What Hardware Should I Buy? - March 2009

Case

First Choice: Cooler Master ATCS 840
UK Pricing: £219.99 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $199.99 (ex. Tax)

Stock of Cooler Master's aluminium monster masterpiece has finally landed here in the UK, but the price tag for now is very steep. Cooler Master has told us it would retail at around £185, but you'll struggle to find stock for less than £200 right now. However, if you're buying an ultra high end system then the Cooler Master ATCS 840 represents the absolute pinnacle of high-end cases to house it all in as we assure you that it’s well worth the investment.

Not only is it stunningly gorgeous in either black or silver, it also packs fistfuls of brilliant little touches that elevate it head and shoulders above the competition. A pop out front panel, ball bearings in the motherboard tray guide runners, plenty of dust filters and a fully reconfigurable cooling system are just the tip of the iceberg.

Build quality is excellent throughout and the included cooling setup, while not as potent as its sibling, the Cooler Master HAF 932, is still very capable with one 120mm and three 230mm fans tasked with keeping your hardware cool. The cavernous interior is an absolute doddle to work with as well, and with space for E-ATX motherboards, six hard disk drives and mounts for a 3x120mm watercooling radiator, the ATCS 840 is big enough to easily accommodate even the most ambitious mod or build.

Perhaps the only downside other than the price is its size - it is VERY large and you'll need a whole lot of desk or floor space to accommodate this aluminium mammoth, but trust us when we say it's worth making room for.

Power Supply

First Choice: Antec Signature 850W PSU
UK Pricing: £148.86 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $249.99 (ex. Tax)

We think the Signature deserves its reputation as an excellent PSU. The Cooler Master UCP 900W gives it a run for its money in the efficiency stakes but the Antec pipes it to the post with its semi modular cables and similar price.

Both are slightly cheaper than the Corsair HX1000W, which is also an excellent PSU, but we found the Antec quieter at high load, plus, unless you're fitting a pair of Radeon HD 4870 X2s you won't need over 850W of power, so the Antec fits quite nicely. We are looking at the Seasonic M12D 850W and Enermax Revolution 85+ in greater depth very soon - so maybe next month our choice will change again, but for now we'd go with what we know, and that's the Antec Signature 850W.

Hard Disk Drive

First Choice: G.Skill Titan 128GB SSD
(and Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB hard Disk Drive)
UK Pricing: £279.44 (Inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $324.99 (ex. Tax)

How can you improve on a terabyte of speedy mechanical storage? By coupling it with G.Skill's speedy 128GB Titan SSD, that's how! Offering speeds comparable to those (and in some cases faster than) Intel's high end SSDs, but with the added benefit of a reasonable amount of storage space, the G.Skill Titan really surprised us. The 128GB is now available for half the price of the 256GB, but both offer a price:performance and capacity that's relatively unmatched.

The innovative use of twin drive controller chips has allowed G.Skill to get the most out of the drive's Samsung NAND flash memory, and has virtually completely resolved the micro-stuttering effects we observed on earlier generations.

Unless you're an obsessive gamer, 128GB will do, although 256GB is more than enough for a boot partition and a healthy stack of games to keep you up all... month, and the difference between even the fastest 10,000 RPM and an SSD like this in general operation is immediately obvious especially in regards to boot and game load times. When combined with the brute force storage of a 1TB hard disk drive or two, you have an ideal storage setup which delivers the very best of both worlds. Just hide the bank statement from the missus at all costs.

CPU Cooler

First Choice: Noctua NH-U12P 1366 Special Edition
UK Pricing: £52.20 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $67.00 (ex. Tax)

We see a lot of very expensive CPU coolers here at bit-tech, and sadly for the most part there’s rarely a decent option for cooling your CPU. They’re frequently built too large, too heavy or just too damn noisy.

However, the Noctua NH-U12P manages to achieve both excellent cooling with fantastically quiet performance and excellent thermal results too, making it one of the best heatsinks we’ve seen. Despite whispering away at 19dBA thanks to its special SSO bearing fan, the cooler is able to keep even a heavily overclocked Core i7 CPU a full 26°C cooler than an Intel stock cooler.

While there are coolers which perform better thermally, none are able to do so this quietly, and to sweeten the deal even further Nocuta now sell the cooler in a special LGA 1366 bundle with a second NF-P12 cooling fan, which usually wells for £18/$30 solo! If you’re looking for the complete package of high-end air cooling and excellent acoustic performance (and why wouldn't you be?) the Noctua NH-U12P is one of the best options out there.

Optical Drive

Alternative: LG GGGC H2OL Blu-ray, HDDVD DVDRW combo drive
UK Pricing: £79.31 (inc. VAT)
US Pricing: $115.29 (ex. Tax)

To get the best cinema experience from your high-resolution display and 7.1 surround sound you really should consider grabbing yourself a Blu-ray drive. This model combines Sony's high definition format with all the usual DVD-RW and CD-RW functionality you'd expect from a cheaper drive, as well as the ability to play the now defunct HD DVD high definition discs too.

Using this drive, and your choice of movie playback software, you're effectively turning your PC into a high end Blu-ray/HD DVD player for less than £130. Just remember that you'll need a monitor that can manage a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution to get the full 1080p high definition playback Blu-ray discs are capable of.