building first silent HTPC, can use some help

Edoll · Post by **Edoll** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:41 am

What do i want to do with it?
- run Windows Media Center to:
- play MP3's, DIVX, DVD's, JPG's
- look decent, its going to be in sight since it will be hooked up to a receiver
- be silent
- perhaps a TV tunercard later on, but its definately not an issue now.
- Thats it, its only a media server there will be no gaming or office applications involved

I've been researching processors for the entire week now and the only result so far is having squared eyes. My main focus was to find a processor with a low TDP. I basically the pentium M and/or the new EE (energy efficient) Athlons seem perfect. However, the Pentium M is quite expensive and not realy upgradable and as for the Athlon/Sempron EE's.. so far i havent found any shop here that sells the 35watt versions.

Basically i have a few questions. My eye was set on this System before i started having second doubts again:
- Antec fusion case, very good looking. Concerns: very big and unnessecary PSU It will probably create more heat then nessecary and thus probably be louder.
- Asus N4L-VM DH MB NL4-VM DH Intel945GM ICH7-MDH Green A Onboard vga (should be enough for MCE visuals), onboard sound, onboard LAN, saves power and probably heat
- Pentium M: 725 Very cool running CPU, can perhaps even be coold semi-passively by using case fan(s)
- 2x512mb ram, nothing special, 1gb will be in this htpc for sure
- Samsung spinpoint HD, probably the largest one i can find at the time i make the purchase. This has no doubts for me either, everywhere i looked these were the most quiet harddrives.
- DVD burner, no specific one, also a cheap one i'l probably check if nero drivespeed works with it before buying.

So quite a few issues i'd love to hear some arguments for. The whole Pentium M mobo+cpu bundle to me seems, cool (quiet) and powerfull (too powerfull?), but expensive and not easily upgradable or sell-able later on.

But i'm not sure what else my options are.. the conroe E6300 would probably be best in terms of upgradability, performance, but i wonder if the 65TDP is low enough to use it in a silent system. Please help me make some decisions on this, i'm going completely bonkers trying to decide what's best.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 8:50 am

If you undervolt an AM2 Athlon/Sempron I'm sure you could get the power consumption down to EE levels, and with the added bonus of massively improved upgradeability/resalability (I'm not even sure if that's a word

). So all you have to do is find an AM2 board that can undervolt.

Welcome to SPCR!

m_yates · Post by **m_yates** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 10:17 am

The Antec NSK2400 is very similar to the Fusion, but costs much much less. It was reviewed here at SPCR.

I would look for low power Athlon or Sempron as much more cost effective than a Pentium M, while still being low power. One possibility is the MSI K9NGM2-FID. It has an AM2 socket, onboard video (with no chipset fan), and comes with a TV-out header: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_sp ... D&class=mb

It you get a TV-capture card with a built in encoder chip, the processor won't have much work to do. One good value is the Hauppauge 980 ( WinTV-PVR-250 ). It comes with a remote control and IR blaster for controlling a set top box. It has a hardware MPEG encoder.

Edoll · Post by **Edoll** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 11:13 am

Thanks for the welcome,
I'm quite sure sellable isnt a word either, but i guess it did bring the point across

What do you consider a low power athlon/sempron? - the athlon 64's and sempron 64's i see in our webshops have TDP's of 62watt. The new energy efficient versions are nowhere to be seen.

This undervolting sounds promissing! - Some questions rise though:
- What kind of performance hit would this mean? (undervolting probably means less stable and thus also underclocking?
- How much of the TDP can be sliced off, is it feasible brining a 62watt sempron to say <50watt without underclocking it redicilously much?
- I've browsing about a bit and apparently this is possible with all cool'n quiet supporting mainbords and just by using software? - Im not comfortable doing anything to the hardware

I've read about the NSK2400, i'm still a bit in doubt between the 2400 / fusion.. the fusion looks better

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 12:05 pm

Sounds like you're thinking along the same lines as me. Assuming you just plan on playing the videos as you would sitting at a PC, you don't need much CPU power. If you want to do some fancy signal processing and HD stuff, than you need probably as powerful a CPU you can find. I'm currently using a Mobile P4 running at 1.2GHz. Which is not a great performer at all. But so far hasn't shown any signs that it won't be able to play MPG/AVI/OGM/MKV/etc which is what I'm most interested in. I would say get an AM2 motherboard and a cheap Sempron. If you decide you need more power later, you can always upgrade to a more powerful CPU and not need to replace any other parts.

I also have a spare Celeron-M that I would rather use than the Mobile P4. But that would require spending money on a new motherboard and memory. I was looking at the AOpen i915GMm-HFS. It has tons of A/V outputs. NewEgg has it for $160 or as an OEM Open Box for $103.

Edoll wrote:What do you consider a low power athlon/sempron? - the athlon 64's and sempron 64's i see in our webshops have TDP's of 62watt. The new energy efficient versions are nowhere to be seen.

Any lower end model should be rather cool running. AMDs TDP values are a general rule as to the hottest the range of CPUs will run. I personally would go with an AM2 Sempron 3000. It should probably run under 50W out of the box. It should undervolt bringing it down to around 40W or so. Plus is supports C'n'Q. So you should be able to use some software to bring down the voltage's in software and avoid having to fudge with the BIOS voltages.

