Creating a totally non moving Media PC (3 Viewers)

[funkstar]

The point of diminishing returns come when you swap a $100 300GB hd for a $600 32GB SSD drive, etc. The last 10% of noise is simply very expensive to get rid of, and will almost always affect performance.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/riteks-16gb-and-32gb-ssds-starting-at-a-low-low-169/

Give them a year and SSDs will be a very attractive proposition

I do agree that getting a very quiet or silent PC with decent performance isn't easy and can be pretty expensive.

I built a PC a couple of years ago and was going for "quiet". It never quite got quiet enough. Building my HTPC with the mCubed case i was going for silent. You can just hear the spinning hard drive (well i can), so it isn't completly silent, but it is very acceptable

 

[cheetah05]

Thank you again for taking time to write your replies guys/gals and thanks for the links, i will almost certainly get around to reading them this weekend.

The problem is, that I am very, very,very sensitive to noise and I have a small apartment so the media center pc is essentially in my bedroom.

I think i will just have to save a bit and get an mCubed case and I can understand that getting totally silent without is near impossible (whilst still looking good). That way it will be silent and have a silent psu aswell which would be great. I wouldnt have any fans running on this either.

I do want to have quite a futureproof media center, so I think i will get quite a good one. I've heard that the Core 2 Duo CPUs have a 65mn (or something like that), which makes them run with minimum heat, so I think i will end up getting one of these. Hopefully by the time i have the money for the case, the technology will be cheaper. I could even go for a laptop version of this chip and unvolt which would be even less heat, but that would have lower performance.

Interesting read on the Solid State Hard Drives. I think i will wait and get one of those. Should provide a good performance over a usb stick aswell and would be silent. For the time being i think i will get a laptop hdd and use that.

With regards to graphics cards, I think i will get one of the low-end Nvidea 7 series PCI-E cards with a passive heatsink and HDMI onboard, which would be excellent. I can have HDTV and purevideo codec.

I will get a passive mothboard too, so overall I could have a totally silent PC which would be perfect.

My only worry that in the summer when it is hot, it would overheat.

 

[funkstar]

I don't know your location, but here is a site that has mCubes cases. There is also a smaller cheaper case that might be of interest

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/mCubed_HFX_Mini_Passive_HTPC.html

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

I don't know your location, but here is a site that has mCubes cases.

Might be useful if they had any in stock, as of this moment in time nothing available.

 

[funkstar]

yeah, good point

they come from Australia and are made by Silverstone. They should be available else where, i got mine on eBay for about half when KustomPCs are selling the Classic for.

 

[Spragleknas]

External HDD (ie WD w/FireWire) could solve some noise.
The HDD is (now) the ting that annoys me the most (Samsung 250 IDE w/AAM enabled)

Just put it far away...

 

[moullas]

Why not use a laptop disk instead of a flash disk?

There are converters that make them IDE, and i think the newer ones are sata anyway, so you should make be able to fit one inside your htpc..

Those small lappy disks make virtually no noise, and run much much cooler than a normal HD

 

[cheetah05]

Why not use a laptop disk instead of a flash disk?

There are converters that make them IDE, and i think the newer ones are sata anyway, so you should make be able to fit one inside your htpc..

Those small lappy disks make virtually no noise, and run much much cooler than a normal HD

Yeah I know, I will be using one of these untill i can get a solid State drive.

These are the components i've lined up so far:

• Core 2 Duo CPU T2600 (a laptop chip) - low voltage and heat
• Motherboard with passive chipset
• Nvidia 7300 with HDMI and passive heatsinks
• Mcubed Case with passive PSU
• Quitest laptop HDD i can find untill i get a solid state hard drive.
• X-Fi Sound Card
• 1GB RAM
• Slot loading DVDRW
• Windows XP MCE + Media Portal
• Media Center Remote

I still need to sort out:

• TV Card(s) - I want the channel changing and quality and stuff to be the best. what do you recommend. I would like a dual tuner card or two cards.
• Cant think of anything else

Questions i have:

• What TV card?
• Will the graphics card be able and general system be able to cope with HDTV and high deff material?
• Will the mCubed case be able to cool all that in the summer aswell without the need for any fans?
• Do I need to buy anything on top of the mCubed stuff? or is all the cooling bits included?

Thanks.

 

[knutinh]

Yeah I know, I will be using one of these untill i can get a solid State drive.

You could also consider suspending the drive.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8240

Core 2 Duo CPU T2600 (a laptop chip) - low voltage and heat

Fine, although regular Core2s are quite nice when it comes to heat as well - you could undervolt or use speedstep with one of those as well.

Motherboard with passive chipset
Nvidia 7300 with HDMI and passive heatsinks
Mcubed Case with passive PSU

If you are using the MCubed case, then you will be getting heatpipes that connect GPU, CPU, chipset to the solid case cooler ribs. There is no point in getting passive components.

X-Fi Sound Card

I would never touch anything Creative, especially for a non-gaming PC.

TV Card(s) - I want the channel changing and quality and stuff to be the best. what do you recommend. I would like a dual tuner card or two cards.

Analog or digital?

Will the mCubed case be able to cool all that in the summer aswell without the need for any fans?
Do I need to buy anything on top of the mCubed stuff? or is all the cooling bits included?

The mCubed case has a top-mounted fan that will kick in if temperatures are critical. A hot intel p4 prescott on a hot summerday may mean that it is not fanless anymore.

I think that the mCubed set is available with and without the cooling bits. They cost quite a bit on their own...

-k

 

[cheetah05]

Hi there,

Thanks for the reply again.

Yeah I already know about ways to silence things (ie suspending), I wrote a mahussive article on it and i read silentpcreview religiously, I have just never gone about creating anything totally passive.

Yeah good point about the undervolting and stepspeed.

Surely if i get passive components, then i am assured that they have low heat and that there wont be any problems with the heatpipes.

Fair enough about the sound card. what would you recommend?

I am after a digital TV.

I am planning on getting the mcubed mini case with vdf, does that have the fan and does the heatpipes things come with it?

Thanks.