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I've only built a few computers, so I may not be as experienced as you, but here's how I approached the quality issue on a parts by part basis:
"What is the worst that can happen?"

• With cheap RAM, I get less performance, maybe a bad stick or two which I can weed out during stress testing.
• With a cheap GPU, I get less performance, the thing craps out in a year--no problem it was going to get replaced in two to three years anyway.
• With a cheap PSU, on the other hand, a catastrophic failure could literally have me buying all new parts and starting from scratch.

The computers I've built have been for myself and family and I personally found that risk unacceptable. As an aside, for the past couple of computers I've built, I've used PC Power and Cooling PSUs and have never had a problem with it. As always, YMMV.

-Grym

Guess I don't need to buy the 1kW power supply for this system, or...?

Now, if they also would come up with a laptop cold fusion unit...

$100 - 1 Antec 550W True Power Supply

I assume you're going for the best of everything, so why this PSU?

Enter the PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510

I'm a big fan of PC Power & Cooling. Very high quality, durable products.

I'm an MIS guy for a small company (10 people, 20 PCs -- go figure...) and I always look at PC power and cooling supplies as well as other brands when I'm building machines. I think they make great server supplies or swap in replacements for older machines at the very least.

I have also used those guys for obscure CPU cooling fan options (try to find a quality replacement CPU fan for a Pentium Pro 200)! They stopped stocking them, but offered to make one up for a very reasonable cost -- I went with a different solution, but they were quite helpful. I have purchased several CPU fans from them and none have yet died.

I usually go with Antec power supllies for new workstations because, in addition to running well, they come standard in good Antec cases that I'd want for a workstation anyway.

Two of the PCs are PowerEdge servers by Dell (a 500sc and a 600sc) and the 600sc fans are particularly loud, enough that I can't hold a speakerphone conversation when that machine is on.

Yea, I know - servers are not built to the same creature comfort levels as 'desktop' machines, but this thing is a jet engine compared to the rest of my gear and spends most of its time off unless I need the additional horsepower of a third machine.

I would LOVE a way to silence this machine.

Well, servers are normally mounted in racks in server rooms where there aren't any people . Why don't you buy a high-quality silent power supply? They are available from many companies. PC Power & Cooling is one of the best.

As far as drivers, I'm primarily thinking of a Windows-only box, since I want my dual-boot machine (the one with the F15-sounding fan in it) back on Linux full-time. Nvidia released fairly new drivers for linux. Do therse have missing features as well? I was thinking of making a little 10GB partition for Linux just for grins, but if I have to wait for the maturity level of chipset drivers to go up I guess I could.

-B

I'll put in a plug for my favorite. I have two from PC Power & Cooling, an "ultra-quiet" AT/ATX one and one of their "turbo-cool" AT models. Both are still going after six years of constant use and even the 300W "turbo" one is quieter than most weaker power supplies. They aren't the cheapest you'll find but they sell a better quality product. I'm happy with it, anyway.

In fact, you can get some nice drive mounting brackets for 3 drives in two 5-bays. Quite handy, especially for stripe/RAID setups with 15krpm drives. 6 drives in 4 5-bays can make quite a nice setup, and the airflow is excellent.

If they had higher-end NVIDIA graphics cards, they could also be very good OpenGL development/visualization stations, using Linux. Port all that SGI code with very little effort...

Biggest problem I'm still having is the system sounds like a 747 taking off and I've had official AMD CPU fans burn out on me. I would still love to get a bit more oomph out of this though if there are any suggestions.

I'd use aftermarket fans, I thought AMD's fans were cheesy (to use a technical term;). If you want a good product, I recommend the PC Power and Cooling Athlon CPU cooler. PCP&C generally has top-quality products (great choice for power supplies as well).

You should probably start going for DVD/RAM drives also, lots more capacity for backups...

One final thought on numerics - you might want to compare some of the commercial compilers with gcc. For instance, Microway resells a strong line of commercial compilers. The Portland Group compilers, in particular, look promising.

Some thoughts on your obsessive friend...

There are systems that have multiple power supplies and multiple power cords. As long as you keep the minimum levels fed with power, your system stays up. You find this in server-class machines, obviously, but you can also find power supplies for cheaper systems which also support this. With one of these, you can completely swap out a UPS with no downtime.

My concern with transporting something like that would be the hard drive. Forget the uptime. If your disk takes a hit that's harder than it can handle while running, you're toast.

I used to worry about uptime, and I used to play net games. My solution? Buy another computer, and take it to the parties. Leave the uptime-getter at home. Problem solved.

