My two mCubed HFX systems

[Pate]

Hi!

Okay, showing off my two systems, both built into passive mCubed HFX HTPC cases.

The first one I built about 6 months ago, with a Pentium M 760 (2.0GHz) processor and Aopen i915GMm motherboard. The only moving (and thus noisy) parts are two 2.5" Seagate Momentus 5400.2 hard disks, which are inside a SilentDrive enclosure. This is my practically silent HTPC, which doubles as a download / XviD conversion / 3D rendering machine and stays on 24/7.

The temperatures after 24 hours of constant 3D rendering, for example, stay at 59 degrees C for processor and 38 degrees C northbridge, at ambient temperature of around 22 degrees C.



The newer machine I built just a week ago, and is a more interesting build as it has higher-performance parts. I wanted to get a dual-core processor for working on 3D animation and rendering, so I chose Athlon 64 X2 3800+. Also 2GB RAM is a minimum, and I had two 160GB Samsung hard disks that I wanted to put into this new machine.

I have been very happy with the passive mCubed HFX case in my HTPC, so I thought I'd try to use a similar case for my workstation as well. After some trouble getting the CPU and hard disks to stay cool with practically no air flow in the case, I finally managed to get the machine to stay cool, so here is how I did that. First, here is what Speedfan now reports after 24 hours of having both cores at 100% load rendering a 3D scene:



After I had built the machine and ran the first tests, the CPU temp rose to 69 degrees C after less than 2 hours of rendering, and both the hard disks went over 55 degrees C. None of the temps even showed signs of levelling, all were still slowly rising at that time, so I stopped the render and turned of the PC, and began looking for ways to keep the components cooler.

I ordered a Heatpipe Extension Set (HES) for the processor, so I was able to use both sides of the case heatsinks to cool the processor. This helped somewhat, but still the CPU went to 69 degrees C after a few hours of rendering, and the hard disks again went over 55 degrees C. I also added an old P4 heatsink on top of the processor, but that did not have much of an effect.

Then I found CrystalCPUID, which allowed me to lower the CPU voltage and clock multiplier. After lowering the voltage to 1.250V and multiplier to 9.5x (5% underclocking) I got the CPU to stay below 64 degrees C. However, the hard disks were still a problem. Suspended they were overheating, and if I did not suspend them they were too loud.

I had a couple of heat pipes left over from the HES, so I thought I'd use those to cool the hard disks. Finding way to attach the heat pipes to the hard disks was a problem until I found some sliding bolts (push bolts? Whatever those things are in English) from a local hardware store. I used those and some thermal paste to connect the hard disks with heat pipes to the case heat sinks. This solution worked very well, the hard disks stay at 43 C (SP1614N) and 47 C (SP1604N). The older SP1604N vibrates lot more than the newer disk, which probably causes the higher temperature as well.

This is how my two hard disks are in the case, suspended within a foam and cooled via heatpipes:



Here is a closeup of the heatpipe that cools the hard disk:



An overview of the machine (with a Lacie USB drive and an extra sliding bolt package on top):



Cable mess inside (irrelevant as the air circulation is not an issue with this case):



Anyways, currently both my mCubed HFX machines are working perfectly and both can be on overnight at 100% CPU load without disturbing my sleep.

Thanks for reading this far! Comments are welcome.

Pate

[theyangster]

now that's cool!

perhaps a cool gel pak under the HD (on the logic board) would help?

[niels007]

Love the thinking "lets attatch those heatpipes to the HD" and it really worked well too! Good stuff

[jaganath]

Amazing, amazing high-performance for a totally passive system! Are you using Silverstone fanless PSU's for both HTPCs? How hot do they get? What are those 4 red knobs/LEDs above the USB ports?

Not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but totally worth it I suspect!

[Pate]

Amazing, amazing high-performance for a totally passive system! Are you using Silverstone fanless PSU's for both HTPCs? How hot do they get?

The older system with the Pentium M processor uses the Silverstone passive PSU, but the newer PC uses an old Nexus 350 PSU I had lying around. I might try it with the passive PSU later on, but that Nexus is quiet enough at the moment.

The Silverstone PSU in my HTPC does get rather hot (even the bottom of the PSU is very warm to the touch, but not so warm that it feels like it would burn my fingers).

