Making a Power yet quiet HTPC

[ZyRo70]

Well I recently got a nice plasma tv and i want to make a HTPC for it. I want to use it for recording tv, watching movies, and playing games. I want the computer to be silent when its being used for movies or recording tv but it can get a little noisier when playing games since the noise probably wont bother me during that time. I've been thing about the AMD 64 because of its Cool n' Quiet so it can be quiet when its not under stress. I also want to use the 939 socket so if i needed to i could upgrade to the X2(unless the 754 is better?). I was planning on using the Antec Sonata II and i wanted to know if the Cool n' Quiet can effect the case fan as well. Another thing is i am planning on using a pretty powerful video card(PCI-e) such as the 6800gt.

-Do all AMD 64 cpu's have the cool n' quiet?
-What heatsinks would be good with this setup so that the fan might slow down a lot when its not being used?
-Do you know of any sites showing the power consumption of the AMD 64's with the Cool n' Quiet enabled?

Does this seem possible??

THANKS!!!!!!

[justblair]

This is more than possible.... HTPC's really dont need that much processing power. Is your plasma HDTV ready, ?

I haven't used a AMD64 yet, My HTPC performs admirably with a heavily underclocked 2100xp running digital TV and music.... Trick is to use the right supporting hardware.

Anyhow..

Do all 64's have cool and quiet.... Yes, though the voltage change is a task actually performed by the mobo. One or two mobos didn't support it origionally, but I am fairly certain that all do now. I dont work in PC retail anymore though so dont take my answer as definative, the mobo manufacturer will list it in their specs I am sure.

Wattages for cool n' quiet...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... 200_4.html

According to this article az 89w rated athlon drops to 35w under cool and quiet.

Any of the big coolers will be able to handle this, to give you an example...

My Athlon XP2100 is underclocked to 1100 and 1.4v from 1733 and 1.75v
This gives it an approx wattage of 29w. I use the tt big typhoon CPU cooler. The case is horizontally aligned.

When underataking typical HTPC duties it idles at 51c gets up to 60c if I'm recording TV and playing back another recording... I have a completely pasive rig, which relies on convection and a lot of mesh to cool it. If I didn't have the silverstone passive PSU so close to it, I reckon it could have run cooler than that. I never play games on it though, and have not CPU burned it to see how hot it would be under full load. 60-70% is as much load as it gets in its entertainment duties.

What you are looking for if you want to keep it simply is a mobo with at least 2 PWM equiped fan headers. You can then use software such as speedfan to control the case and CPU fans from 0 to 100% of their rpm. The tri-cool fan on that case is compatible though from what I have read here there are better fans out there for silence purposes.

CPU cooler wise would depend on the layout you prefer. Someone is going to recommend the Ninja of course... The advantages of it are...

You can duct it to your PSU fan if you wish and run it passive (well sort of passive in my book ) You could also have a second fan on it ready to ramp up during game play. Or duct it to the outside and use one fan to cool the PSU and the internal case temp, Or Duct... There are so many ways to use a tower cooler and so many threads here turn into barneys over which method is best.

I happen to like the Typhoon, as it is a great performer for a lot less money than the Scythe... Especially as it comes with a very quiet fan on it already.

If you look in the galleries section you will find many posts using this cooler, it's flavour of the month. I dare say you could find a few examples exactly the same as the case/cpu/mobo you are considering and just copy the one you like best.

i think Asus does a passive high end GPU, or you can use the antec silencer if you like. My brother just ordered one of these so I can tell you in a day or so how good it is. Oh just made me think, that means there is a TT schooner going spare... What can i use that for...

Good luck with what you decide on.

[jaganath]

According to this article az 89w rated athlon drops to 35w under cool and quiet.

35 watts is still pushing the edge of what can be cooled passively. I believe the mobile Athlon puts out about 25W, and the Geode max. 14W? However performance is also less.

I have a completely passive rig

Cool. (not literally obviously! )

If I didn't have the silverstone passive PSU

What do you think of this PSU? Had any problems with it? How hot does it get?

[justblair]

35 watts is still pushing the edge of what can be cooled passively. I believe the mobile Athlon puts out about 25W, and the Geode max. 14W? However performance is also less.

