Slashdot Mirror

I type on two computers:

- my ThinkPad laptop, which I carry with me around all of Europe and give courses with. I have a Storm CM Mech keyboard that I also lug around, in my suitcase, and always hook up to it. Not only does it draw attention, people also express amazement at how fast and precisely one can type with it. I don't care that it is a gaming keyboard. It is nearly impossible to destroy, can be taken apart because of the aluminium cover fixed with screws, and has Cherry MX red switches for fantastic tactile feedback.

- my Fujitsu Celsius workstation, for when I am at home. There is a Razer Black Widow with Cherry MX blue switches hooked up to it. I can type for an entire day and not grow tired of the loud clickety-click. Of course, that is something not to burden your colleagues with - but then again, the Celsius is in my private work room, at home ( I am independent ).

Going back to the rubber-dome keyboards most people use, when I occasionally must use someone else's computer, e.g. during a course to quickly correct something, feels horrible: mushy, imprecise. Yes, mechanical keyboards have a certain cost, here ( in Central Europe ) about € 70 for a Storm CM Mech to € 120 for a new Black Widow. So what - they'll last me for years, and years, and years. I can guarantee you: once you make the move to a mechanical keyboard, you'll never look back.

Oh really CM 690 III (it's a popular case -- they made three versions of it):

http://www.coolermaster.com/ca...

Antec 280:

http://www.antec.com/product.p...

Same deal with a high end Lian Li PC-A79:

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_p...

I know they sell cases where the PSU's are at the bottom. It's a gimmick to sell cases to people that think that's a better design. It's not. The one and only benifit is the weight of the case is now at the bottom and it's less likely to tip. But heat wise, the PSU is the biggest offender in your case. It's also one of the most heat tolerant components. A good, basic, design has large fans in the PSU pulling air IN from the case and exiting the PSU out. All other fans are blowing IN to the case so all airflow enters the case first, travels through and then exits the PSU.

If you have the PSU mounted at the bottom of the case, he will radiate from the PSU up into the rest of the case. Also, as the hot air exits the PSU it will rise past your input fans causing them to recirculate that warm air again!

Oh really CM 690 III (it's a popular case -- they made three versions of it):
http://www.coolermaster.com/ca...

Antec 280:
http://www.antec.com/product.p...

Same deal with a high end Lian Li PC-A79:
http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_p...

You can put 2 3.5" drives in a 5.25" slot by breaking at least one hdd. So only one works. There is also the problem of cooling if you stuff hardware too close to each other.

That's why cooler master sells a 4 in 3 module ( http://www.coolermaster.com/product/Detail/case/case-accessories/4-in-3-device-module.html ). Makes sense, even though it might appear they could have fit one more hard drive sideways in the same space if they removed the fan. Maybe more. But not a good idea. Because small amounts of heat add up to high temperature in absence of cooling.

Hard drives spaced comfortably don't need dedicated cooling, typically.

It'd be interesting to see the numbers on my own system, I suppose... I have an i5-2500k (sandy bridge) that I bought right when ivy bridge came out, which I have clocked at 4.8GHz. That's running with a Cooler Master Hyper 212+, and doesn't exceed 65'C even when transcoding blu-ray/dvd videos to h.264... I've kept it pegged at 100% CPU for 6 days straight without exceeding that temperature....

I'd be surprised if that heatsink could provide >200W of cooling, given that it's a big radiator with a fan. To be fair the case has a *ton* of airflow (Antec Eleven Hundred), but I'm still doubtful that it's capable of providing *that* much cooling... Cooler Master's own specs say it can only handle about 180W of TDP....

This is pretty much my solution, with some slight tweaks. I don't bother with eSATA. I have one machine with this case, which has a SATA X-dock in the top, and the motherboard has support for hot-swapping (enabled in the BIOS for that SATA port). I just have to eject the drive like any other device. I assume it is probably also possible to get these things as add-ons for 3.5" bays, but I haven't checked into them. I also have an external SATA dock that handles both 2.5 and 3.5 inch devices, although that has the disadvantage of being slower through the USB interface. Here are some options. I don't really see the point of eSATA. I don't need any additional cables with these dock solutions, and I just sit the drives on a nice, safe shelf inside the anti-static bags that they came in. A couple of backup drives I store off-site.

