[mythtv-users] help needed speccing out small silent frontend.

John Baab john.baab at gmail.com
Thu Jul 8 14:55:49 UTC 2010


On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 5:44 AM, Ryan Duffy <dusteur at excite.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like some ideas for a small silent low-power frontend, if anyone has any experience they'd like to share.
> I've only ever built tower PCs before so not sure what to look for in a small HTPC.
>
> The Gigabyte H55N-USB3 looks like a good motherboard with a bit of future proofing, but might be a bit cutting edge for linux (i'd like it to work now rather than in 3-6 months time). Has anyone tried this board?
> My worry here is that on-board graphics would probably only come from using the right sort of Intel CPU, and I think I've read that they're not good enough for hardware accelerated video. Is this true?
> Perhaps some other sort of motherboard then.
>
> What about silent and efficient PSUs?
>
> Built-in wireless N would be nice, but not essential as I have a suitable USB stick to provide this.
>
> Budget not really a consideration, but I'd like it to be cheap but fast enough. As I'd only use it for tv, plus a bit of web browsing I guess an SSD might be unnecessary. I'd just put it in standby when not in use so it would start up instantly anyway.
>
> I'd need a case too. For silent operation, I suppose the case might be important so that the PC is well cooled.
>
> Any thoughts?
> Thanks.
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I run System 76's Meerkat Ion: http://www.baablogic.net/drupal/node/2

You can see in my review that I customized quite a bit, including
removing the hard drive and booting from usb instead.  As with many
others here, I would run a wire, trying to stream HD over wifi is
going to cause you a lot of headaches in the end.


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