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Actually I need to just properly type what I'm thinking :) My post should have read "them over Antec". Out of curiosity, where did you find a number to contact Enermax? The Contact option on their http://www.enermax.com.tw/ website only contains an email link.

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).

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).

1. don't buy an Itanic, if you're going with Opteron for its ultra-fast RAM ( compared with Itanic ) and drastic cost-effectiveness ( ditto ), an Itanic won't show you whether Opteron'd be a good match: the architectures are totally different.

2. RAID storage: don't buy Promise 'raid' cards ( and DON'T do 'raid' 0/1, do RAID-5 ).

Why? ..
1. it ISN'T possible to use S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics in your drives with the Promise ones, at least ( you'll crash the PCI-bus, hanging, fatally, the machine, using Promise chips .. don't know about Highpoint or Adaptec ), and...
2. they oppose Open Source drivers, and coders, for their own products.

Highpoint has only SuSE 7.3-8.0/Redhat-whatever ( IIRC ) drivers for their fast 1520 cards, but if you want compute performance, you want Gentoo... ( and SuSE's been at 8.1 for ages, now... )

Adaptec? I don't know if their cards have the same issues as the Promise/Highpoint, but their cards compete with Promise's, and so probably cut corners in similar ways ( I'd love to see hard data on that point, though )...

3ware are the only cheap ( compared with SCSI ) RAID controllers I know-of, that offer bootable, real, actual, S.M.A.R.T.able RAID on ATA drives.

( I'd stick scads of 120GB IBM 180GXPs on 'em, because they're cooler-running than the 180GB versions, and better than most other drives: fast, quiet, reliable-looking, etc .. quiet means, to me, that wear&tear isn't happening as much, though I wonder-at the No-Seagate rule expressed earlier... is it that fluid-bearings fail soon? or that Seagate has worthless support from our perspective? )

3. SuSE or Gentoo are really your only choice, that I can see.

Why? .. 1. Redhat's trying to microsoft linux, by ignoring standards and making its way law, and Mandrake's .. a flaky ( though fast ) variant originally based on Redhat... I'm fed-up with both, but YKMV ( metric, here )..
2. SuSE includes damn-near every program-capability one could imagine, and has excellent hardware support ( beyond any others' )..
3. Gentoo's compiled specifically for the hardware you are running, and with --buildpkg you get to build on one, then copy all the tbz2's built, to all of the other ( identical ) machines, and just install 'em, and voilá: ultra-performance.

Misc Links:

Chassis, suitable for lots-of-drives NAS type thing.. or this one for well-cooled system ( thick aluminum's a good conductor of heat, and that makes for a longer-living, less-downtime machine )

I'd use Athlons, but that's just me ( Intel's murdered/crippled WAY too many CPUs, and chipsets, for me to be loyal to them ), and would use these HSFs with Verax.de ( or Panasonic Panaflo ) fans on 'em, just because the noise machines make increase sick-time and reduce health/sanity/productivity so damn much.

Consider using P/Ss like these, remembering that 1. they're REALLY quiet only when running at about 50% load, and 2. the UPS-VA-rating you need for each one is DOUBLE the delivered-watts rating of the P/S.
Also, you want LINE-INTERACTIVE UPSs on all machines. ( NO data-corruption due to brown-outs or other glitches ).

I'd consider dual-CPU machines standard for the desktop, simply because even if a CPU was saturated, on that machine, the machine'd still respond, and I'd stuff as much quick RAM into it as I possibly could ( 3GB/desktop, for engineers ), and I'd ALWAYS use ECC RAM.

Consider this board as something to compare against, with Something Like This KVR266X72C25/1G or this times 3 of 'em, per motherboard.

Like the Marines: Capability-based, not capability-choked, right?

The best advice I've seen on this page is

1. get a GOOD admin ( character, more than anything, values, sanity, cultural-harmony-with-you: you CAN change someone's skillset, you CANNOT change their nature ), and

2. metrics, understanding precisely what 'success' means, what the context is, etc...

3. do it one unit at-a-time

Oh, yeah, here's an Opteron-board news link... ( I'm waiting for lots-of-SATAs-on-board )...

Finally, change the ferro-resonant ballasts in your flourescent lighting to RF ballasts, and switch to Phillips TL-930 4' fluorescent tubes ( Colour Rendition Index of 95, rather than the cheap-cool-white CRI 50!! ), and your health will improve, significantly ( you can then ask for a raise, for your increased effectiveness, see )... if you find the warm-white of the TL-930s ( 3000K ) not brilliant/awakening enough, then mix-in a couple of TL-950s ( 5000K, mid-day-sunshine/sky colour ), to punch-up your alertness.