Kind of related I came across this video today:

http://cmstudio.coolermaster.com/video_play.php?lang=en&cid=3&vid=24

well..... with my coolermaster CM690 II advanced case

i get a nice little tray on top in which you slot in a SATA drive .... it's got the eSATA built into it... very very handy indeed and my mobo has the eSATA port at the back as well...

linky

all in all it's the best case i have ever had in my life tbh

I've lost a lot of drives to poorly designed Dell server cases that didn't keep the drives cool enough. A lot of drives.

Apologies wrt Thermaltake. I meant to say: http://www.coolermaster.com/product.php?product_id=2542

I have on of those http://www.coolermaster.com/product.php?product_id=2542 Also, It depends on what you prefer.If you are a "usefull hardware" guy, take a hard drive bay, if you are a system administrator, buy a toaster or a coffe mug holder(unless you use cd-drive tray for that).

Just in case anyone is checking, the total power consumption of this puppy is shown as 38 Watts, just a hair above the heat pipe rating for this Coolermaster heat-pipe based case

Who wants to build the first one?

I got a hall-effect ampmeter for the purpose of measuring power usage. It works pretty well, you just clamp it around the wire you want to measure.

The one caveat, though, which makes it far less convenient to use than it would otherwise be, is that it doesn't work if it surrounds both the positive and negative wires at the same time. I ended up modifying a power strip by cutting open the rubberized outer coating of the power cord so I could clamp the meter around just the postive cord.

In retrospect, the kill-a-watt would have been about equally useful, and I wouldn't have to convert amps to watts.

If I were having a new house wired, I would perhaps ask to have the main power cables into the circuit breaker box routed through some kind of enclosure that would allow me to use a hall-effect sensor directly.

Another interesting device if you just want to know how much power your computer is using: the power supply I'm currently using has an analog watt meter that fits in one of 3.5" drive bays in the front of my computer. It pretty much sits at 100-120 watts day or night. If I'm stressing the graphics card, it sometimes goes up to 180 or so.

I got it at a garage sale. I don't think the company sells them anymore, but here's a link. (Click on "gallery" to see the power meter.) I wish more power supplies were made this way.

I don't know about that. I have Mac Pro and at the time I could not buy any other machine with same performance, fantastic design (and it matters to me: the cooling solution is brilliant, everything is accessible and above all, the machine is ultra quiet).

Back in the days it looked nice, but now it's quite mediocre / dull / boring imho. The design has never been good for space usage.

Take this case for example:
http://www.coolermaster.com/products/product.php?language=eu&act=detail&id=5366

And then a graphic card cooler like this:
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=147

And something similar for cpu, or water cooling which you can easily get within the same budget.

Q9550 is really cheap now, quad 2.83 GHz 12 MB cache, what does the current Mac Pro have?

DDR2 memory are more or less given away.

Similar HDDs and DVD-burners won't cost much at all.

HD4850 / HD4870X2 will kill the Mac Pro and still don't cost much.

Get a Corsair power supply. Feel free to tell me where mac pros performance is superior or where the cooling solution is better or where it's more affordable.

Now just buy the base config from Apple and upgrade the rest yourself for much less.

FB-DIMMs cost a lot, you can't get whatever graphics card but only special old slow ones for a huge markup from Apple, and you still pay a lot for the crap you get even at base configuration.

Of all the things Mac Pro does and has, the fact that is is running cool and with NO NOISE or rattle of any kind is worth a lot to me.

And you don't think the $1000 saved can buy you a better cooling solution?

People will easily pay (and I have) several thousand dollars extra for a quiet case, quiet hard drive enclosure, quiet power supply etc and still won't have as quiet system.

Uhm, VGA cooler 40 dollar or so, CPU-cooler something similar, then what? I think 100 dollar or so would be enough for a similar air cooled solution.

The case in question will make some noise FROM THE AIR MOVING THRU IT, but the fans are 23 cm at 1500 rpm so I doubt they make much of a noise, and the VGA cooler is passive, and if you don't over clock a passive CPU cooler probably works just fine in it as well.

Water cooling will of course be even more quiet.

I built my PCs for ages, and spent up to $5000 and still could not have as well made system.

