Possible HTPC project

I abandoned an HTPC project a few months ago and sold the system. Now i'm thinking about starting a new one. just can't help myself :embarrassed:

This time however i'm going for a (near) silent setup.

I found this range of passive cases and accessories while hunting around:
http://www.kustompcs.com/acatalog/mC...sive_HTPC.html

any thoughts? anyone used or seen these in the flesh? There aren't many reviews of it, and Kustompcs is the only place i could find it in the UK. If i do this the box will be in the living room, on a book case with nothing directly above it. so heat should rise quite nicely away from it.

One problem i have though it motherboard, processor and graphics. Should i go Core2Duo, Core2Solo or AM2 Energy Efficient?

I'll mainly be running MediaPortal and watching Freeview, but i'm also tempted with getting satelite. My plasma is SD only, so i don't have to worry about decoding HD content. Onboard graphics should be fine, but it looks like that isn't an option with Core2 motherboards (at least the ones that Scan has on offer right now). I have no idea what all the numbers mean with regards to Nvidia and ATI cards.

Hard drives i have. so other than case and cooling, all is need is mobo, cpu and memory and perhaps graphics

any advice it greatly appreciated, i really haven't been keeping up with all the ins and outs . :)

EDITT: Looks like MediaPortal required a DX9 card with 128MB ram, so i will need a new card and can't re-use either of my aging Matrox ones, which is a shame.

Surely go as cheap as possible? With 939's and am2's going at dirt cheap prices and there being some damn fine asus matx boards out there, surely that would be the best option. Its what I did! Then again, looks like money is no object with those cases! I have an antec nsk2400, very nice and quiet. And about £60 with decent psu!

I want a HTPC style case that is as quiet as possible. These are the only ones i could find that didn't look like a bag of spanners and i know will be quiet. I also figure i'll be replacing the PC components long before i need to change the case, so spending bigger there is justifiable. Budget is cetrailally not unlimited. If this happens, i'll be spending less than £1000 on it in total. I already have storage and DVB-T cards.

what is the power output of regular AM2 processors? I figure that with using passive cooling for an complete system i'll need to make sure i don't end up with a CPU that is pumping out mega heat.

I figure ~£150 for the CPU going by what is available on Scan, and another £100 - £150 on a board.

get one of the energy efficient processors. they're thin on the ground but if you can pick one up, they have a very low TDP and so dont produce much heat at all. I doubt ull be able to cool it completely passively, as you'll need something to shift the air.

You could try the Hoojum series on Scan, they're quite nice cases, or try kustompcs for some of their other media monkeys. :)

I couldn't actually get onto the kustom pcs site (is it down?) but how about if you are only dealing with SD content, using a Pentium M? With everyone heading off to Core2Duo and the like they should be fairly cheap and still pack a punch?

Dave

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Originally Posted by Steve B

get one of the energy efficient processors.

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My plan exactly, i just don't know whether it should be AMD or Intel. Not built an Intel box since '98 or something (Celeron 300 o/c to 450 :) ). but if Core2 is the way to go for good power/heat/price ratio then thats fine.

I don't like the Hoojum cases, i want a AV component shaped case. None of the other HTPC cases looks quite like an AV component, they are too PC-based in their design. the mCubed ones are much better IMO

what about the antec fusion?
http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_1212.html

it's not bad, but nothing special :)

Another thing i liked about the mCubed was all the 5.25" bays. It actually encourages you to use hard drive coolers/enclosures to quieten your drives. I was planning on doing this anyway. None of the other cases give you teh space to do that.

There will be a DVD-RW, 2x 400gig WD drives in drive boxes and i think a 2.5" as the boot drive.

sounds good:) its expensive though:P

yeah, thats the down side. and it weighs about 27KG. with everything else is there, it will be a bitch to move. i'm guessing somewhere in the order of 35 - 40KG :eek:

So... ignoring the case ;) any recomendations on motherboard and CPU combinations?

decided now i would like dual head graphics so i can use it as a regular PC on another monitor when not using MediaPortal. Will be a lot spedier than my laptop i think.

could pair an ee x2 with a cheaper uATX motherboard.
my x2 4200+ and NF-95 are going into my media rig, once its completed:)

What about this one:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=212714

I put a Sempron 3000 (754) on a uATX board in one of these with 2 DVB-T cards and an AGP 9600SE and it works a charm. The iMon (ihate ithe iprefix...) remote/display works very well too. I can post some piccies if you want.

