videobear
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Feb 14, 2006, 8:34 AM
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Adventures in Computer Building
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Well, my new machine is now together, although I haven't loaded any software as yet.
So far, I can say:
I LOOOOVE the Lian-Li case and the Seasonic power supply!
This is the VP-1200 case, and I debated a long time before deciding to shell out $250 for it. Let me say, it was well worth it.
The case is an oversized mid-tower, to accommodate even Extended ATX motherboards. It's very sturdy black anodized aluminum, quite light, and has wheels. It's almost Mac-like, with a cheese-grater front panel. All edges are rounded, and holes where cables run have plastic grommets to prevent chafing. The sides pop on and off with a single thumb screw.
It's divided into three "zones". The hard drive cage, for six drives, is located at the bottom front, and has a big 80 mm fan to draw in cooling air. The drives slide right into place and lock with plastic tabs...automatic vibration damping and no messy screwdrivers needed. Behind the drive bay is the power supply bay. The 500 watt Seasonic S-12 only has one large, quiet fan, and draws air up through the ventilation holes in the case bottom. By being mounted low, the power supply does not have to deal with exhausting hot air from the case, and only needs to keep itself cool. It automatically switches between 120 and 240V.
The huge upper bay can house a floppy drive and up to four 5 1/2" drives such as DVD-R burners. The bezels all fit precisely. Behind the drive cage area is a large space for cables, and the motherboard mounts to the rear.
The upper bay is cooled by two huge, quiet fans. One is a 120 mm intake fan mounted right behind the processor area. It has a shroud that routes the airflow onto your CPU heatsink. I used a Thermaltake "Big Typhoon", which has an ENORMOUS heatsink about five inches on a side. It mates very nicely to the case's shroud, and I was able to leave off the fan that comes with the Typhoon, using only the case fan for airflow over the CPU. The only drawback to the Typhoon is that it is so large that it's difficult to work past it to connect a few things such as fan plugs and a couple of the motherboard mounting screws.
Above the expansion card area, another fan mounts. This is a centrifugal "squirrel cage" type that pulls the hot air from the CPU, RAM, motherboard chipset and graphics card and exhausts it out the back.
The case came with a card retention cage, but I left it off. It might be useful if you lug your computer around a lot, but mine will be relatively stationary.
ALL of the fans I've mentioned come with the case. In addition, the power supply came with lots of cable ties and wrap so you can do a neat job of cable routing. The only thing I needed to add was a couple of "Y" splitters to get power to the DVD burners and the rear SATA panel accessory. (The power supply has enough connectors, but not in the right places.)
I haven't done any stress testing yet, but with the system at idle, the temps seem to stabilize about 12 - 15 deg C above ambient. Cool and quiet!
I'll end this with a question for those of you using the ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard: Which RAID controller gives optimum results in RAID 0? I used the Silicon Image connectors (the secondary, red ones), but am considering whether using the primaries would have been a better choice.
Regards,
Doug Graham
Panda Productions
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