SFF for HTPC in living room

[MacBriar]

Guys looking for a bit of advice. I am planning on building a box for playing DVDs, MP3s and recording TV, basically I need a system with TV out which will allow me to add a Hauppauge PVR250 card and playback recorded shows with no loss in quality (rules out MiniITX methinks).

I have a Shuttle SN412G2 (Athlon Thunderbird 1200) as my main system so I know Shuttles.

Questions are;
1. Celeron 2.0 or Athlon 2.0 which will lead to a quieter system ?
2. Shuttle system vs AOpen XC cube?
3. Are the latest Athlon CPU's (XP Barton) cooler running than my ageing T'bird 1200 ?

My main concern is system noise. Is a Shuttle with the Sunon ICE fan replaced and the honeycomb grill removed really much quieter ?

or would I be better going the mATX route to get a quieter system.

I really don't want to mess around modding the PSU on a Shuttle as the system will need to run 24/7 and I don't want the house burning down. If needs be I can wait and buy the new PSU when it becomes available.

Thanks for any advice.

[Knoxville]

a celeron 2gig will be quieter than a 2 gig athlon dude they do run cooler depsite improvements made in amd's lately.

Not sure on how quiter an aopen cube is than a shuttle especially if you mod the shuttle with a papst or noise blocker fan.

The latest athlons are running much cooler than the t'birds, If i were you i'd underclock a 2500 barton for cooler running and mod the psu fan, no worries about the reliability there are several people here with modded fans i have yet to here of a psu overheating due to a replacement fan as iirc they push the same cfm

[Bindibadgi]

You could try and pick up a mobile p4 - they dont have heatspreaders and run uber cool cause they are designed for laptops. However they arent the fastest things on earth but will overclock loads apparently.

[5lab]

why not just get a full size silenced chassis (say one of the nice htpc ones of kustom), then stick a zalman inside - would stay very quite

[Rexticle]

Silent X.

[Trickle]

GT3 god used to run his 1700+ 1.4ghz AMD at stock speed fanless for a time iirc.

I would say that AMD run cooler, as on the NForce 2 boards you can (assuming the Tbred B's are still unlocked?) underclock them a little, undervolt them too and run them fanless.

As seen on the main boards a 2.0Ghz celeron isnt really going to be mcuh faster, if at all apart from media coding than a 1.3Ghz TbredB.

[unrealrocks]

I know of alot of people buying 2000XPs and 2Ghz P4s and underclocking, undervolting to get a silent system with a passive heatsink ... a 1Ghz System is still plenty to do all you want it to!

I've even seen cases of people getting motherboards that allow booting from flash memory and installing windows onto a modded 1Gb flash drive then simply pulling MP3s off other PCs ... a TOTALLY silent PC!

[Bindibadgi]

Yea, the only problem im having with my EPIA is the harddisk noise otherwise it would be totally passive

*waits patiently for large capacity solid state*

[Capt Doufos]

The Samsung AV series of drives are supposed to be really quiet. They are the also the fastest IDE disks on the market, which is a bonus.

[Stoo]

don't bother with a celeron they're all inferior to even a 1.6 duron, have a look about for an applebred (basically a tbred B tuned down).
Drop the vcore right down, they only need 1.5volts at stock and you could well find that it might go lower, less volts = less heat

[Bindibadgi]

Originally posted by Capt Doufos
The Samsung AV series of drives are supposed to be really quiet. They are the also the fastest IDE disks on the market, which is a bonus.

Where can u get em?

[Stoo]

spinpoints, pretty much any of the usual suspects really

Not sure about them being the fastest ide drives on the market though..

[roc69]

The new power supply will fit any G or G2 case, so you're pretty much good to go from there.

I would suggest an AMD processor because it's a better value...