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Originally Posted by Funkstar

what is the power output of regular AM2 processors? I figure that with using passive cooling for an complete system i'll need to make sure i don't end up with a CPU that is pumping out mega heat.

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I noticed Scan have an energy efficient X2 4200 for 145 quid.

Still, with cool & quiet enabled I have seen standard CPUs measured at around 7W when idle. Something like an Arctic Cooler Silencer 64 Ultra should stop you from going deaf.

is it possible to fit that beast into an htpc though? u could saw it in half :lol:

Not the 14 quid monster one, the little 6 quid one.

this one

OK, still not dinky but in with a fighting chance. I think it will fit on socket AM2, if Scan ever ship my RMA replacements I might have a chance of trying it.

this is actually what i had in mind for processor cooling :)
http://www.kustompcs.com/acatalog/info_1278.html

I saw the AM2 EE on scan earlier, paired with this
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=443859

would work for me. I don't need PCI-E. This gives me scope for my three DVB-T tuners and a firwire card with one slot spare. Might use it for wireless, or a DVB-S card in the future.

Just need to decide if i go ahead and do this, or put it on the back burner again for a while :)

I've built a HTPC using the mcubed unit on that page before. It is very heavy as you say and the heatsinks on the sides are very sharp (they have serrated edges). It's very easy to leave loads of skin on it.

I wasn't impressed with the quality for the price and is a fiddly build (you need some very long screwdrivers for example). The PSU only sits in the middle and is obviously designed with using a fanless one. The IR receiver is an Imon one (unless they've changed things).

If you're going the whole fanless route you do need to be very careful, heat is still generated and you really need some way to shift it.

It comes with a scart connection although this is only compatible with a very limited number of graphics cards.

You also have to fit a floppy drive (in the rear) or you have a gap there.

I think you can do better that this case.

What would you recomend then?

to get some air moving through it i was intending a couple of slow spinning 120mm fans.

PSU was going to be the seasonic fanless model from Scan. Question is, how do you get power to the PSU? is there a romet under the floppy bay? it's the only thing i could see from the photos.

The SCART is only really for Hauppauge PVR-x50 cards. had no intension of using that anyway, same goes for the stereo phono jacks.

Floppy bay at the back might work out well for me. I'd be using it for either a firewire satelite decoder (http://www.firedtv.com/DesktopModule...ID=8&W=60&H=60) or a CAM slot for another DVB card of some description.

I got myself a Silverstone LC-11 in silver with the VFD and remote - didn't like the sound of the "faux wood panelling" on the black version - silver version is pretty much all-aluminium. It's about the size of a largeish VCR, though somewhat deeper than most VCRs. It was rather cramped working inside but then I guess any small case will be a bit tricky. Not much harder. It's nice and quiet, loudest thing by FAR is my 9800pro. Next loudest thing is the Zalman 7000AlCu cpu cooler if turned up to full.

It has a drive cage for two HDD, but you could probably make some custom thing to put there in it's place (the drive cage is held in by metal tabs and a single screw, and there's a reasonable bit of room between the drive cage and the mobo. it's uATX only of course. The 5.25" DVD-drive I used (pioneer DVDRW 111) was a little problematic, but once I'd shaved about 1mm of plastic off the eject button if works well with the case button. There's probably room for another 3.5" device under the DVD bit but I used that as a place to cram all the excess wiring.

all in all a nice case, bit expensive for what you get I suppose, but then I haven't any other cases like it to compare it to! The iMON remote and VFD are pretty cool. I'm still using it as my main rig and probably will be for a few weeks/months, but it's been deemed acceptable for use under the TV :)

Well i added it all up, and it comes out at around £850 all in.

