noob to sff help?

guess my only question left is.. how's that mobo? seems to be the cheapest one for the options I care for (pcie-2.0, lots of usb connectors and lots of SATA)

Seems way too much money for just two RAM slots.
 
lol the ram slots don't concern me right now to be honest.. i only have 2x2gb right now.. do you think i'll require more in teh future? I figured that I'd need a new cpu or graphics card before I need 4 slots of ram
 
lol the ram slots don't concern me right now to be honest.. i only have 2x2gb right now.. do you think i'll require more in teh future? I figured that I'd need a new cpu or graphics card before I need 4 slots of ram

You'll probably won't need more in the future so that mobo might be all right. But to me, it's a bit bothersome how much that mobo costs considering that there are similarly priced mATX mobos out there with PCI-E 2.0 with four RAM slots like these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ption=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

Granted some of those brands aren't as good as Asus but still. In addition, many sub $80 AMD mATX mobos with PCI-E 2.0 also have 4 RAM slots.

Anyway, if the number of RAM slots don't matter too much for you, just go with it.
 
You might want to take a look at the Silverstone TJ08 case, I believe it should fit all your needs, it looks pretty good too with brushed aluminum front panel.
 
The TJ08 is a good case, I think. Not as good as a the NSK 3480 silence-wise, but quite good nonetheless. It seems to be harder to find nowadays though.

Board-wise. I think it is a mistake to be fixated on PCIE 2.0 capability. Very few cards today make full use of its bandwidth, and everything the OP has said points to someone with mainstream gaming needs. I think it's fair to say that we are at least a few years away from mainstream GFX cards making full use of the 2.0 bandwidth. Cards like the GTX260 (a decent upgrade from a 8800GTS) are still very much at ease on PCIE 1.1.
 
how exactly does g43 and g45 affect these mobos btw? I'll be using a video card so I assume the difference won't matter?
 
how exactly does g43 and g45 affect these mobos btw? I'll be using a video card so I assume the difference won't matter?

Really whether you use a graphics card with G43 or G45 the chipset itself doesn't make much difference. Market segmentation makes it that board manufacturers will differentiate their boards with features. Usually the G43 boards are pretty bad at OCing, for example. Or the G45 will have the RAID version of the southbridge (sometimes). Stuff like that.
 
Have you considered water cooling? It's hard to beat its cooling performance and noise. I've watercooled my microfly and have really been happy with it.

Oh, btw, is the Antec 300 too big for you? I know it's not SFF, but it looks like it'd be really easy to watercool (couple of 120s and a 140 rad).
 
the last time I considered water cooling (maybe 4 years ago), it was too expensive and bad for mobility. If the technology has changed, I'd def take considerations... of course, I'd need to consider effort costs too .. esp b/c it'd probably be something unfamiliar to me. I do have to mention that I don't like the idea of putting water that close to my electronics.

and .. the antec300 looks ridiculously large compared to the nsk3480... it actually kinda looks like my p180...
 
For the kind of setup you are looking at, air cooling is more than enough and can be achieved almost silently.
 
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