Advice on Silent Cooling and Additional Tweaks for an HTPC

esphere · Post by **esphere** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 9:10 pm

I've been working on an HTPC on and off for about two months and now have got the system very quiet, but there I still have a few concerens. The system is in an Ahanix D.VINE 3 case (this post <http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=17359> has details on an HTPC being built with an almost identical case). The components are as follows:

- Compaq motherboard from a Presario 5BW250 (proprietary, integrated graphics)
- Celeron "Coppermine" at 700MHz
- Hauppauge WinTV PVR-350 (MPEG2 encoder)
- Seagate 2700.7 Barracuda 7200RPM 200GB
- 512MB Corsair at 100MHz (I think)
- Samsung CD-RW
- Silverstone ST30NF Fanless Power Supply

The motherboard, processor, and RAM were all recycled from an old computer; the system's main purpose is a PVR and the MPEG2 encoding/decoding is all done on the PVR-350 putting very little stress on the processor.

The processor is cooled by a big copper Zalman flower heatsink w/ no fan; the system is completely fanless. The system seems to do ok (no lockups, nothing hot enough to burn) but I have nothing to monitor the processor temps. Also, I want to run the system 24/7 so heat may become a factor. Any suggestions on improving cooling while maintaining silence (little or no fans) and any other advice is much welcome.

-Nate

P.S. This is my first post.

burcakb · Post by **burcakb** » Tue Dec 14, 2004 10:44 pm

"propriety" Compaq boards are usually normal boards from normal manufacturers. Have you checked thoroughly? Try PC Wizard to see details (www.cpuid.com). Does not Motherboard Monitor 5 work on the compaq?

esphere · Post by **esphere** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 10:45 am

I have tried PC Wizard; it only lists the mainboard as being "Compaq" and nothing else. Motherboard Monitor 5 does not support the 5000 series that my motherboard comes from, only certain Compaq 5000 models are supported (they are different from the 5000 series models). I believe my motherboard was based off a Mitac OEM board but MBM 5 has no support for Mitac boards either.

Nevarion · Post by **Nevarion** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 3:21 pm

Have u test with Aida32?

Nevarion · Post by **Nevarion** » Wed Dec 15, 2004 3:23 pm

maybe "MobileMeter" can show the motherboard/cpu temp...
http://dssc3031.ece.cmu.edu/~tamaru/mob ... adme-e.htm

esphere · Post by **esphere** » Thu Dec 16, 2004 1:07 pm

Okay, I just tried aida32 and MobileMeter (thanks for the suggestions), but neither one helped me out. Is it possible the motherboard has no sensors built in (it's about four years old)?