I think i'll probably order the component parts of the build shortly and see if i can get MediaPortal set up how i want it. That means £280 outlay now, the rest can be a bit at a time

If that goes well, i'll start getting the cooling and silencing bits to see where the noise is coming from i.e. hard drives, power supply, etc. I have an old case i can use in the mean time.

Parts i already have:
2x 400gig WD Hard Drives
3x DVB-T PCI cards (Nebula DigiTV, Twinhan DTV and a KWorld)
MCE remote and reciever
250gig Maxtor or 200gig Seagate to use as a boot
and for the screen i'll be using my plasma. not sure how i'll handle the windows and media portal setup, but that might be fun :)

Yes, from memory the power lead feeds under the floppy drive area. I can't recall all the issues since it was a build for someone else and they requested this case.

If you're using a couple of fans then you should be ok, the site seems down now and I seem to remember you could add a fan at the bottom of the case. I mounted a decent one at the top of the unit.

I'm not sure which seasonic PSU you're referring to, I used the fanless Silverstone (which seems to be the one mcubed recommend, but they would wouldn't they).

Personally I'd go for a Silverstone or the Zalman unit. But if you want to be different I can understand why you don't want to go down that route.

actually, by bad, i meant the Silverstone one. :D

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Originally Posted by Funkstar

PSU was going to be the seasonic fanless model from Scan.

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If you are going to have a couple of 120mm fans, why don't you have the PSU as one of them?

The PSU on this unit sits in the middle of the case. You may not get the fan to do anything for the case (although I can't recall which way it sits). I do remember with the Silverstone PSU you apply tons of thermal paste to the side of the PSU and 'stick' it to the side of the mcubed case, therefore using the huge heatsink to help disperse heat.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Funkstar

actually, by bad, i meant the Silverstone one. :D

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only thing that had trouble fitting in the lc-11 was my audigy2 card, but a little bit of force and some tightening and loosening of the bolt in the pic below sorted that out :) All the other cards fitted fine.

Click for bigger:
http://seis.bris.ac.uk/~bm8746/files..._lc11_full.jpg http://seis.bris.ac.uk/~bm8746/files...udigy2bolt.jpg

Well i placed an order with scan for a few parts to get a system running before plunging head long with the case.

here's what i got:
1Gb PC2-5300 DDR2 667MHz non-ECC 24
AMD AM2 Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual Cor
Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA, NF3 250, Socket
256MB XFX 6200 Mem 550MHz, GPU 300M

This should be delivered to work by the time i get home at the start of the week. :)

Thinking about starting a project page for this...

In case you're still interested in the case I saw the following link via the AV Forums. This guy seems to be legit (there's feedback from others who've bought?) and the HFX case he's selling is priced at £145 + £16 p&p which could be an absolute bargain.

It's not me on ebay, I don't know the seller, I just thought it was a great price (I'm tempted). He seems to have a few for sale if this ones gone.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HFX-Silent-Med...QQcmdZViewItem

Oh stuff it, I bought one despite what I said earler. If it's the full Borg CPU cooler that's an unbelieveable price (I'd better use Paypal for some form of protection!).

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_1278.html

hmmmm, he's got one left

bugger bugger bugger!

even if it's just the case that is an amazing price compared to KustomPCs.

should i/shouldn't i?

EDIT: bugger it, just completed the transaction

EDIT 2: Oh yeah, thanks for that BigBry :)

Hope it's genuine or we're both up the creek! :eek:

Took you and me about the same amount of time to consider it and fish out the credit card.

eBay and the computer inducstry are built on the weak willed :)

If it's not genuine i'll badger JohnLewis/Mastercard. They owe me one with the amount i spend through them :Oops:

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Originally Posted by BigBry

Hope it's genuine or we're both up the creek! :eek:

Took you and me about the same amount of time to consider it and fish out the credit card.

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Did you get your case dude?

Mine arrived about 10 minutes ago with City Link :) I hadn't had any email saying it had been shipped, just the auction and paypal completion notices. Sent the guy an email yesterday asking for the tracking number but didn't get a reply. Not a problem though.

