My New HTPC

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Are those 60mm fans? If so... they're either insanely noisy, or are literally doing nothing.

SheepStar

Yeah the dual rear exhaust fans are both 60 mm and the front intake fan is 80mm.

You mean they are too small to be effective at a slower/quieter speed?

And if they are going too slow, then they might as well not be running at all?

 

[Nemo128]

Yeah the dual rear exhaust fans are both 60 mm and the front intake fan is 80mm.

You mean they are too small to be effective at a slower/quieter speed?

And if they are going too slow, then they might as well not be running at all?

Break out the Dremel and make 120mm fans fit. Or choose a different case. Anything under 120 is basically useless, because >120 will give you equal airflow for far more noise.

92s are supposed to be a good compromise but I've never seen them perform as such. 60mm??? Ditch them immediately; at 19dB or less, they're providing no airflow whatsoever. To get good flow, they're going to be running loud.

I fully agree with SilentPCReview when they recommend the Scythe Slip Stream SY1225SL12M. It beat my old Nexus and Noctua fans in flow and noise level. Contrary to very popular belief, not all fans of the same size, depth, and RPM are equal. Blade design, motor type, and quality vary greatly.

 

[Nemo128]

Anything under 120 is basically useless, because >120 will give you equal airflow for far more noise.

I'm an idiot, I usually proof my posts.

Above should state "because <120 will give you equal airflow for far more noise."

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

In other words, if I want the same case, I need to remove the old fans and install bigger fans.

 

[Sheep]

In other words, if I want the same case, I need to remove the old fans and install bigger fans.

Pretty much. I dont' know how much room you have in there with all your components, but when you ahve 8 HDDs, a fairly large video card, and a Core2Duo/Core2Quad, you produce a LOT of heat.

When I swapped from my Silverstone into the Antec 900 my video card, and HDD dropped 10 degrees(Silverstone was loaded with fans too). HTPC cases are nice for looks, but if you have serious hardware, I'd look for a way to implement a mid tower.

SheepStar

 

[jinjuku]

What can I say?

I'm already looking forward to building another PC.

Should I go for the same Thermaltake Mozart case or should I go for something like, oh I don't know, MORE?

That PC I built does get pretty HOT like you guys said it would.

I think my room increased like 10 degrees.

Should I go for something cooler like AMD, instead of Intel CPU?

Any HTPC I build is based on the 45 WATT TPD Athlons. I don't build them for gaming so I never have to worry about it.

If I run any auxiliary fans I mod them to run off the 5 volt rail. Get a Nexus or Antec Earth Watts power supply and you should be good to go.

 

[jinjuku]

Pretty much. I dont' know how much room you have in there with all your components, but when you ahve 8 HDDs, a fairly large video card, and a Core2Duo/Core2Quad, you produce a LOT of heat.

When I swapped from my Silverstone into the Antec 900 my video card, and HDD dropped 10 degrees(Silverstone was loaded with fans too). HTPC cases are nice for looks, but if you have serious hardware, I'd look for a way to implement a mid tower.

SheepStar

If you are going that route put in a network attached RAID 5 box... You are already outlaying the cash.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

more pics I didn't get a chance to post

More pics I didn't get a chance to post earlier:

View attachment 7531

View attachment 7532

View attachment 7533

View attachment 7534

View attachment 7535

 

[Gaigebacca]

Go with the Low TDP CPU's from AMD,

Like this...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103683

And then get a 790 series motherboard with the integrated HD3 series video.

Like this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131366

Will save you on heat and expense, and you could always get another HD3xxx series card to run in hybrid CrossFire if you want to do some gaming on it.

Put in 6GB of RAM and then download and install the 64bit Windows 7 RC while you still can, it will be good until June of 2010 (plenty of time to buy an actual license key...) and it has awesome driver and 32bit support and compatibility.

Also, you ALWAYS want your OS on a different partition/drive than your data... that is IT 101... and it pisses me off that OEMs dont do this STANDARD... Also, Windows doesnt like the boot partition to be any larger than 1TB or so... so that is why it wasnt playing nice with the 2TB drives... it wasnt a driver issue or anything, but a Windows issue with the boot partition size... if you do multiple partitions, for Win7 x64 you shouldnt really need any more than 25GB.

 

[Nemo128]

If I run any auxiliary fans I mod them to run off the 5 volt rail. Get a Nexus or Antec Earth Watts power supply and you should be good to go.

jinjuku is right, this is an absolute must. Those Scythe fans I mentioned @ 5V will be dead silent from a meter. Zalman also makes silent power supplies, but they don't offer very high power ratings. Since you're going the low dissipation route (I hope!), they should handle your reqs fine.

Also, you ALWAYS want your OS on a different partition/drive than your data... that is IT 101... and it pisses me off that OEMs dont do this STANDARD... Also, Windows doesnt like the boot partition to be any larger than 1TB or so... so that is why it wasnt playing nice with the 2TB drives... it wasnt a driver issue or anything, but a Windows issue with the boot partition size... if you do multiple partitions, for Win7 x64 you shouldnt really need any more than 25GB.

As far as OS setup is concerned, Gaigebacca offered you the best advice. Never, under any circumstances, use a storage drive as a boot drive. The read/write cycles you subject your OS drive to just to boot and run applications will significantly impact its life span.

I run a 150GB WD VelociRaptor as my primary drive just for OS and apps, and I store everything on a 750GBx4 RAID5 of Samsung F1 drives. I may switch to a SSD for the primary and ditch the 750s for 1.5TBs soon. Funny someone brought it up...

