Pentium M SFF low heat/low noise

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 2:47 pm

Hi guys! I apologize if this is a common question, I did about 30 min of searching and didn't find what I was looking for, so here goes.

I got the media pc bug when I realized that my entire music collection is now in MP3 format. I love music, but shuffling through all my CDs was really annoying. I ripped about 150 CDs onto my hard drive now, and have started buying more online as well. But the real problem is, how to get all my music from point A to point B (point B being my home theater system. I plugged my crappy laptop into my tv and I was pleased with the results (running Media Portal). I've been kind of a fan of the Pentium M because it just seems to run so well for the clock speed, and the tiny amount of power it uses is great. I'm really surprised my 1.3 GHz lappy with 512 mb of ram does as well as it does. And of course you can get a 1.7GHz PM for about $20 on ebay.

1) Is pentium M actually used by many people, or just a small minority? Any glaring deficiencys you can think of, besides the obvious one that it isn't as fast as more modern processors.

2) Anyone have experience with this case, or possibly see a glaring flaw in it? Looks good to me so far.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6856101480

3) Does anyone run Media Portal? Looks good to me so far, but I haven't used it TOO much yet.

4) I've got 2 gigs of 240 pin DDR2, it's corsair 800 mhz, can I use it in a system that wants 240-pin 533 MHz DDR2 w/o any problems? Hate to waste a good 2 gigs of ram I just have sitting around. It's corsair ram so I'm not sure if the "plug and frag" auto speed setting thing will mess it up.

5) Should I fork over $40 for the MCE remote from microsoft or perhaps get a cheap TV card which comes w/ a remote for a little more? I have a nice universal learning remote that I will probably train, but I'll still need the IR reciever.

I'm mainly looking for a music server/digital photo box for now, since I don't have cable or a high-def TV. I want it to absolutely be quiet and efficient, since it will run 24/7. Oh yeah, and I'm on a really tight budget because I'm a broke college student.

Planned Specs:
*1.7 GHz Pentium M (overclocked to 2.26 ghz via FSB bump to 533)
*Scythe Ninja Mini(passive) (if it fits)
*2 GB DDR2 @533
*250 or 400 GB sata HD (most likely Western Dig)
Onboard video and Audio (for the time being)
Small case rigged with accoustic foam or other type of dampening material
WinXP pro/ Media Portal

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:07 pm

Nice specs, but I seriously doubt a mini-Ninja will fit in there.....even if you could get the mounts to fit. Most of these pentium M boards would not take a standard 478 heatsink......

On paper they should be much faster than any of the small VIA boards. Sounds like a good deal. Slap a PICO in there and you might have enough room for a different/bigger heatsink. Good luck with the project....

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:19 pm

PICO ?

Also, another question (sorry) am I going to be losing a lot of sound quality by using onboard sound vs. say an audigy 2 ZS?

To give you an idea I've got a Marantz SR7300 receiver, full monster cables (got a big discount on em) and Paradigm Monitor 9 v3.

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:25 pm

A PICO is a small dc/dc converter that plugs into the board. The 12v ac/dc power supply for it mounts externally.

This allows you to remove the standard internal PSU......opens up the case for many different mods. Plus it doesn't need a fan. Mount a rear fan on the outside of the case. You might stuff a big heatsink in there if you're lucky.

hmsrolst · Post by **hmsrolst** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 5:05 pm

I've been running an SD11G5 for over a year (bought the white one that was used for the SPCR review)--just as a quiet PC not for the various media purposes you have in mind. It runs with a single fan that you can replace with a 92mm Nexus Real Silent and run undervolted. It will be close to silent that way. No Mini Ninja necessary.

I used a Pentium M 750 at stock speed. Using Notebook Hardware Control it would run at .70v for 6X and 1.05v full speed. I could also overclock it to 163 MHz FSB at stock voltage, but seldom did.

One nice thing about Pentium M's compared to Core Duo's (and 2 Duo's) is that the latter go all the way down to .70v, whereas Intel has locked the latter at about .925-.95v as the minimum.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 5:27 pm

Thank you for the replys, and please forgive my relative ignorance about many of these silent PC related items. My current computers are noisy as heck and I think I'll do something about it soon... again the funds are going to be an issue.

BUT I found the SPCR article on that case, very nice, they speak pretty highly of it really. I'm getting pumped, which is kind of a weird thing to say I guess. New Egg has the case for $149, so it's a really good deal. The tough part for me now is convincing the misses to spend some money we don't have.. :p

Redzo · Post by **Redzo** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 8:33 pm

djkest wrote:PICO ?