Yes obviously it is... I built (well still doing the prettying up) a case ripping up a midi tower making some fairly drastic adaptions. The holes for the ventilation may seem fairly easy to cut, but then suddenly you have to replace that metal with more metal to stiffen it. However that all depends on what you term passive. The word passive seems to have developed a particular usage on this site when describing CPU coolers i.e. The cooler has no active cooling, but relies on the active cooling from another component... Pseudo passive, to coin a phrase. Pseudo passive cooling should be more than possible when this system is in idle, and then have the fans turn on when games are played as Zyro had planned.

Funnily enough that was my origional plan with the passive system I am working on just now, but three things happened to change my plans.

1. 8rdavcore simply wouldn't do the state changes that my project hinged upon on my NF7 mobo.

2. My anticipated useage of the system turned out to be incorrect. PC games are generally not designed to be played from a couch. MCE on the other hand is so bloody good that I now watch a lot more films, listen to a lot more music and record tv. It really changed how I use my leisure time.

3. My fettling with each and every bit of the process, from optimising the OS to buying in supporting hardware that reduced the CPU cycles dramatically, was so fascinating to me (I was also studying MCP Server so was trying out lots of stuff at home) that the full passive system sort of evolved. (I checked out speedfan and realised that my CPU useage never broke 35% so I underclocked and bingo)

The silverstone power supply has been absolutely fantastic. It gets hot to the touch but not burny burny. Has only ever cut out once, and that was not a thermal overload, that was a slip of a screwdriver that shorted out my homebrew LCD character display running on the 5v line. The power supply protected itself, the LCD display was somewhat less fortunate.

It does exactly what it says on the tin, looks fabulous (bear in mind that it can be seen clearly through mesh) and has no coil noise, transformer hum or anything else. I have been running it 24/7 now since October with no forced ventilation. Admittedly it was in free air for a bit as while I was tweaking I had the system laid out in my desk ghetto style.

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/blairt ... pg&.src=ph

You can see it in this photo lurking in the background with HD enclosures LCD panels and all sorts scattered around the place.

I will no doubt post in the general gallery when i have my project finished.

[ZyRo70]

Thanks for the reply! Well i plan on playing some intense games(halflife 2, battlefield 2). How does this look?
i plan on hooking up all the fans to the motherboard so that the compuer can control them based on the temperature and how active the CPU(most likley a AMD venice core 939) is.
what fans would you recomend?

[stupid]

According to this article az 89w rated athlon drops to 35w under cool and quiet.

I believe the article only states the TDP, which is the maximum heat output under adverse conditions. The 89w is stated by AMD for all single core AMD64 and the dual core X2 3800+. It is obviously a very conservative number. Below is an article from Dec 2004 that compares an A64 3500+ 90nm and 130nm that provides temperatures of the CPU:

Hothardware.com - Temperatures

The article reveiws the older Winchester 90nm core, not the current Venice core. The only significant difference is the added support for SSE3. As can be seen, the 3500+ outputs 46'C of heat under load or 115'F.

Hothardware.com - Power Consumption

Based on the article the entire system only draws 113w of power under load. This is from the AC outlet and excludes the monitor. Remember that the article stated only low power components were used. Here is my guess-timate of CPU power draw:

Total Power 113w (Under load)
Less: Motherboard 12
Less: Video Card 22
Less: RAM 4
Less: Hard Drive (idle) 6
Less: Other misc. 6
CPU Power Consumption 63w (Under load)

These are only guess-timated power consumption, so I am sure people with disagree with my numbers. There is a link somewhere in SPCR to a site that calculates power consumption and I'm sure someone will provide link. But there are people who posted that those numbers are overstated. Therefore take these numbers with a grain of salt.

The 113w is an accruate number because the Seasonic Power Angel was used to obtain the number. Also, be aware that the efficiency of the PSU also determines overall power draw. I think the Antec True Power is rated at about 70% efficiency (I'm pretty sure I'm wrong, but what the hell), if an 80% efficient PSU was used like a Seasonic S12, then the power consumption will be less.

