[mythtv-users] Via Epia sp and hdtv

[glen martin]

James Dastrup wrote:

>On Friday 03 February 2006 12:29 pm, Shane wrote:
>  
>
>>Hello list,
>>
>>I am looking at setting up an ota hdtv machine using either
>>the air2pc card or a pchdtv-3000 card.  I'd like the
>>machine to be fanless 
>>
>Any particular reason 
>you want it fanless? If noise is your concern, you can get a 
>nearly-quiet machine going with a diskless front-end, upgraded CPU 
>fan with voltage reducer, and a quiet power supply.
>
Right.  I'm partway through an attitude shift on this.  I've been aiming 
for the last 18 months at smaller, quieter machines based on the EPIA 
boards with sexy little boxes.  The realization I eventually came to is 
the very very low compute power of those boards, and a suspicion that 
the larger EPIAs with little fans (necessitated by little boxes) weren't 
so good on the power-to-noise ratio.

As an experiment, then, my latest machine is a mid-tower box, quiet PSU, 
and completely integrated mATX mobo with fanless northbridge cooler. It 
is very very quiet.  I oversized the PSU (Seasonic S12-430) to get a big 
heatsink,  PFC and good components, and as a result the PSU fan runs 
around 900 rpm. The cpu cooler is a Coolermaster XP-90 with Nexus 9cm 
fan running around 12 or 1300 rpm. There is one 12cm exhaust fan running 
well under 1500 rpm. No intake fans, because the two exhaust fans pull 
enough air past the single drive (which is a Barracuda, so very quiet 
and low-power).  Add it all up, roughly no noise. Only noticeable noise 
over other background is the disc stepper. And the mobo temp trends 
about 2-3 C degrees above ambient, cpu temp between 30 and 35 C in a 30 
C room (35 C under load). Drive runs around 23 or 24 C.

But, it is a big ugly case. A smaller case could also be made to work, 
but interior airflow will then merit attention.


glen