I got home last night, and my system (which is on 24/7) was off. The woman tells me she tried to turn it back on and it would just freeze at the XP loading screen. I shrug. If I don't get it working within 5 mins, I just throw my XP64 disc in and slipstream it back to working order. I don't have time for a night-long troubleshooting session anymore.

 

[GlocksRock]

My media PC has an 80 gig primary drive for OS and programs, everything else gets stored on the 1.5 TB drive. I would hate to lose all my important data due to a virus or whatever, better to be safe than sorry.

 

[Gaigebacca]

Also, Win7 makes managing your data on different partitions easier.. as instead of My Documents... you get Libraries... on Windows Explorer, there is always a link to your Libraries (Videos, Documents, Music, Pictures) and all you have to do is create the main folder for each on your data partition, then right click on the Library shortcut for each, and add that folder to the directory, be sure you delete the default directory on your OS partition, and Win7 will make the new folder the default folder for all of that type of media.

I love this feature, as it makes it easy for my wife, who isnt the most technically savy person, to actually use the right folders, and save her data on the right partition. Where as with XP and Vista, this could sometimes become convoluted and complicated for the layman...

 

[krzywica]

Nice setup, here are some of my thoughts:

- 8GB memory is totally overkill. For a machine who's primary role is media copying and playback, 2GB would probably have been enough, and 4 at the most. Tom's hardware did an article about how adding more than 3GB ram gives diminishing returns unless you are doing something very demanding like 3D modeling/rendering.

- If you are not gaming on this machine, then the Radeon 4850 is overkill. Even the 4550 (approx $40-50) can smoothly playback 1080p. If you are gaming, however, then good choice.

- I can see your desire for lots of HDD space, but unless you intend to fill all 8GB right away, you spent a lot more money per GB than you needed to. If you were willing to sacrifice half that capacity, even four 1TB WD drives would have only been ~$400, saving a whopping $800. Half the capacity but only 1/3 the price.

Otherwise it's nice.

I read the article at Tom's and it had nothing to do with multitasking.....if he is ripping 2 BR's at once and watching a movie he will need it. Trust me I have a rig with 4 and a rig with 8.

The 4850 might be slight overkill but as more ands more apps start to use opengl and directx for their front end it will help create a nice silky smooth UI. Also the GUI in Vista and 7 run much better if a powerfull GPU is present when running aero. I have a 4870, 4770, and a 4350 and the 4350 does not run as smooth as the other two when Aero is enabled......still smooth but not flawless.

When building a system like this it is important to keep scalability in mind. You want to have the maximum HDD density available when building a stand alone system like this as space will become an issue. So going with the 2TB drives would be a good choice.

I would however advise that some type of redundant or fault tollorent RAID be implemented as when you get into amounts of data greater than 1TB backups become problematic if not impossible. I would suggest RAID5 or RAID6 as you can lose 1 or even 2 drives with RAID6 and not lose any data.

Good luck with the project man!

*Edit*

Just got done reading through the rest of the thread and looks like you are getting some good advice!

If you haven't ordered your gear yet...

I have several of the Scythe fans mentioned and I can vouch for them as being the best option. I have tried offerings from almost every other company but the scythes are the best performing for the $.

Also I would suggest that you have the storage in a different location such as a NAS or custom built file server.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Well, I've taken your advice and installed Vista 64, instead of Vista 32.

Thanks.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

...if he is ripping 2 BR's at once and watching a movie he will need it...

I was doing just that today.

I was ripping Transformers BD & Iron man BD while I was watching Watchmen on a Virtual Clone Drive, and everything was cool.

 

[GlocksRock]

I was doing just that today.

I was ripping Transformers BD & Iron man BD while I was watching Watchmen on a Virtual Clone Drive, and everything was cool.

All this talk of fancy pc's is really making me want to get a new computer, but I don't have the funds for it right now. But when I do, I'm leaning towards getting something with a core i7.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

All this talk of fancy pc's is really making me want to get a new computer, but I don't have the funds for it right now. But when I do, I'm leaning towards getting something with a core i7.

Oh, man, is that like $1,000 just for the CPU?

I have not installed AnyDVD HD or DVDFab yet, but I just installed Windows 7 64-bit (OEM, Activated) last night.

I will try to use those 2 applications today after work. I sure hope they work.

With the brief time I've spent with Windows 7, it appears that this OS is running a lot faster than Vista.

Seems like installing the Graphics & Sound Drivers took half as long compared to Vista!

I think I'm going to try that Readyboost on Windows 7 too.

 

[GlocksRock]

The Core i7 extreme is the $1000 cpu, the base model is only $280. But I don't plan on building the computer, I'm going to get the Dell Studio XPS, just the base model and do all the upgrades myself. The PC is only $750 + tax, so it's cheaper for me to get that than to build one.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Windows 7 64-Bit So far so good

Everything seems to be working just fine with Windows 7.

AnyDVD HD - check
DVDFab6 - check
TMT3 - check
Virtual Clone Drive - check

It seems like everything works extremely well so far with Windows 7.

I like it a lot.

 

[krzywica]

The Core i7 extreme is the $1000 cpu, the base model is only $280. But I don't plan on building the computer, I'm going to get the Dell Studio XPS, just the base model and do all the upgrades myself. The PC is only $750 + tax, so it's cheaper for me to get that than to build one.

I would advise against that......Dells motherboards and general build quality are WAY lower than what you would get from a board built by Gigabyte or Asus or the like. Plus the Dell boards are usually very barebone as far as features and functionality..

I would not build an i7 rig unless you are doing a lot of video encoding, or running a 3 way SLI setup. Those are the only 2 situations where a notable improvement will be seen as apposed to a C2Q or a Phenom II.