“Reasonably pricedâ€

[ben]

Hello,
I hoping for a bit of expert advice with some brick walls I’ve run into…

I am looking to build a new living room PC as part of a bit of an overhaul to my home network. I have just replaced the server – I now have an Antec Three hundred case with and “Asrock K10N78FullHD-hSLI R3.0 GeForce 8200 AM2+â€

[protellect]

thats an awful lot to read.

have you thought about a mac mini?

[ben]

Yeah - sorry - have done quite a lot of research and didn't want to end up going over old ground - not concise, I'll admit.

Thanks for the suggestion - I hadn't thought mac mini as I know windows inside out but unfortunatly not osx (or linux). I shall do some googling and see if this is time to learn. would I have issues of compatability on the network or do macs work nicely with windows these days?

[lm]

Maybe add Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme to your list of potential coolers? It's pretty much the best cpu cooler reviewed by this site, and I am happy with mine.

Macs handle windows network shares better than windows itself, from what I have heard. From my personal experience, linux can use them fine also.

CPU TDP numbers are categorized to just a few different values so that they don't have to change the cooling requirements all the time, makes it much easier for OEMs to build standardized systems.

Decibel is abbreviated dB, not Db!

[ben]

Thanks for the post - I listed HR-01 becuase I think the Ultra 120 is better with higher air flows and the HR-01 better with low which I am likely to have. CPU TDP is also categorised because each CPU perform slightly differently so they pick something higher which all CPUs they produce will fit under - just difficult to find actual average numbers; I guess it would need a tester with 100 of each cpu and not much else to do to find a true max, min and mean. I'll make sure I use db in future to prove I'm paying attention.

I have found someone who has just about managed to shoehorn a Sythe Ninja mini into a Psile case so shopping list currently looks like:

• Nexus Psile Case, 150W PSU Kit & DVD Writer (£222)
  Scythe Ninja Mini (£27)
  Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache (£63)
  Scythe Quiet Drive for 2.5" Internal HDD Silence (£28)
  Coolink SWiF-801 80mm Case Fan (£8)
  5v Noiseless resistor cable (£3)

With that summing up to about £350 so far.

If I go with this I need an ITX mobo (either 775 of AM2) and a nice low temp CPU to go with it (& 4Gb ram). If the mobo has PCI express then I'll need a new dual freeview tuner.

Any suggestions on these (or improvements on the above?)

[Moogles]

Couple random, hopefully relevant thoughts:

- Mac Mini will run Windows via bootcamp (officially supported by Apple, too) but it has a fan and it's not silent. Quiet by some people's standards though.
- MoDT is obsolete in my opinion, as 45nm Core 2 Duo CPUs barely use more energy than equivalent 'mobile' counterparts.
- Intel is releasing mobile CPUs for s775 soon. Max TDP 35W and they'll fit in any s775 motherboard.
- If you want a no compromise, performant and silent small footprint HTPC I'd check out atechfabrication.com. I have no affiliation with them -- don't want you to think I'm shilling. Might stretch your 600 UKP budget though.

I would either go relatively cheap with an NSK2480/uATX/IGP single fan type of configuration or go balls out and get the Atechfabrication mini client. In my opinion everything in between is some sort of compromise.

[protellect]

Yeah - sorry - have done quite a lot of research and didn't want to end up going over old ground - not concise, I'll admit.

Thanks for the suggestion - I hadn't thought mac mini as I know windows inside out but unfortunately not osx (or linux). I shall do some googling and see if this is time to learn. would I have issues of compatibility on the network or do macs work nicely with windows these days?

Oh, it's all right. I really did read your whole post, and I thought to myself "I think a mac mini would fit what you want great".
And you can't really beat it for footprint or noise in my experience.

As above poster said, Mac Mini can run windows fine, has Wireless N and gigabit Ethernet. You might find you really like the front row movie player.

I'd suggest having that turned into a a dedicated file server for all storage kept in a closet or whatever in a case that will hold the multiple drives.

