[mythtv-users] The elusive silent myth BE/FE box [in search of]

[Matt W]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 12:10 AM, Epinephrine Junky
<epinephrine_junky at beadon.ca> wrote:
>
> Any suggestions on a case or CPU cooler?  Am I spending too much time and
> money on this?  (hint the answer is yes)
> Anything I might have overlooked?
>

i, too, am really bothered by noisy PCs and noise level was a major
consideration for my combo FE/BE box, which sits in an entertainment
center underneath and a bit in front of the flat panel display.  the
front of that entertainment center is steel mesh, so great for
cooling, but bad if the system is noisy.

someone else on the thread mentioned Arctic Cooling as a possible
video card cooling idea.  I use a passive-cooled video card (not the
AC one, that would barely fit in there... you need a big case for that
one) in my FE/BE combo and it runs a bit warm but so far no
performance affecting issues.  the case has one intake fan near the
drives and two small (60mm) exhaust fans at the back.  plus the power
supply has its own fan of course.  like all fans, if you can get the
3-wire ones and the mobo is compatible, they will spin slower and make
less noise if the system isn't running as hot.

I love Arctic Cooling's cpu coolers.  They really are very quiet, and
very affordable.  I don't know why AC doesn't get more play.  Make
sure you haven't disabled speed stepping / powernow etc etc in your
linux distro as well as on the motherboard.  the ACPI and linux kernel
support for this sort of thing is very mature these days and shouldn't
be defeated.

someone also mentioned hot DIMMs being an issue; that's true, try to
spend a few more bucks on RAM with built in heat spreaders.  not too
pricey these days.

if you don't mind buying new drives, try 5400/5900/"Green" drives as
your large data drives.  I use them on my system and don't see any
major i/o latency issues.  use xfs to help overcome possible i/o
latency due to slower platter RPMs.  slower drives save a few watts
and throw less heat back into the system.  SSD is getting cheap enough
now where you could use that as your OS drive; one less drive = less
noise, less heat, and less power usage.

-Matt