Ongoing New HTPC project -- comments more than welcome! (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter hansb
- Start date
I've just completed building a system with very similar components (<-- See specs). My system is completely fan-less - a mostly standard mCubed HFX with only minor alterations. I'll describe my own experience since our systems are so alike.
My mainboard is the socket 939 version of yours, so it's also based on GeForce6150. I also looked a similar ASUS mainboard, but my research caused me to reject it. Apparently there are multiple unresolved issues with it.
The onboard GeForce6150 does get extremely hot and without the airflow, normally provided by nearby fans, the puny heat sink on it is completely insufficient. I have cooled it with heat-pipes instead and this works quite well.
The CPU is also cooled with heat-pipes. I purchased an additional heat-pipe kit for it, just in case, but I've never managed to get it beyond 45 degrees, so that won't be nescessary.
My mainboard didn't come with a S/PDIF bracket and it seems they are very hard to come by. Be aware that the mainboard doesn't provide optical/TOSLINK - only RCA/coaxial. I plan on DIY wire the S/PDIF to one of the RCA outputs on my case. In the mean time I'm simply using the analog outputs.
The Plextor SATA DVD drive I've chosen is very silent once you've slowed it down - at max speed it sound like a small jet. I chose a SATA drive to avoid the IDE cables.
My harddisk, a 500Gb Western Digital, is also very quiet and cool and so far I haven't had any heat problems. The disk is enclosed in a VerticalSilence internal case which reduces vibration and seek noise and provides cooling. I had purchased a heat-pipe set to cool the disk, but so far it hasn't been nescessary. I plan to add two identical drives later for a sum of 1Tb in RAID 5 - if I can manage to find room in the case.
The display is a Samsung 32" LCD at 1360*768p60 with 1:1 mapping on the VGA port. I initially had it connected via DVI/HDMI at 720p but discovered that Samsungs are unable to use 1:1 on the HDMI port. IMO the GeForce6150 should be able to handle 720p, but so far I haven't been able to get acceptable quality with MediaPortal.
Graphics setup has mostly been a trial and error process and I'm far from convinced that I've found the optimal settings. With the default graphics settings the quality was terrible with excessive skips and stuttering and I lost 20-30% frames! Disabling vertical synch helped, but the quality got even worse. None of the other GPU setting made any difference at all.
I too am using PureVideo. The only setting I have found that helped any was to set "De-Interlace Control" to "Smart" in the MediaPortal NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder Setting. Now I'm not losing frames and this is the setting I'm currently using.
Incidentally unchecking "Use Hardware Acceleration" doesn't have any visual effect on my system other than using a bit more CPU. Also the Jitter dropped from 20-30 to 0.
My experience is that once you've updated all the drivers to get past the endless bluescreens, the system itself runs quite well. Unfortunately I don't think MediaPortal is quite able to take full advantage of the hardware at present.
I put 2Gb RAM in my system in the hope that it could be used for buffers and cache in order to minimize disk access, but MediaPortal doesn't seem to utilize available RAM at all.
The dual cores also seem somewhat wasted on MediaPortal. The GUI is quite sluggish at times and I've experienced major lip-synch, audio skipping and video stuttering with both TV and ripped movies. The CPU is definitely underutilized running at a typical 5-10% utilization. I do wish some of that excess CPU capacity could be used improving the video quality. I've noticed that just watching TV yeilds about 2000 context swithes per sec and close to 50% kernel time, so maybe there resource contention issues in MediaPortal.
Finally make sure you install AMDs CPU driver:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/amdcpusetup.exe
and the XP KB896256 hotfix:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256
http://www.google.com/search?q=WindowsXP-KB896256-v3-x86
The hotfix solved the worst of my stuttering problems.
My mainboard is the socket 939 version of yours, so it's also based on GeForce6150. I also looked a similar ASUS mainboard, but my research caused me to reject it. Apparently there are multiple unresolved issues with it.
The onboard GeForce6150 does get extremely hot and without the airflow, normally provided by nearby fans, the puny heat sink on it is completely insufficient. I have cooled it with heat-pipes instead and this works quite well.