What are those 4 red knobs/LEDs above the USB ports?

At the back of the case? Those are actually 4 sets of RCA plugs (left=white, right=red) that are built into the case. I could connect some analog or even SPDIF connections to them if I wanted. There is also a SCART connector at the back of the case.

Not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but totally worth it I suspect!

That is true, the cases cost quite a bit, but since I've been envious of my friend's Zalman TNN-500 system for almost two years now, I thought it was time I beat him in our "arms race"

Pate

[Tibors]

Nice work!

I see the cable on the PCI bracket for the COM port is actually long enough to reach across the hole case. Is that the original that came with your MSI RS482M4 mobo? I have the older brother of that mobo (RS480M2) and it came with a cable that is so short it is unusable.

[Pate]

Nice work!

Thanks!

I see the cable on the PCI bracket for the COM port is actually long enough to reach across the hole case. Is that the original that came with your MSI RS482M4 mobo? I have the older brother of that mobo (RS480M2) and it came with a cable that is so short it is unusable.

Yeah, that's the original COM port bracket. I don't actually need it, but installed it (same as the other brackets) just because they fit nicely.

Pate

[johncl]

Hi, and thanks for showing your two mCubed systems. I am in the process of making myself a htpc which has to be totally silent, or at least so silent that I will not be able to hear it on a silent evening on the sofa.

The mCubed systems has been on my wish list for a long time, mainly because of the ability to passively cool both a CPU and a GPU. I read up a bit on the Pentium M processors and was really surprised when I saw that your 760 2.0 GHz P-M processor has a temperature of 59 degrees Celsius!!! I consider that very high since this is a 27 watt processor according to Intel specs. Are you sure that your heatpipe is properly attached?

Also, I would like to use the Borg heatpipe system to cool a 6600gt because I would like to be able to play some games on this system too. Anyone have any experience with this?

Finally, there is a 500w PSU that is called MIST here in Norway (Cooltek MST 500 "Real Power" in Germany I think) that is supposed to be the most silent one while still using a fan. From what I know, the speed depents on the load and not necessarily on heat, meaning that a Pentium-M system with the 6600gt wont draw too much power and cause the fan to spin up. I have ordered this PSU now to test it out in my main system which is already very silent with huge copper coolers from zalman on both CPU and GPU. If I order the mCubed I will try this PSU in that first just to see if it works well with no noise - and its always nice to have the assurance that some heat is pushed out of the case. Your silverstone passively cooled PSU sounds a bit too hot imho, and I can see that its an issue from your pictures where you have extra blocks of wood under the feet to keep it up from the table.

[johncl]

Hmm, on close inspection of the case I see that the PSU is mounted far inside the case towards the front with no exhaust possibility if the PSU has a fan. This ruins my plans of using a very silent PSU instead of a passive one.

[Pate]

Hi, and thanks for showing your two mCubed systems.

Hi, and no problem, thanks for your interest!

The mCubed systems has been on my wish list for a long time, mainly because of the ability to passively cool both a CPU and a GPU. I read up a bit on the Pentium M processors and was really surprised when I saw that your 760 2.0 GHz P-M processor has a temperature of 59 degrees Celsius!!! I consider that very high since this is a 27 watt processor according to Intel specs. Are you sure that your heatpipe is properly attached?

Well, I only connected two of the four heatpipes, so in that sense my heatpipes are not properly attached.

I think I read somewhere that the max case temperature of Pentium M is around 100 degrees C, so I consider 59 degrees C really cold. I used to have a P4 system and had it running at constant CPU temperature of 69 degrees C for about two years with no problems. The max case temp of that processor was much lower than my Pentium M, so I feel my safety margin at the moment is huge.

Your silverstone passively cooled PSU sounds a bit too hot imho, and I can see that its an issue from your pictures where you have extra blocks of wood under the feet to keep it up from the table.

Actually, those wooden blocks are there because the system is deeper than the depth of the shelf the system is on (so that the rear legs fell off the shelf without the wooden blocks). They certainly do also help with the cooling, though.

This ruins my plans of using a very silent PSU instead of a passive one.

