After looking for a cheap Windows 7 or 8.1 license and not finding anything, I took the leap with a Windows 10 license.
So far the OS does not seem ideal but not too bad.
I stress tested with Prime95 and Furmark. With Prime95 at maximum settings, the computer pulled about 134 watts at the plug and the CPU temperature seemed to stabilize around 64° C with the "silent" fan profile but at least one fan ramped up because the noise level clearly increased. Furmark only drew about 125 watts at the plug and while it looked like the GPU temps were climbing, the test ended before the fans started to ramp noticeably.
My idle draw is around 34 watts so slightly disappointing although hibernate is around 3 watts.
All in all, I think it is pretty good. The GPU is underpowered for gaming (GTX750 non-ti) so it will be dealing with much more GPU soon but I'm not predicting problems.
The Macho 90 just barely fit but seems to be doing a fine job.
My PSU is a 450 watt 80+ gold which should be much more appropriate once I get a powerful GPU.
The noise is hard to judge because my test spot has a high noise floor with a ticking clock, attic exhaust fan and some not quite silent electronics.
The only times it was noisy was installing software off the BD drive and the Prime95 burn in when a fan ramped up. I was worried about the case lid vibrating and transmitting noise but that never was a noticeable issue even without screwing the lid to the chassis.
I'm going to call this a successful experiment, an "obsolete" horizontal HTPC case can be close to silent if the layout is decent and you get parts that will work well inside it.
My Gigabyte Motherboard does not have the most advanced fan control but with low speed fans that does not seem to be an issue, "silent" mode is actually pretty quiet.
Old horizontal HTPC case (full ATX)
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Re: Old horizontal HTPC case (full ATX)
congrats. What steady state idle temps are you seeing (just to put the load temps in perspective).
Re: Old horizontal HTPC case (full ATX)
My idle temps for CPU, PCH and system were all in the 25-35 degree range, low enough that I didn't care which was which but I think I remember the CPU idle being the one around 25 degrees. My ambient temp was around 20 degrees.
One caveat, I have no idea how accurate those numbers are but if they are in the ball park, I like that ball park just fine. I think I set it in ECO mode also which idles the cores at 800mhz.
With this kind of performance, I will probably never have any desire to de-lid, water cool or over clock.
One caveat, I have no idea how accurate those numbers are but if they are in the ball park, I like that ball park just fine. I think I set it in ECO mode also which idles the cores at 800mhz.
With this kind of performance, I will probably never have any desire to de-lid, water cool or over clock.
Re: Old horizontal HTPC case (full ATX)
I got some Blue Ray playback software Power DVD 10 or something, $6.99 OEM package.
It turns out that it is EOL with the software company, no further updates but it was cheap and I got it working.
My Blue Ray playback power is about 44 watts at the plug, good enough for me but the noise of the drive needs some work or else I'll have to come up with a way to copy to the SSD for silent playback.
It's not the biggest problem because the noise should be masked by the sound track of the movie but I'm worried it might make those parts of low dialog less intelligible. It should be fine for Buddy films.
It turns out that it is EOL with the software company, no further updates but it was cheap and I got it working.
My Blue Ray playback power is about 44 watts at the plug, good enough for me but the noise of the drive needs some work or else I'll have to come up with a way to copy to the SSD for silent playback.
It's not the biggest problem because the noise should be masked by the sound track of the movie but I'm worried it might make those parts of low dialog less intelligible. It should be fine for Buddy films.