Too bad you suck at getting good parts then.

Macbook and Macbook pros are beautiful machines and a joy to use. Everything from the looks to the OS is well put together and to some of us that is worth the money.

Yeah, I especially like how Safari use all my ram within a day, how applications crash all the time since Safari is using all RAM, how hot the machine gets.
How shitty the TN-panel is and the low 1440x900 resolution of it, how the keyboard makes marks on my screen.
The poor audio quality of the headphones output, the annoying super bright white diode keeping me awake at nights while the machine is at sleep.
How frickin' noisy the machine is since Safari and Flash for OS X sucks balls and how insanely hot the bottom of the enclosure gets since they have pressed it all together within 1 inch without sufficient cooling.
The poor quality of the build (excessive thermal grease and lose aluminium frame around the button releasing the screen.)
And how much bad configuration the machine was with 128 MB vram for an 8600m GT but still top of the line 2.2 GHz CPUs. No way Apple could had put an extra 30 dollar on getting a decent amount of VRAM in all models!?!

I have not seen a single PC or laptop that I would want to buy at any price segment. Just look

Screw beige.

I'll take my Stacker tower over a beige box any day of the week...

Looks sleek, has more than enough space to fit anything you want and it's got quiet 12cm fans instead of noise 8cm ones...

So yeah, I'll just call "black and steel" "the new beige".

Here's my current gaming rig, I need SLI to drive the very high resolution 37"(1920X1080) display (anti-aliasing etc.)

CPU: AMD 3700+ SD Overclocked to 2530mhz (230X11 Aircooled 80mm @ 5,500RPM w/ 4 Heatpipes 1.456V 36C/44C) (very loud, my PC is in a seperate sound isolated room...I have been considering water cooling but have yet to take the plunge)
Board: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
RAM: 4 X 512 OCZ Platinum EL Rev. 2 TCCD (230mhz 2,3,3,5 Aircooled NB 2.8V 37C/41C)
Video: 2 X eVGA 7800GT SLI (stock)
Drive: 74GB WD Raptor
Sound: Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic + PA2v2 Headphone Amp + Sennheiser HD595 Headphones
PSU: Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 550W Power Supply (not recommended, poor quality control on these...some are fine others are not...I got a not)
Case: CM Stacker
Display: Westinghouse 37" 1920X1080 LCD (best purchase of my life)

37" may seem too large for a PC display, but I sit back in a reclining chair with a viewing distance of about 6 feet. It's so comfortable I can game for 16 hours straight(which I do on occasion).

It's a sweet setup...I'm CPU and fsb limited but I can play almost all games at max settings 1920X1080. Low resolution emulated games (Dos, MAME, Atari ST, NES, commodore, amiga, apple IIgs) etc. all look great on this screen.

The Coolermaster Stacker has 11 bays http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php?LT=english&L anguage_s=2&url_place=product_list&p_class=614 I want to get one and put eleven http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/ezbake.shtml If my calculations are correct I could output enough baked goods to open a small bakery.

• Cons

• Pros

My major gripe with cases is: most don't provide enough 3.5" expansion bays. And many case makers put in lots of 5.25" (external) bays before they put in 3.5" bays. Nobody sells a 5.25" disk drive anymore, and I'm tired of screwing in 3.5" brackets.

Note that the stacker actually has 5.25" bays but they sell a cage to fit 4 x 3.5" drives in 3 x 5.25" bays, and the cage comes with its own fan. I don't know how many 3.5" drives the case can support at maximum, it might be 12.

The Lian Li case allows you to fit 5 hard drives, a floppy and 4 CD/DVD drives all at the same time and doesn't make you give up one of your 120 MM fans to do it. The Coolermaster case allows you to fit 2 hard drives and a floppy IF you give up one 120 MM fan and turn your case into a component cooker.

The Coolermaster allows you to fit up to *12* hard drives plus a floppy, plus a CD/DVD. That's with ALL fans, including the optional ones, in place.

The Lian Li case has better ventilation. Coolermaster gives you the option to install more noise generating 80MM fans.