Well, I have an active Nexus 350 PSU in my newer mCubed HFX PC, so I don't see why you could not use an active PSU in yours. My Nexus gets cool air from below the system so the fan never speeds up from the slowest setting, even with both cores at 100% for long periods.

Good luck with whatever system you decide to get for your HTPC!

Pate

[jaganath]

From what I know, the speed depends on the load and not necessarily on heat

That would be the first PSU that SPCR has ever come across that varies fan speed as a function of electrical load rather than heatsink temperature. ALL fan-controlled PSU's that I know of use a thermistor attached to the main PSU heatsink to control fan speed; the only differences are in the integrated circuit design to tell the fan how much to vary after a given rise X in temperature.

More load = more heat (although many PSU's reach higher efficiencies at higher loads, so the relationship is not linear).

[johncl]

Thanks for the quick replies. Seems I have had the wrong idea about how the PSU fan was working, thanks for clearing that out. Probably gonna try out that MIST PSU and see how its working although 500watts seems to be overkill for this system.

I assume the passively cooled Silverstone 300 watt be enough for a system containing this:

MSI Pentium-M 915i Micro-ATX motherboard
Pentium M 740 (1.73 GHz)
1 GB (2x512 MB) ram
GeForce 6600GT
Hauppage Win-TV 350 tv-card
120 GB Seagate Barracuda 3.5" (might use a 2.5" instead)

[jaganath]

I assume the passively cooled Silverstone 300 watt be enough for a system containing this:

Yep, should easily be enough.

Motherboard: 5~10W
Pentium M 740: 27W (TDP)
1 GB RAM: 5W
6600GT: Max 51W (see this Xbitlabs article: link
TV card: 20W?
120GB Barracuda: ~10W, maybe a little more at spin-up

TOTAL: c. 125W max power dissipation

[johncl]

Thats nice to hear! This is getting all the more tempting...

Do you think the heatpipe for the 478 will fit the Pentium-M 479 socket? My provider of heatpipes say that it might be a problem and I should wait for them to get a dedicated 479 heatpipe kit.

[jaganath]

Do you think the heatpipe for the 478 will fit the Pentium-M 479 socket?

Is this the motherboard that you are getting?



If so, it looks like it has a stock socket 478 retention bracket, so even if the heatpipe doesn't fit you can still put a conventional heatsink on there.

PS. The photo is a picture of the MSI 915GM Speedster FA4.

[johncl]

Yeah, thats the motherboard I was thinking of. Seems to be a good one and costs quite a bit less than than then AOpen cards (around 500 NOK lower price).

I was going to use the borg heatpipe system on this CPU though, so I guess thats out of the question unless the Borg can fit this 478 retention bracket?

[Pate]

The normal Borg HPC fits Intel P4 Socket LGA775, 478 and AMD Athlon64 754/939/940, so it should fit fine if that motherboard uses a standard 478 socket retention mechanism.

However, looks like the location of the CPU socket on that motherboard is such that you will probably need to bend the heatpipes close to 180 degrees (instead of the 90 degree bend they come with). Should not be a problem in itself, just something you might want to be aware of. The heatpipes bend quite easily and seem to work fine regardless of the amount of bending done to them.

Pate

[johncl]

Thanks again for your answer Pate. Yes I noticed too that the socket was placed a bit odd. And I have read some more details on this board now that makes me wonder if I can use it at all. If you look at this review:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.a ... 37&head=58

There is a section about the power connector: "Another sign of the server department’s involvement in developing this board is the presence of a 24-pin power connector. By contrast, the AOpen i915GMm-HFS only featured a standard 20-pin ATX connector. In a sense this was an advantage as it gave you a wider choice of PSUs to choose from as only more recent PSUs offer a 24-pin connector, so check before you pair up this board with your PSU. A +12V four-pin connector is also present and needs to be connected for the board to boot."

This seems to ruin the ability to use the Silverstone Nighjar 300w fanless PSU for this project. The Silverstone only has a 20pin power connector it seems. What I dont understand is that it uses a 24 pin connector but still requires you to connect a 4 pin +12V connector too. I thought that was supposed to be part of the 24 pins?!?