More info here

Having built my first *new* system ever (ie: not from scraps I had here and there), the power supply was one of my highest priorities. I read and looked around, and Enermax looked pretty tight.
So I get one. 450W model. Build the system, turn it on for the first time.

Well, I'll spare the details. I went through several expensive components, after which I take the box into a local shop, because at least if they break something, it won't cost me anything. The tech says I should replace my power supply on grounds that it "smells funny". So I replaced it with another Enermax, 350W model. Everything works, but not because I replaced the PS.

So now I've got this 450W Enermax power supply sitting around. I email Enermax, claiming their power supply has cost me a lot of money in damage. They offered to test it. So, they had a shipping guy sent to pick up the power supply, then they paid to have the power supply shipped to Taiwan. They proceeded to test the power supply using a test rig identical to my hardware.

Then, they sent me pictures, via email, of the power supply with s/n visible, the system components (no case), and the monitor displaying a working system at the BIOS setup.

Then, they paid to have the power supply returned to me. All the way back from Taiwan (in case you missed that part.)

I now have that power supply running my new server that I built from spare components accumulated during the whole ordeal.

Needless to say, after having helped me out so much at their own expense, I'm a huge fan of Enermax (also because I've found their power supplies to be really nice, too. ;) I don't think I've ever heard of customer service that great.

1. Alright, so I can't do math, what your point?

2. The 460W is the output wattage. I was basing my numbers off of enermax's site for the EG465P-VE(G)(W) FMA, for peak amperage: 9.5A at 115V: 115*9.5=1093~=1100

3. To be honest, I had no idea what the average house had for current ratings, i was just basing 30A off of the parent post's numbers.

Take a look at this.

Okay, granted, there's a bunch of foo-foo colorific crap (you could do the same with some sandpaper & careful application of spray paint for a lot less), but the white and/or black is nice. At the bottom of the front is a pop-up panel that exposes a front-mounted USB connector, which counts for more in my book.

Aside from this it's just another rectangular box, so it's certainly no G4 clone. In fact, they made a laughable attempt at one.

Take a look at this.

Okay, granted, there's a bunch of foo-foo colorific crap (you could do the same with some sandpaper & careful application of spray paint for a lot less), but the white and/or black is nice. At the bottom of the front is a pop-up panel that exposes a front-mounted USB connector, which counts for more in my book.

Aside from this it's just another rectangular box, so it's certainly no G4 clone. In fact, they made a laughable attempt at one.

It's not a Mac. Doesn't look a blessed thing like a Mac. Doesn't have any of the attractive features of a Mac (flip down motherboard, e.g.) It doesn't have the fit and finish of a Mac. It's not ergonomic. It doesn't look like the ventilation is all that good, either.

I was recently in the market for a new case. This is what I wanted. Unfortunately, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Keeper of the Privy Purse shot me down. So I've got a big beige box with beaucoup fans. It's functional, and sits under the table where big ugly boxes belong.

Now, how about some Stuff That Matters?

News for birds. Stuff that splatters.

Yeah, my 350W Enermax PSU comes with a connector that goes to the mobo for the main fan (it has two).

That was, until I blew it up in a dust-removing incident.. bah.

They're great PSU's though. Rated for 100,000 hours, tonnes of gold plated connectors and fan throttle control. Now, if only I could afford to replace it..

Underclock the proc and run it without a fan but get a big cheap socket 7 heatsink and get an rpm adjustable fan that will rev up and down according to a temparture probe included. I have an amd 500mhz underclocked to 375mhz without a fan that runs my firewall.

I recently replaced a power supply with an Enermax EG365P-VE and was quite impressed with the low noise level.

Another quiet power supply to consider is Ultra Quiet Power Supply from quietpc.com

- "For the power supply, the three of us easily agreed on a vendor: PC Power & Cooling"

Bloody typical. Yet the reality is that the PC Power & Cooling mob are just 'badge engineers' - they re-sell other manufacturers products with their own own brand markings & inflated prices.

[con mucho snippo] I recommend the Enermax 350 watt EG365P-VE(FC) or 450 watt EG465P-VE(FC) power supplies.

If you want to snub PC Power & Cooling's inventory, you could contribute something positive by finding the same (or equivalent) PS from another vendor, cheaper or better.

[And for what it's worth, I'm not affiliated with pcpowercooling.com, ESR, or with the mob.]

It amazes me the amount of 'software' guys who think they're experts but have no idea when it comes to hardware.

Check these examples out:-

- "Do get a pure PCI-bus machine (not a hybrid PCI/ISA design, you sacrifice about 10% of peak performance with those)."

This is pure humbug - you do not get 10% greater performance by buying a motherboard that has ni ISA slots (like those Asus KT boards). Because the fact is that even if they have no ISA slots, they still have a ISA bus built in the southbridge to support legacy stuff like the printer/parrallel port, the serial port/s & the PS2 mouse & keyboard ports. Now as far as the USB ports are concerned, I'm not sure whether they use the ISA bus or the PCI bus.

