Ongoing Mini-ITX HTPC - D945GCLF2 (1 Viewer)

LittleKahuna

Portal Member
January 6, 2009
20
1
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Point taken Kossu :p Been meaning to post these for a while...honest.

Picture 1 / 2 - The Noah case as it arrives.
Picture 3 / 4 - First installation, without the PCI card installed.
Picture 5 - The mobo in place before I removed the redundant cables.
Picture 6 - Extra cables removed and the PCI card fitted. The length of the Nova card obstructs the IDE and SATA ports, nothing major but required a longer IDE to reach the drive tray.
Picture 7 - Everything fitted showing the clearances (or lack of) between the heat sinks, PCI card, and drive tray.
Picture 8 - The enclosed case.

CPU Usage

These are the recorded CPU usages I've experienced so far.

Task CPU %
Computer Idle 3%
Playing DivX (SD) 10 - 15%
Playing Mkv (HD) 35 - 40 %
Playing MP3 10 %

TV
Watching 10 - 13 %
Record and Watch* 13 - 17 %
Record (x2) and Watch* 13 - 17 %
Record (x2) and DivX 10 - 15 %
Record (x2) and Mkv 38 - 47 %

I've installed Intel Desktop Utilities so I'll be able to record the temperatures and report whats going on. Currently I can tell you the system idles at 52 degrees (CPU), and 34/35 degrees for the system.
 

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hbryce

Portal Member
January 31, 2009
16
0
Gloucester
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Little Kahuna,

Thank you very much for that.:D

I am really pleased at how well your system works - well done!

The low CPU usage seems to indicate that the Atom 330 is well capable of running this sort of system.

Are the Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics up to the task with no difficulties?

I now have little excuse not to get on and order up my components - sharp stabbing pains in the wallet.

Once again thanks for sharing your experience.
 

Kossu

Portal Pro
June 8, 2008
109
0
Home Country
Finland Finland
Been looking at a very similar setup to yours, 35-40% cpu at mkv, those are 720p right? Have you tried 1080P?

The case looks awesome, If I were you I would consider ordering way shorter cables, it would help airflow a lot and keep temperatures down.
 

LittleKahuna

Portal Member
January 6, 2009
20
1
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
hbryce, there's not much to say about the graphics - they've played everything I've thrown at them in terms of vids. However I'm not using the system for anything else (i.e games/emulators) so I can't really give any in-sight into what the on-board chip in capable of.

I am, however, a little disappointed with the actually quality of the VGA output. I'm running an old P4 Shuttle with a GeForce 7600 (DVI out) graphics and this intel board into the same monitor (separate VGA and DVI inputs), and there is a very obvious difference in the quality. The intel VGA looks fuzzy and soft in comparison to the DVI (same resolution settings), this is obvious on the desktop. I don't know enough about the graphics chips or VGA vs DVI to know if this is expected....but I'm beginning to question why a DVI or HDMI out wasn't included on the board.

Kossu - I don't know weather the mkv was 720 or 1080, I was only able to get my hands on a single "HD" video with no info on the quality. I would assume 720 though, just to be safe.

Project Update

I finally had enough of the noise from the system and started investigating the fans. After disconnecting the case fan it became obvious all the noise is coming from the Intel northbridge fan.

As a result I ordered a replacement Scythe Mini-Kaze.

Instead of an easy replacement as I had hoped. I found that the intel fan screws were too large to fit the Scythe case (the Scythe didn't come with it's own). After a bit of work with a drill the screws finally fitted, however the final fit is not perfect. As the screws were still not a perfect fit I could not fully secure the fan against the upper heat fans. The whole fan now sits on the lower fans (instead of being slightly suspended) and has a small amount of play.

On boot up the fan didn't spin, but as other forums report, the BIOS settings for system fan spin up need to be changed from 50% to 'higher' - I choose 90%. Hey presto the new fan kicked in.

The noise level is incredibly reduced - such that I can now hear the HDD spin (time for a solid state drive?). I will continue to watch the system temps.

Although the noise is better it still is not a silent system. The case fan is now audible as is the HDD.

I also disconnected the power LED while I was in the case, much more subtle.

I'll give the system a couple of weeks and then give a final review of the parts while I move this thread to the completed projects page.

Any further questions let me know.

LK
 

hbryce

Portal Member
January 31, 2009
16
0
Gloucester
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Little Kahuna,

Thank you for the information about graphics quality; I have been agonising as to whether to go for the Shuttle X27D which has an ITX Atom 330 motherboard with both DVI & VGA graphics o/ps or to stick with one of the other Atom 330 ITX boards from Intel, Jetway etc which only have VGA o/ps. Further as my TV supports its native resolution of 1360 x 768 for the DVI (HDMI) input, but only 1280 x 768 for VGA input (which would leave black bars down either side I presume), your finding that DVI produces a better image than VGA rather confirms my inclination to go for the DVI solution. I suppose that generally one would expect the DVI input to give a better image than VGA on a digital TV as every time you do a digital to analogue or vice versa conversion you must loose some quality.

Again thank you for the info. Regards: hbryce
 

thedee

New Member
February 14, 2009
1
0
Tested out the same Atom pretty darn good. My issue right now is boot times of 75 secs. Are you also getting the same delay? Am actually thinking of making a custom case for it. Researching on the VFD/LCD displays
 

Lyve

Portal Member
January 2, 2009
28
2
Germany
Home Country
Germany Germany
Hi there,

I've got the same mainboard here, there's unfortunately no chance to have 1080p playback by using software only. I bought the CoreAVC h264 decoder, but still there are no smooth 24/25 frames per second even CoreAVC used all 4 kernels (CPU 100%)

Therefore I changed my system, had trouble finding it but finally was able to buy it here in germany: A Geforce 8400 GS as PCI version.

Now, together with the Cyberlink H264 Decoder that is able to use DXVA, I've got 3% CPU usage while watching a 1080p video, which is very nice :)

Additionally, to have a quiet system, I removed the northbridge cooler because there's no need for it if you use an external graphics board.

Whatevery I do, my cpu never exceeds 49° while the northbridge is below 39°.

My next TV card may be a Hauppauge WinTV Nova TD (Dual Tuner) as USB version. The MSI causes BSOD (common problem on many machines, see google.....)
 

hbryce

Portal Member
January 31, 2009
16
0
Gloucester
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Well I took the plunge and have ordered the Shuttle X27D. I will post here in due course as to how I get on. I hope to have something up and running in about two weeks.
 

LittleKahuna

Portal Member
January 6, 2009
20
1
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
Excuse the delay in answering your questions but I've been having major issues with the system lately.

The system started random re-boots for no obvious reason, no fault reports or error logs. As well as frequently losing connection to the tv server, even though it's all on the same system. Any way eventually I lost tv permantely so I've un-installed and re-installed everything and time will tell...

thedee - my boot up time is 1 min 55 from power-on to the desktop, and 40 seconds to launch MediaPortal from the desktop.

Lyve - Just a warning with the Hauppauge card. I spent hours trying to figure out why some tv channels were freezing. At first I thought is was the codec's but it was actually the signal level. After changing aerial sockets, cables, and booster boxes, I found the answer is actually the connection on the T-500 card. I have to adjust the aerial connection into the card to achieve the necessary signal level (>60). I don't know if this is just my card or the connection is loose on all cards, but just a heads up for anyone with the same issue.

hbryce - good luck with the shuttle, I think you've made the better choice.

LK
 

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