It's been a month since part one (CPU+Motherboard), and I must admit the comments didn't help me choose at all! Why? The comments didn't lean one way or another.
I've decided in the end to go with an Intel E1200 and Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L. Despite renewed searching for AMD power usage including the Semprons, the E1200 still seemed to have the edge (especially when you factor in pricing and availability). The difference in power at this end of the spectrum is pretty low - more power will be wasted by an inefficient PSU than an inefficient low end CPU.
This means going with the current market prices, the CPU is $50 and motherboard $70, meaning there is a healthy $480 in the budget for case, power supply, hard drive(s) and any third party cooling required.
My requirements
The ideal case would be a tiny unnoticeable case, yet somehow like the Tardis able to store 50 hard drives; and the ideal PSU would be 100% efficient, making no noise at all. Neither are going to happen, but what's the next best thing?
Since I've chosen to go with a motherboard with four hard drive ports, I want the case to be able to hold four hard drives. Optical drive really isn't a concern, because (with any luck) I'll only be installing WHS once.
Meet the Contenders
The reason I've chosen to combine both cases and power supplies is that although you can get some awesome looking cases, or some with fantastic functionality, those cases tend to go for AUD$200+, and then to get a "decent" (and by decent, I mean quiet and won't burn out once you overload it by plugging in three hard drives, not 1kW) power supply will set you back another AUD$100->$150.
This system even on load and with 4 drives, will struggle to make it to 100w (actual draw, before factoring in power supply efficiency, would be about ~10w average per HDD, with a top of 40w for motherboard and cpu combined). Power supplies are less efficient at very low loads, so the closer the PSU's maximum wattage is to the actual/projected draw, the higher the efficiency should be. On the PSU front its very hard to find anything below 300w that claim to meet "80PLUS" standards, with Seasonic making a hard to find (in Australia) 300w model, Zalman producing a 360w. Thermaltake have an interesting 5.25" bay model which puts out 270w.
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That was until I found the picoPSU, which was looking like a real winner…until I realised it really only has one or two hard drive power connectors!This thing is really tiny and efficient though, "so tiny that 70 picoPSUs would fit inside the casing of a normal ATX power supply"! |
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To move onto something with more connectors, we're looking at the standard size ATX PSU. The Antec EarthWatts line of power supplies are cheap, low noise, fairly efficient, and have a low wattage. I ended up with a 380w EarthWatts PSU in my HTPC build.The "New Solution" (NSK) range of cases from Antec provide pretty good price/performance, and all come with an Earthwatts PSU. The NSK1380 (350w, ~AUD$120), NSK3480 (380w, ~AUD$120), NSK4480 (380w, ~AUD$100) and NSK6580 (430w, ~AUD$135) all look like real contenders to me (the NSK2480 is what was used in my HTPC).
They all share roughly the same design - just larger than the model number below it, except for the NSK1380 which is a cube form.
(There is also the NSK4000 and NSK6000 which appear to be the NSK4480 and NSK6580 chassis respectively, sans power supply. The damage for the NSK4000 is only AUD$69 however, meaning it could be more suitable to be combined with the picoPSU.) |
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I must admit CoolerMaster, while a well and truely established giant in the PC Case industry, isn't one I'd normally choose from "low end" cases. I suppose it helps that this case is $200 without a PSU, meaning it is over budget and definitely not a low end case. The iTower 930 looks like your standard beige (make that silver and or black these days!) ATX case with one "small" difference - 4 hot-swappable SATA drives. It includes little caddies to put your drives in, then you just slot them into the computer.While not a new idea, being SATA means not only do you not have to open the case to add a drive, you don't have to even shut down the machine!
There are other advantages too, the iTower 930 is made from mostly steel, meaning it should produce less vibration than cases with a majority of aluminium. Whether or not that's the case is another matter. |
Decision Time
Sure, the iTower is probably the most "featuresome" case on this list but coming in at ~AUD$200 seriously hampers the rest of the budget, especially when you consider it still needs a power supply. Can the iTower compete with the cheaper NSK series (with or without the EarthWatts PSU)? Is the Antec EarthWatts efficient enough to knock out a picoPSU? Can the picoPSU safely be fitted with adapters for more drives? Have I left anything off my list?
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Before I make my comments about Silverlight 2 Beta 2, I've first had to get the darn thing working with Visual Studio 2008. Anytime I'd go to open a Silverlight project, I'd be greeted with "The project type is not supported by this installation".