PC Power & Cooling sells their power supplies with "Dell" style motherboard connectors for those who need them.

Don't skimp on the power supply, guys. Get an Antec or one from PC Power & Cooling. Sure they're expensive, but not as expensive as rebuilding your burnt-out house.

Chip H.

Maybe not an 150W power supply (at least, not well) but here is an example of two SFX-format power supplies that are Athlon and P4 approved:
PC Power And Cooling: Athlon/P4 approved SFX-format power supplies

If you don't know what the SFX form factor is, it's two specs for small form-factor power supplies. One is SFX-S, the other is SFX-L. One of the more famous (infamous) companies that uses SFX-L power supplies is eMachines.

These power supplies put out 180W which is not great but will do the job if you don't overtax them. The coming ATI P4 chipset with Radeon-class graphics should thrive happily with this PS, and I already know two people running nForce motherboards with this very power supply in small form-factor cases. Sparkle also makes a similar Athlon/P4 approved power supply.

PC Power And Cooling kicks ass. Great products, knowledgeable sales people, fair if not cheap prices.

1U essentially. would take up less room. has a DVI and DVD too. Exhaust is side mounted too so air can escape pretty easily. Mounts under the cupboard without a problem.

Sleekline 1260

These guys make absolutely bulletproof power supplies too. But take this, throw in a wireless/RF keyboard/mouse combo, and put in a 15" flat panel ($200 now?) and you have something for the kitchen or wherever.

-----

Sleekline are 1U high, can fit one or two HD's, a CD and a floppy. Most of there motherboards come with a video card and a sound card on board (which may not be the greatest.) Wouldn't these suffice?

Has anyone done a review of these cases/computers? Would they be good linux boxes? Expandability is seriously limited though. I don't think a you can put in a normal PCI card in them. I could be wrong.

$600 for a case is insane. For $200, you can get a fantastic case and top-notch power supply from PC Power & Cooling which leaves $400 for a faster CPU, better hard drive, and extra cooling fans.

This is a luxury item. Total overkill.

See http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/. By far the most reliable and quietist power supplies I have ever used, and I have used a lot.

blech. It doesn't matter if you have no qualms about going and replacing the ps when it fails.

If you need the best money can buy, I don't think I've ever heard anything bad about: PC Power and Cooling

They are expensive, but the best. CompUSA/Fry's no-names are cheap. But you will have to replace them at some point.

Anyway I had a lot of flakeyness when I first got it. Turns out a lot of the problems were with getting the BIOS settings right. I had to slow the AGP port down to 2X, disable the onboard IDE controller (not in use), disable some of the power conservation features, and tweaked a half dozen other settings. Now the system is solid as a rock, even when I boot into Windows. (Win2000Pro, not ME/98) Haven't crashed anything in probably 6 months.

I've been building my own machines for about 10 years now. It's always the same, getting the right combination of BIOS settings, system settings, and stable software is an iterative process that just takes time. My machines are usually unstable for the first 2-4 months after I get them until I can stomp out all the bugs. Once in a while you run into a real dud piece of hardware and have to bite the bullet on it, but usually some persistance pays off. It does take time though.

I do take certain precautions now though to ensure a stable and easy to maintain system, not all of which are cheap but all help a lot. Some of these include

• I always use SCSI. Yeah IDE is cheaper and it works just fine, but if you can afford it, SCSI is better in pretty much every aspect except price. Easier to set up, easier to expand, the drivers are usually better, it's faster (at the high end anyway), etc. If price isn't a huge issue, get SCSI.
  
• I purchase a UPS. (I like APC personally.) They are cheap insurance. They will protect your machine from brief power dips which are often more damaging than spikes, they carry an insurance policy on them if you equipment is damaged, and they unless you want auto shutdowns, they don't have any compatibility issues.
  
• I get a good power supply. PC Power and Cooling is my brand of choice. This is slightly paranoid but I've had two machine have power supplies go south on them. When the power supply goes, it usually fries things. So I get one that is very unlikely to go.
  
• Don't get no name components if you can avoid it, and preferably get something you've worked with before. I use Adaptec controllers because I worked with them for many years, they work and I know what to expect. Not to say others don't work great but I know what I'm getting and that makes the inevitable debugging easier. It's also more likely that drivers will be available if more than 3 people have that piece of equipment.
  
• I avoid equipment with unusual interfaces. If you have SCSI, get as much SCSI equipment as is practical. Don't mix and match interfaces if you can avoid it.
  
