Just Built My First HTPC needs a few tweaks.

[Alifink]

Ok this might not sound like too good a system but I was working to a very tight budget.
Case - CiT MTX-006B Mini ITX
Board - MSI B75IA-E33, Intel B75
CPU - Pentium G2020
RAM - Corsair XMS3 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz
HD - Hitachi Ultrastar 1TB

The RAM and HD are items I had left from a rebuilt PC and I'm running Windows 7 as I had a licence after going to W8 with my main PC.
I chose the board as it allows me to upgrade easily to an i3 and use faster memory and a SATA III drive but after using the system I will probably stay with the Pentium ( I can't believe how good a CPU this cheap could be). The case for something so cheap is amazing, the PSU fan is almost silent. However this brings me to the tweaks I need, the basic CPU fan leaves a lot to be desired, are there any coolers that will fit in a 60mm high case and be silent or as near as, and not break the bank.
Also the hard drive rattles away especially when W7 decides to do something so I was thinking of going for a 2.5", would I be correct in assuming these are much quieter? Ultimately I plan on getting a SSD for the programs and keep my media on the 2.5".
Thanks.

 

[Charlie98]

You have a pretty solid system, believe it or not; it mirrors my system in most respects (minus the specific brands.) I have the G2020's predecessor, the G620, and I was surprised at how good it is. I don't encode with it, but it does everything else I throw at it.

The Ultrastar is Hitachi's enterprise drive, so it favors performance over noise considerations. Any decent basic HDD would suffice; I have 2 Hitachi Deskstars and 2 Seagate drives in my HTPC... none of which I really hear. I probably wouldn't go to a 2.5" drive, just stick with a reasonable 3.5" HDD. You can try one of the 'green' drives, but I'm sticking with 7200RPM drives myself. I have a WD 'green' drive in my video security recorder and I can hear that thing clacking 24/7...

 

[pkscout]

I think if you remove the top fan of the Noctura NH-L12 cooler it would fit in that case. That cooler has gotten pretty good reviews from silentpc.com (I think that's where I saw the review anyway).

For the HD, I would check the mounting and maybe see if you can find some rubber washers. It seems like the issue is the drive isn't mounted securely or that the drive vibration is being transfered to the case. Or you have a hard drive that's about to fail.

As for a new HD, I would skip the 2.5" spinning drive and just go directly to the SSD. I don't think the SSD will be that much more than a 2.5" spinning drive.

 

[Binky]

The stock intel cpu cooler shouldn't be very loud. Are the bios settings for the cpu fan set correctly? Is it just running at full speed, or trying to keep it to an unrealistically low cpu temp?

At idle you should barely hear it. It might ramp up in a hot case, but that would be true for any small cooler.

 

[Alifink]

Cheers guys.
I've got another drive somewhere that I will try, but I will try some rubber as the case holds the drive tight against the base. I think the main issue with the fan is it's 2mm from a big vent in the top of the case and not hidden away inside so even at slow speeds the sound is there, I'll just use it as an excuse to turn the volume up.
Decent size SSD's are still pretty expensive in the UK so that option might have to wait.

 

[lemmo]

I may get this board and am interested in your impressions in terms of performance, the BIOS/software and power consumption.

There is a detailed review on a Polish website (Google translate) which compares the MSI, Gigabyte and ASRock B75 boards. Power efficiency and heat are important to me as I'll be using a passive cooled case, and MSI is the best in that regard, although it has fewer features.

I'd like to find out how it compares to the Gigabyte H77 board in terms of power and heat...

 

[Charlie98]

Power efficiency and heat are pretty much a non issue with an HTPC... unless you have a tiny case stuffed with a bunch of heat generating components cranked up. A B75 board with a G2020 and the Intel cooler will be fine, even in a passively cooled case (as long as it is ventilated!)