The Lian Li case does not have better airflow than the Stacker. Impossible. I bought the optional fans for up front. They are nice slow quiet 120mm fans, not 20mm fans. That's 3 120mm fans up front. A wall of air moves through the case. It keeps everything cool. Plus one more 120 fan in the back, plus optional ones for the top and side. Plus there is even a optional fan you can buy that blows along the entire length of the motherboard. You pretty much can't find a case that can get more air flowing through it.

The Lian LI case is BTX and sectioned into three thermal zones. Coolermaster uses outdated ATX standard and is one giant component cooker.

The Stacker comes with all the parts to allow you to set up your case in either ATX or BTX format. You can switch back and forth between configurations if you buy a new motherboard of the other type.

Lian Li places the power supply at the bottom with its own separate cool air supply. Cooler Master places the power supply at the top where it will suck in heated processor air garunteeing worse power efficiency and more noise due to the fan having to spin up to cope with increased heat. ATX sucks

The Stacker allows you to put the power supply at the bottom of the case, or the top, or install two power supplies, one in each location, so that you can run two quieter power supplies rather than one large noisy one.

Basically, you don't know what the hell your talking about.

Almost all disk utilities can't pick up dynamic disks, meaning if there's something on that disk you need - you're stuck. I think R-Studio can work with RAID members, including the software type. Dunno how well it works with FireWire connections though.

Although... a decent case is a much better option...
A quick Google shows this 11-bay box
(http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php?LT=eng lish& Language_s=2&url_place=product&p_serial=RC-810&oth er_title=%2BRC-810%2BCM%20Stacker%20810)

This is a well cooled case.

I don't care much for quiet, I'm more into keeping everything cool, and if that means that it's not quiet, then so be it.

Check into the Coolermaster CM/Stacker with it's drive bays and 4-in-3 Device Module that can be removed and big 120mm fans placed into the front of a stack of 3 5.25 drives. You can add more 4-in-3 modules with fans if you wish. Not to mention the Cross Flow Fan that blows air across the entire motherboard.

Loud? Not as bad as you would think. The bigger the fans btw the less they have to turn to generate the same airflow as a 90 or 80mm fan. But some may find the fans too much, which is why I keep mine under the computer table. I hardly notice it...but your milage may vary.

Yep. I wish Apple would sell just their cases for PC folks who want a decent looking case with a good design for quet cooling. I was just looking at G5 towers the other day. Then I ended up buying a CM Stacker. It's the same basic concept as the G5 case. The entire front is a grill to let in air, and you can have up to 3 slow quiet 120mm fans right up front. Plus more slow quiet fans elsewhere (up to 9 total including one in the power supply). I think that's about the same number that are in the G5 case.

CoolerMaster rocks. I discovered them when looking for a new PC. I went with a smaller "botique" brand this time and two of the 4 brands I'd narrowed it down to offered various CoolerMaster cases as options.

I ended up with a CoolerMaster Cavalier 1 (with the side window option). I love it. It looks like what a tower case would have looked like in the Art Decco era (had PCs been around then). Very "retro".

• Antec
• Silverstone - if getting an HTPC case, be careful to get one that doesn't have cooling problems with your CPU of choice. HTPC cases with higher numbers in their names are generally better at cooling.
• Travla
• Ahanix
• XOxide carries their own brand of cases, plus a lot of the other ones on this list.
• Arisetec (formerly Kanam)
• CoolerMaster
• Logic Supply

They make the most beautiful media pc or just PC case in general. The ATC-620 is a wonderful case. It is a shame it is so often overlooked.

For a tower, I would say the Antec Sonata is about as nice as they come.

They make the most beautiful media pc or just PC case in general. The ATC-620 is a wonderful case. It is a shame it is so often overlooked.

For a tower, I would say the Antec Sonata is about as nice as they come.

Just worked on a machine in this case in the shop... gorgeous, imo, especially in black. Though I'd probably switch the blue LEDs for red or something.

As ever, Coolermaster make some very nice cases also with more reasonable (circa $100) price tags that would be suited to such a PC. Here and here are some links. You do, of course, still need to add a PSU to these cases.

As ever, Coolermaster make some very nice cases also with more reasonable (circa $100) price tags that would be suited to such a PC. Here and here are some links. You do, of course, still need to add a PSU to these cases.

Yes, heat is definitely an issue, and an issue I didn't even think about when setting up my 4 disk linux software raid 5 set.

