I'm shopping for a new PC to replace the old PII 266 (!) that the kids have been using to play games. They're beginning to play 3D games that just won't play on it and I don't want those games on my machine. And I figure I can recycle that old PII into a Linux box to muck about with.
But what to get! Something small but something fast. Something that looks good but isn't noisy. I'm verrrrry tempted to go for a full blown up-to-date gaming machine so that I can put my favourite games on it as well as the kids stuff. Got to be ready for Half Life 2 ya know! And then I can dual boot it and use it as a workstation/server once in a while. Would be nice if it ran Virtual PC well. Hmmmm. Tough trade offs.
My current thoughts are:
- Shuttle SB75G2 (using the latest Intel 875 chipset with Prescott support)
- Pentium 4 3.0Ghz seems to be at a good price point
- Sapphire Radeon 9600 XT 128Mb DVI VO seems to be the best bang for buck (full DirectX 9 support)
- 160Gb SATA150 IDE Seagate Barracude 7200.7 or bigger
- 1 Gb RAM running at PC3200
I like the small form factor. Looks nice. Should be fast. But I dread the noise! A P4 running at that clock speed puts out a lot of heat so the fan will stay cranked. The SB75G2 doesn't have the SilentX power supply and I'd have to buy that seperately. I'm hoping I can put another Zalman heat pipe on the Radeon card (just like the Sapphire Ultimate cards) and get rid of the VGA fan. If it fits that is! It will still sound like an air conditioner though.
Maybe a better case? Maybe look at those fanless power supplies? Maybe look at water cooling?