- "For the power supply, the three of us easily agreed on a vendor: PC Power & Cooling"

Bloody typical. Yet the reality is that the PC Power & Cooling mob are just 'badge engineers' - they re-sell other manufacturers products with their own own brand markings & inflated prices.

For example their full tower case is just a California PC full tower case with a custom bezel on the front.

Now as far as their power supplies are concerned. I remember when they used to sell a 'Silencer' model 275 watt power supply. In fact all it was was a generic 300 watt power supply, de-rated down to 275 watts so it was understressed, so it would cope with retro-actively fitted low speed 'silencer' fan.

As far as powersupplies are concerned I recommend the Enermax 350 watt EG365P-VE(FC) or 450 watt EG465P-VE(FC) power supplies. They have a push/pull dual fan design (a 80mm exhaust fan at the back & a 92mm intake fan at the bottom), which means the fans can run at a much slower (therefore quieter) speed, without losing any cooling performance. The Powersupply comes with a standard motherboard 3 pin senser connector cable, so you can blug it into a spare motherboard fan header, which means ifyou can see what revs one of the power supply fans are running at in you PC monitor applet in you system tray (& it can warn you with an alarm if it fails). Also the powersupply comes with a thermastat on a connector which can be somehow attached to the heatsink or against the CPU core if its a exposed flip-chip type core (as long as it has no heatspreader like the AMD K6 series has), this controls the fan underneath the powersupply & it only runs when necessary. Consequently these power supplies are so bloody quiet you sometimes think its not running.

- They also recommend the Thunder K7 (S2462) Motherboard, which is a huge waste of money as you can buy a very similar motherboard made by the same manufaturer at a much cheaper price (the Tiger MP (S2460) Motherboard). Also the 'Tiger' has a standard ATX connector, rather than the propietry connector that the 'Thunder' has. Which means you can use normal ATX powersupplies, rather than the inflated priced propietry powersupply that the 'Thunder' uses.

- Also, even though this is s'pose to be a 'Ultimate Linux Box', they fail to mention that both IDE floppy drives(if you are using the IDE bus) & SCSI floppy drives (if you are using a SCSI BUS) are avaliable. Even better one can get the LS120 variety which are compatible with both 120MB 'SupperFloppies' & standard 1.4MB standard floppies.

- They spend 4 paragraphs talking about 'Noise Control and Heat Dissipation' without really saying anything. When all they really needed to say that it's best using bigger fans at slower speeds - such as 12 volt 120mm fans running at 7 volts (positive hooked up to the 12 volt line while the negative is hooked up to the 5 volt line). The quietist fans (all other things being equal) by brand are the Papst Simtec bearing fans, the Sanyo Denki fans & the L1A1 versions of the Panaflo fans.

- They recommend a pretty well generic (though above average) Antec case, but this is s'pose to be a ultimate Linux box.

Therfore I recommend the Addtronics 'Server Cases' (their full tower cases) - the 7890 & the 7896. They are great cases with their great cooling options, filtered intakes, butterfly doors & slide out 'mainboard & I/O backplane tray'. Supermicro sell their own badge engineered version of this full tower case.

Other good full tower cases are the all alloy ones made by Lian Li. Such as the Lian Li PC-70 aluminium full tower computer case & the Lian Li PC-76 server case

If a mid tower case is more your style, both Lian Li & Coolermaster maker great alloy ones. They are great for LAN parties. In this regard I recommend the Lian Li PC-60 computer case & the Coolermaster ATC-201SX. Both cases are unbeatable as mid-tower cases - they have everything. I Personally thing a midtower case must have 4 5.25inch drive bays; so you can have both a CD burner & DVD drive, plus 2 HDDs in removable HDD pullout caddies.

For a ultimate box it should have the all alloy (better heat dissapation) twin fan caddies that agains are made by Lian Li. The 3 best models appear to be the RH-620 , the RH-600 , & the RH-29

For the motherboard, I'd recommend one with the SIS 735 'chipset'. Preferably it would have a AGP Pro slot, 6 PCI slots, one shared with a ISA slot at the bottom. It would have BOTH 2 DDR slots & 2 normal SDRAM slots. It would have a integrated RJ45 network connector above the 2 rear USB ports, plus integrated 'hardware' 5.1 sound (IWill have brought out a couple of boards of late with integrated 'hardware' 5.1 sound, they have the 3 standard female jack ports under the midi 'D' plug at the back, plus the extra connects hook up via a ribbon cable & a slot backplane cover). The board would also have integrated SCSI & Firewire like some of the MSI Pro or Turbo or whatever boards have. Plus an extra IDE controller (Promise, Highpoint, etc) so there's the potential for 8 drives (HDD, CD, DVD, LS120, ORB, etc) rather than the standard 4. The extra IDE controller will also have RAID 0,1 & 1+0 options (most have this built in, though its sometimes disabled). All the integrated stuff must have the capability to be disabled, either via jumpers or in the BIOS.

