[PeterS]

Alright, maybe I'm crazy, but I am considering building my own HTPC. First, I am looking for a motherboard recommendation. What do people think of the P5AD2 Premium? This seems to be the best out there and offers a lot of things I would like to have in the future.


Here is what I am considering, please feel free to comment as I am looking for the best performance at lowest noise - fanless if I can do it!


Motherboard: P5AD2 Premium

Processor: Intel 3.2 gHz

Processor Cooling: Fanless (recommendations???)

Case: Silverstone LCO3V - Black

Power Supply: Fanless (recommendations???)

RAM: 1 gigabyte DDR600 (recommendations???)

Video Card: nVidia 6600GT PCI-e

Hard Drives: Dual SATA 400gb (recommendations for sound???)

Video Capture: Looking for Dual NTSC/Hardware MPEG (MCE 2005)???

HD-Capture: ATI HD Wonder

Wireless Keyboad/Mouse: Gyration

Sound: On-Board Intel High Definition Audio (important)


Please feel free to make any recommendations.


Thanks

 

[finlandia]

You are absolutely crazy. Just like the rest of us. DIY is the only way to go if you want this done right, though.


CPU cooling:


I don't think fanless is going to work well for a 3.2GHz P4, especially if it has a Prescott core. Too dangerous. Your best bet is a big heatsink with a big, low-rpm fan. Something like a Zalman heatsink/fan or one of the new Thermalright heatsinks with a Vantec Stealth or Panaflo fan. Maybe undervolt it with a fanmate or something like that. It'll do the job and be very quiet. But only if you get good airflow through the case.


Power supply:


If you want a fanless power supply, you could take a look at the Antec Phantom 350 @ $200, but be warned that it's not going to do much in the way of pulling hot air out of the case. You may need an exhaust fan, which would defeat the purpose. Maybe you'd be better off with a high-efficency power supply with a quiet fan. Take a look at the recommended ones here .


Motherboard:


No idea. HardOCP likes it.


Hard drives:


Since it sounds like you're going for quiet, I don't know about that choice. AFAIK, only Hitachi makes 400GB SATA drives, and they historically aren't quiet. Check out the forums/recommended drives at silentpcreview. The biggest drives are multiplatter, which tends to make them louder. You may have to settle for smaller drives to get lower noise. I'd go with Seagates now that Samsung has cheaped out and switched to JVC parts.

 

[cualexander]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. If you look at some of my other posts I talk about my efforts to build the ultimate HTPC and I think the Asus rocks. The technology out right now for HTPC is just amazing. I just got into the hobby this year after being a long time technology nut and I currently have a ATI Radeon 8500DV, and my friends think I'm nuts for upgrading to a new video card because they say "it can't get any better, just leave it alone..."


And I'm currently running an Infocus X1 at 800x600 on a 100" Da-Lite Screen, no video post processing at all! And I have an HDTV thats running off the SVideo(ATI's horrible quality no less), and they claim I'm just being picky!


Oh how little the average consumer knows about video...

 

[shive]

Hey PeterS,


Funny to see this thread since I'm in the process of finishing up my HTPC system/gaming box. Here are my components:

- ASUS P5AD2 Premium

- LGA 775 560, 3.6ghz with CoolerMaster hyper 48 silent cooler

- 1 gig Corsair DDR2

- Maxtor 250gb sata

- WD raptor 74gb

- Gigabyte X800 xt ("powered by ati") pci-e with artic silencer 4

- Hauppage 250MCE tuner card

- ATI HDTV wonder

- MCE 2005


The board is pretty awesome...basically has everything I could want for a HTPC/Gaming machine and then some. I have, however, been having problems with the Gigabyte x800, ATI HDTV wonder card and MCE 2005 getting along (see the other thread for details).


I do have some faint noise that are the result of cheap-o fans in the DVine4 case that I will replace. The Hyper 48 is pretty quiet although I'm tempted to go with the Zalman Reserator for a totally silent CPU. Let me know if you have any other questions...

 

[miimura]

Maybe my idea of a good HTPC is different than yours, but why do you want to put a workstation class board in a HTPC? The P5AD2 is over $250 and has dual gigabit and RAID 5. Why put that in a HTPC? It's totally overkill. No doubt, it's an awesome board, but unless you're really gaming on it, you can get away with much less and you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference in most HTPC apps.


- Mike

 

[mnn1265]

Quote:

Maybe my idea of a good HTPC is different than yours...

HTPC's aren't just for PVR anymore!


I build my HTPC as multi-purpose such that it can carry-out classical HTPC functions, gaming rig and PC applications as well. Because of the size required I'm not a fan of RAID 5 for HTPC's but rather use a software backup method. I second dedicated media/backup server works best.

 

[gigtek]

Has anyone experience of the Intel Desktop Board D925XCVLK. I am about to try it.


Usefully includes optical and co-ax digital audio out. Looks pretty feature rich in other areas.


Main problem is the usual Intel inability to overclock. Not sure this should be a problem as most HTPCs will need to run at lower temperatures to keep the fan quiet.


Extremetech have good review of 925X boards, sorry can't post direct link as newbie.

 

[Gary McCoy]

I have long been a fan of Intel motherboards. They are rock stable and feature-rich, but as you indicate cannot be overclocked. They also cannot be underclocked and frequently do not let you set the CPU core voltage lower - two items which reduce the need for cooling.


The large diameter, slow fan is an excellant idea - it reduces CPU fan noise to below that from hard drives and optical drives, which is to say usually inaudible.


An Intel motherboard with a good case design and a premium power supply is hard to beat for stability and reliability.


Gary

 

[MartinK]

You're going to be in cooling hell with and i9xx/Prescott. The heat has to go somewhere... even "silent" cooling solutions will generate more noise when more heat is generated.


Prescott TDP = > 100W

Athlon 64 90nm TDP - 67W , 20W idle. And it drops to 1v no need to experiment with undervolting.


Also, noiseless sounds great but it isn't. The idea is to use low-noise equipment that blends in with the general noise level of the environment, so you still get reasonable cooling results.