voxel 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 Anyone has experience building a HTPC in a room without air-con? I'm afraid that a Celeron 1G without fan, a 200G HDD in normal use or a PSU with silent fan will be damaged soon in such a condition... Regards, voxel Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
huangyong 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 ok...... give you some advice on this... i used to be a PC freak b4 turn into head-fier..... use water cooling with low speed fan or non at all since you are using celeron...haha..that's the 1 of best way. harddisk noise...hard to eliminate.... just put it into a box with water cooling and seal it.... expensive way is to get a few notebook harddisk connect thru adapters to PC then use raid.....to run... get this idea from tomshardware.com .... i think... if want tranquil enviroment but still want to switch on computer... use APPLE. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voxel 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 Thanks huangyong:-) Water cooling is toooo complicated for me... I choose celeron to avoid the CPU fan noise, and the PC is more than 2 meters away, so in fact, the only noise is from the PSU fan. The real problem is the temperature Maybe i've to find a room with air-con... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Sipher 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 are u trying to build those SFF (small form factor) HTPCs? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lekguan 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 (edited) PSU u can use Antec, because they are real quiet, though you have to fork out more than a normal PU. Aluminium casings remove more heat so you will need less active cooling (aluminium casings provide over 5C of cooling and is very light). I recommend you get Lian-Li PC60, at about $180 from cybermind, but I think it comes with a PSU, so maybe you can sell away the PSU and replace with Antec. The PC60 has 2 intake fans with adjustable fan speed (high mid low). They are high performance ADDA 50cfm fans. It also has a dust filter for the intake fan. The exhaust fan, however, has no speed control. If you find the exhaust fan noisy, get them replaced with somewthing like Panoflo or Coolermaster fans with rifle bearing. You can go for 5400RPM HDDs. Notebook hardisk are still very noisy, ticking sound. If you really are a total freak, and would be willing to spend any amount to get a quiet HTPC, order some vapochill casing or Prometeia casing. Check them out. Well, just a suggestion, don't kill me. These casings are real expensive and have to ship all the way from britain. They have a compressor inside which cools your CPU or Chipset Or GPU to below freezing point. It takes about a minuite to get near freezing point, before the PC will power up. Yes, don't use water cooling, too much hassale, and you risk frying your mobo if you are not careful enough to connect the hose properly. And the reservoir is really bulkie, oops i mean bulky . And the shower method will get lots of water lost each day and you have to refill very soon. You can also try to improve heat conduction, by lapping your heatsink, then using a good thermal compound like Artic Silver III. Using copper heatsink, though expensive, will reduce lots of heat, because copper conducts heat well, yet has a high specific heat capacity. If you are still very worried, there is another way, get the CPU with a highest multiplier you can get but with the same FSB, then underclock it. That should make it fast yet cool. I just checked Inte;'s website out, that should be Celeron 1.4Ghz. It is the fastest Celeron with 100Mhz FSB, so it means that its multiplier is higher. Underclock it to say 80Mhz and it should do the trick. Then also remeber to lower your Vcore (voltage) for the CPU to produce less heat. Of course, you can combine all above as well if you like, to get a very cool yet not noisy HTPC. Expensive though. Expect something ard 1K or more. Edited October 18, 2003 by lekguan Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ablaze 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 watercooling is not really a hassle if you get the hang of it. I've been watercooled for the past year at least now. once its set up its relatively fuss-free, and virtually silent if you choose the right parts, and a nice solid commercial block like something you can get from http://www.cryophilia.com watercooling's the way to go if you really want a silent HTPC man, no doubt about it. lekguan, you think watercooling is a hassle, and you suggest a vapochill/prometia? do you even know what you're talking about here? harddisk-wise, search www.storagereview.com for the noise ratings. the Seagate barracudas are pretty quiet. basically, I've managed to make my pc so silent, when you walk into my room, you wouldn't think the pc is on Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
voxel 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 wooo, so many suggestions:-) lekguan, what if i buy an Antec casing? I guess it will come with an Antec PSU... ablaze, that commercial water cooling block is really expensive Since the sound card may cost a lot, i cannot spent too much on other parts. BTW, anyone here has experience on those expensive sound cards, like CardDeluxe, RME Digi96/8 or LynxTwo? I have been thinking about this for a whole month. CardDeluxe has no WDM drivers; RME does better in Digital than analogue out; LynxTwo has similar price as Arcam CD72/82 player... ... ... It's really hard to determine. There is no direct comparison between the Lynx and a standalone cd player on the web, and most of my friends and members in a China headphone forum said I should buy a good CDP instead of any sound cards. What do you think? Sincerely thanks voxel Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Q00 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 Lynx two is recognized as THE standard for audio on a pc... next in line is the dmx 6 fire.. and then followed by either the audigy zs or the m-audio rev Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