Unfortunately, I was foolish enough to install the VS2008 SP1 beta/.NET 3.5 SP1 beta (largely thanks to the cool stuff mentioned at Remix) which apparently was the original cause of this problem. It wouldn't be too bad if Blend had any IntelliSense, but unfortunately the only way to develop the C# behind the SL2 project is to use VS2008.
After several uninstall/reinstalls of everything I could find relating to VS2008 (and no more reinstalls of SP1 Beta), I stumbled across Michael Sync's tips for Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Tools + VS2008. I uninstalled and reinstalled everything according to that post…but it turns out all I needed (no reinstalling required) was but one parameter while launching VS2008…
devenv.exe /resetskippkgs
Now I'm "enjoying" Silverlight 2 content again, but hopefully future versions of the SL2Chainer will fix this on install!
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The Live Writer team have released a tech preview of the next version of Windows Live Writer. While the GUI for Wordpress’ editor is certainly improved in v2.5, it still doesn’t beat the power of a desktop app. The fact that while I’m writing this post, it looks like I’m writing it straight on my blog is fantastic for visualising how good/bad/otherwise it’ll come out at the end of the day, rather than having to just “know” or use preview everytime I add an image.
It has a few neat looking features (that are immediately noticeable) such as
- New border effects (reflections, rounded corners, solid 1pixel, solid 3 pixels)
- Support for Lightbox/Lightbox groups! (Via Options under Link on images)
- Quicker access to different “views” of your blog. Down the bottom there are now three tabs, Edit, Preview and Source
- Images can now be centered! Yay!
- Image editing options now include cropping and tilting. While I’m unlikely to use tilting, cropping I’m sure I will. There are always moments where an image is one or two (or 10!) pixels off, and it is much quicker to crop in WLW than it is to load up Photoshop again.
Going from the Live Writer team’s blog entry, most of the changes are related to the SDK, albeit not stable at the moment.
On a negative note however,
- It seems to of changed quotes from being " to “ and ”. A small visual difference, but when copying code examples, means you have to run a search and replace to get any snippets working! Update: As Brandon Turner pointed out in the comments, Tools -> Options -> Uncheck "Use smart quotes" fixes this issue. The Live team is fast to respond!
- You still can’t modify any of the parameters on the border effects. By that I mean you can’t make a drop shadow more subtle, change how strong the reflection is, or even change the colour of the solid 1/3px borders.
I'm sure there are one or two things I haven't noticed at first glance, so by no means take this at a definitive list of new features.
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Update: Okay, so SL2B2 is coming out next week apparently, and it addresses at least some of the control issues! Maybe I'll get some of my wants sooner rather than later.
No, this isn't a leaked announcement of SL2B2, but things I want (need?) into Silverlight before v3. I've been playing with SL2B1 lately, and while I'd love to say it totally rocks and I'll be using it everywhere from now on…but I just can't bring myself to that level of fanboyism.
- Native WrapPanel, yes I know of the WrapPanel on CodeProject, but its not the same.
- Tile/TileBrush/Ability to tile images. I'm sure I'm not the only one who wants to use a tile background in parts of my app which can't overlay HTML.
- "BitmapEffects". While these have sort of been depreciated in WPF 3.5 in favour of PixelShaders, Silverlight doesn't have the ability to do Inner/Outer Glow, Drop Shadows, etc.
- More controls - Think of this point as <em><em'ier><EM'iest!'>! I attempted some Silverlight 1 stuff, but it was a nightmare building anything "rich" because all controls had to be built by hand. Don't get me wrong, SL2B1 has a lot more controls (and very common/useful ones at that), but there are still a fair few missing from WPF.
- Webcam support; Flash can do it, but I personally think the amount of media stuff that Silverlight can do would make it even more useful. Webcam support in Silverlight, along with additional controls like TreeView…you could replace whatever instant messenger you currently use with a completely web based/silverlight without losing any of the rich experience!
And on a more minor note (from me)…
- VS2008SP1 breaks Blend 2.5/Silverlight support? Argh!
- Perhaps less restrictive port ranges for Sockets, currently only 4502->4532 & 80 are supported. According to Robert Folkesson "the site of origin restriction will go away in future release", maybe the port restrictions will too.
- can has Silverlight for WinMo now pleeeeease?
To me, Silverlight 1 was interesting in the aiblity to deliver WMV, but failed to really get my interesting. Silverlight 1.1/2 is a lot more powerful by bringing .NET into things as well as inbuilt controls (and yes, I know a host of other things), but it still doesn't seem all there.
I can now see the obvious reason for why it was rebranded from the seemingly "good" codename of "WPF/E" (where the E stood for everywhere) - it's not WPF, its sort of a subset, but not really.
Hopefully somebody is listening..
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