Components
The components that were initially planned to be used to build
this system are as follows:
Case
The Antec
Solo case was chosen for this system. This is a mid-tower case with a
conventional configuration. There is some damping material on the inside
of the side and top panels of the case. This damping material removes resonances
from the case, and helps to absorb some of the internally generated noise.
An Arctic
Cooling AF 12025 PWM fan was used to exhaust hot air from the back of the
case.
Power Supply
A SeaSonic SS-500GB was
chosen for this system. The 500W rating was based on my
preliminary estimate of power usage in this system, with a reasonable safety
margin, to allow more powerful video cards to be used. The bottom-facing fan
in this power supply is critical to system cooling. This power supply is 80+
certified (indicates a high efficiency). We've used SeaSonic power supplies
in the past, and found them to be both quiet and robust.
As an added bonus, this power supply has Active Power Factor
Correction. This feature makes the power supply an easier load for a UPS (or
for the power grid). It also causes the power supply to be able to run on
power sources from 100VAC to 240AC without any intervention, which makes it
less susceptible to line surges when operated on 120VAC power.
This power supply has since been discontinued. The replacement
unit is the SeaSonic
M12II 500 Bronze.
Motherboard
The Supermicro
X8STE motherboard was chosen for this system. It accepts any of several
LGA-1366 CPUs, it handles the ECC functions properly, it has 4-pin PWM (Pulse
Width Modulation) fan headers, and it has an isolated passive chipset heatsink.
All of these features are critical to this system.
This particular motherboard was chosen because I wanted
a Virtualization workstation, with space for a 10GBE card and the ability to
experiment with other PCI-E cards. For general-purpose workstation use, the Supermicro
C7X58 would normally be a better choice.
CPU
The Intel
E5520 CPU was chosen for this system, due to it's validated ECC capability
and it's low TDP (80W). Faster CPUs (including the 130W TDP CPUs) can also
be used in this configuration, if desired.
The Thermalright
HR-01 Plus heatsink was chosen, as I believe it is the best of the available
heatsink options for this system, due to it's size and cooling ability. In
this system, the heatsink will be run without a fan, but it will be ducted
to both the rear exhaust fan and the power supply intake. This is why the
power supply needed a bottom-facing fan. To mount this heatsink to the motherboard,
it is necessary to use the Thermalright
LGA-1366 bolt-through kit. Thermalright has several other excellent heatsink
options for the LGA-1366, many of which will work in this system.
Another option is the Thermolab
BARAM cooler. It fits in the same space as the Thermalright HR-01 Plus,
and it cools at least as well.
Memory
The memory chosen for this system was six modules of Super
Talent 2GB unbuffered ECC PC3-10600 (W1333EB2GM) memory. This memory was
not on Supermicro's validated memory list, but it has operated flawlessly in
this system. At PC3-10600 (DDR3-1333), it can keep up with even the fastest
of the currently available LGA-1366 CPUs.
Video Card
The BFG
BFGE98512GTHE video card was chosen for this system. It is the fastest
video card we could find that is completely passive, and doesn't have
an external vent. As this system is intended to run at low airflow, there
will be little or no pressure (positive or negative) in the case. Any video
card that depends on case pressure to create airflow would be likely to overheat
under these circumstances.
This video card uses the Thermalright
HR-03 Rev. A heatsink.
This heatsink is on the card when it comes out of the box, and is therefore
a good way to get high performance graphics in a silent system, without voiding
the warranty. The manufacturer specifies that this card have at least 25CFM
of air directed over the heatsink. The configuration of this system meets
that specification.
Disks
In this system, I started off with an Intel
SSDSA2SH032G1 2.5" 32GB SATA SSD as a system device, three Western
Digital WD3000HLFS SATA disks to store Virtual Machines, and a Seagate
ST3750640NS SATA disk to store backups of the Virtual Machines.
Also, a Samsung SH-203B SATA DVD/RW with Dual-Layer support
was used as the optical drive. This drive is currently out of production. Any
DVD/RW drive with a SATA interface can be used.
Finally, a Mitsumi FA405M 13-in-1 USB card reader was installed
in the system. This card reader in a front-panel accessible 3.5" bay. It supports
quite a few different types of flash-card, and it has a USB 2.0 port. This
card reader is currently out of production. Any USB 2.0 card reader with a
similar form-factor can be used, or none. This item is completely optional.
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