evil-zen 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 lynx 2 is THE standard setting soundcard but i am sure dmx 6 fire is not next. voxel already listed out some which are one step above that of the dmx 6 fire. the only person i know who tested out soundcards is ablaze. he is the pc and soundcard guru around here. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tenson 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 (edited) Hi, I have been on the quest for a quiet, cheap PC for a while now as I use it in my home studio. My room is very quiet so I can hear even the 'silent' fans etc.. MY suggestion would be this: *Case - An AcoustiCase OR any mid to large case that is well built. Get some foam or thick carpet and glue it to the inside of the case. Cover everything except one hole at the bottom for cool air to be drawn in and the PSU fan at the top will blow hot air out. This will work like a chimney and be the best way. *CPU - Intel and clock it as low as it will go while still doing the job you want. If you don't know about clocking just leave it. *Heatsink - I don't think the Celeron 1gig will run with no fan at all so.. just get the biggest copper heat sink you can and replace the fan with a 'silent' one AND get a Fan Mate to use with it Or put a resistor in its power line. Make the fan speed as low as possible without the CPU overheating. Use a good thermal paste not the silly 'pads' that come on the bottom of the heat sink. *Hardisk - Any hardisk other than the Seagate barracuda (it gets too hot) and put it into a Silent Drive Enclosure These are great! *PSU - Get a Q-Technology Ultra-Quiet PSU They have a variable fan speed control and 'silent' fans. You can do this on the cheap if you open a PSU and solder a resister into the fan's power line. Also squirt silicon between the fan and the PSU and the PSU and the case where they touch. *Video Card - An old one with no fan and if possible no heat sink. Maybe a ATI Radeon 7000 *Motherboard - If your motherboard has a fan on it. Rip it off and get a Silent Motherboard Heat sink All of this put together will make for a VERY VERY quiet PC. It should be reasonably cheap compared to going for water cooling or a fridge computer thing.. lol Good Luck! Edited October 18, 2003 by Tenson Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lekguan 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 (edited) Water cooling have to refill water. Prometeia/vapochill no need to do maintenance. But then again, not worth the money. And long boot time. Tenson, unfortunately, some of the stuff u mentioned not are available in Singapore. I seriously recommend, if you feel the PSU is real noisy, Antec. It is in abundance in SLS. Though you'll have to pay over $100. AND remeber to LAP YOUR HEATSINK before placing it back, and use COPPER. and use Artic Silver III. This is slightly hard to get, but walk around and you should be able to find it. If you really can't afford, don't get Lian-Li. I would say its a luxury. with its multiple 5.25" and 3" bays, expansion is really neverending. Its design in such a way that there are no sharp edges, and you will not cut yourself while fitting all components together. Though it is aluminium, and effectively acts as a gaint heatsink, a good heatsink and a good HSF should work well enough. For harddisk, I don't recommend Hitachi/IBM deskstar. They are performers, perform with hell of a speed, but its hot and noisy (esp 180GXP). Harddisk with large storage space and made for entreprise are usually very quiet and not as hot. As far as possible, 5400RPM. Wonder if WDs are good for the quiet and cool purpose... 1.4Ghz celeron should be fine, but the motherboard, please do a little research first, because it plays a huge role in the stability and speed (the chipset a.k.a. unsung hero as well). Edited October 18, 2003 by lekguan Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ablaze 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 lekguan, as far as possible 5400rpm? wrong. there are 7200rpm drives like the famed Barracuda IV that are absolutely silent at idle. even the V which I'm using now is barely a whisper when idle. and as far as watercooling goes, you really are talking thru your *** here. have you heard of closed loop set ups for watercooling? do you know what that is? do you know you don't even NEED a reservoir? there's maybe a neeed to refill water, once every..6months? is that really a hassle? and the vapochills..come on man. do you know how much condensation issues there are? do you even know that there are condensation issues with below-ambient-temp chilling? do you know how much work there is to overcome these issues? please don't give advice when you've no idea what you're talking about. voxel, those were the two soundcards I was looking at too. using the RME 96/8PST now. supposed to be almost as good as the new 9632. the good thing about the RMEs is that the drivers bypass windows' Kmixer even using Directsound or Waveout, whereas other cards have to use kernel streaming or ASIO to bypass the kmixer. the digital out is supposed to be better, but the analog out is no slouch either. I'd go for the lynxtwo if I had the money. but hell..that just costs so much there's the Lynx L22 which is cheaper by a bit, and basically a 2 channel version of the Lynxtwo, you might wanna consider that. there's one place you should go to if you want all the soundcard info: --> http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdispla....php?forumid=26 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tropicalrips 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 for me i think the most noise come from the PSU, and part of it from the CPU fan. for my setup, i change the PSU to 1 of those that use a very big fan, 18cm i think, its almost the same size as the PUS itself, the big fan is really quiet, u don't hear it at all. for CPU, i use a Zalman, the heatsink of the Zalman does not hav a fan attached to it, its full copper, the fan is a 12cm one with its own special bracket, it lets u attach it to the case and blows at the heatsink, according to ppl this will hav less vibration on the CPU itself , the 12cm fan is also very quiet, when the side panel is close u can't hear it, also come with a fan control so u can reduce the speed to make it even more quiet my display card is a Matrox G550, i replace the heatsink with a Zalman north-bridge sink, also no fan needed, this sink is adjustable so it can fit on the display card now i can sleep beside the PC while it runs overnight as for the HDD, i hav a WD 7200rpm 40GB, i don't hear anything from it, except when its spinning up or spin-down when i shutdown, i also hav a HDD fan on the drive, but mod it to run on 7 volts instead of 12v so it also makes no sound Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lekguan 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 and as far as watercooling goes, you really are talking thru your *** here. have you heard of closed loop set ups for watercooling? do you know what that is? do you know you don't even NEED a reservoir? there's maybe a neeed to refill water, once every..6months? is that really a hassle? and the vapochills..come on man. do you know how much condensation issues there are? do you even know that there are condensation issues with below-ambient-temp chilling? do you know how much work there is to overcome these issues? please don't give advice when you've no idea what you're talking about. It does come with a heater which goes under the CPU itself. and do you have to kill me over just-a-suggestion? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jasonhanjk 0 Report post Posted October 18, 2003 So lekguan got those warning bar increase.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
