[mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

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[mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?
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briandlong at gmail.com
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 6:18 pm Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 3:05 PM, Charles Iliya Krempeaux
<charles@reptile.ca> wrote:

Quote:

Charles,
I recently built a PC to replace my aging P4 box. It's not running
MythTV, but I built it to be quiet and it's working out well. I'll
give you a list of components and you can see what makes sense for
your MythTV setup.

Antec Solo case (recommended on silentpcreview.com)
Replaced Antec 12cm fan with Scythe S-FLEX SFF21E
Seasonic Power Supply (also recommended)
Asus P5K Pro motherboard (fanless northbridge)
Core 2 Duo E6300 with stock cooler (quiet)
(2) Samsung 250GB SP2504C Drives (older and quiet)
Nvidia GeForce 7300LE (fanless, fast enough for my needs)

/Brian/
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nico at youplala.net
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:04 pm Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

<charles@reptile.ca> wrote:

Quote:

box myself.

Quote:

The first thing I'd like a MythTV box (that I would build) to be, is
to be quiet. Completely silent if possible. Does anyone have any
advice or experience in doing this?

Here is what I have:

http://www.youplala.net/linux/home-theater-pc

* Thermaltake Mozart SX case - Does not resonate, but cramped. I
would go with a case that accepts vertical PCI PCIe cards if I
had to redo it. But now the TV stand has been custom-made around
this case, so...
* Seasonic S12II 380 W power supply - 120mm fan with automatic
speed control, very nice, very quiet
* Intel DG965WH motherboard - No fan on the chipset, controls case
fans, controls CPU fan
* Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 microprocessor - 64 bit, 4 MB cache, 2.66
MHz, 1066 MHz FSB
* Zalman CNPS8700 NT CPU cooler - Very nice, controlled by the
motherboard. Noisier when it spins up, but only on HD content.
* SilenX iXtrema Pro 80mm 14 dBA 32 CFM fans - No choice with this
case, I had to go with that size. SilenX stuff is very quiet.
They are controlled by th motherboard too
* A-Data memory - 1 GB (2x 512 MB) PC6400 (800 MHz) DDR2
* Thermaltake PCI-E and PCI riser extenter kit
* Western Digital Caviar GP WD10EACS 1 TB, 16 MB cache, SATA-II
hard drive - Very quiet
* Sony DRU-500a DVD reader/writer - Old, noisy, but nearly never
used. There is a trick to control its spin rate through
software, but I never bothered
* Matrix Orbital VK202-24-USB Intelligent VFD
* Hauppauge WinTV NOVA-T-500 dual DVB-T tuners PCI Digital
terresrial TV card
* KWORLD DVB-S 100 DVB-S tuner PCI Digital satellite TV card
* PNY nVidia GeForce 7100 GS - 128 MB - PCI Express 16x with
DVI-HDMI adapter - This one has one of those tiny fans. I'm
suprised that it did not start to be annoying after more than 1
year of operations. Will be gone soon anyway

The NVIDIA card was supposed to be temporary until Intel sorted out the
DVI stuff and come up with HW accelleration for HD video decoding. It
looks like the replacement will be a fanless NVIDIA 8400.

The whole thing is very very quiet, nearly silent when it sits there or
when it is playing SD.

The machine is 3m away from my measuring position, the couch.

Fans only spin-up when playing HD, and in my case this is only when
watching a movie, so the volume is turned up and covers the noise from
the PC.

I am very happy about this setup as I cannot stand fan noise after
having spent way too much time in data center rooms.

I have a history of spending time trying to prevent PC noise:

http://www.youplala.net/v/nicolas/computer/newworkstation/shuttle_mod

The chipset 40mm fan was replaced by a massive passive cooler, and the
original system/cpu fan by a 120mm external fan (now a SilenX) that has
been under-volted.

I can only ear the HDD seeking Surprised

)

I also regularly dismantle my laptops to refresh the thermal paste
between the CPU and heat-pipe as modern laptops are more often under
stress as they are under-cooled to keep noise and size down.

Nico

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james at ultratans.com
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 8:38 pm Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

On Sun, 2008-11-16 at 12:05 -0800, Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:

Quote:

Hello,

First, thanks to everyone to responded to my first e-mail:
http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2008-November/238792.html

So given people's comments in there, I'm exploring building a MythTV box myself.

The first thing I'd like a MythTV box (that I would build) to be, is
to be quiet. Completely silent if possible. Does anyone have any
advice or experience in doing this?

Is using SSDs (Solid-State Drives) instead of a Hard Drive an option?
(Anyone have experience using them?)

What about not having any fans? (Like no CPU fan, no power supply
fan, no graphics hardware fan, etc?)

Does anyone have a list of hardware that is known to work (with Linux
and MythTV)? (Such that I could pick parts from the list?)

Also, what considerations are there for video playback? Is it
recommended to get a system that can playback certain video formats in
hardware (rather than in software)? (Like a hardware MPEG player or
something?) And if so, what hardware of this type is known to work
(with Linux and MythTV)?