The CPU is also cooled with heat-pipes. I purchased an additional heat-pipe kit for it, just in case, but I've never managed to get it beyond 45 degrees, so that won't be nescessary.
My mainboard didn't come with a S/PDIF bracket and it seems they are very hard to come by. Be aware that the mainboard doesn't provide optical/TOSLINK - only RCA/coaxial. I plan on DIY wire the S/PDIF to one of the RCA outputs on my case. In the mean time I'm simply using the analog outputs.
The Plextor SATA DVD drive I've chosen is very silent once you've slowed it down - at max speed it sound like a small jet. I chose a SATA drive to avoid the IDE cables.
My harddisk, a 500Gb Western Digital, is also very quiet and cool and so far I haven't had any heat problems. The disk is enclosed in a VerticalSilence internal case which reduces vibration and seek noise and provides cooling. I had purchased a heat-pipe set to cool the disk, but so far it hasn't been nescessary. I plan to add two identical drives later for a sum of 1Tb in RAID 5 - if I can manage to find room in the case.
The display is a Samsung 32" LCD at 1360*768p60 with 1:1 mapping on the VGA port. I initially had it connected via DVI/HDMI at 720p but discovered that Samsungs are unable to use 1:1 on the HDMI port. IMO the GeForce6150 should be able to handle 720p, but so far I haven't been able to get acceptable quality with MediaPortal.
Graphics setup has mostly been a trial and error process and I'm far from convinced that I've found the optimal settings. With the default graphics settings the quality was terrible with excessive skips and stuttering and I lost 20-30% frames! Disabling vertical synch helped, but the quality got even worse. None of the other GPU setting made any difference at all.
I too am using PureVideo. The only setting I have found that helped any was to set "De-Interlace Control" to "Smart" in the MediaPortal NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder Setting. Now I'm not losing frames and this is the setting I'm currently using.
Incidentally unchecking "Use Hardware Acceleration" doesn't have any visual effect on my system other than using a bit more CPU. Also the Jitter dropped from 20-30 to 0.
My experience is that once you've updated all the drivers to get past the endless bluescreens, the system itself runs quite well. Unfortunately I don't think MediaPortal is quite able to take full advantage of the hardware at present.
I put 2Gb RAM in my system in the hope that it could be used for buffers and cache in order to minimize disk access, but MediaPortal doesn't seem to utilize available RAM at all.
The dual cores also seem somewhat wasted on MediaPortal. The GUI is quite sluggish at times and I've experienced major lip-synch, audio skipping and video stuttering with both TV and ripped movies. The CPU is definitely underutilized running at a typical 5-10% utilization. I do wish some of that excess CPU capacity could be used improving the video quality. I've noticed that just watching TV yeilds about 2000 context swithes per sec and close to 50% kernel time, so maybe there resource contention issues in MediaPortal.
Finally make sure you install AMDs CPU driver:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/amdcpusetup.exe
and the XP KB896256 hotfix:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256
http://www.google.com/search?q=WindowsXP-KB896256-v3-x86
The hotfix solved the worst of my stuttering problems.
- Thread starter
- #13
Very interesting and valueable information SpeedFreak. 
I have no plans of going completely fan less though. I know how much that
air flow means to mainboard cooling, graphics, RAM etc.
Are you sure that the problem really is the 6150? Heatpipes and all, if you
can not get the hot air _out_ of the case it will stay in the case and cause
other damage. I do not believe that any case is self-ventilated enough to
dispatch the heat from an AMD X2 + graphics + RAM etc.
I would really recommend some sort of low speed/noise fan and evaluate
the system again. Maybe some of your problems are still heat releated,
and even if it works ok today, the components may degrade much faster
at finally fail on you completely. Have you measured the temperature inside
the case recently?
You said you mounted extra heatpipes on your 6150? Do you have some
product data I can use to search for it in Sweden? Maybe I should stock on
one of those just in case. It is also a matter of fitting everything in the case.
What heatpipe/heatsink do you use for the CPU?
