Low power, low noise HD HTPC (hopefully low cost)

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 5:34 pm

Having read the article on SPCR about the new AMD/ATi chipset 690g, got me intrigued into the whole HTPC scene. They are finally affordable and able to do HD.

I have just bought myself a Silverstone LC02 which has physical limitations in terms of heat and size.

I am not sure what CPU is needed. I am only used to Intel's line up not AMDs.

Would the new AMD Sempron LE-1100 1.9Ghz (45W max TPD with 65nm) be sufficient or would i have to look into the AMD Athlon X2 BE-2300, dual core, 1.9GHz?

Hopefully I can underclock, undervolt it to ensure minimal heat dissipation.

Thanks.

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 7:16 pm

I don't really see any point in going with a single core cpu anymore. Yes, it will work, I use a 3200+, but there are some things like HD-DVD and downloaded mkv files that a Sempron could struggle with. If you want to go that route I won't stop you because that is the lowest power setup you can do, but the dual core will allow you to do more with the PC than just watch video, like transcode, commercial skip, FFDshow, HD-DVD, etc. The 690 chipsets do a great job with HD video though. You can always upgrade the CPU later if you run into speed issues as you advance with your HTPC knowledge. I ran a Sempron 2600+ at 1.6Ghz for a full year with HD.

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 7:23 pm

The dual core cpu is 3x the price of the sempron. Might be worth getting the dual core if it means it could do a better job as a HTPC. Since its going to have a digital tuner installed as well.

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Tue Nov 27, 2007 11:05 pm

I've got an LC02 (see my sig) and have struggled to keep it cool enough. It just doesn't get enough air, despite significant modding. I mostly run it with the top off the case

I'd recommend doing anything you can to keep heat out of your case - make low power consumption your mantra with all component choices, and as you mentioned ensure you buy a CPU and board that will allow you to undervolt/clock. If possible, an external USB tuner would be better than an internal PCI one - they dump quite a lot of heat into the case.

Digital tuners use almost no CPU, so you shouldn't need too much CPU grunt to run it - but you'll need CPU power to display HD - have a look at the new article on the Asus M2A-VM HDMI on the main site to get some idea of what CPU power you'd need. I think I'd go for the dual core if you can afford it.

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 4:32 am

You have almost the setup I have in mind. Except the CPU being the BE version (I assume this is the low voltage model? Not familiar with AMDs line up) and using a 2.5" HDD suspended and no need for a ODD apart from initial installation.

I have looked on the internet and the main downfall of the case is the very limited intake vents.

What mods have you done to it? When I get mine I plan to drill/cut holes on the floor where the PSU used to be and on the other side as well. The idea is to have a negative pressure case. The CPU cooler will be mounted such that air is pushed out of the case. The holes at the bottom of the case will draw air in. The top hole will also be enlarged

EDIT: Having looked at the CPU you have it is either 65W or 89W (from amd compare) the one I am looking at has 45W. Do you think a difference of 20W (assuming you have the 65W version) would have helped in your case? I.e. no need to have the cover off?

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 5:29 pm

Yeah, the limited air is definitely its biggest problem. I fell in love with the looks and size of the case ~18 months ago, and have been trying to get it to work efficiently every since!

I haven't been game to do much external drilling/cutting - my skills aren't up to doing it neatly. What I have done is swapped out the internal PSU for a PicoPSU (which gives a bit of ventilation space where the power cable used to come in, and is basically silent), and I've cut away most of the internal drive tray which was just creating an insulating layer of air between it and the top of the case. The only bit I kept was the front edge, and under the optical drive, to give me something to bolt the drive to.

Once it was gone, I also had more scope for CPU coolers, and an 80mm case fan will fit vertically, too, though there's still no way to get the air out of the case. Note, though, that depending on the mobo you're putting in, the CPU cooler may interfere with the optical drive. This is this case's third incarnation - in the previous two I had a Zalman 7000 and 7700 cooler in there with no problems. But now with my M2A-VM-HDMI mobo, the CPU is so close to the DVD drive that even my ghetto fan swap on the stock heatsink barely fits.