Doesn't seem as heavy as i would have thought, but it is a *big* box. I'll open it up later to see what all is included.

Not yet but I paid for it 24 hours later (just in case!).

When you've opened yours post back re contents please. I'm looking at the emergency fan solution, have you looked into this?

Just got mine before noon, he'd paid extra for a pre-noon delivery!

Just opened it up, the case looks good and all the promised parts are there (the CPU cooler looks like it's actually the sort that fits virtually all CPU's) and it's also got a graphics card silent cooler unit too;

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_1280.html

This is a £400 package all in!

In my HTPC case the main causes of noise are the HDD and GFX. If you have a case with a couple of silent 120mm fans (try the orange Antec ones at 7V for example), then they are quieter than a wisper anyway. Add a PSU with a 120mm fan at low speeds (eg enermax liberty, Silverstone Strider), you still won't really hear it in comparison to the gfx/hdds.

I recently switched to a TT Blue Orb II on the CPU and Arctic Silencer on the Gfx, and now I can't tell if my HTPC is on or not except for the lights and the hdd. Silence is relative, and unless you live in a recording studio you probably won't notice rear-exhaust fans >80mm or a relatively silent heatsink on Gfx or CPU.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BigBry

Just got mine before noon, he'd paid extra for a pre-noon delivery!

Just opened it up, the case looks good and all the promised parts are there (the CPU cooler looks like it's actually the sort that fits virtually all CPU's) and it's also got a graphics card silent cooler unit too;

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_1280.html

This is a £400 package all in!

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As the person who bought the third one of these the only question I can ask is where is mine.:(

Opened mine before i went to lunch. Very impressed with everything in there. Silverstone iMon remote/reciever and VFD, CPU cooler/heat pipes (shame it's not the cool copper one), graphics and north bridge heat pipes.

Impressed there is an extra long screw driver included too :)

What is the little PCB with the red and green LEDs in the pack with what resembles an audio cable?

That's the HD and power LED's that fit in the front window. Take care they're very tight to the finish and can cause it to mark the front. Haven't seen the screwdriver but then I bought one especially for the last time I built one of these.

eek I'm sure yours is on the way!

I've ordered a Core 2 Duo for this and I'm ordering the 'emergency' fan unit from Kustom PC shortly.

i'm at work, so i've not had a chance to have a proper look through everything and lay it all out yet. Doing some major decorating work at home too so it'll be a few days before i get time to sit down with this monster. Was planning or starting a thread over in the Project Logs board

Fans i'll decide on later. Was looking at some neat ones on KustonPCs last week.

I take it the piece of plextiglass sticks to the front of your CD/DVD drive when installed?

Once i'm done, this thing is going to weigh a ton! Might be up as high as mid 30s KG.

Yes the front fixes to your DVD drive so try and get one with a flat-ish front. It's then a good idea to use the eject button to open and close the drawer I thought it wasn't the best such fixing I'd seen (but maybe it's improved).

I'm building mine 100% fanless except for the emergency roof mounted fan. It will be interesting to see how the Intel CPU works in that situation. I'm also using rubber hard drive mountings, a spinpoint HD slowed down through accoustic management and I'm hoping Nero Drivespeed will control the DVD noise effectively. Once it's tested it'll be sold.

All the parts should be here Thursday and it will be interesting to compare notes?

I think our goals are the same to be honest, but i've gone the AM2 Energy Efficiant route instead. It only kicks out 65W peak so the passive cooler block should handle that.

I've got a lot of other things to deal with this week (i have litterally no kitchen right now) so you'll have yours build before i will :) i also need to get a few more parts such as hard drive boxes etc.

I thought about AM2 but the CPU cooler didn't list that as an option/fitting so I didn't want to risk it.

I've ordered the Core 2 Duo for the lower heat levels which I believe is also 65w.

I think the e6300 seems to max at about 45watts or so.

Still no sign of my case however.

I'm using a e2140 1.6ghz with my HFX. I plan on ordering the BorgFX 520 for my cpu and the BorgVGA for my Ati HD2400 and a silverstone psu.