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[ New PC ]
Well, I have decided it's time to upgrade my computer, something which I loathe doing since it's such a massive task. This time though was a little different than other times when I was usually driven by some dire need, such as failing hardware or something. This time it was because my main PC sat in the living room all day long, and it was pretty darn loud. So I agreed that this was unacceptable and took the opportunity to try and make the quietest system possible on a reasonable budget.
I also realized that my old P4 3.0Ghz was overkill for me since the only game I ever play is Starcraft. I decided that besides it's shortcomings, the D945GCLF2 was a good choice for the following reasons:
1. The Intel Atom 330 is a great little chip with all the horsepower I need.
2. The board is reasonably low-power, but it's a shame that the 945 chipset is such a power hog.
3. Cost is about right. At about $110 CDN for a board (chip is soldered on), plus an extra $15 for RAM, that price can't be beat.
4. I had a spare board on hand. Bonus.
5. The agreement I had was that this system was going to be as quiet as possible, and apart from the annoying chipset fan which is included on the board, my needs are essentially met.
A note on the chipset fan. I don't know why Intel made some obviously poor choices with this board, and the fan is one of them. I have read reports of these fans crapping out in short order, and they are uncomfortably loud.
Now that everything is so insanely quiet here, the sound from the chipset fan is starting to drive me crazy so I have started looking at options. The recommendation is either replace the chipset fan itself or replace the whole thing with a heatsink so I am still trying to decide. A SilenX iXtrema Pro fan apparently fits the bill nicely, but that means that there's still only marginally adequate cooling. A better option - if I can figure out how to do it - would be to buy a set of nice big aftermarket coolers and let a good quality ultra-quiet 120mm case fan move some air through the case. This would also help cool the hard drive, which I noticed is running pretty hot. Bummer.
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