I soft-mounted the 2.5" drive to the side of the case (upper right, near the back) with adhesive velcro. It works fine, and is silent for all intents and purposes.

I'm thinking about moving the HD a bit further forward, and trying to shoe-horn an 80mm fan into the back right corner at an angle to try to blow some heat out of the case. Dunno how much it'll help, there's still not much space there, but if I duct it to ensure all the air through the fan goes out of the case it might be enough.

I hadn't thought about trying to drill through the bottom - since I've removed the drive tray, the base of the case is giving me 90% of my structural strength (and even so, it's a bit wobbly). I guess it could be an option to drill a big fan grill hole near the left front and put an 80mm fan horizontally - it should just exactly wedge between the mobo and the side of the case.

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 11:22 pm

Thanks for the picture it is very informative. Lucky for me I have no need for an optical disk drive. DVDs are ripped and stored on my server and streamed thru network. Yeah the big metal plate getting in the way made no sense to me. That's going to go first.

Have you tried mounting the CPU fan upside down? So that air is sucked thru the heatsink and out the top ventilation, and thus acting as an exhaust. On paper theory it seems to work since hot air rises and will get sucked out.

The way it is now. Hot air gets blown back down when cool air gets blown in from the top (maybe there are hotspots?) and it will eventually leave from the 2 sides where the 60mm fans. This to me seem a poor airflow design.

Or copy the antec fusion airflow design with the 80mm fans.

I will investigate futher when I get my case (on monday)

EDIT: If you can mount 80mm fans vertically . How about trying to mount 2 80mm fans (left and right at where the 60mm used to be) blowing into the case as intakes and then reverse the cpu fan to blow outwards as exhaust. I think that would work really well with minimal modding to the case itself. (Having said that removing the vents and putting in a grill would really improve the above proposed idea)

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:59 am

I haven't tried inverting the CPU fan - might give that a shot on the weekend. But all the airvents (both on top and sides) are so restricted that there's very little air gets through. I tried putting a nexus 80mm fan hard up against the vent holes on the left of the case, and even with the fan going full pelt there's almost no air getting through the vent

The other thing is that the PCI tuner card generates more heat than the CPU. I might aim to replace it with a USB version, but it seems a bit silly to replace a perfectly good tuner.

I've now got it to the stage where I can run it with the top on during winter, but not during summer. I'm aiming to do a bit more tinkering before we hit our hottest months here.

With no optical drive, you'll have an option for more air - that can only be a good thing! I'll look forward to hearing how you go - you're the first person I've "met" who's trying to build a quiet, cool, system in this case.

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:51 pm

Hello again.

I've started looking at the motherboards and there seem to be none in the market that is suitable for me. Unless there are others I have not heard of. I am only looking into the uATX 690G boards.

The 2 most popular has its con's and pro's. I am split between waiting for the perfect one to come out or close my eyes and choose one now.

1.) Asus M2A-VM HDMI
Pros
-Undevoltage and unclockable
-Relatively cheap
Cons
-PCI-E x16 daughter board for the HDMI and digital out is the deal breaker. Since its made for a HTPC why not move/remove the parallel port. If the parallel port is needed (for LCD/VFD's etc) make that attachable via a daugther board
In order for me to use this board I would have to buy a PCI-E riser card thus making the relatively cheap void.
-no Optical Digital out

2.) Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H
Pros
-HDMI is on the I/O plate along with the Optical out
Cons
-No undervolting/undercloaking at all
-No coaxial digital out.

Why isnt there one which is the combination of the two? One uATX with the 690G chipset with all the HTPC connections (HDMI, Optical, Coaxial) at the back I/O panel with Intensive OC'ing (UC'ing) ability.

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:37 am

This might be out of left field (and I haven't done the research) - but what about the Gigabyte S3H? It's not uATX, but the case'll take a full size board. And I seem to remember reading that the S3H has the power control that the 2H doesn't. There's a discussion here somewhere comparing the two...

