Ongoing Passive Cooling Thread / Projects with several enclosures on itx-boards (1 Viewer)

[Silenssimo]

GeForce GTS 450 passive or ATI Radeon HD5770 passive

GeForce GTS 450 was introduced yesterday, there's one passively cooled model from Sparkle and another one with Arctic Cooling from Calibre (Sparkle design too). Which one or which other one would you choose for HTPC / light gaming system? Passive HD5770 is one of the options too. I have images of these cards at my blog about silent & quiet HTPC, but I don't know if they are the best available atm. Please give your opinion to this thread, with PM or to my blog.

 

[polarie]

AW: Passive Cooling Thread / Projects with several enclosures on itx-boards

for myself - i prefer ATI -
(couse Vector-Adaptive-Interlacing)
only the ION (G9400m) and the ION2 (G218) are interressting for me (onBoard mITX)

maybe someone else got more information about the GTS 450 ...

 

[polarie]

AW: Passive Cooling Thread / Projects with several enclosures on itx-boards

some news here :

now that our full-HD and full passiv clients are working
i'll rebuild my TV-File-Server @ home -

back again to 1HU mITX (now 4HU full ATX)...
but in case of emergency - with an emergency-FAN - so it will be semi-passiv

@ present i use 3 TV-DVB-S cards (Dual-Tuner DVB-S and 2 x S2)
i will reduce to 2 x DVBS and 1 x DVBS2 ... couse we look less HD than i thought.
(maybe it is couse the multiseat installation often got fraq-problems @ HDTV special @ SKY)

so the tuner-count goes down - but HDD-Space grows up

i will replace few HDD - so conf will look like that (no RAID but redundancy):

2 x 500 Gig (2.5" System - Recordings - Timeshift - Music)
2 x 1500 Gig (3.5" TV-Series container)
2 x 2000 Gig (3.5" HD and SD Movie container)

CPU now: Athlon X2 BE-2350/4450e (65nm 45 WTDP)
CPU will be: Smepron140 Single-core (45nm 45WTDP)

the X2 was all time bored - couse oversized (@ 989 MHz ~ 10-40%)
the Sempron (single-core) with its max 2.7 Ghz will be better (and i hope less heat and power consum.)

Motherboard wil be again the Jetway NJC62K till now -
but if i find a better solution (cheap) with 6x SATA and Intel-Atom (dual-core) i would use it ...
couse also less power consumpation ...
(GPU is not needed couse dedicated TV-Server)
till than i use the 4xSATA + an IDE2SATA Converter
(2 Sata HDD's with Master/slave function on the IDE converter (only for backup) couse it will be slow with 66mb/s)

so i hope to bring down the energy hunger for another 20-25%
i'll post pictures as soon as i start with the hardware ...



greatings

 

[ichessblumen]

Test mini-itx Jetway NC98-525E-LF/DVB S2 Stick pctvsystems

Hello@all,

just want to show you an interesting mini-itx board.

I bought a Jetway NC98-525E-LF which has a

Atom 2x1,8 GHz and
a Nvidia GT218 onboard gfx.
All the specs can be found here

It has an integrated PSU onboard. All you need is a 12V/60W (or higher) AC-DC power supply. I bought one on amazon for 20 Euro.

Installation:
- Win 7 32bit home premium
- SAF 4 codecs
- Mediaportal 1.1.1.
- passkey from DVDfab
- Plugin: Bluray Handler

Other Hardware:
-DVB-S2 Stick from pctvsystems (formerly known as pinnacle).
I installed merely the driver from the supplied CD. full specs here
- 37" TV LG something @1920x1080 @50Hz respectively @24Hz when playing BR or 1080p video
- 4GB of DDR2 800 RAM
- 250GB 2.5" HDD

Test:

Bluray: no problem at all. Smooth playback. CPU load around 12-25%. Avg. 20%.

Playback:
- 1080p mkv's: no stuttering, fine, smooth playback.
- 1080p wmv's: no stuttering, fine, smooth playback.

TV:
- PAL (576i): easy, all well
- HDTV 720p: easy, no probs
- HDTV 1080i: easy, some dropped frames after channel switch, but then stable

* and here the little asterisk:
The onboard GPU does not Temporal Spatial interlacing ( equivalent to ATI's Vector Adaptive Deinterlacing).
It does Motion Adaptive Interlacing which is better than BoB or Weave.
So, from a 2 meters distance (or for all the guys are not in the metric world : around 6 1/2 feet) you will not recognize the very small lines. And that happens only in fast scenes like sports.
I bet you will not sit 50cm away from your 4o" TV, do you?

