Building a new computer?

Recently I've been considering building a new computer, partially as something to occupy my time with research, and partially as a serious venture to possibly replace my current rig. Though my current computer still works fine, it is frustratingly noisy, inefficient, and runs far too hot. It has definitely seen plenty of use in the past couple of years I've had it (coming up on 4 now, I believe) and it has also seen it's fair share of issues- I believe it is on its sixth or seventh iteration of operating system, having had to be reformatted a few times. Some of these were hardware failures- once, the cooling system leaked and fried a number of components, and more recently, a SATA cable failed and the primary hard drive went out. On a different occasion, a particularly nasty virus forced a reformat, and still others were the upgrade cycle from Windows XP to Vista to 7. I'm thinking that if I build this new PC, I'll still use the current one I have, albeit relegated to a media server role.

The goal for the new build would still be to make a high performance computer, but this time balance the performance with the criteria of being a quieter and more efficient computer. Usually these goals are at odds with each other so I won't be striving to overclock the CPU to absurd levels, or have the large power drain of multiple video cards. It is very possible to build a high performance machine with only a single video card, so I will be limiting myself to one mid to high end card.

From the start, I'm going to specify that the machine be entirely air-cooled, as I'm weary of watercooling based on my previous experiences, having had a catastrophic, fail to POST level disaster once before. Not that I'm dismissing it totally as an option in the future, but for this particular case, I'm going to play it safe and go with air. It might seem counter intuitve that large fans actually make a system quieter, but the large fans actually move far more CFM of air at any given RPM, allowing them to move decent quantities of air at relatively low (and quiet) speeds. To manage them and keep an eye on temperatures, I think I might try to find a functional, simple fan controller with a display for the front panel, taking up one of the drive bays.

An intriguing idea I've toyed with is making the build into a Micro ATX form factor to lower the rig's space consumption as well. This idea complicates the nature of what I have to look for greatly, as small cases tend to be far more sensitive to component size, not to mention Micro ATX more often than not includes features like on-board graphics, which seems like a waste if I'm going to be plugging in a video card. In fact, when I did a Newegg search, only one Micro ATX motherboard met the specs I wanted, and it was rather expensive. Another key factor in this would be cooling- smaller cases tend to have fewer fans, making ambient case temps higher. In that regard, you're beginning to fight an uphill battle to keep everything adequately cool. In the end, the ability to expand if need be is never a bad thing, I suppose, so that idea will probably fall by the wayside.

One case that particularly intrigues me is the Silverstone FT02 fortress- although it is painfully expensive, it looks like a really clever innovation in terms of keeping the insides of a computer cool. Since the heat is rising anyways, why not use it as an assist to keep a steady flow of air upwards and out of the case? They put a sizable air intake on the bottom, powered by 3 large fans which suck up cold air and push it upwards to the top fans. The whole thing appeals to me from an engineering standpoint, what with the positive air pressure, integrated dust shields, and so on. The fact that the power supply is isolated is another plus- you won't have hot air from the power supply breathing all over your CPU and GPU coolers, giving them another little advantage. I'm not completely sold on the idea, though- aside from the price tag, the other thing that bothers me is the fact that the motherboard is rotated so that the rear of it faces upwards to the top of the tower. This is designed to make cable management easier, but it has the disadvantage of making the case somewhat top-heavy. If I'm going to be dropping so much coin on something, I certainly do not want it to tip over due to an errant kick or tug from an attached wire. In that regard, I think I'd end up going with something more traditional (and less expensive) like a Cooler Master Storm series, or an Antec 900.

Regarding the internals, the Intel 1366 (i7 900 series) socket motherboards and processors are coming out with all sorts of cool features like 6 gb/s SATA and USB 3.0, which matches nicely with their high performance and ability to use DDR3 RAM. Though the i5 would certainly be more efficient wattage-wise, the i7's can be mildly overclocked to nearly match the performance of the i7 "extreme" models for a fraction of the price. (Of course, this excludes the hexa-core madness that is the i7-980, as that's made on a completely different 32nm architecture) In the GPU area, the ATI Radeon 5850 and 5870 cards are particularly attractive, although they are definitely getting into the higher end of the performance and cost spectrum. On the bright side, they are quiet, relatively efficient, and will be less expensive and draw less power than two lower grade cards working in tandem.

SSD's are a crucial part of taking advantage of all of this bandwidth, however they are a moving target as far as price, capacity, and performance- looking at where SSDs were a year ago serves as a testament to how fast it is developing. My current thought is that I'll get a relatively small, less expensive SSD in the ~100GB or so range, and use it as the primary hard drive that will hold only the OS and a few programs/games, and then use a conventional drive to store larger file collections like music, movies, photos, etc. As a large SSD can run you in the range of $800 and up, I think the smaller ones at the ~$150 price point are probably a better value right now. Of course, by the time I would get around to actually building the system, there may have been even more developments in the market.

There is a stupefying amount of reading on these topics- reviews, technical articles, and so on- and I've only yet scratched the surface. Hopefully at the end of this, I'll have something to show for it and gain a bit of experience building my own computer, which I admittedly have never done before...