Hello again! I've done some further research, reviewed my approach and reached the quite possibly mad conclusion that a fanless build might be a good idea. To those of you who have some experience with or knowledge of fanless setups, what do you think about this? Streacom FC8 fanless chassi PicoPSU ...

Yes. I have set Windows 7 to turn off the harddrive completely after two minutes of inactivity (my secondary hard drive), and it's completely silent. After only two minutes? Don't you get a lot of starts-and-stops that way, and wouldn't that shorten the life span of the hard drive? Reassuring to he...

If they stop spinning altogether, that should make the hd virtually inaudible, right?

As we all know mechanical hard drives tend to be quite noisy. Now, I realize there are ways to "spin down" (or turn off or what have you) hard drives after a certain amount of inactivity.

But what does this really imply? Do the disks stop spinning altogether or do they merely slow down?

But I think you should consider a mini-ITX. Take a look at the LIAN LI PC-Q11B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112297 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112296 Given that my setup uses few components (1 hdd, ...

Thanks for all your help! @ces : The Noctua CPU fan seems a good choice, thanks! About the cases and the PSUs, see below. @kuzzia : Money isn't really a big issue here, but if an older CPU is considerably more energy efficient and cooler, it might be worth it. I'll look into it. I had hoped that sof...

(I'm sorry that I haven't contributed anything before asking this advice.) I'm intent on building a simple HTPC with basic server capabilities. I've read through some of the articles and reviews, and I've scanned the forum to some extent to come up with this configuration: Configuration Motherboard:...