Building a dead silent HTPC

[FishTankX]

Oh, last of all.

If you can, punch an 80MM hole in the top and use an 8412NGL there instead of at the exhaust fan ports. Since it's orientation is that way, top exhaust would be perfect for disipitating the rising heat.

 

[peang]

How about VIA MiTX ? can it work? because for sure Mini iTX will be very quiet.

 

[FishTankX]

Mini iTX do not have the horespower required for real time MPEG-2 compression.

Hell, they have barley enough power to decode DivX well.

You need atleast a 1.7 P4 for real time MPEG- 2 compression. And that's probably with SSE2 assistance.

 

[FishTankX]

Originally posted by: Fencer128

...and it [DVI] much better than component.

I hadn't heard this. I always thought component best?

Cheers,

Andy

DVI is digital and carries pixel info, only. Not the analog driver signal. I assume if you're using DVI cables this enables the TV to do it's own onboard internal decoding.

 

[Dug]

Power Supply- Fortron - P300XFPN 300W Power Supply
I have this and it is completely silent with its 120mm fan barely spinning. (Quieter than an L1A) No voltage fluctuation and I'm runnin a 2100xp at 2.3Ghz and an ATI 9700.

Do DVI out only. Especially for that display. Any vga-component conversion will not compare.
Note: You will need powerstrip for custom resolution.

Do get an ATI 9500 or higher. You need the ability to change the resolution and timings that you won't be able to do on an Nvidia card.
Do the Zalman heatsink on the video card for silence.

Seagate IV or V as mentioned. (Don't bother with serial)

An LG 48x/16x DVD combo drive will be the quietest drive on the market and can read anything out there.

See if he can live with an Antec Sonata. The case you link to only has two 60mm fans and is known to be loud. This will be the loudest thing in the case and won't really move that much air if you slow the fans down.

 

[beatle]

He's already got the case with the VFD, so I think a Sonata is out of the question.

I actually have that very same PSU. I've yet to try it out with my GF's pc, but it's good to know that it'll do the job silently and inexpensively.

He already has a DVD player, so I don't think the brand of DVD drive will matter. Besides, even my Lite-On 16x dvd is quiet when I have it turned down with Nero DriveSpeed.

New list:
IS7, 2.4C w/SLK900 + 92mm vantec stealth, Fortron PSU w/120mm fan, Audigy 2 (no drive), 60+ gig Cuda IV or V, Radeon 9500, black dvd-rom, wireless NIC - 802.11b should suffice for throughput, no? Wireless keyboard/mouse are already taken care of.

What about a capture card? He has digital cable and a box already. An HDTV card would not be out of the question. Any good recommendations? Looking for something with a good simple interface.

 

[AtomicDude512]

www.silentpcreview.com

I used them a lot and now my computer is very quiet. Anandtech is not the right place to ask this question.

 

[Dug]

If he's not playing games, I highly recommend the M-Audio Revolution sound card. It is far superior and more felxible for HTPC use.

 

[FishTankX]

I would suggest ditching the stealth line for a lower DB rating fan like the Pabst 8412NGL, which puts out a mere 12DB.

 

[0roo0roo]

there are fanless psu's. zalman makews some really big coolers

 

[beatle]

The problem with a fanless PSU is that is doesn't provide any exhaust. Since the case is very low on airflow, the PSU will be the only source of airflow out of the case. Besides, they're absurdly expensive. I'll look into the Papst fans... I hear they exaggerate their cfm and db ratings though.

 

[beatle]

Any other suggestions for a capture card?

 

[LikeLinus]

Originally posted by: lameaway
Some other comments... yes, some ATi cards do HD component output with an adapter. Been there, done that, its *&$!ing buggy - i'm still trying to get mine to stop overscanning the image on my Mitsubishi HDTV... 720p resolution would also be nice... If you want to do this without problems I recommend you get a cheap Matrox G450 (or whatever) and drop a few hundered on a good HD scan converter.

Leadtek capture cards seem to have pretty decent software, at least the TV2000XP i was playing around with. If you want to do HD, though, you want to get the DViCO FusionHDTV II.

For sound, get a board with NVIDIA Soundstorm and digital out... like, say, the Asus A7N8x. No need for an Audigy if you won't be doing much gaming.

Sound damping material is a must... underclock and undervolt the Athlon, cool things with some undervolted Panaflos and it should do fine.

hehe. Well just to correct what some of this guy says. The ATI overscan is probably not a problem with the ATI HD adapter. I use the adapter with my 48" Mitsu platinum and it works awesome. Admitted the resolution isn't what I want, I wish the TV supported 720p, but it's great for a media station (videos, music, web, games).

Also youre comments about the 720p resolution are valid, but you do realize that it'd help if you even had a tv that could display 720p. There are currently NO mitsubishi HDTV's that support 720p resolution (other than the DPL 65100 and the Plasma 5010 - but i highly doubt you have either one of those), they only support 1080i and 480p. It'll all be upscaled to 1080i from your original source. So it might be nice to have, but completely useless in your situation.

Also about the overscanning. All HDTV's have overscan outta the box. Unless you've had an ISF professional come out and calibrate your TV, you're going to have approximately a 4-5% overscan (atleast in the cases of Mitsubishi). You can't blame ATI for your overscan because anything you run into that tv will have an overscan. You just dont notice it on movies and tv.

 

[Wyck]

Don't forget to get a solid state hard drive so you don't have any noise coming from that either... then you'll be quieter than a Tivo.

 

[LikeLinus]

Just bubble wrap the whole computer...that'll solve all your problems!