On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 08:30 -0400, Dave Phillips wrote: > Greetings: > > Not long ago I mentioned that a student had traded an MSI mobo (socket > 939) for some lessons. I'm ready to start building a system around that > board, and I have some questions for this list: > > 2) Recommended case/power supply ? I"ve been eyeing an Antec case, with power supply. Never used it but I heard good reports. www.antec.com > 3) The MSI box says it includes an nVidia nForce3 chipset, which I > assume means that there's an audio/video chipset on the mobo. I'll > probably disable the audio, and I have a gForce AGP video card to put in > the machine. Question: Am I better off using the integrated video or > should I use my card instead ? (Btw, I use the kernel nv driver, not > nVidia's binary driver). I vaguely remember there being issues with the onboard ethernet for these chipsets - as in you have to install a driver that doesn't come as part of the standard kernel source. But I could be completely wrong. > 5) The CPU includes a fan, but should I get something more powerful ? Something quieter, probably. Zalman make some interesting fans for CPUs. www.zalman.co.kr > 6) How can I best reduce the noise from this system ? Fans and hard drives are the noisiest components. So if you have quiet PSU and CPU fans (and GPU if it's a powerful nvidia), the next step is to get a hard drive enclosure. Or maybe go for a 2.5 inch laptop drive, bearing in mind that the throughput is lower. Although I read recently that laptop drives aren't as slow as they used to be and can be used acceptably in a desktop system. bye John