After I set it up for the first time, I had a drive die on me really quickly and noticed when I replaced it that it was murderously hot. As in "burning my fingers" hot. So I went and bought these little hd cooling fans that fit in front of a 5 1/4" drive bay (and come with 3.5" drive mounting adapters) and have 3 little fans on them. They cost about $7 each. I put 4 of them in my machine and they kept the drives at room temperature. Ahhh.

But the noise was a problem as all those fans together sounded like a wind tunnel. Especially 2 years later when all the little fans started dying and making extremely loud noises. Think annoying fan noise multiplied by 12. Ugh. Then I found this neat product:

Cooler Master 4 in 3 device module.

Instead of 12 little fans I now have one big super-quiet fan, and my drives still say nice and cool. It was definitely worth the $30 I paid for it.

Don't forget about heat.

-David

I took a nice 8 discs and a pair or 3ware Escalade 8506-4LP (max 2TB/array, so I have two arrays in RAID0)

The system runs on debian and provides Fileserver for a small video-editing company.

you can find a test of the hdd here

For the case, I took the Cooler Master STC-T01, a bit overkill, but I was a anxious of overheating ...also, it provides room for another 4 disks, but I will need another psu to power 12 disks....

The disks are quite silencious, and the 3Ware card allow for staged disk spin-up, so I was able to run it all on only 1 PSU.

Overall, that makes a 3Tb Fileserver for 4500Euros (including a cheap AMD XP 2400 + 1 Gig ram and Gigabit ethernet), which is quite nice if compared to NAS appliances offered elsewhere.

Of course I don't have the whole collection of utilities to manage the box that comes from major vendors, but Webmin is quite up to the task...

Also, having 8 disks in two RAID0 offers no security/redundancy whatsoever, but I was just asked for a giant fileserver, not a Disaster Recovery implementation 8)

With HD space coming so cheap, I think a dedicated RAID box would work as a storage solution. DVD's are a pain, I'm assuming you want to store large volumes of data, so people will say get a tape backup. 1. They're expensive and 2. They're small. Even with a 200GB tape compressed to 400GB... You're still not anywhere near 1.6TB or even 800GB (since we don't know what type of data he might be compressing, I'll just go with an even 2:1).

Oh yea, Buying PATA drives in bulk. If you do this, assume failures will happen in bulk and purchase extra's accordingly. 3Ware, according to their website (and as far as i know) make the only 8 & 12 port RAID cards around. Couple that with a cheap full tower (or a badass midtower) and throw in 12+ HDs.

Since you considered DVDR, I'm assuming this doesn't need to be online 24/7. This is not a problem since it's storage, feel free to power down your raid box. This saves the headaches of hardware failure, power surges, accidentally hitting the delete key, etc.

In deciding Tape vs RAID, the key factor should be: Do I want my data spanned across several tapes. If you can get 4:1 compression or better, by all means consider the tape drive, but with a big enough tower, you could get >3TB + redundancy + hotspares. My only RAID5 problem is that even with 1.6TB of data, you lose two drives and you're toast. {--that should be your second deciding factor. It's a scary thought.

• MSI MATX I865PEM2-ILS
• Samsung black combo 52X24X52+16X CD-RW/DVD
• WAG311GE Netgear Wireless .11ABG+ PCI
• Intel P4 2,6GHz 800/512K
• Hauppauge WinTV PVR 350
• MSI GeForce FX5200 TD128 with DVI and TV-OUT
• 512MB PC400 DDRAM
• Maxtor Dmax Plus9 200Gb 7200RPM 8Mb SATA
• Coolermaster ATC 620C-BX1

The reasoning for the different items are as follows:

A similar model of the motherboard got good reviews by Toms Hardware Guide (yes, I know some people in /. hate Tom). The integrated sound on this board was recommended to me by an ALSA developer. It's also got SATA, LAN, USB and Firewire and, as a nice bonus, both coax and optical digital sound outputs.

Samsung...didn't matter much as long as it had DVD and CD-RW capabilities, black front was a nice touch though.

WAG311GE, one of few cards that support A, B and G wireless networking. Supported in Linux by the MadWifi drivers, unfortunately not truly open source, but neither are any other ABG card drivers.

