Hi, here comes some pro and con's for the things in the setup that i used. - The coolermaster chassi has a non-standard PSU that cannot be replaced. And no fanless solutions are possible. Fortunatly i asked the computerstore about a compatible PSU for this and got the reply that the Antec Phantom PSU 350W EC Fanless was compatible, so after i opened the box and realized that it would not fit i was allowed to return the PSU. - The so called "120mm fan" in the rear of the chassi is NOT a 120mm fan, it's 2x60mm fans, and they really do create ALOT of noise and vibration in the chassi, another con about those are they they are using a 4pin molex for power, so no fan-control here. the 80mm fan is a bit more silent, toe it also uses a 4pin molex. Just ordered 2x60mm 14db and 1x80mm 10db fans with 3-pin connectors so i can finally control those.. Another BIG con for the mb is that they have put the 5.25 bay in exactly the wrong place so the lower bay cannot be used for any full-lenght 5.25 units since it will interfear with a ATX-MB (atleast for me it covers the power-connector for the Asus a8v deluxe. Another small con is the internal 3.5-bay that they have put on the right of the 5.25-bay (vertical mounting also!) since this makes cooling of the HD very hard, and also with the current design it's impossible to remove the vibrations that the HD generates. I would have thought that they would have put some rubber-isolators for that atleast. I'm going to try and do some modding later and see if i can fit the 3.5 drive in some other place later, and then add rubber-isolators to that.
The cooling of the chassi is quite good, the motherboard reports a temp of 27 degrees and my q-tec fancontroller reports 32 degrees from the probe that i put on the far right between the PSU and the chassi. The Zalman CNPS7700-CU is really good, thoe i do not have any test-equipment to determine the exact temp, but during load it goes up to 50C and when idle it is about 35C in silent mode, no vibrations or anything. If i turn the HD and chassi-fans off i dont even hear a whiper from it! Running a AMD Athlon64 3500+, and i have seen temp's been reported lower than this, but since i have put a static load on the fans to get them down a bit in the noice-level the airflow is not really that good. (only had some big resistors so they are probably only running at about 20-30%) The Zalman ZM80D-HP VGA cooler is working perfectly, thoe the installation-instructions could have been a bit better. Nothing really to report here since it "just works", no commends on the temps either since i do not have a good place to put the meter from the q-tec fancontroller. About the motherboard that i got. Asus a8v Deluxe The main problem here was to mount the CNPS7700-CU cooler since they have glued a metal-bracket on the rear of the motherboard, and the screws that comes with the cooler does not fit in that. What i did was that i got a couple of long screws and after some work i got the cpu-fan stable. Would not reccomend this to someone with a tower, but for a desktop it works fine (atleast when it's not beeing moved :). One big + for asus is that have gone with a RaLink Ralink RT2500 PCI card for the wlan, and that has native drivers that they have release under the GPL license. Conclusion: The chassi is quite nice, but still a bit to noisy for use as a HTPC even if coolermaster pushes this chassi as a HTPC chassi. The mainboard/cpu/cpu-cooler works like a real charm, and the cool'n'quiet works perfect in linux also! (also possibilities to control the fan-speeds throu i2c) and those components are really quiet, and with the passive cooler for the GFX card that makes it even better. Chassi: Pros: - Fits in a tv-bench. - looks nice. - quite good airflow. Cons: - NOT toolfree - Quite noisy (and they are NOT using a 1x120mm fan in the rear as the spec's say!!) - non-standard PSU (thoe still quiet enough for use in a normal workstation) - No vibration-isolation for the HD-mounting - Vertical mount of the HD in a low-airflow area - Lower 5.25 bay interfears with the MB if you mount a full-lenght 5.25 unit. - Sharp edges in the chassi that you easily cut yourself on. - A bit small in depth, a couple of cm (4-5cm) here would improve in the following areas: 5.25 bay would not intefear with the MB, improve the airflow since it's a bit crammed with cables, easier to work with. Motherboard: Pros: - Cool'n'quiet compatible. (also in linux) - Possibility to control the fans (via i2c in linux) - wlan-card (with native GPL'ed drivers in linux!) - good sound-quality without to much noise beeing generated by interferance. - good layout of componends that dont disturb big CPU-fans and passive-cooling kit's for GFX-cards - No problems with running all fans with a seperate fan-controller (possibility to ignore all fans in the bios!) - ACPI compliant and no problems