The Athlon 64 CPUs are very cool especially compared to the Pentium 4s. In fact, people are using the Scythe Ninja to passively cool the dual core Athlon 64 X2 3800+ in a case with decent ventillation. The more daring state that they are passively cooling the X2 4600+.

[ZyRo70]

What do you think would be quieter, the Zalman Reserator or 2 or 3 fans running at low rpm?(what fans would you guys reccomend?)

[stupid]

What do you think would be quieter, the Zalman Reserator or 2 or 3 fans running at low rpm?(what fans would you guys reccomend?)

To me water cooling is really an extreme way of cooling your CPU & GPU. It is very expensive for the near silence that you pay for in my opinion. I would go for a Scythe Ninja with a Nexus fan (or Yate Loon), and the Zalman VF700 for your video card. This setup may not be as silent as the Zalman Reserator, but it will be cheaper.

[El Doug]

my reserator is on the way for my HTPC which is similar in specs to yours - ill let you know how it works out

[dragmor]

I've been thing about the AMD 64 because of its Cool n' Quiet so it can be quiet when its not under stress. I also want to use the 939 socket so if i needed to i could upgrade to the X2(unless the 754 is better?).

-Do all AMD 64 cpu's have the cool n' quiet?
-Do you know of any sites showing the power consumption of the AMD 64's with the Cool n' Quiet enabled?

All A64's have CnQ and but Semprons below 3000+ do NOT have CnQ which limits them for HTPC use.

You can reduce the temperatures substantially by undervolting the CPU. I'm running a 3500+ in a shuttle. With the ICE fan on low the difference between [email protected] and [email protected] is about 10c. I have idle underclocked and undervolted from [email protected] to [email protected] and the difference is about 4c and there is no difference in performance.

As for graphics I suggest getting a 7800GT rather than a 6800 card its faster and cooler. Or you could wait for the 7900s to come out. Hopefully the 90nm transistion will make them cooler. The X1900 cards do have the hardware accelerated H.264 which might be nice for a HTPC and slightly better image quality.

[stupid]

As for graphics I suggest getting a 7800GT rather than a 6800 card its faster and cooler. Or you could wait for the 7900s to come out. Hopefully the 90nm transistion will make them cooler. The X1900 cards do have the hardware accelerated H.264 which might be nice for a HTPC and slightly better image quality.

The 7800GT and 6800GT both produces about the same amount of heat, based on the articles I've read there is only a 2'C difference at most between the two. Having said that I would opt for the 7800GT if you can afford the extra $50+ if you live in the US.

The X1900XT is hungry like Hell for electricity, and just as hot. Since we're talking about Hell you might need to sell your soul to pay for a X1900XT which starts at $500.

In case you are not made of money, you might want to consider the 6800GS. It is about $60 less than the the GT version, and in most cases a little slower. But it is worthy of consideration.

6800GS Review. Oooooh animated bar graphs.....

[autoboy]

For the most part the cooling of your cpu depends on your case. Everyone here recomends the ninja but the ninja does not fit in most HTPC cases. I use the areocool 101 which fits 80mm fans. My cpu never gets past 37C with the panaflo L1A on 5V. It is a sempron 2600+ for socket 754 which tends to run cooler than 939 athlons. Still, temps in the 50s are no problem as long as your system is stable so do't shy away from higher temps. Getting a motherboard with fan control is probably the most important. I got one of the gigabyte Nforce 4 boards for a friends build (can't remember the name of the board) and the fan control was fantastic. There were 4 different fan settings you can set the temps for (I set mine pretty high, 45, 55, 60, 65) with a Zalman 7000 AlCu and the fan ussually never runs when idle. the X2 3800+ seems to idle with no fan turned on at 38C (there is a antec tricool 120 pretty close to it in my P150). I set the PWM settings to 1 and the fan starts everytime and is absolutely silent. No clue to what the voltage was but i expect it was something like 4.5V. It never ramps to 55 so it never hits the next fan voltage. Might be something to think about though i'm not sure how other people here rate them. The passive northbridge seemed to run pretty hot. Too hot to touch for any period of time at least. Overall, its not that hard to build a silent computer as long as you stick to the recommended lists here.

