silent.
This old beast that I’m currently tapping out this post on is giving up the ghost, well it is quite old and it’s struggling. So the search is on for a replacement and dear god it’s one hell of a hassle.
First up it’s a dual boot system, Ubuntu with Windows XP – yes that’s how old it is. Ubuntu for everyday stuff and Windows when I absolutely have no option but to use it. Wanting to keep both I of course read that Windows 8 plays silly buggers when you try and install another bootable OS. Great.
But there’s help, there’s the Cooler Master Silencio 650 case. With a dual boot switch. Rejoice.
Install two hard drives, put a different OS on each, slide the switch to the left press the power button and Ubuntu boots. Slide the switch the other way and press the on button and Windows fires up. What could be better? Well sticking a couple of solid state drives in there and they both start so much faster.
No.
After reading a number of reviews and the Cooler Master site – some time back when the case came out – that was the plan of action when it came to the crunch and a new system was bought. Don’t know why but had another look at the official site and all of a sudden something jumped out that I’d not read anywhere else before. Notice: the HDD Boot Switch supports traditional 3.5″ HDD drives only
.
Apparently the firmware with various SSDs of various brands have caused problems, problems that don’t seem to occur with your standard 3.5″ spinning disk hard drive.
Brilliant, it’s either completely back to the drawing board or stick with a couple of traditional hard drives. You’d think with a case that was based around creating a quiet PC, what with a name like Silencio and all the sound absorbing padding in it that making sure it worked with quiet hard drives would have been high up on the to-do list.
And it’s not as if that’s the only hurdle, it’s bad enough trying to find a motherboard and graphics card that work with Ubuntu without major headaches.