Here are some pics of my recent HTPC adventure, unfortunately I forgot to get a pic of the thing in its final resting place...
http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m261/sidesh0w_2006/?action=view¤t=dscn2191.jpg http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m261/sidesh0w_2006/?action=view¤t=dscn2196.jpg http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m261/sidesh0w_2006/?action=view¤t=dscn2199.jpg http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m261/sidesh0w_2006/?action=view¤t=dscn2202.jpg http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m261/sidesh0w_2006/?action=view¤t=dscn2208.jpg http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m261/sidesh0w_2006/?action=view¤t=dscn2210-1.jpg Specs - Antec Remote Fusion Black HTPC Case Antec Signature 650w psu DFI Lan party JR 9400 T2RS Intel Q9400 CPU 2x2Gb Patriot 1066Mhz DDR2 ram 2 x 1TB WD Green HDD Hauppauge HVR-2200 Pioneer Sata DVD RW Scythe mini ninja cooler Noctua 120 silent case fans Logitech diNovo mini Bluetooth keyboard Overall I am happy with the build, the cpu is passively cooled by the new case fans as the cooler sits perfectly along side the fans. Audio / Video over onboard HDMI. The unit is whisper quiet, the PSU uses a 80mm fan and was recommended by silentpcreview.com. Currently running ubuntu 9.10 / mythtv 0.22. Theme: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Blue_Abstract_Theme Overall cost was $1700 but you could definitely do it cheaper. Luke -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jake Anderson Sent: Sunday, 15 November 2009 11:35 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [SLUG] MythTV hardware advice sought John Clarke wrote: > On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 02:05:37AM +1100, Jake Anderson wrote: > > Jake, > > Thanks for your input, much appreciated. > No worries, > >> you probably want a silverstone case. They have some nice ones. >> > > They have some ugly ones too :-) I was thinking of buying an LC10-E. > I think I have the lc17, was one of the first ones they came out with I think > I'm pretty sure I can do what I want, but I don't know whether I'll be > able to do audio over HDMI or whether I'll need to use analogue audio > for the TV. It doesn't matter; if I want good quality sound I'm not > going to use the speakers in the TV. > Many audio amps that have hdmi ports don't actually decode the audio on the hdmi channel, just something to be wary of. > >> If you want quiet, ditch the mbo, cpu and separate video card. >> the new myth out uses vdpau to accelerate video on anything that >> supports it (> nvidia 9300 or so) >> > > The card I'd picked, the GT220, supports VDPAU (VP4 including MPEG-4 > decoding), but I'll have another look at motherboards and see if I can > find one with suitable graphics on-board. > Yeah it's probably overkill though and in my experince video card fans make loads of noise relative to their size. > >> I have a quad core q6600 in it but I'd put one of the newer quad cores >> in it now but its also my everything server (it has 6gb of ram and is >> > > This is going to be running MythTV only, so I figured a dual core would > be enough. > should be, My dads TV was (until a few days ago) a P4 3Ghz with no vdpau. > >> Although if you want to run commercial flagging while recording you >> will probably want one cpu per channel. >> > > We can live without that. We're used to skipping ads manually, so as > long as I can configure a 30-sec skip button on the remote, it'll be > fine. > Only major upside to it is reduced disk load as it can commflag it can do it without writing it to disk again. Look also at tweaking the file system options so it'll use like 256mb blocks, its not actually a block size of 256mb but you tell the FS that it'll have big files on it on average and if your streaming 2 files onto the one disk it'll help to stop it from getting really fragmented. > Wikipedia says that the GT220 is more powerful than the 9400, so it > might be able to handle it. There's also the GT240 (rumoured to be > coming soon), which has even more grunt. > I'm fairly finiky about it but it all looks good enough to me. > Too much CPU is barely enough :-) > heh, If your going to do transcoding that's pretty true, again quad core will get you the performace for the price and thermal more than faster dual cores ;-> > >> Add another hdd or 2 because myth can use storage pools to reduce the >> seek load when recording and playing multiple streams and drives are so >> cheap these days. >> > > More drives == more noise though, so if I do add more drives, maybe I > should configure a remote back-end? The machine I'd do that on would > then need some drives replacing because all of its SATA ports are in > use, and there's not enough free space to store much TV. > HDD's are pretty silent unless they are super fast to my ear. A 5400RPM drive makes almost no noise next to the 15Krpm seagate cheetah I just put into the missus PC ;-> Having the multiple pools will reduce the amount of disk seeking you need to do and seeks are pretty noisy. Also you can usually tweak the hdd's noise settings and put them into quiet mode where I believe they slow down the seeks so they make less noise. > >> I'd investigate the possibility of sticking / on a USB stick perhaps so >> that the spinning disks can shut down. >> > > I'd thought of that too, but I'll get it up and running on a hard drive > first and see how much noise it makes. Our analogue hard drive recorder > is barely audible with the cabinet door closed. We can hear the drive > heads moving sometimes, but only when editing or deleting content. It's > damn near silent (apart from the cooling fans) when playing or > recording. > My feeling is that provided the thing isnt actually "loud" a little bit of noise is ok, you can't hear it anyway when the TV is on ;-> >> I use a shintaro >> http://www.shintaro.com.au/products/peripherals/14SH-KEYREMOTE/index.htm >> > > I like the little Logitech diNovo Mini. Small is good. > I looked at that, I was going to get one but they were like $240 Vs the shintaros $100. BTW the shintaro can be recovered from having a bowl of stroganoff dumped into it (If your interested). > I won't need to be any more than a few metres away, especially if I can > use the IR remote for most things. > I tried to get the IR remote to work, but by the time it got close I was used to the keyboard ;-> -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html ********************************************************************** This message is intended for the addressee named and may contain privileged information or confidential information or both. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it and notify the sender. ********************************************************************** -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