Just about any modern dual-core processor will be able to run 1080p content with a decent onboard.
And frankly, there isn't that much 1080p video that isn't on blue-ray, so even a AppleTV might do what you need it to do.

[hybrid2d4x4]

A mini Mac doesn't sound too bad, but after a quick visit to the apple site, I was disappointed by the price and specs. You'd be paying $600-800 for what is essentially a >2 year old low-end Core2/"Pentium Dual Core"-grade CPU+ram, 3 generation old integrated video that is useless for HD multimedia applications (and the 1.83GHz version may not be up to the task of 1080P), and a hard drive that is leftover stock from 2-3 years ago. The built-in wireless and optical out (assuming you don't need to pay $50+ extra for a minijack to optical converter) features are great, but overall, it doesn't seem like good value for money in my books- especially if you're going to be running windows on it. The main argument I read/hear from other pc enthusiasts in defense for the macs is how neatly the OS is integrated with the hardware, and by running windows, you'd be bypassing that 'advantage'.

Seems to me that you could build a quieter, more media-capable HTPC that looks very elegant (although, admittedly, not anywhere as small as the mac) using a 780g or GF8200 mobo and a low-power Athlon X2 in an Antec 1380 all for about half the cost of the cheaper mac mini (assuming you already have the OS, but if you were going to run win on mac then you'd have to buy it as well if you don't already have it). And I'm not pulling the 1/2 price out of thin air- I actually went to newegg and priced out a BYOKMD system for $290-325 depending on choice of 1GB RAM (like the mac) vs 2GB, and 80GB notebook drive vs 640GB WD Green 3.5".

EDIT: On second thought, I forgot a few things in the above build (aftermarket CPU cooler, quiet case fan, quiet replacement fan for PSU, wireless adapter) which adds another $60 to the total. I cheated a little bit by getting a ninja mini and using its fan for the PSU in this imaginary build. Still $350-385 vs $600-800 for essentially the same functionality, with tradeoffs between noise and size advantages canceling each other out, I know which way I'd go...

[The Gangrel]

A few things to think about:

Fan manufacturers lie about their fan specs(or at the very least distort the truth). The typical background noise level in a rather quiet room will be around 15db, so any fan you can describe as "loud" that claims to be 15db clearly isn't.

db doesn't decrease with direct relation to fan speed(i.e half fan speed doesn't equal half db, could be more or less).

Lastly, the human ear has greater sensitivity to certain frequencies than others, so one sound at x frequency could sound much louder than another at y frequency given the same db rating.

The best way to get a "quiet" fan is to check the SPCR recommended fans list, this will tell you about the true db at x rotation speed(measured by SPCR) and further more the subjective quality of the noise at said rotation speed, which is far more important than rote db ratings especially when they come from the manufacturer.

[ist.martin]

...And I'm not pulling the 1/2 price out of thin air- I actually went to newegg and priced out a BYOKMD system for $290-325 depending on choice of 1GB RAM (like the mac) vs 2GB, and 80GB notebook drive vs 640GB WD Green 3.5".
...

I've done the same thing myself, and the price has always been comparable to the mini, without all the great extra Mac sw. Unfortunately, the mini is under-powered and it is NOT silent. Which parts list did you price out to $385?

Thanks.

[my-pc-is-too-loud]

I have found someone who has just about managed to shoehorn a Sythe Ninja mini into a Psile case so shopping list currently looks like:

• Nexus Psile Case, 150W PSU Kit & DVD Writer (£222)
  Scythe Ninja Mini (£27)
  Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache (£63)
  Scythe Quiet Drive for 2.5" Internal HDD Silence (£28)
  Coolink SWiF-801 80mm Case Fan (£8)
  5v Noiseless resistor cable (£3)

With that summing up to about £350 so far.

If I go with this I need an ITX mobo (either 775 of AM2) and a nice low temp CPU to go with it (& 4Gb ram). If the mobo has PCI express then I'll need a new dual freeview tuner.

Any suggestions on these (or improvements on the above?)

that is a nice case, so the scythe mini fits ?

any similar cases I would prefer something more flat and wide.... as per my other post I am probably going to end up with an antec...