The HDD silencer/cooler occupies a 5.25" slot does it not? That is N/A in my
systems since there are no hidden 5.25" slots available, only 3.5"
What strikes me is your small PSU, are you sure it provides enough stable
power/system? 300W seems a little bit short. Only the X2 CPU eats 89W at
maximum freq. This is one of the reasons I have choosen the AM2 solution,
this means I can use AMDs 35W series, there is an X2 variant of that too,
but that costs 4 times as much.
Again, thanks for you feedback, those links I will keep in a safe place
PS. Have you tried this, from www.amd.com:
"AMD Dual-Core Optimizer - The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer can help improve some PC gaming video performance by compensating for those applications that bypass the Windows API for timing by directly using the RDTSC (Read Time Stamp Counter) instruction. Applications that rely on RDTSC do not benefit from the logic in the operating system to properly account for the affect of power management mechanisms on the rate at which a processor core's Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is incremented. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer helps to correct the resulting video performance effects or other incorrect timing effects that these applications may experience on dual-core processor systems, by periodically adjusting the core time-stamp-counters, so that they are synchronized."
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/Setup.exe
I myself have some experience in programming real-time systems heavily depending on
the RDTSC. If reading this counter gives a false picture due to variable CPU frequency and it is not compensated for using some other clock source, lots of problems and timing issues arise. If you have not tested this fix yet. Do it. It will not hurt.
I have no plans of going completely fan less though. I know how much that
air flow means to mainboard cooling, graphics, RAM etc.
Are you sure that the problem really is the 6150? Heatpipes and all, if you
can not get the hot air _out_ of the case it will stay in the case and cause
other damage. I do not believe that any case is self-ventilated enough to
dispatch the heat from an AMD X2 + graphics + RAM etc.
I would really recommend some sort of low speed/noise fan and evaluate
the system again. Maybe some of your problems are still heat releated,
and even if it works ok today, the components may degrade much faster
at finally fail on you completely. Have you measured the temperature inside
the case recently?
You said you mounted extra heatpipes on your 6150? Do you have some
product data I can use to search for it in Sweden? Maybe I should stock on
one of those just in case. It is also a matter of fitting everything in the case.
What heatpipe/heatsink do you use for the CPU?
The HDD silencer/cooler occupies a 5.25" slot does it not? That is N/A in my
systems since there are no hidden 5.25" slots available, only 3.5"
What strikes me is your small PSU, are you sure it provides enough stable
power/system? 300W seems a little bit short. Only the X2 CPU eats 89W at
maximum freq. This is one of the reasons I have choosen the AM2 solution,
this means I can use AMDs 35W series, there is an X2 variant of that too,
but that costs 4 times as much.
Again, thanks for you feedback, those links I will keep in a safe place
PS. Have you tried this, from www.amd.com:
"AMD Dual-Core Optimizer - The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer can help improve some PC gaming video performance by compensating for those applications that bypass the Windows API for timing by directly using the RDTSC (Read Time Stamp Counter) instruction. Applications that rely on RDTSC do not benefit from the logic in the operating system to properly account for the affect of power management mechanisms on the rate at which a processor core's Time Stamp Counter (TSC) is incremented. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer helps to correct the resulting video performance effects or other incorrect timing effects that these applications may experience on dual-core processor systems, by periodically adjusting the core time-stamp-counters, so that they are synchronized."
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/Setup.exe
I myself have some experience in programming real-time systems heavily depending on
the RDTSC. If reading this counter gives a false picture due to variable CPU frequency and it is not compensated for using some other clock source, lots of problems and timing issues arise. If you have not tested this fix yet. Do it. It will not hurt.
I'm definitely not convinced the 6150 is the cause of my problems since none of the GPU settings made a difference wrt. lost frames. Only turning vertical synch off or changing the deinterlacing method solved that problem. Without any knowledge of MediaPortal's architecture, my guess is that there's a lock contention problem somewhere in the video pipeline.
I haven't measured the exact temperature of the 6150 since I started cooling it, but from touch my guess is that it's no hotter than 45 degrees.
The case design does provide some airflow through normal thermal convection. The temperature inside the case is 40-45 degrees. I have installed a mCubed safety fan system with a trigger level of 45 degrees and since I started cooling the GPU it hasn't been activated. According to the onboard sensors, the CPU core temp is 48 and the "system" temp is 42. Cooler than most systems wouldn't you say?
