[mythtv-users] HD Frontend hardware: cases for enclosed spaces

Steve Adeff adeffs at gmail.com
Mon Oct 24 23:42:57 EDT 2005


On Monday 24 October 2005 23:12, Sean Cier wrote:
> I'm finally chucking the wretched XBox that has served as my living room
> frontend for far too long, and building a proper machine.  I want HDTV
> support (only have an SDTV there at the moment, and no HD sources, but the
> latter will hopefully change before long, and the former will undoubtedly
> be replaced some day).  That means a hefty processor; I'm planning on going
> Athlon 64.  I'll have a hard drive just to avoid the headaches of remote
> boot, but it'll spin down and presumably not be a factor heat-wise.
>
> The catch is, I want to put this in my armoire-style TV cabinet.  That
> means either:
> -- in a shelf under/over the TV (~5" high X 27" wide x 20" deep, but a case
> must be no more than 4.2" high to actually be able to get it in there),
> which is open on the front but enclosed on the sides/rear/top/bottom, or
> -- in the cabinet area, in which case it'd have a whole half of the cabinet
> to itself (17"w x 19"h x 21" deep), but apart from a 1" vertical
> wire-access slit in the rear, the doors will be closed and it'll be
> completely enclosed effectively 24/7.
>
> So, I see three options.  I'd love advice, feedback, anecdotes,
> what-have-you about which will most likely work without fear of
> overheating, and give me the least grief from a stability, functionality,
> future lifetime (e.g. replacable parts), and
> compatibility/standard-hardware standpoint (I want to be able to use
> modules from ATRPMS as much as possible, like my other boxes, not spend
> hours patching it every way from Tuesday just to get something to maybe run
> briefly on Thursday mornings when Saturn is ascendant).
>
> -- Slim desktop-style case, ala Minuet or Pundit-R (these *can* work
> horizontally, right?).  Seems like if the vents are in the right places and
> the case has pretty good
> -- Cube-style SFF case in the cabinet, ala Antec Aria (I've been happy with
> Antec cases in the past) or Shuttle.  Seems like the small case, with
> clearance on the sides *and* top, would give a shot at better airflow.
> -- ATX-sized desktop case in the cabinet, ala Cooler Master 620 (which I'm
> using happily for another frontend), Ahanix D.Vine, Silverstone, NMediaPC,
> etc.  If the lack of edge clearance (the cabinet is only 17" wide) isn't an
> issue from an airflow standpoint, this would be a lot easier to deal with
> than a shuttle-style SFF case.
> -- Say screw it and put a run-of-the-mill mini-tower in the cabinet.
> Wouldn't look as sexy as the other solutions, but definitely the easiest,
> and *probably* would have the best airflow overall; and hey, it'd be behind
> doors usually.
>
> With no tuners and such, the hardware demands are relatively light and I
> never anticipate them growing too far (though perhaps evolving with new
> video cards, new processors, etc someday) -- but I want something solid
> that isn't going to give me grief, and something that'll last a while
> without going completely obsolete.  And, I want *full* Myth
> PVR/music/DVD/video functionality -- no embedded hardware that'll only do
> half of what my other frontends will.
>
> I'm not too concerned with absolute silence in this location, though I of
> course don't want an absolute jet engine either.  I'm only concerned with
> appearance if I use one of the shelves rather than the cabinet, though I'll
> go for a decent HTPC-style appearance either way rather than a drab 1990
> beige.
>
> -spc


this is exactly what I'm doing!! I finally want full HDTV support and the xbox 
just can't do it.

Here's my saved shopping cart at Newegg:

$146.00		AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 1GHz FSB Socket 939
$83.99		REFURBISHED: MSI K8N NEO2 PLATINUM Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce3 Ultra ATX 
AMD Motherboard - OEM
$40.99		CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) 
Unbuffered System Memory Model VS512MB400 - Retail
$138.00		Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500
$269.99		SILVERSTONE SST-LC16S-M Silver
$74.50		SILVERSTONE SST-ST46F ATX 460W Power Supply
$131.50		Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200JD 320GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 
(might get a couple, need to replace some older drives as well)

I chose the MSI cause I want a 5xPCI 1xAGP with SATA support with the ACL655 
chipset with optical/coax digital output. I've already got a spare AGP fx5200 
so I don't need that. the CPU is enough to watch HD and I have a Athlon64 
3200+ on my file server for all my transcoding needs.
I chose the Silverstone case cause its got an LCD+IR that work with lcdproc 
and irman, has support to hold 4 harddrives and a DVD drive. They're well 
built and it looks really nice. I wanted to get their silent fan-less power 
supply, but at $150 I can live, I'm in Boston, so city noise is more of a 
concern than the powersupply.

I planned on getting a few more HD3000 cards (already have one), but I think I 
might rent a couple more DCT6200 cable boxes from my cable company instead. I 
can record the HD channels over firewire and a the non-digital cable channels 
as well. 5c prevents me from getting any of the digital or non-OTA HD 
channels, so I plan on connecting one cable box to the PVR500 for recording 
digital cable channels and the other two via firewire for the channels I can 
get over firewire.

I plan on installing KnoppMyth on it, so hopefully that will make the setup 
easy. though compiling from SVN on my current debian system has been cake, so 
either way I think I'll be ok...

Steve


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