- MoDT is obsolete in my opinion, as 45nm Core 2 Duo CPUs barely use more energy than equivalent 'mobile' counterparts.
- Intel is releasing mobile CPUs for s775 soon. Max TDP 35W and they'll fit in any s775 motherboard.
.

when are those cpu's coming?

- If you want a no compromise, performant and silent small footprint HTPC I'd check out atechfabrication.com. I have no affiliation with them -- don't want you to think I'm shilling. Smile Might stretch your 600 UKP budget though.

alternatively and IMHO even nicer go to hifiatx.com and start drooling near perfect, if I end with cash (small lottery win, hope hope hope) that is where I am heading

[ben]

Thank you for all the feedback:

Intel is releasing mobile CPUs for s775 soon

That sounds intersting - I hadn't heard that!

atechfabrication.com

hifiatx.com

Would be nice if I was spending a little more.

Mac Mini

Let's see if I can build something better than Steve Jobs
Incidentally I don't need wireless - I have 2xGbit LAN in every room in the house.

Just about any modern dual-core processor will be able to run 1080p content

But not the Atom 330 - otherwise I'd have gone with that.

I'd suggest having that turned into a a dedicated file server for all storage kept in a closet or whatever in a case that will hold the multiple drives.

I already have the server built and hosting the multiple drived (last months build was to replace the old server) - when 2TB or larger HDDs come up there will be a HDD consolodation exercise...

Seems to me that you could build a quieter, more media-capable HTPC that looks very elegant

I was looking at the Antec Cube (especially since I got my Antec 3 hundred and like that so much) and almost went that route but didn't like the PSU positioning and I think (could be wrong) before that one was customised it was 80mm fan which is a shame given size of case could cope with 120mm... Very nearly went this route...

Fan manufacturers lie about their fan specs

That was kind of my point saying the 15db fan was loud, the SPCR recommended fans list doesn't include the fan I'm thinking of getting -but as a fan is negligable money I could always try other ones later if the range of noise it makes isn't perfect for me.

that is a nice case, so the scythe mini fits ?

Apparently just about - although the top bolts may have to come off because there are 0mm to spare!

[ben]

OK so I have made a choise - the Psile looks great and is 10cm smaller in each dinension that the antec so...

• £124.74 - Nexus Psile Case & DVD Writer - http://www.itx-warehouse.co.uk/Product. ... ductID=807
  £40.25 - Nexus FSP150-AAA 150W 19V Adapter - http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=30#psilepower
  £33.35 - Nexus PSB-1000 DC-DC converter - http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=30#psilepower
  £82.07 - Jetway JNC62K AM2+ GeForce 8200 - http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=12081
  £48.7 - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e - http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.a ... t_id=22077
  £16.58 - Crucial 2GB 800MHz DDR2 PC2-6400 - http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=55XM
  £30.34 - Scythe Ninja Mini - http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=555G
  £64.64 - Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache - http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.a ... t_id=22699
  £27.99 - Scythe Quiet Drive for 2.5" Internal HDD Silence - http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/produc ... quietdrive
  £8.5 - Coolink SWiF-801 80mm Case Fan - http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/produc ... olink_80_r
  £2.29 - 5v Noiseless resistor cable - http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/produc ... /resistors
  £86.13 - Gyration Media Center Vista Remote Compact Suite - http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=4S8K
  £0 - Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual digital DVB-T PCI TV card - Taken from main PC

Total cost £565.58 + P&P from 6 different suppliers. All lowest prices and in stock apart from the QuietDrive which should be stocked up again soon.

I have not used itx-warehouse, mini-itx, linitx or cclonline before so if any are dodgy please warn me!

I could get the Psile, PSU and adapter as a kit from mini-itx.com but getting them separatly I am saving £20, if anyone thinks itx-warehouse is dodgy I'll get the kit from mini-itx instead.

Most importantly if anyone can see anything that is not compatible or should be swapped with a better or cheaper component please let me know.

It won't be blisteringly fast but should do the job without sweating too much, look good and perhaps in a couple of years I'll be able to keep the case and upgrade with one of those Mobile CPUs on s775 (or whatever is available then)...