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:36 pm

Yeah I have also looked into that. If you look at the layout the PCI slots are at the very bottom of the board. PCI-E 1x x2 is underneatth the PCI-E 16x. Which means It would be impossible to add in the PCI riser card to add in a tuner.

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 3:38 pm

Bummer. I eventually gave in and bought the PCIe riser - I figured it was useable for the HDMI card now, and potentially for a PCIe tuner later on. Or the alternative is a flexible PCI riser like http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/index.php ... y_id]=1165 but that's just as expensive as the PCI riser...

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 2:36 am

Do you think a 60W (as opposed to 80W) would power my system?

Just looking around I found it is cheaper to get the "SILVERSTONE LC06 Mini ITX case " with its passive 60W. than actually buying the picoPSU 120W + 80W external brick.

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 4:59 am

It'll depend on what mobo and CPU you end up with - and how much you can undervolt it - and how much headroom you want to have. I'll stick mine on the kill-a-watt tomorrow and let you know how much it's using - right now the kill-a-watt is on my server that's busy recording...

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:12 pm

OK, the HTPC as configured in my sig draws about 40W at idle, 44W playing a DVD or SD content from the HD or across the network. HD (1080i) material draws about 50W. At boot it hits 60W for a few seconds. If I run Orthos it's 63W, Orthos and Rthdribl is 65W. So if you think you might EVER want to run it at 100% CPU, it probably won't do it on a 60W PSU. I'd go for the Pico to give yourself some headroom. Also, that Silverstone mightn't be as efficient as the Pico, in which case you'd not have much headroom even just playing video.

I had the 120W pico in the server, and the 200W in the HTPC for a while - and the server kept crashing. It's been fine since I juggled components - I think I was just going too close to the limit on the PSU - odd since they both had the same 80W bricks, I'm guessing it must have been the draw on the 5V line, or something. The server has 2 more tuners, full size optical drive and an extra 2.5" HD - which was enough to send the Pico over the edge.

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 6:19 pm

Thanks for that i'll go with the picoPSU route then. I think I have all the parts more or less sorted out. I will start ordering soon and tell you my progress. I've decidedon the Asus HDMI as it is the only uATX 690G that has voltage control for the CPU and RAM.

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 4:28 am

I could not see in the picture. But did you have to buy any extra cables for the picoPSU to work with the asus HDMI motherboard? E.g. 20-> 24pin or P4 connector etc?

Wibla · Post by **Wibla** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 6:28 am

Can't understand why you want to waste time on a case design with majorly flawed cooling... sure looks nice, but still...

autoboy · Post by **autoboy** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:26 am

Ever considered a thin client like the new HD extenderfrom SageTV?

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:56 pm

I could not see in the picture. But did you have to buy any extra cables for the picoPSU to work with the asus HDMI motherboard? E.g. 20-> 24pin or P4 connector etc?

20-24 pin is no problem - just plug the 20-pin right in - it's keyed so you can't get it wrong. But you will need the extra 4-pin power plug that goes onto the mobo - mine won't boot without it.

Can't understand why you want to waste time on a case design with majorly flawed cooling... sure looks nice, but still...

Well, I can't answer for LBadvance, but for me I needed the flexibility of a full PC, and when I bought it 2 years ago this was one of the very few that (a) looked nice and (b) fitted where I wanted it. It's been more of a challenge than I've expected, but I've learnt a lot about how to build a low-power-consumption PC, LOL.

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:28 pm

So i would need a molex Y splitter, and a P4 connector.

As for the case many reasons led me to it.
1.) Cheap, got it 2nd hand
2.) Very nice and tidy looking.
3.) I like a reasonable challenge to put my dremel into use. Just needs the grills taken out and enlarged
4.) Smallest ATX HTPC case I could find.

Does anyone know what stock heatsink comes with the Athlon X2 BE-2350? Is it the one with the heatpipes?

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:40 pm

Yep, molex and Y should do it. Dunno what you're planning to do with the power cable coming in to the Pico - it should just reach to the PCI slots, but you won't have one free, will you? You might need to think about a) extending the cable and b) how to mount it to the case. I haven't done anything about mine, yet - it's still just dangling over the top edge of the case...

