I have a guest blogger today! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my hubby dearest with his nerdy contribution to the ever evolving world of computer technology! Girls, this may not be so interesting for you, so I won't blame you if you decide to go surf another site like e-bay or something... . But I did promise Martin a guest spot on my blog (since he doesn't have a blog of his own), so here's his exciting post to all nerds out there! Enjoy... .
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- By Martin -
When building an HTPC there are many things to consider, one of the more important ones, if not the most important one, is the WAF (Wife Approval Factor). This is an item that will be just as visible as the TV and therefore must be presentable, something that, over time, wont stick out like a soar thumb.
To accomplish this its important that it looks good, that is not too nerdy, no women want a piece of clunky technology in the living room – married men will testify to this! Choosing the right case is paramount, but equal important is the noise level – you don’t want something that gives you a headache when its time for bed, if you know what I mean…
A gadget that will be on for many hours a day should also be very energy efficient, if the energy bill is too high at the end of the year you might come home one day finding the HTPC in the garbage, next to the moose head – she’s your wife, what can you do?
Ease of use shouldn’t be taken lightly either, fortunately there are many alternatives, just make sure its something that appeals to your better half too. Also make sure that *if’ there are problems, that its something you can actually fix relatively easy – or at the end of the day you will find it, again, next to the moose head…
So in summary:
#1 – Nice looking case
#2 – Silent
#3 – low power requirements
#4 – ease of use
This wont be my first time assembling a computer, by far – but it’s the first time I had to get something WAF certified so it could be in the living room. Fortunately today’s technology (2008) makes it possible to obey all requirements without compromise and without breaking the bank.
CASE
For the case I chose the Silverstone LC20. This company makes many HTPC cases in all shapes and sizes, the quality is really good so the slightly higher prices are justified – you don’t want something plastic-fantastic in the living room :). As you can see it has a very sleek design, only the power button is visible drives and connectors are all hidden behind two push doors.
MOTHERBAORD + CPU + RAM
As of this writing, the most “green” CPU available is from AMD. Their new CPU called 4850e is a DualCore @2.5GHz that uses a maximum of 45Watt!!! Combined with the latest “green” motherboard from ASUS we got ourselves a winner!
I had looked at the 780G chipset from AMD, but this is a two chip solution. A bit more research revealed a new chipset from NVIDIA. The nForce750A(8300), is a single chip solution – less chips, less heat and therefore reduced cooling needs.Memory
is also important, sure you can choose any run of the mill DDR2 PC6400(800MHz) *but* most of these don’t run at the standard 1.8V, many actually requires 1.9-2.0V thus increasing the power consumption and heat production.Also its quite warm in such a case, since airflow is kept to a minimum to reduce noise, so passive cooling is very important – large surface area or heat pipe technology will do the trick. CORSAIR have some excellent memory on the market, I found these 2GB modules which operates at 800MHz @ 1.8V *and* they have a very nice heat spreaders!
HARDDISKS + RAID
My case of choice allows for up to 6 internal 3.5” drives, 2 external 5 ¼” and 1 external 3.5” – enough storage space for most people.
Two slow moving 92mm fans will keep the 6 drives cool. I’m using the new Western Digital’s “green” 1TB drives, they are virtually silent in operation and power consumption is at a record low!
For the OS I chose to utilize one of the 5 ¼ bays and combine it with a HDD cooler from ZALMAN, this frees up all the internal bays for storage and allows me to use a slightly faster drive for the OS and still keeping the heat to a minimum. Using a SSD would have been preferred, but unless you have too much money its not recommend just yet…
With all that storage some form of protection will be need to have, not nice to have! So a RAID5 configuration is a *must*, using 6 1TB disks in this configuration will give ~5TB of storage and the possibility to loose one harddisk without loss of data.You can use the onboard RAID controller as it supports RAID5, I just happened to have an eight channel Promise EX8350 I could use…
CONNECTIVITY
HDMI is probably the easiest way to get video and audio from the HTPC to your amplifier (or TV) as both signals are combined into the same cable – keeps the cable mess to a minimum! Only problem with this is that you need a rather expensive amplifier that supports TrueHD audio :( …but most amplifiers do, however, support S/PDIF using a COAX (electrical) or TOSLINK (optical) cable. This is also digital so its good enough, unless you are really an analogue audiophile.Digital is cheap and easy to use, to get good or better quality using analogue you need… …to get married, too much time on your hand! :)
I did replace the onboard audio (Realtek® ALC1200 with a Creative X-FI PCI-express as this has a TOSLINK interface and slightly better quality.
COOLING
Since this is a HTPC its location will be in the living room. This is a regular PC and as such it has the same problems – two of which are heat and noise!
Heat can be combated by using power efficient components, these gives of less heat and thus requires less cooling which translates into less noise!
Heat pipes and low rpm fans will do miracles in keeping your HTPC’s components cool without the noise!