Edoll wrote:This undervolting sounds promissing! - Some questions rise though:
- What kind of performance hit would this mean? (undervolting probably means less stable and thus also underclocking?
- How much of the TDP can be sliced off, is it feasible brining a 62watt sempron to say <50watt without underclocking it redicilously much?
- I've browsing about a bit and apparently this is possible with all cool'n quiet supporting mainbords and just by using software? - Im not comfortable doing anything to the hardware

Yes, undervolting is great! It does not affect performance at all. As long as you don't go to low, there should be no stability problems. You never know how low you can go. You just have to try. Run MemTest or Prime95 or something. If you can run them without any problems, your stable. My Sempron 64 2600 is running at 1.05V @ 1.6GHz (from a stock 1.4V) and my Pentium-M 725 is running at 0.925V @1.6GHz (0.7V @600MHz). Both run really cool and I haven't lost any performance. The Sempron I set in the BIOS as it doesn't support C'n'Q. The P-M I set using RMClock as it doesn't have any BIOS options.

My HTPC problem right now is what software to use. I was planning on MythTV. But the remote (ATI Remote Wonder) wasn't working well and I was having issues with the media player side. MPlayer is the default player. But it doesn't appear it can do subtitles unless you pass the subtitle info in as part of the command. (WTF???) I tried to use VLC but that was having some issues as well. MCE has the same issues with subtitles. But at least the remote works in Windows. But MCE doesn't let you change the video player to VLC. So right now I'm thinking of building my own HTPC GUI frontend and launch VLC to play the videos.

Anyone know of any simple media playing HTPC front end that could play through VLC? I don't need TV tunning/recording features which is what most HTPCs seem mostly centered around.

Edoll · Post by **Edoll** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 3:34 am

BillyBuerger: If its subtitle issues you have you should look into directshow filters, i know if you install ffdeshow it also installs a subtitle directshow filter. meaning that the filter will automatically look for a "moviename.srt" subtitle file and start using that without any extra intervention.

Im wandering.. right now im working behind a soon to be absolete P4 northwood 3.2ghz HT (a very hot and absolutely noisy one) the mainboard im using now can't undervolt (vcore already is at its lowest possible setting) but is there a possibility a p4 3.2 can be undervolted to be used in a quiet htpc perhaps using a modern mainboard? (i have an MSI pt880 Neo mainboard btw)

If that's not a real possibility then i've settled for the sempron 3000+ and a am2 mobo that supports cool 'n quiet, 2x512mb ram, samsung spinpoint and either the antec fusion of nsk2400 case. im hoping that will be able to run whisper quiet. (as it seems is possible out of the review for the nsk2400 of this site)

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Thu Sep 07, 2006 3:52 am

The AM2 Sempron 3000 does not support Cool'n'Quiet, so you'll need to find a mobo that can undervolt or move up to the 3200. I was faced with this situation too, and after viewing the prices, I just decided to get the Athlon 3500 since it looks to offer the most bang for the buck and the power consumption is very close to the Sempy's while running C'n'Q.

Oh, and saleable IS a word. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=saleable

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 5:06 am

Edoll wrote:BillyBuerger: If its subtitle issues you have you should look into directshow filters, i know if you install ffdeshow it also installs a subtitle directshow filter. meaning that the filter will automatically look for a "moviename.srt" subtitle file and start using that without any extra intervention.

Actually, I'm playing with MediaPortal right now and it seems to be working pretty well. (I installed the K-Lite Mega Codepack which includes all the different filters and stuff) I have OGM and MKV files with multiple subtitle and audio streams. Sometimes I may want to watch in english with no subtitles or Japanese with subtitles. So being able to change these on the fly is important. And MediaPortal seems to be working well with that. Now I just have to get my ATI Remote Wonder to interface correctly.

Edoll wrote:Im wandering.. right now im working behind a soon to be absolete P4 northwood 3.2ghz HT (a very hot and absolutely noisy one) the mainboard im using now can't undervolt (vcore already is at its lowest possible setting) but is there a possibility a p4 3.2 can be undervolted to be used in a quiet htpc perhaps using a modern mainboard? (i have an MSI pt880 Neo mainboard btw)

I haven't worked at all with Intel P4s and undervolting. But I would guess that even with a motherboard that undervolts, you'd be hard pressed to get that CPU running very cool. You would still need a good cooling system which can be difficult, especially in an HTPC, to keep quiet. Not that it can't be done!

Edoll · Post by **Edoll** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:40 am

Well, i ordered a few parts last night. namelly.

Antec fusion
samsung spinpoint 400gb
DVD rom
MCE remote
ASROCK matx s478 mobo

I'l see if i can use the p4 in it first (p4 and underclocking dont seem to mix very well, at least not on my current mobo MSI Neo PT880 since it has a locked multiplier and the vcore cant be undervolted on this mobo). Basically i dont think it's going to give me what i want.. no onboard vga (have a pssive 9600 here though) and a way to hot cpu. But the way i figure.. this p4 will become completely absolete.

Next project will be the replacement for this desktop (where the p4 currently resides anyway) so at this point i think 50 euro's isnt *THAT* bad to know for certain it's not a good htpc proc. In any case i have some components already so as soon as i think the p4 wont work i'l have to get a new set of mobo + proc.