Also, what output jacks should I be looking for (in people's
experience)? Is RCA (3 plug) output enough? Or should I go for a
system that supports SVideo? Or do I want a system that support HDMI?
Or is there some other output jack that I want a system to support?
(Note... I'm not an expert on output jacks.)

Obviously, I'd also like the system to support a remote control. And
have wireless networking support. But is there anything else I should
desire in a system?

Thanks.

--
Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.
http://changelog.ca/

I had a hard time finding a half-height PCI-E fanless card with
component out for my Myth box. In the end I bought a Nvidia 8400GS
half-height card with a fan. The fan was ridiculously loud and I ended
up replacing it with a heatsink I got from a local computer store. I
have no idea what the heatsink came from, but it is about 50MM^2 by 35MM
tall. I had to do some minor modifications to make it work, but now my
video card is fanless and under load is cooler than my full size 8400GS
fanless. The downside is that the heatsink covers the PCI slot next to
the PCI-E slot. Not a problem for me, but may be for others.

If you want to see more details of it I just put up a post about it:
http://jamesanddiana.com/blog/?p=9

Cheers,
James

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drescherjm at gmail.com
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:01 pm Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

Quote:

Looks like a zalman zm-nb47j

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118214&Tpk=zm-nb47j

BTW, The only reason I got that is I have a few on my desk...

John
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drescherjm at gmail.com
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:09 pm Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 4:05 PM, John Drescher <drescherjm@gmail.com> wrote:

Quote:

Looks like a zalman zm-nb47j

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835118214&Tpk=zm-nb47j

BTW, The only reason I got that is I have a few on my desk...

Oops did not read far enough. Ignore my post.

John
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peterl at standingwave...
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 9:10 pm Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

On Nov 18, 2008, at 10:22 AM, Brian Long wrote:

Quote:

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 3:05 PM, Charles Iliya Krempeaux
<charles@reptile.ca> wrote:

Quote:

I recently got an Antec P180 tower, and it is a very nice case if
you're looking for a larger "server" type setup. Very sturdy, high
quality. Very quiet.

-Pete
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finlay at moeraki.com
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Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 10:31 pm Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:

Quote:

I wanted my frontends to be quiet and low power because both are in
closed door cabinets. I couldn't use an Antec Solo because the form
factor didn't fit but I went with a couple of Antec NSK2480 cases. I
found a MB with on-board Nvidia 7050 graphics for one system (out to
HDTV) and fanless Nvidia 8500 (out to analog tv). The MB had passive
cooling on the northbridge chip. The 2480 has a couple of Antec120mm
fans that are very quiet at the lowest speed setting. I use fanless
Scythe NINJA MINI CPU coolers with AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane
2.1GHz CPUs since the NINJA was apparently designed to work in the 2480
using only the 120mm case fans. In one case I removed one of the 120mm
case fans to decrease noise as far as it would go at a cost of slightly
higher system temp (4C IIRC). I replaced the Antec power supply with a
Nexus 80Plus 400W power supply which has a 120mm fan (very quiet but
pricey). I've had problems with crappy PS taking out my entire system
including hard drives so I don't economize on PS. The frontends run
diskless since hard drive noise seems loud (maybe the newer hard drives
are better). These run quiet and cool until I play back HD at 1080p when
the system temp goes from 30C to about 38C.

John
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florin at andrei.myip.org
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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:13 am Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:

Quote:

The first thing I'd like a MythTV box (that I would build) to be, is
to be quiet. Completely silent if possible. Does anyone have any
advice or experience in doing this?

Is using SSDs (Solid-State Drives) instead of a Hard Drive an option?
(Anyone have experience using them?)

Whoa, that's pretty extreme. It might be doable, but the obvious
question is: is that a real requirement?

From a practical perspective:

1. Get a fanless graphics card. There are tons of cards out there. Get a
cheap old card that's passively cooled. This is nothing special.

2. Get a motherboard with everything embedded (sound, network, etc.).
This will keep the wattage low, and the noise too.
If you find a mobo that also has a decent graphics card embedded (that
works well enough for MythTV) then that's even better and it obsoletes
item #1 above.
This is nothing special either.

3. Get a low-power ("green", etc.) CPU. Find a decent fan for it, if the
original fan is not quiet enough. Turn on cool-n-quiet in the BIOS, turn
on cpu frequency scaling in the OS, and all that stuff.
I've an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200 that's sitting at 30 C (86 F) when idle,
auto-throttled at 1000 MHz. I can't hear the fan at all when idle, and
when it's not idle it's drowning in the sound coming from the speakers
anyway (and it's pretty quiet even then).

4. Get a low-noise power supply. There are some out there that are
actually fanless and completely silent.

5. Get a decent quiet hard drive. Nothing special.

6. Make sure the case is not a skimpy little thing that rattles and
vibrates from the supply and the disk.

--
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/
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florin at andrei.myip.org
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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:23 am Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:

Quote:

What about not having any fans? (Like no CPU fan, no power supply
fan, no graphics hardware fan, etc?)

