After reading all the interesting posts on this forum, I decided this morning to share my experience in building an HTPC.
This one is my 3rd attempt, the previous ones didn't past the WAF test ("Wife Acceptance Factor" )
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Things I learnt is that there is no ideal solution, you have to think about what are your expectation, contraints and needs. You cannot make something without any drawback ... if you want power, you ll get noise and heat ... if you want storage, you ll need large case, etc.
So, my main contrain was: it should go in my living room, be quiet and cool, and also been accepted like a VCR. I can say I m a little bit fastidious when it s about noise. My previous projects were too noisly and didn't enter the living room for more that 1 week. So they became our desktop PCs. Well I will not talk about failures here
SO for this 3rd attempt, I went through the Silverstone LC11 some month ago and decided to try this case. For me it was perfect : big enough to place some hard drive and a good DvD burner and small enough to enter the closet of my TV set. I got only a 15 (H) x77 (W) x45 (D) enclosure, which is not easy if you think about the Anahix case or coolermaster...
This it the black case model, we love it!
So, as you might know the case has a special design, and the motherboard is mounted on the top of the case, so the CPU cooling is on the bottom (have a look to the Silverstone werbsite for more details)
Ah well, something interesting in there!
Here you can start thinking about which CPU in running there, I will not let you wait more :roll: ... here is the hardware list:
- CPU : AMD Mobile Athlon 64 3000+ - 1.8 GHz, Cache L2 1 Mo Socket 754
- Cooler : Zalman CNPS7700-AlCu
- Motherboard : MSI K8MM-ILSR (VIA K8M800) - Micro ATX
- Mem : Corsair TWINX 2×256 Mo DDR-SDRAM PC3200 C2
- Video : Nvidia 5200FX Vivo AGP
- HD : Western Digital 200 Go 7200T 8 Mo IDE
- DvD : NEC ND-3520 - DVD(+/-)RW 16/8/16/6x DL(+/-) 4x CD-RW 48/24/48x
- Tuner : Hauppauge PVR500MCE PAL
I selected all these components for their Quiet properties but it wasn't easy to setup all this in this small case!
First of all, the CPU is not usual and you will not find lot of Micro ATX MB able to run it. Even the MSI doesn't recognise it at Boot time; I went into a long testing and fixing process before finding the right settings.
The reason is the AMD 64 Mobile are able to use the Cool'n quiet technology to adjust the CPU speed base on the load (and also the CPU power), so you guess the direct benefit: horsepower when needed, low comsumption when idle, so no heat!
Let's finish the assembly before talking about the configuration
This one is my 3rd attempt, the previous ones didn't past the WAF test ("Wife Acceptance Factor" )
Things I learnt is that there is no ideal solution, you have to think about what are your expectation, contraints and needs. You cannot make something without any drawback ... if you want power, you ll get noise and heat ... if you want storage, you ll need large case, etc.
So, my main contrain was: it should go in my living room, be quiet and cool, and also been accepted like a VCR. I can say I m a little bit fastidious when it s about noise. My previous projects were too noisly and didn't enter the living room for more that 1 week. So they became our desktop PCs. Well I will not talk about failures here
SO for this 3rd attempt, I went through the Silverstone LC11 some month ago and decided to try this case. For me it was perfect : big enough to place some hard drive and a good DvD burner and small enough to enter the closet of my TV set. I got only a 15 (H) x77 (W) x45 (D) enclosure, which is not easy if you think about the Anahix case or coolermaster...
This it the black case model, we love it!
So, as you might know the case has a special design, and the motherboard is mounted on the top of the case, so the CPU cooling is on the bottom (have a look to the Silverstone werbsite for more details)
Ah well, something interesting in there!
Here you can start thinking about which CPU in running there, I will not let you wait more :roll: ... here is the hardware list:
- CPU : AMD Mobile Athlon 64 3000+ - 1.8 GHz, Cache L2 1 Mo Socket 754
- Cooler : Zalman CNPS7700-AlCu
- Motherboard : MSI K8MM-ILSR (VIA K8M800) - Micro ATX
- Mem : Corsair TWINX 2×256 Mo DDR-SDRAM PC3200 C2
- Video : Nvidia 5200FX Vivo AGP
- HD : Western Digital 200 Go 7200T 8 Mo IDE
- DvD : NEC ND-3520 - DVD(+/-)RW 16/8/16/6x DL(+/-) 4x CD-RW 48/24/48x
- Tuner : Hauppauge PVR500MCE PAL
I selected all these components for their Quiet properties but it wasn't easy to setup all this in this small case!
First of all, the CPU is not usual and you will not find lot of Micro ATX MB able to run it. Even the MSI doesn't recognise it at Boot time; I went into a long testing and fixing process before finding the right settings.
The reason is the AMD 64 Mobile are able to use the Cool'n quiet technology to adjust the CPU speed base on the load (and also the CPU power), so you guess the direct benefit: horsepower when needed, low comsumption when idle, so no heat!
Let's finish the assembly before talking about the configuration