever side you want, towards the front, drill a hole for an 80mm intake fan. Cut's temps about 10 - 15C accross the board. I'll get a pic of mine up in a second.

Also it's definitely not the PSU, I had a 2.8C, 2 hard drives, gig of ram, and a 6800GT running in this thing with cpu temps at 60+ and gpu temps at 80+ (before I modded it) and it was rock solid.

Aria w/intake

That's a very low speed 80mm too, no name fan seems to put out more air then a L1A at less noise.