[ben]

- MoDT is obsolete in my opinion, as 45nm Core 2 Duo CPUs barely use more energy than equivalent 'mobile' counterparts.
- Intel is releasing mobile CPUs for s775 soon. Max TDP 35W and they'll fit in any s775 motherboard.

This seems contradictory (or perhaps it is just that your opinion is different to Intel's opinion). It would be interesting to see a comprehensive testing head to head of desktop vs mobile to see if the premium is worth it. I would be interesting to know which throw out more heat when the comparison is like-for-like and which start to choke quicker when the temp gets higher. I have seen stats showing that desktop cpus are no longer much different from mobile but nothing quantifiable, but if intel are going to bring out mobile cpus on s775 then they obviously think there is something better about them - shame all this is incompatible anyway (esp. heatsinks)

[Moogles]

- MoDT is obsolete in my opinion, as 45nm Core 2 Duo CPUs barely use more energy than equivalent 'mobile' counterparts.
- Intel is releasing mobile CPUs for s775 soon. Max TDP 35W and they'll fit in any s775 motherboard.
.

when are those cpu's coming?

- If you want a no compromise, performant and silent small footprint HTPC I'd check out atechfabrication.com. I have no affiliation with them -- don't want you to think I'm shilling. Smile Might stretch your 600 UKP budget though.

alternatively and IMHO even nicer go to hifiatx.com and start drooling near perfect, if I end with cash (small lottery win, hope hope hope) that is where I am heading

I just went back to the original news article I read concerning the 35W s775 CPUs, and apparently the information provided was incorrect. They are coming out with new 35W mobile CPUs, but they require a mobile socket. Here's a link: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/displa ... actor.html

On the subject of mCubed's fanless offerings, there are some quality, design and service issues (I read their forums regularly) that prevent me from buying such a case. Atech builds custom, precision machined, perfect fit cooling solutions that just exude quality. I mean, look at this! http://www.atechfabrication.com/images/ ... 28-640.jpg

mCubed's generic CPU mounting mechanism with bendable heatpipes and plexiglass mounting plates is just too rinky dink for me.

[hybrid2d4x4]

...And I'm not pulling the 1/2 price out of thin air- I actually went to newegg and priced out a BYOKMD system for $290-325 depending on choice of 1GB RAM (like the mac) vs 2GB, and 80GB notebook drive vs 640GB WD Green 3.5".
...

I've done the same thing myself, and the price has always been comparable to the mini, without all the great extra Mac sw. Unfortunately, the mini is under-powered and it is NOT silent. Which parts list did you price out to $385?

Thanks.

Sorry for the long response time. For starters, as I mentioned in my post, my prices are in USD$ from newegg, since I imagine that to be where most of the users here are from, so CDN prices would be a bit higher. At any rate, here's what I picked out:
Antec NSK1380 w 350W PSU $79.99 (it was over 100 when I priced it last week)
Gigabyte 780g full-featured mobo $79.99 (last week they had these and the gigabyte GF8200 boards for ~$65 & $60, respectively, but have went up in price apparently)
AMD 4850e CPU $48.99
Kingston 1x2GB pc2-6400 $18.99 (if you feel you want to squeeze the most out of the 780G in games, get a 2x1GB kit, otherwise a single stick will save you a few watts)
WD Green 640GB $69.99
Scythe Ninja Mini $35.99
(optional)Scythe Slipstream or S-Flex for fanswap: $8.99/$14.99

Total Price: $348.93 with components that are equivalent or better than the $799 version of the mac mini at less than half the cost. I deliberately left out bluetooth and WLAN since I don't use either, but a usb adapter is available for the former for as low as $9.99, and a pci b/g adapter for as low as $13.99, bringing the grand total to just under $375.

