Hi and happy new year! I was wondering if someone can help me. I want to build a media pc for the living room. It needs to be small and very quiet. It will just be used for media play back up to 1080p. I've got a Core 2 Quad Q8300 spare so that could be included. Something as cheap as possible. I dont need much storage as I've got a NAS for archive stuff. thanks in advance.
You'll need a few things. Depends on what you have. If you're sticking with the Core 2 Quad, you'll need your motherboard obviously as well as your memory. For playing movies you don't need much more than a low spec GPU like an AMD HD7750 or NVidia's Equivalent. Get a small SSD for the OS for fast booting. If you wanted to watch some Television using Antenna or Satellite signals get a TV Card. There are many models and I don't use one so I can't recommend the best model. A Good looking case is a must. OrigenAE and Streacom have nice, minimalist cases, but most are radically expensive unless you're looking to spend Hundreds on a case. But Fractal Design and Silverstone have some modest HTPC cases for some good prices. For Quiet the Stock heatsink is actually pretty quiet. But you can get a small, flat and very quiet heatsink from any of the major manufacturers but Be Quiet! have one that is great.
I have just upgraded my media PC with a Celeron G530, 4GB DDR3 a MSI 1155 mobo (Aria open box £22) and a standard 250GB HD and all is fine. I have 2 dual DVB-T tuners and I use s£ sleep, so I would never put a SSD in it. I use a nVidia 210 with HDMI output @ 1080P I do not have 1 problem with it at all. Using anything more expensive is kinda silly, unless you have loads of money. Mine works, and been using a media center pc for at least 4 years without problems.
Yeah you don't need much - I bought an Asus P5G41T board (from a member on here), slotted in a Core 2 Duo E8400 I had, and paired that with a 64Gb SSD I had spare (all my media is stored on a server), and stuffed in some RAM and added a blu-ray drive - it's quiet, quick and does a sterling job of being a media PC in a second room. Your largest expense, if you're a bit case style conscious like me, will probably be the enclosure. It's important to get something that is well-cooled and doesn't make a terrible racket, while all the time looking nice. Do you have any space in a hi-fi rack or TV unit (to fit in a standard AV component-sized case), or are you thinking something along the lines of a mini-ITX type build?
Was thinking about mini itx, but open to anything really. The main thing it has to be quiet, I dont want to be watching something and hear the hum of a computer.
My HTPC is in a Silverstone GD04. I love it. I have a passively cooled E8400, 4GB RAM, a GTX 560, a 256GB SSD and a 2TB HDD. The 3x 120mm fans are very quiet, and speedfan makes it almost silent when not under full load.
Oh, by the way, the GD04 case only takes mATX boards but does take a full ATX power supply and a full size DVD/BD drive.
Budget dependent, there are a fair few passively cooled cases around. My main HTPC is in an HFX passively cooled chassis (HFX classic), and my secondary one is in a Silverstone ML02 (which is also very quiet if you tinker with the single 50mm(!) fan to slow the airflow, disable it, or replace it. Both cases are fairly pricey, but a friend has an Antec Fusion chassis which is very quiet (he's put decent fans in it) Case choice all comes down to a) aesthetics and b) budget!
If you want to re-use your CPU, have a look in the marketplace to see if anyone's shifting a microATX Socket 775 board?
Ideal. If you give an idea of budget, I'll happily give some case ideas? It all hinges on what defines 'cheap'!
The Antec Fusion is a great case. The fans that come with it have speed controllers so they can be silent. I run mine with a passive heatsinks on the CPU and GPU. I did used to use an onboard GPU (ATI 780G or something like that) which did a great job for blu-rays and the rest but I needed a discrete one with a newer HDMI version when I got a 3D TV. Are you after a TV card? I've been very happy with Blackgold ones. If you want Freeview HD I can recommend the BGT3620 (dual) or BGT3650 (quad).
Probably something like this, if you don't mind low-profile expansion cards (low-power GPUs are often low-pro, as are TV tuners), or one of the Antec VERIS range (the new range which has replaced the fusion lot as I understand it). However, if you want a remote receiver built in, you'll have to a) mod a cheaper case, or b) get one with an MCE remote inbuilt, which plugs into a USB header. If you want VFD displays and the like, things start getting a bit more expensive. I like Silverstone cases though, and think that the ML03 looks good. It's USB3, too, which is a bonus.
Not really, just a gentle whoosh which I can easily ignore when playing games etc. The key to a quiet system is to tweak the parameters in speedfan so that the fans don't speed up too much unless they really have to.
You can probably get away with changing the fans for, say, Nexus or the like (which are quiet by design) and then not have to worry too much about controlling the fan speed too heavily (plus, most decent mobos now have some degree of fan speed control inbuilt). Remember that smaller fans usually = louder!
Seconded on both counts. The Fusion case is well built, allows you to use a remote control and is quiet and isn't too difficult to build in. Same for the Blackgold tuners - they're fantastic, though expensive. Can't recommend using your Q8300 though - it's a 95W CPU which is going to be very difficult to cool in a small case - I had enough trouble getting a 65W i3 530 to run at a sensible temperature, to the extent I rebuilt my HTPC in July using a 35W TDP CPU(see my sig for the specs). The Fusion was about £120 when I bought mine, though for me was worth the money - I've said before though that the bundled remote is useless - I replaced it for an Origen branded version of the Microsoft designed Vista MCE remote - which is all I need unless doing updates. £400 is a realistic budget for something nice but obviously depends on storage requirements, whether you want to play Blu-Ray discs or not...
Just realised I didn't post the link to the recommended case. It's this: http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=283&area=en
