> What about using a mobile CPU meant for laptops? They have good power > saving (heat) abilities. Are motherboards that take mobile CPUs > available for a reasonable price?
My goal was a backend/frontend single machine with a pcHDTV card, and maybe a pvr250 later on. I got an XP mobile 2800 chip. The board I choose was an Abit VA10. I knew I had to get a board with multipler adjustements. I thought that Abit would come through here.... not a chance... so I did some hard research this time and got the "Biostar M7NCG 400". I got a cheap desktop case with a 250W power supply and one 5.25 bay in the front. I got out my dremel and "improved" the vent in the top of the case by removing the bits of metal so the vent was actually a series of holes rather then dents. I then mounted a 120mm panaflo under the vent with a short duct so it pulls outside air down over the mainboard. I got a 5 dollar big quiet heat sink from newegg as well. ( I put no creed in expensive heat sinks, they are just slabs of metal. ) I used Artic Silver's "Ceramique" for the contact. ( Performance is all in the contact. ) I stuck both a 100gig and 80gig drives that I had in the two 3.5 inch mounts. ( I could definitely lose more noise with one 200gig Seagate ) I put a little fan I had at the back of the harddrive bay to move air around the drives. I wired all three fans to run at 7 volts, or put power resistors on them. ( The power supply has a fan as well but it's very quite so I didn't rewire it. ) The mobile helps out here a lot. I don't use any frequency scaling or power saving crap. I just under volt the CPU quite a bit, down to 1.2 or1.3 I believe. You can not run a stock 2800 XP with it's CPU fan at 7 volts. This CPU wasn't kicking out any heat at all. With fresh air coming in from the panaflo, and a some air across the drives, everything stays fairly cool. I use the onboard GeforceMX video, however the board does have an AGP slot and an FX5200 works nicely as well. So my experience has led me to some rules for quiet == cool. 1.) Draw outside air with a duct and a vent. 2.) Limit processor heat with mobiles and/or undervolting. 3.) Lower all fan speeds with 7 volts or power resistors. 4.) Use enough fans to cool all components. Even a tiny bit of air movement from the slowest, smallest fan is much better then passive cooling. The only thing I really hear from my machine is the drives... My drives suck and are whiny and loud. I will get a single 200gig seagate in there soon. Then the machine will be very quiet. It plays HDTV with Xv just fine at 2.1Ghz or so. You want to work with the memory speed to get it as high as possible. The board with run memory at 200Mhz , but only if you _don't_ use the onboard video. However, I think I have it running at 183 or something. It's nice to have the mobile where you can set the multipler to anything. -- Anthony Vito [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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