Intel processor, I usually like Athlons but temperature (and thereby cooling requirements) is much more important in this box than speed.

Hauppage, well supported by MythTV and able to do MPEG2 recording and playback in hardware.

MSI GeForce, has VGA, DVI and TV-Out, also fanless and really cheap. Closed drivers but that's kinda hard to avoid.

Maxtor drive, I really wanted a more quiet Seagate but the SATA models were kind of impossible to find in any nearby store for decent prices. Also most stores seemed to have the ones with the least storage capacity.

Coolermaster, the case isn't "designed" to be a HTPC case (such as this one) which means it doesn't have the same silly price tag. It was also the exact same width as my stereo components (well, 3mm wider) and similar color.

Now all I have to do is wait...

I recently purchased Seasonic's 300 watt Super Tornado (they should have called it "Silent Tornado") power supply, and it's *very* quiet. It uses a 120mm fan mounted on the interior surface of the power supply instead of the traditional 80mm fan mounted at the back of the PC. That alone helps to slash the amount of noise the fan makes, but the power supply is also the most efficient you can buy, which means it generates less waste heat than any other power supply its size. So not only will it cut the noise, it'll also cut your power bill.

The power supply also comes with a nifty set of cable-management goodies - wire wraps and ties. Cost about $60, should pay for itself with a couple of years of use. A few people reported problems with an early run of this unit - the fan received so little voltage when the case temp and power requirements were low it would sometimes squeal or chatter - but Seasonic quickly fixed it. Shouldn't be an issue now - mine doesn't suffer from the problem, but then I've got two hard drives, two CD ROMs, 512mb of RAM and an Athlon, so the system is probably always drawing enough power to keep the fan spinning faster than the minimum speed.

The PSU fan isn't the only culprit in system noise, though. Although it's traditionally been parked right at the edge of the case, where the sound can most easily bleed into the room, the CPU fan is probably the #1 offender. I picked up one of these Cooler Master squirrel cage fan coolers recently from newegg.com and I'm pretty happy with it. It makes a LOT less noise than a traditional fan, given the amount of air it moves, and it's not outrageously heavy like some of the giant heat-sink coolers out there. Makes about half as much noise as my old CPU cooler and keeps the chip just as cool with the fan cranked to about half speed. Curiously, running it full blast doesn't make the chip substantially cooler, but it does generate a lot more noise - I think the limiting factor is the relatively small aluminum heat sink (the copper model they sell might be a better option for hotter chips, but my Athlon XP 1800 isn't that bad). Another benefit is that the noise generated by this cooler is lower in frequency than the noise generated by other coolers - less a whine than a whirr, with a bit of rumble too (the cooler does cause a bit of low-pitched vibration in the case).

I also purchased Samsung's new 160GB SpinPoint drives, and they're effectively pretty damn silent. No whine, no noticeable spin noise, no seek noise audible from where I sit (at least, not over the other sounds emanating from the case). About the only issue I have with them - or had with them - is a bit of vibration that setup a buzzing in a removable drive bay I've got in my system. I pretty much solved that by putting vinyl grommets in the mounting holes of the drive bay.

The silentpcreview website is the best one I've found on the web for reviewing quiet hardware and practical modding ideas. You may want to read through some of their articles and the forums. Interesting stuff.

I remember around 1995 I went to a Melbourne Computer Expo. Every stall I went to had a pair of these JUSTer Active 75 80W speakers. They sounded awesome, and at just AU$80, I got myself a pair.

Nowdays, my system consists of:
Gentoo GNU/Linux 1.4
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
CoolerMaster Aero 7+ HSF
ASUS A7N8XDeluxe (nVidia nForce 2 based)
Kingston ValueRAM 1GB (2x256MB & 1x512MB DDR-333 dual-channeled)
PowerColor Evil Master II Multi-Display Edition (ATi Radeon 8500)
Maxtor 60GB 2MB 7400RPM IDE
Seagate 120GB 8MB 7400RPM SATA (x2 in RAID)
Hitachi CML175SXW B 17" Multimedia TFT LCD
Pioneer 12X DVD
ASUS 52x24x52x
Enermax expensive as all hell PSU
Enermax FS-710 Aluminum case
Netgear WG311 802.11g network card
Logitech Cordless iTouch keyboard
Logitech TrackMan Marble Wheel
JUSTer Active 75 80W

As you can see, my speakers and mouse are the odd ones out - both aren't made anymore but I'll never give them up (unless I get a bigger apartment which allows for a 5.1 speaker setup).

