Excepting for a monitor upgrade, my computer building is finished. Today I received my second Seasonic S12 600W Power Supply and I am in love. The first one I put into my server since I had it turned off due to mandatory evacuations here in Orange due to the fires last week. Since I upgraded the server, I can hardly hear it (though it occasionally produces a high-pitched buzz which you can only hear when you're right next to it (e.g. at my computer)). Since the server took the S12 so well, I bought another one for my main computer as I had originally planned. I am now a die-hard Seasonic lover.

I have 2 Seasonic S12 600's in my two main computers and one Seasonic S12 430 in my HTPC. They are all just amazingly quiet for the amount of power they have to output. For example, my server has 2 optical drives, 6 hard drives and an Athlon 3700+ with 2 gigs of RAM. Combine all those with a case made for silence (not cooling) and the power supply has to ramp up a little extra to sufficiently cool itself and it's barely audible. My main computer has one optical drive and 5 hard drives along with a dual core Opteron and 2 gigs of RAM alongside a very power hungry eVGA 7800GT video card. And though I haven't stressed the video card yet, I have the Opteron running at 100% and I can effectively turn down my TV volume 5 or 6 notches (from 48 to about 42) for the same amount of clarity.

Combining the Seasonic S12 with my other upgrade this weekend, the main computer (ZEUS) is very quiet. My other upgrade was to replace the stock fan on the eVGA 7800GT video card which was making a ton of noise with a super-quiet Zalman VF700-Cu cooler. It is pure copper and though my video card runs at the same temperature under Windows, it runs about 2-3 degrees cooler at full load (when playing World of Warcraft) and is infinitely more quiet than the stock fan. So it's all done. I've got a Zalman on the video card and the CPU in my main rig and three Seasonics throughout my setup.

I do have to figure out how to quiet the HTPC a bit (I think the Thermalright XP90 is making all the noise and might be replaced with a Ninja Scythe or a Zalman 7000 (as my main rig has)), but other than that, I'm done.

Oh yeah, I am waiting for my tax refund to purchase a 24" widescreen LCD monitor from Dell. I'm waiting for the price to go down as well or for them to come out with the 2407FPW which adds HDMI support so it will work with Windows Vista if I ever upgrade to that. And even though I don't plan on upgrading when it comes out, I've been with my 17" Viewsonic since 2002 and if my 24" Dell lasts four years, the extra support will be a nice feature.

URL: :::: Sea Sonic ::::