Very tricky.

There's a huge difference between no fan at all, and a system that has
at least one fan somewhere. The latter is doable with some skill and
some planning, the former is surprisingly difficult if you want good
performance (HD).

A two-fan system (power supply and CPU) is very easy to build and
usually pretty quiet, if you take the right steps.

Quote:

Also, what output jacks should I be looking for (in people's
experience)? Is RCA (3 plug) output enough? Or should I go for a
system that supports SVideo? Or do I want a system that support HDMI?
Or is there some other output jack that I want a system to support?
(Note... I'm not an expert on output jacks.)

You seem to be casting an exceedingly broad net. Don't you know what are
the connectors on your own TV? Don't you know whether you need HD or not?

Clarify your objectives and a lot of these questions will get an
automatic answer.

Quote:

Obviously, I'd also like the system to support a remote control. And
have wireless networking support. But is there anything else I should
desire in a system?

ditto

--
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/
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steve at priorityelect...
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Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:40 am Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

Quote:

Obviously, I'd also like the system to support a remote control. And
have wireless networking support. But is there anything

else I should

Quote:

desire in a system?

I'd say there is:

1. You probably want to get an IR Blaster so that you can power on/off your
sound system and/or cable box(s). Microsoft makes some good blasters that
come with a remote.

2. Also for the sound, try to get optical or composite output. Every
motherboard that I've used with built in analog sound outputs make buzzing
sounds when the hard drive is being accessed. Even nice Asus boards. Crazy.
But when I go with optical sound, it's super clear and perfect.

-Steve

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charles at reptile.ca
Guest

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:40 am Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

Hello,

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 3:17 AM, Paul Gardiner <lists@glidos.net> wrote:

[...]

Quote:

Did you use anything else for you system too? Like... for example... what
type of enclosure did you use?

Jetway JC200 case

Kingston 1GB 533MHz DDR2 (KVR533D2N4/1G)

Panasonic CW-8124-B with Black Bezel - Slot Loading DVD/CDRW

I could send you urls, if you like.

Yes please. That would be helpful.

Quote:

I have to admit I'm not completely satisfied with picture quality,
but that's just down to perfectionism. The picture is strikingly good,
just subtly not quite as good as my previous DVRs. I think the only way
to get quality as good as good commercial machines

Are there particular commercial machines that you are referring to here?

(I'm interested in finding out what these commercial machines have
that makes them have slightly better picture quality.)

--
Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.
http://changelog.ca/
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charles at reptile.ca
Guest

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:41 am Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

Hello,

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Brian Long <briandlong@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

Quote:

Thanks you very much!

Very helpful.

--
Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.
http://changelog.ca/
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charles at reptile.ca
Guest

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 6:17 am Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

Hello,

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Nicolas Will <nico@youplala.net> wrote:

[...]

Quote:

Here is what I have:

http://www.youplala.net/linux/home-theater-pc

Thank you very much. Very helpful.

Quote:

* Thermaltake Mozart SX case - Does not resonate, but cramped. I
would go with a case that accepts vertical PCI PCIe cards if I
had to redo it. But now the TV stand has been custom-made around
this case, so...

It is a nice looking case though, that would look nice in a living room.

--
Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.
http://changelog.ca/
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nico at youplala.net
Guest

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 6:27 am Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 22:21 -0800, Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:

Quote:

Hello,

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Nicolas Will <nico@youplala.net>
wrote:

[...]

Quote:

Here is what I have:

http://www.youplala.net/linux/home-theater-pc

Thank you very much. Very helpful.

Quote:

* Thermaltake Mozart SX case - Does not resonate, but cramped.

Quote:

would go with a case that accepts vertical PCI PCIe cards if

Quote:

had to redo it. But now the TV stand has been custom-made

around

Quote:

this case, so...

It is a nice looking case though, that would look nice in a living
room.

It does look good. It doesn't look much like a PC or even an HTPC,
especially with the display in it. I get very high WAF with it.

On the other hand, the riser stuff is annoying, there isn't much space
inside, no opportunity for a 120mm case fan, the power supply is a bit
too close to the MB, so I had to Dremel out the CPU fans

But if you manage to make it all fit, change the case fans and don't
have to open it regularly, it's a cool case.

Nico

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charles at reptile.ca
Guest

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 6:36 am Post subject: [mythtv-users] Advice on Building a Quiet MythTV Box?

Hello,

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 12:42 PM, James Crow <james@ultratans.com> wrote:

Quote:

On Sun, 2008-11-16 at 12:05 -0800, Charles Iliya Krempeaux wrote:

[...]

Quote:

If you want to see more details of it I just put up a post about it:
http://jamesanddiana.com/blog/?p=9

Thanks for the article.

--
Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.
http://changelog.ca/
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