[mythtv-users] The sub $500 mythbox

[Joseph A. Caputo]

On Tuesday 02 November 2004 09:52, flurdy wrote:
> The Antex Aria is advertised as the quitest box.
> Is that a fact? Once motherboard, disks etc has been put in?
> Does it fit all types of gfx cards, capture card etc?
>

I read a good review of the Aria that praised its 'quietness'.  The 
panels are made of a sound-deadening sandwich material (much quieter 
than aluminum) and the power supply has a 120mm (bigger == slower & 
quieter) fan.

Supposedly the Aria doesn't suffer from the heat/airflow problems of 
previous cases (one of the previous ones, either the Overture or 
Sonata, or both, was problematic in this area).

The case supports full-height PCI & AGP cards.

The only real caveat is that because of the size/placement of the power 
supply, some CPU coolers may not fit, as the CPU socket is partially 
overlapped by the power supply, though this is a fairly common issue 
with many of the smaller cases these days.

My Aria arrived last week ($82.57 + S/H = $94.20 from 
www.securemart.com); I'm just waiting for the rest of the parts for my 
new backend/frontend box.  If I get a chance, I'll post a mini-review.

If anyone's interested, I managed to pick up:

Antec Aria
Chaintech 7NIF2
Athlon XP 2600+ Barton
(**) Zalman CNPS-3100 Plus
512MB Samsung PC2700 RAM

...for a total of about $375 w/shipping.  Everything but the Aria came 
from Directron.com (it helped that the Athlon was on sale).  I probably 
could have shaved up to $25 off that total if I'd bought *every* 
component from a different site, but the time I was spending searching 
for the best deals was definitely worth $25.

Of course, that doesn't include the cost of disk drives, DVD/CD drives, 
IR or RF receivers and tuner cards that I already have from my current 
(soon to be previous) box :-)

-JAC

(**) This cooler was used in the review I read of the Aria, so it should 
fit