Sudhian has a forum dedicated to HTPCs only.

HTPC forum.

There are some good HiFi like cases like the CoolerMaster ATC 600,610, 620 and 630.
The LianLi 9100, 9300, 9320 and 9400 are fine as well.

The other forums at Sudhian are interesting as well if you into XPC and similiar stuff.

Bye egghat.

I like my Cooler Master ATC-600, but it looks like they have a number of other options as well (look under "Desktop"). The ATC-600 is just slightly too big for my entertainment center, but it perches nicely on top of it. Now I just need to find a reason to use the thing (now I have a high definition cable feed, the HTPC is useless for recording shows). Also, it's a Micro-ATX form factor, but if you're planning on doing an HTPC, that should be more than enough. Especially if you want the case to fit well in your entertainment center.

I like my Cooler Master ATC-600, but it looks like they have a number of other options as well (look under "Desktop"). The ATC-600 is just slightly too big for my entertainment center, but it perches nicely on top of it. Now I just need to find a reason to use the thing (now I have a high definition cable feed, the HTPC is useless for recording shows). Also, it's a Micro-ATX form factor, but if you're planning on doing an HTPC, that should be more than enough. Especially if you want the case to fit well in your entertainment center.

You could try the ATC-620 from Coolermaster. Looks nice, available in silver or black. Not super-cheap, but reasonable at least. I'm leaning towards a couple of these myself for home a/v use.

I am also interested in this. You can check out coolermaster's ATC 600 series.

They look alright.

This case would look at home in any AV setup.

Cooler Master 610-GX1

A bit pricey though

A few more pictures.

Coolermaster do them, there are plenty of coolermaster suppliers throughout the US and UK.

Look for the ACT-610 series.

I've had an ATC 101 for over a year now. Coolermaster cases are very expensive, but the quality and performance is unbeatable. My ATC 101 runs at 30C with 100% CPU utilization sustained in a 78 degree room. No crazy mod either, just a standard ATC 101 case, with a standard coolermaster heatsink, and 2 superdrive coolers in the front. Here is a screenshot.

Get back to me when Lian Li make a case as nice as the Coolermaster ATC-710
The guts of that one are the same as the Antec/Chieftec towers BTW... complete with (metal) clip-in drivebays for 3.5" devices and rails for the 5.25" bays.

I think the point is the idle noise. All your examples with VCRs involve actions (hit stop. hit eject. hit rewind). With computers/hard drives, there is noise on a constant basis due to fans and drives spinning. The western digital special editions are probably the worst offenders noise wise - they are fast, but they are loud and run hot.

Other people have mentioned it, but the seagate barracuda IV's and (just over the past month or two) V's are the quietest drives available, come in large capacities, and in the case of the V's perform fairly well in benchmarks (although still slower than the WD drives).

I've recently built a HTPC for my living room using a cooler master 610 case, zalman 5100-cu low noise cpu fan, a baraccuda IV mentioned above, and an athlon xp 1700+. it runs about as loud as my PS2 (which has a dinky low rpm 50mm fan).

With a few spray-cans of car paint, you can give your shuttle case the same look.

Personally, I prefer the coolermaster cases for home theater PCs: they have two 5 1/4" bays, the ability to contain up to four agp/pci cards and about the same form factor as a VCR.

Have you looked at this one?
Coolermaster ATX P600
IMHO it's quite neat (but rather expensive :-( )

Bye egghat.

One thing that I was interested in after reading the description was the case they are using... Since the article is /.'ed, I did a little searching around and found more information on the case itself:

I believe they are referring to the Cooler Master ATC-600 Series. That site doesn't mention anything about it being available in black though.

There is a review and pictures of it at http://www.hexus.net/review.php?review=281

One brand that is a little on the expensive side, but makes great cases is Coolermaster. I purchased an ATC 101 about a year ago and have been really satisfied. If you not willing to fork down that much money for a case, Lain LI makes some great alluminum cases that are relativly inexpensive.