My PC for 2003

I hate background noises, like dogs barking and computer fans; on the other hand, I need plenty of computer power and that usually means a big case, hard disk noises, and electrical humming. Until December 2002, my PC was totally power oriented - after long working sessions, my ears went buzzing and I got sleepy due to the monotonous noise. So I decided to invest on a new PC, as powerful and silent as possible.

Most of my "old" PC noises, come from the dual 300W power supplies, the dual CPU fans, a special fan for a 10000 rpm LVD SCSI2 HD, and four ball bearing case fans, summing up to 2+2+1+4=9 noisy cooling devices. If I could use a simpler case, with much fewer fans, I would greatly reduce noise and should still be capable of great performance, by choosing the right hardware.

Curiously, current consumer trends for computer cases are going on the opposite direction: users seem to appreciate big tower cases with as many fans as possible, and there actually is a market for higher speed replacement fans! Strange.

I just love Enlight computer cases, so I bought a simple Enlight mid tower case, reference Enlight EN-7233, fitted with a 300W power supply. Its a great case, entirely built on aluminum, meaning that the whole chassis helps to dissipate temperature. This case should cost no more than 70€/70USD, so it is a true bargain!

As for the motherboard, the first question was: VIA or INTEL. After a few (happy) years on VIA, I decided to try the new Intel 845PE (Performance Edition) chipset. I bought an Albatron PX845PE PRO2S motherboard, which is proving to be an awesome device, that surprised me from the first minute! The Albatron is cheaper than most of the equivalent alternatives, but is more feature packed and it has a superb design: mine is a "silver edition", so the whole board is silver, as pictures on the sides can show you. Not only this, but the package itself (CDRoms, printed manual, etc...) really shows a quality that I had never, ever, seen!

Here are the main characteristics of the motherboard: Chipset I845PE, FSB 400Mhz/533/667Mhz, 3 DDR DIMM; up to 2GB DDR400 SDRAM, 5.1 audio with S/PDIF IN/OUT, 6xUSB2, ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 + RAID; serial ATA, 1xAGP4x, 6xPCI, LAN INTEL 10/100Mbps, ATX... Now, if this doesn't impress you...

I was so extremely satisfied with the Albatron motherboard, that I decided NOT to buy a Asus VGA Geforce, which was my first option. I bought an Albatron 128MB VGA card, based on Nvidia's Geforce 4 4600 architecture and - again - I couldn't believe my eyes with the quality, the design and the price of the product! I very strongly recommend Albatron.

As for the CPU, I couldn't buy faster than Intel P4@2.7 GHz.

I also couldn't find hard disks bigger than 120 GB, so I bought three Western Digital 120 GB IDE UDMA100 internal devices. I would later add to the system a Lacie 200GB external firewire HD.

The I845PE chipset has a few tricks on memory. Despite the motherboard having three DIMM slots, you can only use all of them if they are single sided AND if the DIMM on the third slot doesn't exceed the capacity of the other two DIMMs. Because its nearly impossible to find other than double sided DIMMs on the market today, you'll be restricted to two DIMM slots, which - in my system - correspond to 2x512 MB = 1 GB RAM. This is half of the RAM I had on my previous system and I am trying hard to find decently priced 1 GB DIMMs, so I can get to the more comfortable 2 GB RAM figure.

SCSI is dying. I still have an Adaptec SCSI 2930 scsi controller on this new computer, but it only controls a (terrible) Pioneer DVD-ROM - I will ditch it soon.

The computer's PCI slots are all filled with:

- 1x AGP Albatron Geforce 4-4600, 128 MB

- 1x INTEL NIC Pro100s

- 1x Adaptec 2930U SCSI controller

- 1x Pinnacle PCTV Pro

- 1x Adaptec Firewire FireConnect 4300, 3 ports firewire controller

- 1x Creative Labs Audigy 2 Platinum

I also bought a Plextor 48/24/48A IDE CDRW, black edition; and a Samsung floppy disk drive.

I'll be reviewing some of this hardware, on the next updates. However, I should warn you about the new Pinnacle PCTV Pro: DO NOT BUY IT. I am using my old PCTV Pro, which features a tuner from Philips. The newer PCTVs have a tuner from Pinnacle and that tuner simply doesn't work well with CATV PAL Stereo (the only signal I tried with it), at least with the current drivers; in fact it works so bad, that you don't get audio at all; plus the current software doesn't do Teletext.