New computer case and power supply

I’ve just got a new case and power supply. The old case was a clunky old beige thing I’d had for over ten years and while the old power supply was good (a Thermaltake butterfly), the whole lot sounded like a jet engine starting up. In our office it was just too loud.

I’ve bought an Antec Solo Quiet case from Computer Lounge here in Auckland (Antec Solo Quiet case). The guys at the shop advised I get a Seasonic power supply (Seasonic ST12 550 power supply) – I had originally thought of getting a Cooler Master PSU (Cooler Master Real Power 450 power supply).

It took me an afternoon to rip the old PC apart and put it back together in the new case and there are lots of reviews of the case on the net that explain how to do this. It’s an easy task and you just have to be methodical. The case comes with installation instructions, and I just followed them so I would sure I’d connected everything correctly. It all worked nearly first time – I hadn’t pushed two of the connectors in far enough. One of these is an SATA cable in one of my hard disks. I’ve had this problem before, the cables push into place, but have no latch mechanism to keep them there and they slip off quite easily.

Is the machine any quieter? I want to say it’s completely silent, but no there’s still a background hum. It’s the power supply (since I disconnected the case and CPU fans and the hum’s still there). It’s quieter than the Thermaltake was, but I’m a bit disappointed, because I wanted complete silence. Maybe it’s as quiet as you can get though.

The case is excellent though. It looks better than the old beige thing and it is quiet, I don’t get any hard disk noise and the case fan itself is dead quiet.

However when I ran Vista and put the machine to sleep, an old problem came back – the machine will not sleep. I’ve fixed this in the past and written on www.tabletquestions.com about it. It took me a while to find the solution on that forum so I will post it here