Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

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trucabulles
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Joined: Sat May 24, 2014 4:27 am
Location: France

Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

Post by trucabulles » Sat May 24, 2014 5:59 am

Hi,

I am planning to build a new machine using an old case on mine that the Antec NSK2400 (2006 HTPC case).

I am going to run a gentoo based OS called Daphile. This PC will be a headless PC, no need for video output except for bios configuration. No need for huge power neither, since music playing (flac mainly) is not demanding a lot of CPU power (should be less that 10pcent average). I will probably undervolt the chosen CPU.

I have been browsing PC parts sites (in France) and I just do not know what to choose. AM1 processors from AMD seems ok for a fabless use but for now the stock heatsink cannot be changed (nothing available for 2 holes mount) and I don't know if an AMD Athlon 5350 (kabini) will run fabless with only the stock heatsink.

An other problem is the PSU. I don't know what to choose, since I thought a fanless one form Seasonic X400fl would do but I am not sure if I can use such a PSU with my horizontal antic case. Hybrid PSUs seems cool but I don't when the fan starts (at what temp or wattage) and running a fan is not what I want (it keeps resonating in my furniture.

last point is that I absolutely need 3 sata connectors (SSD, HD and cd drive).

i will use 2*1gb of DDR3 10600 for now. More that enough for my needs and I already own it

Motherboard max size: mini-ATX. Micro ATX prefered. Having coaxial or spdif is a plus.

So what I thought would do:

Processor: INTEL Celeron G1840
Main board: GIGABYTE H81M-HD3
RAM: 2*1gb DDR3 PC10600
Thermal paste: NOCTUA NT-H1
FAN: if possible, stock heatsink fabless or NOCTUA NH-L12
PSU: Seasonic P-400FL Platinum or Seasonic G-Series G-360 (is it hybrid?)

I will add later a 60gb SSD dedicated to the OS


Or the other idea was:

Mini ITX ASROCK AM1H-ITX - Socket AM1 with DC in 19v and an AMD kabini 5350 ... far less expensive!


Thank you for reading and making suggestions !
Last edited by trucabulles on Sat May 24, 2014 7:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

FrankL
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Re: Silent PC for audiophile use (fabless)

Post by FrankL » Sat May 24, 2014 7:30 am

OT: fabless doesn't mean the thing you think it means (although AMD is indeed fabless these days)

CA_Steve
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Re: Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

Post by CA_Steve » Sat May 24, 2014 11:04 am

Your system is ideal for a DC-in motherboard. As it turns out, Phoronix reviewed the Asrock mobo. So, it looks like it can be linux friendly.

trucabulles
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat May 24, 2014 4:27 am
Location: France

Re: Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

Post by trucabulles » Sat May 24, 2014 12:15 pm

FrankL wrote:OT: fabless doesn't mean the thing you think it means (although AMD is indeed fabless these days)
Typing mistakes, you know... Hopefully, you could be helpful with my config :mrgreen:

@CA_STEVE: Thank you for the link. I already had read this article on Phoronix, that's why I thought the AM1 config could be nice. Only thing that is a bit annoying for now is that no other heatsink is available but stock and I fear that It cannot run fanless with stock.

My current config for this gentoo based OS is an AMD sempron 3200+ operated fanless with the stock heatsink. Temperature of the 3200+ never goes beyond 37 degrees celsisus, chipset 57 and incase with no fan 45. Acceptable but I want something more optimized for my use.
Current PSU is an "old" Antec earthgreen 500w 80+ certified, moded with a noctua 8cm fan plugged outside the psu with a noctua ulna (I have a stock of noctua fans back to the time I used to build PCs). I added pads of rubber between the case and the psu today and the noise it produces with those tweaks is unheard at 1 meter or so from the PC. External 19v input would be a nice step with the AM1...
Last edited by trucabulles on Sat May 24, 2014 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

CA_Steve
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Re: Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

Post by CA_Steve » Sat May 24, 2014 12:48 pm

Worst case - don't use the stock fan. With your use, the CPU will be consuming 10W or less. You can modify a good low rpm (and silent) fan to mount onto the cooler if needed.

trucabulles
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Location: France

Re: Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

Post by trucabulles » Sat May 24, 2014 1:03 pm

Yeah low power PC indeed. I have to decide what to buy but for less than a hundred bucks, this AM1 sets looks good. 19v power unit needed seems pretty standard (and I also have some in stock).
I probably should, nor will, use the stock fan at all, and will no fan at all....

CA_Steve
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Re: Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

Post by CA_Steve » Sat May 24, 2014 3:46 pm

Look for a 19V brick with a "V" efficiency level.

boost
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Re: Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

Post by boost » Sun May 25, 2014 9:09 am

Why do you want to use a PC?
An audiphile (SA)CD/Bluray Player like the Denon DBT-1713UD can play all the music formats you like and you can connect an external drive via USB with all your flac files.
I have never been happy with onboard sound from mainboards even via S/PDIF. Audiphiles use asyncronous USB D/As to get better quality, I'm lazy and just use a sound card with S/PDIF out.

sjoukew
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Re: Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

Post by sjoukew » Sun May 25, 2014 1:15 pm

Memory is very cheap, I would add more ram. If it is not in use by your programs, it will be used as disk-cache and speed-up your machine.
2gb seems very little.

trucabulles
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Joined: Sat May 24, 2014 4:27 am
Location: France

Re: Silent PC for audiophile use (fanless)

Post by trucabulles » Sun May 25, 2014 3:09 pm

I do own an asynchronous DAC.
I already use a PC for reading my flac files and the result with my dac is great (dac then plug to my audio analogue amp and a pair of Triangle Lyrr 222). I would not recommend the use of your denon blu-ray player as an audiophile flac reader.
Using a PC with Daphile as the OS is more fexible in terms of control (Daphile include squeezelight and LMS server, formerly used by logitech in their squeezebox product).
Daphile runs well with only 512mb of ram (used to run it on an old industrial tablet pc with a pentium m onboard). 2 is ok (since it's free and already home). Current config has 4 of ddr2.

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