[Tibors]

The extra 4 pins (3.3V, 5V, 12V1 and ground) on a 24-pin ATX connector are for powering cards in the PCIe slot. The 4-pin connector (2x ground and 2x 12V2) is for powering the CPU. As you can see they have a totally different purpose and are powered from a different rail. Most 24-pins mobos work fine with 20-pin PSU's.

B.T.W. The line "Another sign of the server department’s involvement in developing this board is the presence of a 24-pin power connector." just means the reviewer hasn't got a clue what he is talking about. And that he is getting behind on the times. Any newly released mobo that wants to comply with the latest ATX specs needs to have a 24-pin connector.

[jaganath]

A +12V four-pin connector is also present and needs to be connected for the board to boot."

This is true of all P4 boards, it's not some freak feature specific to the i915GM. The Silverstone Nightjar PSU will have no problems powering that board.

[johncl]

Ok, thanks all for your help. I have just ordered the mCubed hfx with a vertical silence HD enclosure. And I also chose to get the AOpen Pentium-M board instead with 1GB DDR2 memory and a Pentium-M 740 CPU.

I will try this out first with normal fan based cooling and then order the heatpipes as i see fit. Most probably the new Borg heatpipe that seems specifically made for this motherboard as well as the GPU heatpipe. I will first try this out with a very silent PSU (which was planned for my main system) and see how that works out.

[Pate]

Congrats, johncl!

By the way, sorry I haven't mentioned this earlier but I only just remembered it: The SATA RAID connectors of the AOpen i915GM board are situated so that it is close to impossible to use them if you use the Silverstone passive PSU. There are no problems if you use only a single SATA disk or PATA disks, but as I wanted to have a SATA RAID configuration I had to lift the PSU up about an inch (which meant I had to improvise the bracket that holds it in place) to get the main power cable (from wall outlet to the PSU) to clear the SATA RAID connectors of the motherboard.

Hopefully this is not an issue with your setup.

I also recommend that you get the Borg 479 heatpipe system as soon as you can, as that is a really problem-free cooling solution. Truly an "install-and-forget" solution.

Pate

[johncl]

Thank you! I have read so many good things about this Silverstone 300w passively cooled PSU that I just went ahead and ordered that and the VFD/remote that is made for the mCubed system (seems I can get em to work fine in Meedio which I intend to run on it). I was a bit sceptical about the 300w since it became so hot and I was afraid that it might shorten the lifetime of everything inside the case, especially since I plan to use a 6600gt in it too. Just need to wait some more for my seller to get the Borg 479 heatpipe cooler in stock.

Really looking forward to piecing it all together into my dream htpc.

Just wondering, how would you compare the quality you get from a software DVD player on a PC connected to an LCD hdtv to that of a dedicated DVD player? I plan to use a Sony 40" LCD with 1:1 pixel mapping on the VGA port (HDMI doesnt like DVI signal at native resolution) and are really wondering if the scalar in e.g. PowerDVD is as good as the native one in the television.

[Pate]

I use a Panasonic AE-700 projector as my display device. For some reason I could not get my DVI->HDMI cable to work at HDTV standard resolutions (all other resolutions did work, though), so I switched to using component cables. I run the desktop at 1280x720 (at 59.94Hz) resolution, and thus zoom PowerDVD to fullscreen to that resolution when watching DVDs.

I see no difference in picture quality whether I use that setup or connect my (ancient, non-progressive) DVD player to the projector directly. I am quite happy with the picture quality of my HTPC, whether playing DVDs or HDTV material.

I have a feeling that on my new desktop PC with the ATI Radeon Xpress 200 integrated video the picture quality of PowerDVD is not as good as with the Intel GMA900 on the AOpen board. I haven't yet used the same display device, though, so I can not be certain.

Pate

[johncl]

Just recently got the mCubed case, vertical silence, AOpen card, 740 CPU and 1 GB memory! I had an Asus DVD-player lying around as well as a new Samsung Spinpoint 250GB S-ATA drive that I wanted to use too. Later I plan to add a 6600gt card I have too, but for now I will use the motherboard GPU.