Also, another question (sorry) am I going to be losing a lot of sound quality by using onboard sound vs. say an audigy 2 ZS?

To give you an idea I've got a Marantz SR7300 receiver, full monster cables (got a big discount on em) and Paradigm Monitor 9 v3.

Answer is a big Yes...Onboard sound will sound poor with weak midranges and even poorer bass. It not something that is obvious for somebody siting with logicrap

speakers that are made of plastic and cost 60$, but with the setup you have, you will hear a big improvement if you go out and get a real soundcard.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:07 am

my friend pointed out that my 192-320 kbps MP3s are going to be a source of sound degredation as well. I probably should have used a "lossless" format instead. Hmm, who wants to spend 12 hours ripping CDs!

Redzo · Post by **Redzo** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 8:33 am

Your friend is right. All form of compression (besides lossles) will degrade sound.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 3:24 pm

Okay, back on track, looking at a
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
for the HD,

Processor probably a 1.7Ghz Pentium-M w/ 2MB cache, overclocking the bus to ~150 while keeping the clock speed the same and undervolting as much as I can.

Butyl rubber-based Sound dampening material applied to all outer casewalls
Replace fan w/ a Scythe S-Flex fluid dynamic bearing fan
And of course rig up a HD suspension to keep that sucker quiet.

Whole thing will be using >50watts at idle I suspect, I can borrow a clamp-on ammeter to verify.

kittle · Post by **kittle** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:33 pm

definately do NOT get an on-board soundcard.

one thing you may want to look into is a turtlebeach card. im a bit of an audiophile myself, and when I pluged in the turtle beach card into my home stereo it sounded wonderful. Unfortunately it made for Lousy performance in games, so I eventually "upgraded" to an audigy card.

The turtle beach card cost me $20 at my local computer store. The audigy 2 card was $120 at the same store (6 months later).

seeing as you wont be playing games on your HTPC, the turtle beach card may be a good choice -- especially when you go back and re-rip all your CDs into a better format

A good test there is to play a cd from the drive, and then play the mp3s you ripped from it, and see if you can hear a difference.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 4:38 pm

Interesting, I'll have to keep that in mind. The shuttle case I'm looking at does have a "sound blaster live" chipset, but I'm sure it's inferior. I've got an audigy 2 ZS in my desktop, maybe I'll steal that and put a cheaper one in that computer.

My DVD/CD player is a pioneer elite with 6-channel burr-brown dacs and monster reference 2 RCAs, so it might win :/

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 7:28 pm

I've got almost the exact same setup you're talking about. Upgraded my laptop's Celeron M 1.3GHz with a Pentium M 1.6GHz. So had that old celeron laying around. I paid $200 (after $60 rebate. Yuck) for the shuttle at the time. So the $150 price tag sounds nice. The stock cooling is very good except for the crap fan. I had a low speed Yate Loon at 5V on it and it kept things running plenty cool. Recently put a Artic Cooling PWM fan on it. Makes a little bit more clicking noise but only when I'm real close to it. Upgrading the cooling would be very difficult and not worth it from what I can see.

The included Sound Baster sound card seems fine to me with all of my 160kbps OGG files. I'm not a huge audiophile though. It only has 1 16x PCIe and 1 1x PCIe. So you can forget any PCI audio cards.

I too use MediaPortal. My reasoning being a) it's free and b) it was one of the few that let me use an external video player which means I can watch mkv and ogm files and switch between the different audio and subtitle tracks. I'm currently using Media Player Classic for that. I like VLC better but it has some issues. Seeking is messed up on ogm and any H264 encoded files drop frames like mad.

I've got a server running Ubuntu Linux which has a 300GB and 500GB drives in a LVM group for a total of 750GB for all my audio/video/picture storage. That way, this thing only needs to hold the OS and software. I've got a 20GB Samsung laptop drive in it suspended. Very quiet and cool and low power. There's no room for suspending a 3.5" drive. So that Seagate will be very noticeable especially when seeking.

It's a great HTPC setup. Although I'm thinking about building a new HTPC sometime and using this as my main desktop. I like it that much. Plus an upgrade to a Pentium M would be nice. Too bad the 780s are still REALLY expensive.

djkest · Post by **djkest** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 7:26 am

I've been looking at the 1.7 GHz Pentium MS with the Dothan core, a little faster and 2mb of cache. $20 plus shipping on ebay.