i7 Build

In the picture, you can see the giant Noctua heatsink with the fans in a push-pull configuration. At the rear of the computer case, it's a Thermaltake 120mm Magma fan. The Magma fan is extremely quiet due to an unique 'bat wing' blade design which seems to lower the perceived noise. In addition, the rotor assembly can be separated from the motor housing for easy maintenance cleaning.

Having no 2.5" mounts for the solid state hard drives, I decided to attach them to the bottom of the case using velcro pads. It should be okay since SSDs have minimal vibrations and heat output. However, the part about SSDs being 100% silent is false. I can definitely hear them when the drives are reading/writing small chunks of data (e.g. 4kb). The noise is very high pitched so it's very possible that only certain people can hear it because the frequency is so high.

I opted for the EVGA Nvidia GTX260 Core 216. This video card is the first one from Nvidia that I have ever owned. In the past, I was an ATI fan but it seemed like the drivers for their cards were always lacking. Got a great deal on the 260 and I pounced on it. The card is huge though. I have about a half-inch clearance to the hard drive cage in my original Antec Sonata. It fits though so I have no regrets buying this card.

The Coolermaster 700W Silent Pro PSU lives up to its billing. I can't confirm or deny whether it's truly silent or not but it's definitely the quietest PSU I have ever owned.

The rig is running on Windows 7 (64-bit). I've never used Vista so I can't compare but coming from XP, Windows 7 is fantastic. Super stable, fast boots and shutdowns, and familiar but improved user interface. I'm finding I'm using the Sleep function daily. Instead of leaving my computer on 24/7, I now allow it to go to sleep after 30 minutes of idiling because to return from Sleep literally takes 2 seconds on my computer. I never use Shutdown anymore since Sleep turns off all fans and hard drives (no noise) and only uses minimal power. I forget the exact amount of power, but it's practically nothing. Shutdown is fast becoming unnecessary.