[ZyRo70]

As for graphics I suggest getting a 7800GT rather than a 6800 card its faster and cooler. Or you could wait for the 7900s to come out. Hopefully the 90nm transistion will make them cooler. The X1900 cards do have the hardware accelerated H.264 which might be nice for a HTPC and slightly better image quality.

Oh, thanks for the suggestion. I was going to get a 7800GT originally but i thought that i would create too much heat for a quiet system to cool.

the Zalman VF700 for your video card.

Assuming this heatsink works with the 7800gt as well, do you think that the artic cooler might be quieter? plus it vents the heat from the card out the back through a pci slot.

[stupid]

For the most part the cooling of your cpu depends on your case. Everyone here recomends the ninja but the ninja does not fit in most HTPC cases.

I would tend to agree with you. Most of the time when I personally speak of a HTPC it is usually a small case. But when many people here at SPCR posts topics on HTPC, like ZyRo70, they are speaking more about the function of the PC; not the physical size or type of case.

ZyRo70 stated he will be using the Antec Sonata II, it may not fit the "definition" of a HTPC case, but it is large enough to fit a Ninja.

[stupid]

the Zalman VF700 for your video card.

Assuming this heatsink works with the 7800gt as well, do you think that the artic cooler might be quieter? plus it vents the heat from the card out the back through a pci slot.

The downside to the Artic Cooler is that it is specific to the brand of graphics card. I know there are different Artic Coolers for ATI and nVidia so you cannot swap one for the other. I am not sure if Artic Cooler is also specific to the video card model, meaning there may be an Artic Cooler specifically for the 6800 series and the 7800 series.

The great thing about AC is that they exhaust the heat out the back of the case. There are reports that after a short time AC can start making noise. It has been reported to happen on the ATI coolers, not sure about the nVidia versions though. I assume they use the same parts, just arranged differently.

The Zalman VF700 is a universal solution, it works with all current generation video cards; ATI, nVidia it doesn't matter. The only exception that I know of is the GeForce 5xxx series, but I don't think you'll be getting one of those.

[ZyRo70]

ZyRo70 stated he will be using the Antec Sonata II, it may not fit the "definition" of a HTPC case, but it is large enough to fit a Ninja.

Well the reason i chose the Sonata is because i think it looks nice enought to be a HTPC plus i don't want to be constrained by small HTPC cases.(I think the sonata is still pretty small though.....)

[derekva]

Thanks for the reply! Well i plan on playing some intense games(halflife 2, battlefield 2).

On a plasma? Eeek! You're gonna have some heinous burn-in...

It might help us if you told us what you will be running on this HTPC. Windows Media Center 2005? SageTV?

For what its worth, I'm running Media Center 2005 on a Sempron 3300+ with 1GB RAM and a Radeon 9600XT (will be upgrading to a FX5950U when I upgrade my desktop machine). It works fine for normal TV and should be OK for HDTV (waiting for the cable-card tuners), although the video card upgrade will help a lot. The biggest shortcoming in my system is that I only have 200GB of drive space.

Comments on hardware:
- Since you want S939 instead of S754, you may want to go with a 3200+ or even an Opteron 146 as they have very good thermal profiles.
- The Sonata is a decent case, but I'm a fan of the OrigenAE X11.
- A 6600GT or 6800GS are both good choices for HTPC / HDTV, but you'll want to get a better cooler.
- I've been hearing good things about the Asus A8R-MVP ATI CrossFire board...

-Derek

[Jeff Haas]

I've been following the HTPC build threads for awhile. I think a 6150 motherboard should be fine, reportedly it can handle HDTV so it's just a matter of adding in a TV tuner card (and 802.11 wireless to connect to the net.)

My question is, how do you figure out which heat sink fits into a case? Let's say I like the OrigenAE 11. How much space is there above the motherboard for a heat sink?

The website shows that it's 155mm (6.1 inches) tall. But there could be some sort of crossbar that would get in the way.

Jeff

[El Doug]

i have an x11 and can tell you that theres plenty room left above my 7800 inside, so unless youre looking at an uber-tower heatsink you should be fine