[ben]

Well, I bought and built the system and all is well - ended up getting case, PSU & Motherboard from mini-itx (ordered 4.30pm and it arrived 10am next morning so relly very good. I have set up a dual boot system with winXP & vista and all seemed to be going well until I install a game (worms 4) on the XP OS, it worked for a turn or so and then died. Tried it on vista and it dies even quicker - freezes to a blank screen requiring hard reset! Also tried a few other old games (need for speed hot pursuit 2 - plays for a bit then freezes; Quake 2 appears ok, although didn't test it for long, GTA (original) displays runs with very garbled graphics...
I wanted it primarily as a media machine but did want to stick the odd old game on there so this is a littel irritating!!

My first thoughts were temperature and power, but I have swaped out the heatsink and have the lid off that looks ok. I also tried hooking up a 620w PSU in case the 150w wasn't enough and I also took out the TV card...same problem... I have the latest nvidia drivers installed...

So now I'm left with a system with a fairly major reliability problem

[Nick Geraedts]

Sounds to me like the graphics card (i.e. the chipset) is overheating if you're getting those kinds of artifacts in games. Does it artifact if you run rthdribl?

[ben]

I haven't tried - I'll give it a go tonight...

I have noticed the layout of the board I have seems different to pics on the net - mine has a small heatsink with fan when the large heatsink is on this pic:

http://images.bit-tech.net/content_imag ... tx/1-3.jpg

There is also an extra, long heatsink just behind the VGA/DVI connectors... which doesn seem to be on the motherboard in the pic! Some changes between revisions?

If it is graphics overheating (I have tried to run for a few secs and alt-tab out to speedfan to check but it crashes before I can check!) it would be faulty board as I have the lid off and haven't tampered with the standard heasinks at all...

Thanks for the help!

[ben]

My Motherboard looks like this:

http://images.hardware.info/products/large/026064.jpg

I think the "-LF" postfix is the difference...

A collegue who plays a few games has just listed some tools I can use to test the GPU more effectively...

[hybrid2d4x4]

The silver heatsink behind your VGA/DVI ports seems to be for the VRM modules.
Your symptoms sound a lot like GPU(chipset) overheating just as Nick mentioned. A good utility for monitoring these things is RivaTuner. You can get it to show your temps as an overlay while you have the game running so you can keep an eye on them in real-time. It will also let you control the clock speed (over/underclock) of the GPU. If the temps do seem to get high , try dropping the clock speed down by half and see how it affects your stability and temps (I'm not sure what constitutes high for this chipset, but I'd like to see it under 80*C at full load as an upper limit, ideally, but these things are supposed to be able to work until ~100*C). If the problem is due to thermals, then you can try to manipulate the airflow in the case so that it gets cooled more effectively.

Alternatively, some other things to try are updating to the latest BIOS revision. Also, try reseating and testing your ram (if games are the only thing that stresses that system), as that can also cause lockups.

[ben]

I didn't have much time last night but I ran rthdribl with fanspeed monitoring the temps. It ran fine for about 5 mins with temp starting about 48C and ending up about 54C. It did bsod in WinXP but I had made the window bigger and that was when I resized it back again. I ran it in vista for ages (and resized the window) with no trouble and simialar temperatures. I then ran worms 4 in vista and it died (frozen machine)after about 5 or 10 secs in the initial menu.

I tried RivaTuner but must be dense as I can't work out where the temp monitoring is so can't get the temp during worms but can't imagine the menu screen it taking the temp up that much in a few secs!

How intensly irritating - I want to get on to the interesting bit of trying to make it as quiet as possible!!

I have actually tried a completely different RAM module and have the same problem I have looked at the BIOS - I have rev A03 and the latest is A05 There is no mention of anything in the release notes of anything like the problem I am having so I haven't updated but could do it just to make sure...

[ben]

I contacted the supplier and they suggested I check CPU temp, driver version and BIOS version. The CPU remains well below 50C with SuperPi running for 30mins so that seems fine. The graphics driver (and other motherboard drivers) have been tested with both the CD version and the latest nvidia drivers (and used drive cleaner pro to properly remove old drivers) whilst the BIOS is version A03 and version A05 (latest) has nothing in the change log to say it fixes catastrophic 3D problems (I haven't updated as the award bios update software requires a pure dos platform and I have no floppy drive to use my old boot disk).

