27 Jun
2006
27 Jun
'06
10:53 a.m.
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