• I generally avoid integrated controllers or disable them if I get one. Onboard SCSI and ATAPI can work fine but are usually harder to work with and troubleshoot. Driver availability tends to be not as good as a rule though this is not always true.
  
• I don't overclock. Not that there is anything wrong with doing it, but don't expect a stable system if you overclock. You might get it but chances are fairly high you won't too.
  

Bought one last week to replace an ATX Turbo model 300 watt from PC power and cooling. The 275 ATX Silencer model is terrific. The difference is incredible, I now only hear a slight sound from the case power supply, and can discern the CPU cooling fan. From 44 db down to 34 db. Happy Customer, was on sale for $80 free shipping ULTRA-QUIET

They have quiet power supplies and CPU coolers.

I've tried PC Power and Cooling's Silencer power supply. Quieter than most (20db) but definitely not silent.

The problem as I see it is partly fan noise and partly case design. Most machines these days have several fans for cooling, most of which seem to create around 30db of noise. Not deafening to be sure but if you have fairly sensitive ears (like I do) it is enough to wear you out after a while. The other part of the problem is reverberation (for lack of a better word) from the case. The case seems to act like a drum for all the fan noise. Really though, the noise due to the case is really just a function of the fan noise. Eliminate the fans, and you eliminate the noise.

Unfortunately it seems there hasn't been much effort put into keeping systems quiet because it requires more engineering time and effort. It's cheaper to just slap a fan in the power supply and another on the chip than it is to design the systems to not produce much heat or duct it efficiently. With commodity motherboards and assembly from components, it is very tough to design a system that will be flexible enough and still keep costs in line.

If there are any entrepreneurs out there, design a quite case and power supply and I will buy it. I would love to have a system that is silent or very close to it.

Many hard disks have a "quiet mode".

Here's some good info

You give up some performance, but sometimes that would be worthwhile.

Also, here's a bunch of reliability vs. heat info from pc power and cooling

This site specializes in almost silent power supplies and processor fans. I've got several in my various systems, and I can personally vouch that they're all that they claim and more.

Disclaimer: I don't work for these people.

Amen, brother.

PC Power and Cooling sells quiet fans, power supplies, etc. QuietPC is another place to look. Elan Vital specializes in quiet cases, also.

In my case (pun) "fan noise" is really turbulence caused by the fan trying to blow or suck air through inadequate openings. My stupid case had very small perforations where the case fans were attached that were quite noisy. Imagine blowing through a window screen. The solution I used was to cut those perforations away, which left 3" holes for the fans to blow through. I coved them with standard wire grills. This worked quite well, though it's a lot of work.

john

Mobile computers have one feature in common with iMac's : they haven't any fan

Heh. The Sony Z505JS (portable) has a fairly loud fan. Unless I go to the power profile thingie and ask for low fan noise (which seems to also get variable CPU speed) it is louder then my home machine. Of corse my home machine uses the all important PC Power and Cooling Silencer fan (I think it is a scroll cage fan). The CPU fan makes modestly more noise (with the case closed) then the real fan. Of corse disk chatter is louder then both those...so I have to make sure the MP3 player never stops :-)

Still it goes to show you can make quietish desktop machines with fans, and loud notebooks too.

It would be nice if there were enough demand for quiet fans on other parts of the machine too, if the CPU fan had a scroll cage I would be even happyer. Regretably scroll cage fans appear to be expensave. I don't know if that's because they are harder to make, or just in way less demand, so less compatation, so higer price, so less demand....

If you want a quiet machine, I urge you to check out the PC Power & Cooling fans (the silencer ones, not the turbo cool), and if anyone knows where to get quiet stuff cheaper, drop me a line.

I know that IDE (whatever they call it now) is almost as good today and a lot cheaper, but I still insist on pure SCSI parts. Cusomte built is the only way to get a desktop system with no IDE (Okay, the IDE connectors are on the board, but unconnected)

Video cards are the next reason. Some work better then others with xFree86. I'll use what works, thank you.

Third, quality. Granted most electronics last for a long time. Cooling fans don't, power supplies don't - unless I get them from www.pcpowerandcooling.com. I know that others make good fans and power supplies, perhaps for less, but once burns by hot water you always blow on milk the from fridgerator.

I could save money buying a pre-built. I'd get poor componants that may or may not work with FreeBSD. I'd get fans that may or may not last. Or I would have to buy an overbuild server system, pay far more, and still not be sure of quality parts everywhere, or freeBSD compatibility.