I have run 3DMark05 and that does freeze after a short while (30secs or a couple of mins).

Any more ideas? I've run out!

[hybrid2d4x4]

To access the monitoring in RivaTuner, click the "Customize" button as shown here:

Choose "Hardware Monitoring" from the list (the one with a magnifying glass). If you don't get a graph for temps by default, click the setup button in the bottom right corner, and checkmark "Core Temperature" in the scrolling list in the bottom half of the setup screen.
Once you have that, right-click on the graph for temps, click setup and check "Show Core Temp in On-screen display" and click the "Run Server" button next to it. Try running worms again, and if you see the temp shoot up, try underclocking the GPU next time around.

To underclock using Riva, click the "Customize" button below the one indicated in the picture, in the Driver settings section. Click the leftmost "system settings" button. In the new window, click "enable driver-level hardware overclocking". If you get prompted about detecting default speeds, click "Detect now" and NOT the reboot option. Then reduce the core speed slider and the memory (if applicable) by a very large margin (in the interests of figuring out if this is the cause of your issue, you can fine-tune them later once you know). Then click "Test" near the bottom, and then "Apply". You should see the new clock speeds displayed in the Hardware monitor graphs. Try Worms again, and let us know how it turns out...

[ben]

Thanks for the guide, unfortunatly mine said that there is no additional information available:



And there doesn't seem to be a magnifying glass on the flyout menu:



mini-ITX.com are being very helpful and have contacted jetway to try and diagnose what the problem is but any other ideas you have would be very useful as I have tried just about everything I can think about except replace the motherboard! - I do wish I'd have gone for an intel fly creek motherboard and a core2 cpu!

[hybrid2d4x4]

It looks like your GPU isn't supported in the version or Rivatuner (yet?). Have you checked the BIOS to see if there's a setting for the GPU clock speed? I know the 780G boards have it, so these should as well...

On a side note, if you manage to get it working, the GPU you have is significantly better than G45 for gaming...

[ben]

Well - I think I am getting close. I have had a few random BSODS and I sent the mini-dump files to a friend of mine who works for Microsoft premium tech support... he analysed them and said they were mostly SATA related (something about data issues with the page file/kernal). He did give me a registry key to change so that I could create BSOD dump on demand by pressing ctrl+scroll+scroll but once frozen that didn't work - apparently if it is software that can often work to create a dump even when the machine appears frozen!

I have dug out an old 18GB IDE HDD and installed windows on it and had a bit of a test last night - all seems well... I'll give it a thrashing and leave 3dmark running etc... and see if it holds up... if it does at least the problem is narrowed down to SATA controller/driver/HDD...

They seem random symptoms for disk problems but this guy seems to have experienced teh same thing:

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/in ... 11603.html

[ben]

Well I *think* I'm finally getting there. The short story is that I think the WD Scorpio black drive was the problem; I'm not sure if it is specifically my unit or a general compatibility problem with the mobo (jetway are supposed to be testing this but haven't got back to me; mini-itx never got back to me either). I have bought a seagate momentus 7200.3 320GB drive and the WD is sitting in the naughty corner for the moment; possibly £60 down the tube).

So, assuming that has solved it I am back to the beginning and finally can attempt to make the thing quiet! - It isn't bad on stock cooling but there is an audible whine from the fans...

I'll leave it with stock cooling for a little while before putting the sythe mini-ninja back in.

I'm interested to know if the GPU heatsink and fan can be replaced with a passive unit - it *looks* like a standard northbridge unit... does anyone know if I would be able to fit one of these in there?:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Xigmatek ... dge-cooler

and if it will fit physically will it provide enough cooling?

Happy days!

[NeilBlanchard]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the suggestion - I hadn't thought mac mini as I know windows inside out but unfortunatly not osx (or linux). I shall do some googling and see if this is time to learn. would I have issues of compatability on the network or do macs work nicely with windows these days?

All Macs come with BootCamp, which lets you set up a dual boot with Windows (XP or Vista) as the alternate to OSX.