with linux here. - Customizable BIOS boot-logo - 4Mb Flash for the bios. (time to start looking at the linux-bios project :) Cons: - glued metal-backplate for the cpu-cooler that's HARD to remove. - long bios-detect time (even if all unused devices are disabled) - wlan-card is a seperate PCI card, would be better if it where included on the MB. Zalman CNPS7700-CU: Pros: - Easy to install. - Good cooling even at the lowest rpm. (800-900rpm, AMD athlon64 3500+ aprox 35-50C) Cons: - Can be a bit tricky to mount of you have a small chassi. I would prefer that all brackets and sutch would be secured on the cooler with screws before mounting it. But the current setup works. Zalman ZM80D-HP VGA Dual Heatpipe: Pros: - Nice quiet cooling for the GFX card - Once you understand the design it's easy to install. Cons: - Can be quite tricky to install, and the manual for it is quite hard to understand. - a bit big, so make shure that you dont have any components that will block. Think that's all, but this is a really nice setup for a quiet workstation, but not for a HTPC. I where just so lucky that i where in the loops of getting 2 machines workstation/htpc so i could afford to take a chance with this setup. /Patric On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 16:25 +0100, Patric wrote: > The coolermaster. There are tons of reviews on the net... but i'm gonna > switch to a fanless psu and some stuff... so i'll post a mini-review of > the chassi with my own configuration.... > > > On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 14:04 +0000, John Molohan wrote: > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf > > > Of Karl Lattimer > > > Sent: 19 January 2005 07:50 > > > To: freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > > Subject: Re: [Freevo-users] Media Center Case Choices > > > > > > Patric wrote: > > > > > > >I would recommend that you take a look at the > > > Silverstone-chassis, thoe > > > >they are quite expensive. > > > > > > > >I went with this configuration instead. > > > >- CoolerMaster Cavalier 4 Miditower (desktop) > > > >- Antec Phantom PSU 350W EC Fanless > > > >- Zalman CNPS7700-CU CPU Cooler > > > >- disk with fluid bearings > > > >- RaptorVibe Disk cooler/silencer > > > >- Zalman ZM80D-HP VGA Dual Heatpipe for the gfx-card. > > > >+ a fan-controller that will autoadjust the speed of the > > > 2x120mm fans > > > >+ on > > > >the rear depending on the current temp. > > > > > > > > > > > >Also a thing that i can recommend to you all that wants a powerful > > > >machine as a htpc... Get one of those cpu-fans that i have, > > > get a AMD64 > > > >cpu + a motherboard with the cool'n'quiet tech + passive cooling for > > > >the gfx-card..... and then just enjoy the silence =) > > > > > > > >/Patric > > > > > > > > > > > >On Tue, 2005-01-18 at 22:08 -0500, Justin Wetherell wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > >>I am looking for an "small" ATX case that has atleast three "5 1/4" > > > >>drive bays and atleast "2" Hard Drive bays. I'd like it to be a > > > >>desktop and not a tower. I have a DVD-RW, a 2 bay LCD, and > > > 2 internal > > > >>HD's and i'd like to accomidate them all. > > > >> > > > >>Thanks for any suggestions, > > > >>Justin > > > >> > > > >> > > > >>------------------------------------------------------- > > > >>The SF.Net email is sponsored by: Beat the post-holiday blues Get a > > > >>FREE limited edition SourceForge.net t-shirt from ThinkGeek. > > > >>It's fun and FREE -- well, > > > almost....http://www.thinkgeek.com/sfshirt > > > >>_______________________________________________ > > > >>Freevo-users mailing list > > > >>Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > > >>https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users > > > >> > > > >> > > > >> > > > I've just bought a silverstone LC11 for 100£ from > > > www.microdirect.co.uk just incase your interested... > > > > > > > > > > > > > I'd be very interested in a report on this case if you've got some time to > > give feedback. > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > > The SF.Net email is sponsored by: Beat the post-holiday blues > > Get a FREE limited edition SourceForge.net t-shirt from ThinkGeek. > > It's fun and FREE -- well, almost....http://www.thinkgeek.com/sfshirt > > _______________________________________________ > > Freevo-users mailing list > > Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users > > -- Patric <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IntelliVIEW -- Interactive Reporting Tool for open source databases. Create drag-&-drop reports. Save time by over 75%! Publish reports on the web. Export to DOC, XLS, RTF, etc. Download a FREE copy at http://www.intelliview.com/go/osdn_nl _______________________________________________ Freevo-users mailing list Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