Twin AthonXP/MP CPUs would be the go (the XPs work fine in SMP setups, they just are not certified/supported for such configurations - that's the main difference between the XP & MP, the MPs are certified/supported for SMP use.

That's enough raving for now.

While we're at it, I'm going to post the specs on a more down-to-earth machine that I'll be building shortly. My ultimate goal is to create the ultimate workstation / gaming box that won't sound like a small aircraft when you turn it on.

$189 Seagate Barracuda IV SoftSonic 80 Gig
The 'Cuda IV is probably the quietest and one of the fastest Ultra-100 Drives in existence. A pair of 40-gig platters with Softsonic fluid-bearing motors keep the noise down below 30dB

$757 2x1.2Ghz AthlonMP
2x256 ECC DDR RAM
Tyan Tiger MP
2xThermalTake VolcanoII Cooler
The Tiger is the baby-brother of the Thunder. You get the same performance as the Thunder, without the extras, such as on-board SCSI, & integrated ethernet. You can look up specs at tyan.com.All of these components may be purchased, pretested, from Monarch Computers as an "AMD Pretested Combo;" Monarch produces very high quality boxes (my last three, actually).

$070 SD-M1502 Toshiba 16X DVD Drive
This drive's a fairly good performer, (try a google search for the model number and "review"), but what I am interested in is the noise and vibration factors. Toshiba's introduced a type of balance mechanism designed to handle unbalanced / cheap discs.

$335 Asus GeForce3 Pure 64Meg AGP
At this point, the choice of video card is purely up to the builder; I chose this one simply because it was one of the better performing, and the higher quality cards (google will tell all about this card...)

$85 SB Audigy X-Gamer!
Hey, why not? At $85, it's not a bad deal at all for a new whiz-bang sound card.
??? Speakers?
Up to you.

$014 floppy
Duh. Pick one.

$170? Lian-Li PC-60 Case
Reasons for this part: 1. It's cool. Literally.
2. It's light-weight.
3. Lian-Li cases are extremely high quality, which explains the high price.

$089 Enermax Whisper 431W EG465P-VE(FC) Power Supply
The Whisper is an ultra-quiet PS with variable speed fans. If you look at the Product Page, you can see the various nice specs on this PS.

$214 24X10X40 Plextor CD-RW
Based on various net reviews (again, google), this is the current burner of choice. That'll probably change by the time I finish typing this setence, but that's the nature of the technology.

$80 Wireless Keyboard / Optical Wireless Mouse from Logitech
As a long-time logitech fan, the Logitech Cordless Freedom Optical takes all of the good stuff from their keyboards, mice, and wireless devices and wraps it into one package. Note that RF mice are not very good for games. I've owned one of these for about a month, and can say that I have no problems with either device until I try to play DoD or Q3A, in which case my trusty Mouseman Optical comes in handy.

$1918 Subtotal sans Shipping (If the numbers don't add up, I'm gonna look really, really stupid. Oh well.) (updated price 10-13-01)

Most of my price info came from either Pricewatch or MySimon, fyi.

Yes, but the specs call for the 5V to be able to kick out at least 30A. I don't know if this can happen with a "standard" supply. Anyone who knows more about power supplies wish to comment on the current capability of the 5V node?

the enermax PSU are dessigned like that, they are also verry stable, sad part is their price tag

you may want to check out this power supply or the enermax whisper series.

alternatively, i understand it is fairly easy to disassemble a power supply and get really nice quiet sanyo denki or panaflow fan to replace the (most likely) lower quality noisy sleeve bearing fan in there now. check out plycon for fans if taking this route.

hope this helps.

complex

Lots of people are mentioning PCP&C supplies, but I've found Enermax power supplies to be amazingly quiet despite having two fans. They cost less also. My power supply is actually quieter than my PCP&C CPU fan. They aren't kidding when they say "whisper."

The second change I made was to get rid of the fan on the cpu and replaced it with a water cooler. I attached the radiator to the power supply's intake so I wouldn't have to add yet another fan. Fortunately, the temperature delta from the warm air intake isn't too high for the ps.

Net result is the computer went from being the pariah that was only turned on when absolutely needed to being the first choice machine. (I have 3 machines in a small room.)

If I were to do it over I'd probably just go with a Koolance case. They appear to have put the pieces together properly with the exception of putting the radiator at the bottom of the case.