I'm going to buy one or the other very soon, but I'm not sure which. Basically, the SC420 is uses newer technologies, which may be a good thing, but there are a lot of things I've read that make me like the 400SC better. Here's why:
1. I've read that they use one of several different CPU fans on the SC420, even the 2.8GHz, and that some people with 2.8GHz have gotten a very noisy fan. I haven't read anything like that about the 400, just always that it's near silent.
2. The SC420 supposedly supports only 5V PCI cards, not 3.3V. I don't know what the typical voltage is, but it worries me that this is noted as an oddity about the SC420.
3. SC420 uses DDR2, which is more expensive, and according to everything I've read, much slower than DDR.
4. The 420 only has 1 channel of parallel IDE, which means if I add a second optical drive, it will have to share the channel with the other optical drive, making it slow.
What do you all have to say about the problems I've noted above, and is there anything good to say about the SC420? any reason I would want to buy it instead of a 400?
1. I've read that they use one of several different CPU fans on the SC420, even the 2.8GHz, and that some people with 2.8GHz have gotten a very noisy fan. I haven't read anything like that about the 400, just always that it's near silent.
2. The SC420 supposedly supports only 5V PCI cards, not 3.3V. I don't know what the typical voltage is, but it worries me that this is noted as an oddity about the SC420.
3. SC420 uses DDR2, which is more expensive, and according to everything I've read, much slower than DDR.
4. The 420 only has 1 channel of parallel IDE, which means if I add a second optical drive, it will have to share the channel with the other optical drive, making it slow.
What do you all have to say about the problems I've noted above, and is there anything good to say about the SC420? any reason I would want to buy it instead of a 400?