Another pro argument: The NVidia drivers seems to be better in not producing artifacts from time to time like the ATI driver does.

Summary:

Pro:
- no dc/dc adapter needed
- silent, passive cooling
- maximum power consumption of 45W (@1080i HDTV)
- GPU acceleration for playback and HDTV
- mini pcie-slot ( e.g. for DuoFlex S2 miniPCIe TV card of digital devices)
- good as tv server (around 30W)

Con:
- AC/DC supply has to be bought separately
- it's not cheap (around 180€)
- on 1080i HDTV only motion adaptive interlacing when intended to use as TV client.

At the end find some pictuers of the board, the tv stick and a screenshot from 1080i HDTV.

Cheers
ieb

 

[ichessblumen]

AW: Passive Cooling Thread / Projects with several enclosures on itx-boards

So I decided to use the jetway board from the post before as new TV Server since until now I only had two single seat installations and another htpc has to come.

Fortunately I had an old dvd-player which I could ripp off. So twas freebie.
I sniped from ebay then a Terratec s7 dvbs2 box with CI( cause I got a Sky subscription) for 72€, which is a bargain.
The new TV Server has now 2 Cards ( one PCTV Systems HDTV and a Terratec S7).

One thing's left to do. A huge HDD ( the one shown is old crap) has to be built in later.

Power consumption ist now 37 Watts.

Here are some pics. It's not a beauty, but it hasn't to be cause it will have it's place in a small chamber where it's not to be seen.

 

[polarie]

AW: Passive Cooling Thread / Projects with several enclosures on itx-boards

hmm looks real good ... like you said - not the beauty but very functionally ...

hmm did i told that i have still 3 pairs of coolers for the jetway case?



greetings

EDIT:

i also got some news -
the "new" TV-Server is now comming.

just a few minutes ago i ordered :

Jetway NC9C-550-LF (passiv Dual-Atom 2x 1500 Mhz)
SPECS (click)

4x SATA daughter Board(click)

(plus the 4 SATA's onBoard = 8 Sata alltogether)
and 2x 1024 MB DDR3 of Ram So-Dimm 1066



Atom = 8.5 Watt
Intels NM10= 2.1 Watt
(board complete 11-13 watts i think)
so i hope to bring down the Power consump. again
will only use low-power HDD's again for it

2 x 500 Gig 2.5" (in my "old" TV-Server)
2 x 1500 Gig 3.5" (in my "old" TV-Server)
2 x 2000 Gig 3.5" (waiting @ home to be used)

= 8000 Gig (ok - save way - usable 4000 Gig)

so i got now the (hopefully) perfect MoBo for my dedicated TV/File-Server
and i can use my small 1HU 19" case again ...

which is THAT (click)


that MoBo is my personal christmas gift

 

[polarie]

AW: Passive Cooling Thread / Projects with several enclosures on itx-boards

hi there ...

server is running - til now only XP Sp3 is on the HDD's
and @ the momet i look what kind of DVB-S2 tuners i can use ...

i still have dual-tuner (dvb-s) PCI card in use (PCTV4000i) works good but only SDTV..
so i dream a little around ...
that PCTV4000i (2 xDVB-S)
and a digital devices DuoFlex cine s2 (2 x DVB-S2)
so four tuners together should make the job for us @ home...

if not - here is the joker
a double digital devices DuoFlex cine s2
nice thing i think ...
4 x DVB-S2 at/in a normal full-size slot ... *zeng"

 

[polarie]

AW: Passive Cooling Thread / Projects with several enclosures on itx-boards

it is ordered

Digital Devices Duoflex S2 Mini-PCI-e

now waiting for the postman ....

 

[Jay_UK]

Hi there,

Who did you order the card off?

Thanks,

J.

 

[polarie]

AW: Passive Cooling Thread / Projects with several enclosures on itx-boards

hi Jay

ordered it in the dvb-shop (click-link)

stock ist still "green" - so it is still available ...
pictures of the case will follow soon ...

EDIT:

Pictures

till now

Jetway NC9C-550-LF (Dual-Atom passiv)
Jetway ADPE4S (4x Sata Daughter Board)

2 x WD 500 gig 2.5"
2 x Samsung 2000 gig 3.5"

... more to come