I think I did everything wrong when I started mounting this thing. Motherboard had to go in and out 3 times before I did everything right. And its a very tight fit for the Power cable to the motherboard. Its kinda squeezed under the DVD drive there. Also, the front of my DVD drive is unfortunately not flat, making it impossible to mount the acrylic thing. I dont know if I should try to take the front off and sand it down so that its flat or just get a new DVD drive. If anyone can recommend one that is silent (dampened in some way inside) i will be very happy. Installing Windows Xp was extremely noisy as the drive spins up to full speed.

System booted fine and first I wanted to check temperatures. My CPU, a 740 1,73 GHz, seemed to climb to around 50 degrees quickly (I think bios run some stress on CPU dont they, to simulate load temps?). The Asus fan is clearly audible, but kept the temps under 50 degrees. I configured it so that the fan would adjust according to a target of 55 degrees. I can hear that its spinning up and down now. Kinda hoped they would adjust speed to keep it under 55 and not turn it on and off all the time.

Want to try this undervolting from the review of the AOpen card here on silent pc review. Is that all done from Bios? Seems there is a lot to gain from that.

I use a Fortron Source 350 watts PSU for now, and its kinda noisy wooshing a lot of air into the system. Still awating the Silverstone 300 watts passive one as well as the VFD display and the Hauppage WinTV-150 MCE card. Hopefully the 479 heatpipe is here soon too as I really want to get rid of that fan and have a purely passive cooled system.

The vertical silence seems to work fine, but its hard to know if I hear anything from it since the PSU and the CPU fan is definitely louder. Really looking forward to hearing how silent it can get.

[johncl]

Seems my CPU will idle around 60 degrees now after some hours. Dunno, but it sounds a bit too high for me. Gonna try to reapply some Arctic Silver 5 again (after cleaning the die) and refit the cooler once more and see if I can get it down a bit.

Other then that I have just installed Meedio and use the Nvidia codec for DVD playback. The quality is stunning and the scaling is absolutely perfect. I can run my 40" Sony S10 LCD at 1280x768 with a very sharp image (still gonna try to get the native 1360x768 res some day soon though). A 1280x768 image stretched to fit is almost as good and I really dont notice any blurs. The htpc setup is definitely satisfying my expectations!

Meedio is also great with the many plugins that exist, and especially a cool one for NRK (norwegian television station) that has all latest news and shows available on the net so that you can view through the interface easily. I also use a theme adapted for widescreen (hdtv).

The onboard GPU on the AOpen is quite fast and works fine for typical DVD playback and such. Still I want to play games on this too some day, and will fit the 6600gt as soon as I get the passive heatpipe cooling for that one too. But my main focus now is to get the new passive PSU and heatpipe cooler for CPU to get it silent!

[johncl]

Installed the new passive psu and naturally temperatures went up a bit, even undervolted at 1.1 volts the CPU will climb near to 70 degrees celcius after load for some time. Touching the heatsink (supplied with AOpen card) and its not even warm to the touch, probably arond 35 degrees celsius. So obvioulsy the supplied heatsink isnt even in contact with the CPU die and its only the fan thats sucking some air away from around the CPU. Does anyone else have any experience with this?

I am soon expecting the new Borg 479 heatpipe cooler and I hope that will transfer heat better as well as getting rid of the second last source of noise.

The harddisk is mounted inside a vertical silence, and gets way too hot for my liking (48 degrees celcius after 3 hours, burning hot at the touch). Going to swap that for a 2.5" drive instead. Less noise and less heat.

[niceguy]

Folks....For those of you who like this Hi-End look and well built chassis you may purchase it at www.elgo-tech.com at a very reasonable price. They are in Canada.

[daneiljacks0n]

I ordered a Heatpipe Extension Set (HES) for the processor, so I was able to use both sides of the case heatsinks to cool the processor. This helped somewhat, but still the CPU went to 69 degrees C after a few hours of rendering, and the hard disks again went over 55 degrees C. I also added an old P4 heatsink on top of the processor, but that did not have much of an effect.

Pate

Great post, I am thinking of purchasing a mCubed HFX with a dual core 3800+ but I thought the mCubed HFX could handle a CPU upto 120W, and the dual core AMD 3800+ is specified as 89W. Do you know why additional heatpipes were required over the standard supplied with the HFX case kit?

[niceguy]

I just built a unit with AMD 4400+ and use the extension kit just in case. The internal temperature is so dame cool and running great.