The 6150 heat-pipes are the mCubed Borg HBC kit.
The CPU heat-pipes are the mCubed Borg HPC kit.
The HFX case itself is one massive heat sink.
A heat sink is necessary since the heat-pipes needs somewhere cool to dump the heat.
Heat-pipes doesn't make the heat magically disappear. It just makes sure that both ends of the pipe are equally hot/cold. For that reason I seriously doubt that something like the Zalman ZM-2HC2 harddisk cooler works at all since it just transfers heat from one side of the disk to the other.
Yes, the VerticalSilence is a 5 1/4" unit. There's a similar unit for the HFX Mini though. Maybe that'll fit.
There's a couple of Swedish message boards which discusses the mCubed products. They were an immensely valuable research resource for me when I designed my system:
http://www.tystpc.nu/forum/viewforum.php?f=1
http://www.minhembio.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=88345
The SilverStone PSU is rated at 300W, but according to several benchmarks it delivers more power than most 400W units.
My system uses 20W in S4 mode, 22W in S3 mode and 100W when running full throttle in G0 mode. I think the reason S4 uses so much is that the VFD is powered on at all time. The max power the system has ever used is 150W. I've had an external digital power-meter on the system since first boot.
I haven't measured the exact temperature of the 6150 since I started cooling it, but from touch my guess is that it's no hotter than 45 degrees.
The case design does provide some airflow through normal thermal convection. The temperature inside the case is 40-45 degrees. I have installed a mCubed safety fan system with a trigger level of 45 degrees and since I started cooling the GPU it hasn't been activated. According to the onboard sensors, the CPU core temp is 48 and the "system" temp is 42. Cooler than most systems wouldn't you say?
The 6150 heat-pipes are the mCubed Borg HBC kit.
The CPU heat-pipes are the mCubed Borg HPC kit.
The HFX case itself is one massive heat sink.
A heat sink is necessary since the heat-pipes needs somewhere cool to dump the heat.
Heat-pipes doesn't make the heat magically disappear. It just makes sure that both ends of the pipe are equally hot/cold. For that reason I seriously doubt that something like the Zalman ZM-2HC2 harddisk cooler works at all since it just transfers heat from one side of the disk to the other.
Yes, the VerticalSilence is a 5 1/4" unit. There's a similar unit for the HFX Mini though. Maybe that'll fit.
There's a couple of Swedish message boards which discusses the mCubed products. They were an immensely valuable research resource for me when I designed my system:
http://www.tystpc.nu/forum/viewforum.php?f=1
http://www.minhembio.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=88345
The SilverStone PSU is rated at 300W, but according to several benchmarks it delivers more power than most 400W units.
My system uses 20W in S4 mode, 22W in S3 mode and 100W when running full throttle in G0 mode. I think the reason S4 uses so much is that the VFD is powered on at all time. The max power the system has ever used is 150W. I've had an external digital power-meter on the system since first boot.
- September 15, 2006
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Hi, interesting thread. I also have a 6150 system that I'm building up at the moment. Mine is based on the Asus Pundit P1-AH1 system. I like the looks but it's not the quiet. I've also been having problems with stuttering on video. In fact I've not been able to get stutter free output using the PureVideo codecs at all (particularly when using the analog input from the HVR-1300 I use for input). I did find that if I switch to the MPV/MPA codecs then things are much better (but they do not seemto deal so well different aspect ratio input streams, so I would really like to get PureVideo working). Now I only get the occasional stutter and on my system I get this on recorded as well as live TV (and on recorded TV the stutter is always in the same place, so I assume was recorded that way). I assume that given that when I recorded the program I had the MP TV display turned off then the codecs and probably the 6150 had little to do with it. I'm still working on this and one of the things I need to do is to move the HVR-1300 to another PCI slot, at the moment it seems to be sharing an interrupt with the 6150 which I suspect is not a good thing. Does anyone know if it is possible to reassign interrupts in the BIOS or some other way then actually moving the card. This card is a very tight fit and I'm not sure I will be able to get it to fit if I move it to the other slot.
Will keep following...
Andy
Will keep following...
Andy