Here's an Athlon 64 system I like... (shameless plug alert)

[Case]

Check it out:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1300285,00.asp

Cheers,

Loyd

[Brandon Clements]

Ok, Loyd, here's a question relating to your test setups: Are there any real world gains to using a 10,000 RPM SATA Drive over a plain old 7200 RPM IDE one? I'm itching to pull the upgrade trigger (pending Spousal Approval), and am looking at first of next year for the purchasing.

[Case]

Ok, Loyd, here's a question relating to your test setups: Are there any real world gains to using a 10,000 RPM SATA Drive over a plain old 7200 RPM IDE one? I'm itching to pull the upgrade trigger (pending Spousal Approval), and am looking at first of next year for the purchasing.

No, not unless you're using RAID arrays. Then it makes a difference.

And until recently, the 10K SATA drives were prety small - 36GB. Western Digital just announced 73GB versions.

[jeffjones]

Loyd, this is a question i've been wondering about regarding these new SFF cases. First a quote from the article:

"The power supply is unlabeled, but according to Albert Chang at Shuttle, it's a 240W unit."

As computer builders and hobbyists, we've been hearing for a while now, that the power supply needs to be in the 300 and 400w range for the high end AMD and P4's. Why do almost all of these SFF cases have low wattage power supplies? (most I've seen have 200w) Maybe a better question is how do they get away with it? What if I had and AMD64 3200+ and a 9800 Pro, wouldn't that need more than 240w ?

[XPav]

As computer builders and hobbyists, we've been hearing for a while now, that the power supply needs to be in the 300 and 400w range for the high end AMD and P4's.

And quite frankly, I think that entire point was BS.

[Case]

Why do almost all of these SFF cases have low wattage power supplies? (most I've seen have 200w) Maybe a better question is how do they get away with it? What if I had and AMD64 3200+ and a 9800 Pro, wouldn't that need more than 240w ?

In a word, no.

Power supplies have to be rated for the systems they'll be installed in. A full size ATX power supply has to assume a max load that could include a high performance graphcis cards, four hard drives, two optical drives and five PCI cards.

The Shuttle boxes, and other similar units, only have to supply power to, at most, one PCI slot, the video card, two hard drives and one optical drive. Plus, the tiny power supplies they use are often repurposed from 1U server chassis, which need reliable current delivery.

So 240W is perfectly adequate for even a GeForceFX 5900 Ultra plus memory plus the Athlon 64 3200+, if one could actually fit in the case.

[jeffjones]

Cool, I learned something new today, thanks 8)