Ongoing Shuttle ST62K HTPC (1 Viewer)

[Anonymous]

This is my little project. It´s not finished yet. Still trying to get it even more quiet. But its ok now. Can´t hear it from 0.5 meter away.

The fun thing is that I have not bought anything else but the computer. The modding material is from the "scrap yard" at my work
Follow the link for more info and pics: http://gellervik.se/htpc/

A word to the developers and others. Thank you! I just love Media Portal! Keep up the very very good job you are doing!

 

[rabbitinpumpkin]

Since you use the wintv usb2 how is the performance?

I'm looking to build a similar rig but with the 150mce (or 150)
however....

How does the graphics card hold up on a regular TV?

will i see splotchy artifacts?
I've got a transcend 2.0 (no mpeg2 hardware decoder) and
it looks great on my pc monitor/flat panel. But crap on the tv.

This is my main concern.

I can get the shuttle zen to play all my archived movies and etc...
but what I really want is a good PVR that has great playback.

 

[Anonymous]

It´s been a while now since I last played with it and there are now new versions of MP which I´ve not tested. My tv broke down so now I´m using an old one and picture from PC is black and white Hence I don´t use the HTPC much nowadays.

1.0.0.6 is installed right now and what I can remember TV was ok. The problem I had was finding the right drivers for Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2. Not sure which I use. Found it on this forum. Again, it´s been a while.

For the on-board graphics I use the latest drivers fom ATI.

If you use the right drivers and software TV quality is ok. I think so anyway

 

[rabbitinpumpkin]

Thanks! Sorry to hear about your tv.

I think I'm going to end up getting the WinTV 150MCE because I have $50 worth of certificates (amazon.com card) and they're selling it for $67.

I don't plan on getting a remote and I already have a wireless mouse and a spare ugly keyboard I'm gonna have to hide somewhere..

Thanks for the website and ideas for silencing your rig. However, I think I won't be using mousepads. hehe.

I wonder how a stock rig sounds from about 10 feet away?

 

[Anonymous]

Mousepads I just took what I had

10 feet? Thats about 3 meters right? Could be ok for you.
I was disapointed with the noiselevel after I have read a couple of articles saying it was so silent. It was not. Actually louder than my other stock pc.

Try moving the fan to the outside and cut the grill open. Together with Speedfan lowering the RPM I think that helped the most .

 

[rabbitinpumpkin]

Well...guess what? I ended up NOT getting the Shuttle ST62K.

Instead I am getting the SN41G2V3.
I just ordered it an hour ago.
I did this for 2 reasons....
Although a while back (2 months ago) I could have gotten the ST62K from newegg for $150, I felt a little iffy about the lack of slots.

So the SN41G2V3 has 1 PCI and 1 AGP port. Making me feel I have at least one more option.

Another reason is I wanted to get an AMD Athlon XP CPU.
I just feel more comfortable around AMD's stuff over Intel.
I don't think heat will be a huge issue.

The only downside is I have Nvidia instead of ATI. Now some people here prefer Nvidia and I understand why. However, if you've ever had an Nvidia card blow out on you you'd be reasonably upset too.

My main concern is the noise but I'll let you all know how that goes when I get all the parts.

 

[Brocklander]

Well...guess what? I ended up NOT getting the Shuttle ST62K.

Instead I am getting the SN41G2V3.

Would be great to hear how this goes, I'm looking at the same thing - SN41G2 (in black) with an Athlon 2800XP and GeForce 6200. Most interested in the noise and how warm it gets.

 

[fathead]

Having owned the best part of 5 or 6 Shuttles personally at home, and using god knows how many at work, I can honestly say don't get the SN41G2 if you want quiet. In fact don't buy Shuttle if you want quiet. The PSU's (including the new silentx ones) are noisey. The ICE fan is noisey. On the SN41G2 they have an activly cooled north bridge with a noisey 40mm fan - this need to be cooled in this way due to the onboard graphics etc.
All the Shuttle G series cases have the graphics card on the left of the PCI slot, meaning you can't get any decent cooling on the card & its wedged up against the case side which makes extra noise.

The only huttle worth considering for a quiet HTPC would be the ZEN.

 

[Brocklander]

Hmm, doesn't sound promising! The other SFF I was looking as was the Soltek Qbic EQ3702M, but have also heard that may be a bit on the loud side (not so much after you slow down the fan speed).

 

[rabbitinpumpkin]

Well, depends on *how* quiet you want it of course.
I'm using the built in Nforce (geforce 4mx) and so it is not rattling around.

Your GeForce 6200 might make it though....are you gonna use it as a gaming station too? You might want to consider a few low profile rubber or foam stoppers to cushion against the case. Plus the airflow is going to suck for that video card.

My plan is to use it as a media center/PVR/arcade/Azureus (with mame and emulators). I do not plan to push this system hard at all.
I was worried when I first turned this system on, but after 10 seconds the noise dropped to almost nothing.

Fairly quiet by my standards. Also really cool as well.
Definetly cannot hear it over the TV or my other computer which is one room away. I can hear it from about 6 feet away, but the couch is 9-12 feet away so no worries.
STATUS

I'll go more into detail when that time comes but so far so good.

Performance: Speedy. No complaints.
Cooling: Cool to the touch and little heat output.
Noise: barely audible from 6 feet away.

Configuration:
SN41G2V3 (stock fans and ICE)
XP 2600 barton
Sata 7200 rpm WD 200GB drive
Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150MCE pci card

software list: (some you may need)
Media Portal
AVG Free AV software
Spybot & AdAware
UltraVNC
TweakUI XP powertoy
Mozilla Firefox
Partition Magic
WinKawaks
VideoLan
K-lite Codec Mega Pack. v 1.29 (www.codecguide.com)

One thing to note....Make sure you install the USB 2.0 drivers from MS's site. Just do a windows update. I heard some guy did not from the newegg review's website and had to do a reinstall.

Overall a good rating. I cannot compare it with the Zen (as I have not owned one) but talking with the OP the Zen is quieter. You have to base it upon what you value more. Noise or options. I believe the SN41G2V3 is a good balance of noise + options.
Finally it's all opinion...there's noise..and then there is noise.
The noise coming out of this unit is more than acceptable for myself.
I expect if I load this unit with 3d games or more demanding apps, it'll get noisier. The same could happen to the Zen. If this is the case, go for options.

Future plans:

I have an agp ATI 9000 Pro (64bm) card with s-video (composite? forgot. lol. the one with 4 pins) out. Although (I think) it'll be slower than the IGP, I get better tv out quality. The built-in tv out uses RCA which I'm not too thrilled about. Also it uses a heat sink w/ no fan so the heat should be okay. Of course it's in my office computer so I'm gonna wait till I retire this machine to server status (have a laptop to use as workstation)

I hear in 2 months time I might have to replace the 40mm fans as they will get noisier. I plan to replace it with much quieter fans down the road. But so far so good.

Need to buy a wireless Xtreme G (108Mbps) usb device.
Also waiting for an Amazon gift certificate before buying firefly remote.

I haven't figured out how to get MP to wake up from standby mode to record (*1) so I just set it to turn off the SATA harddrive to reduce the heat. I recently read on slashdot you can get one of those L brackets and mount a fan (they used a case fan) underneath your harddrive for extra/cheap cooling.

But these are just ideas until I find the time to mess with it.


*1: Hey, I'm in the middle of writing even more term papers....let's just say by the end of this semester alone, I'll have written over 75 pages worth of serious graduate level work....I can give it more time over the summer.