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 4:10 pm

What is your OS of choice? I am thinking MythTV but am unsure if the 690G chipset is supported well in it or not.

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 10:30 pm

I'm running plain Windows XP - with Webscheduler for recording, and Zoomplayer for playing - although I'm thinking about swapping to VLC - it seeks forward and back much better on my work Fedora laptop than ZP does. But I don't know Linux well enough yet to switch my home machines over. I tried MythTV once but couldn't get it up and running (TV tuner driver issues, I think) - and decided that I didn't want to be tied to its database structure etc - just wanted to be able to dump TS files straight to disk and then deal with them as I pleased.

On my server I've cobbled together a bunch of free sofware with scripts that finds and removes ads, and convert to xvid or author a DVD as required. Works pretty well, but does need a bit of attention on a regular basis to ensure I don't run out of disk space!

I've played around with a few front ends to make it look pretty, but I wasn't happy with any of them, and get the same functionality with shortcuts on a Windows desktop, so decided not to bother.

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Mon Dec 24, 2007 5:10 am

Holidays are here and work will start. Still undecided about what OS I would be using. I'm leaning towards MythTV at the moment.

mimwdv · Post by **mimwdv** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:33 pm

Good luck with MythTV. I really wanted to use it, and had a shot at it a couple of years ago but gave up in frustration - couldn't get it to recognise my tuners, plus a host of other issues. Being a total linux newbie, I gave up and went back to windows. These days my laptop runs Linux and it works OK as a front end - ie streaming video across the network from the Windows box. But I haven't revisited MythTV - what I've got is stable and familiar for family and visitors so I'm hesitant to change.

How's it getting on? Are you managing to get enough air in the case?

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 3:20 am

I have not finished deciding on some parts of the HTPC so I haven't bought anything yet. (I will buy them all at the same time) I did not know what tuner to buy or remote, as this is very much OS dependant. I wanted to find the OS I wanted first and then buy components to suit. To prevent headaches and compatitbility issues down the road.

I used a spare computer and my laptop to test out OS's and media centre apps (free ones). After days of testing out OS's and Media Centres, I have come to the conclusion of Media Portal. It is like much like XBMC, since its made by the same guy. (XBMC is the best media centre OS out there I've ever used)Media Portal runs as an application under windows xp sp2.

MythTV seems like a diamond in the rough. Some of the functions seems unfinished or not very well implemented. Some quirks I don't really like.And the fact that Linux generally does not like ATI chipsets.

The case unfortunately has been sitting on my desk loney and empty gathering dust.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:05 am

You can undervolt/ overclock/ underclock with the gigabyte board. You just need the right bios. (I have it). Works like a charm. Plus, do you really need digi coax if you have optical?

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 10:36 am

Really, is there a new bios update for it? The gigabyte board I am refering to is the mATX one. I know the full ATX has OCing features.

Yes, the digital optical port on my reciever is already in use by the xbox360. Is there a expansion bracket or some way to add in coax?

LBadvance · Post by **LBadvance** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 4:33 pm

Got all the parts assmembled and its up and running. It looks almost like yours mimwdv haha. Although i'm using a SATA 2.5" (Seagate momentus 5300.3 SATA, not as quiet as i thought it would be).

I'm using the stock PSU, its actually quite quiet for a flexATX psu with a 60mm fan. That's gotta go. It runs hotter than my CPU!

Can't have the lid on as well, checked speed fan with the lid on. It has slowly increased in temps by 10 degrees in 5 minutes.

I now have to find a source to get the PicoPSU, looks like I have to import unfortunately

MODS to do.
-replace stock psu with picopsu 12v 120w. 80w AC-DC Brick
-Buy fans (possibly sunbeamtech core fans 120mm and 2x80mm)
-Dremmel grills out and replace with fancy mesh.
-sides are intakes, cpu fan replaced with 120mm fan (softmounted to roof of case with stock heatsink) acting as exhasut blow hot air out.