Re: Ultra-low budget silent PC for multimedia
- From: Serban Andrei Dumitrescu <sad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 21:21:07 +0100
Hi Jaster and thanks for your reply.
I''m thinking about building a media center pc with a PIII-933 with the i810 or Soyo m/bs I have laying in the closet. But I want to be able to capture and playback HDTV w/ 5.1 digital sound onto TV or monitor. Not helpful info for you but just planting a thought.
I only need playback for which a PIII or Celeron would suffice. However for your requirements the Sempron system you mention should be more appropiate. However it exceeds my budget...
Via makes the quietest and coolest cpus (no fans needed) but you won't be able to purchase a Via C3 or C7.
Well the older C3s sell rather cheaply on eBay, most of the times with matching mobos. But not sure if I should go that way....
Bye + thanks, Andrei
AMD is second with the "Quiet and Cool" technology. If you're looking to buy cpu and motherboard I'd go with a QnC Sempron 3000 instead of the Duron. I can get a Sempron 3000/3100 w/ motherboard for 90usd plus 20usd for quiet cpu cooler. The motherboard comes with 10/100 lan and 5.1 onboard sound.
For a CPU, I believe the 1.2 GHz Duron will work fine with only a (bigger?) heatsink mounted on it. Am I right there? Which Durons can do that (and still provide the performance necessary for, say, Xvid decoding)? I also read somewhere that the "Tualatin" Celerons can run with only passive cooling, but there wasn't any exact data. Anyone know something more about that?
The choice of the motherboard will be based on the CPU. In any case, I thought an older board supporting DDR RAM @133 MHz, parallel ATA (that way I'll be able to use a 40 GB ATA100 hdd I already have), USB 1.1 and AGP 4x will do just fine.
However I haven't decided on the form factor yet. I'll have to buy a new case anyway, so I might as well go for a smaller form factor, to better be able to unobtrusively integrate the PC in my otherwise hi-fi dominated bedroom. Would there be smaller form factor boards meeting my requirements?
For a graphics card (remember, it only needs to play video files) I could get a passively cooled older one like a GF MX440. On-board IGPs like those on newer boards would probably do the job quite well too, but on older boards you mostly get something like a GF2 or an nForce 2 or a Trident Blade3D GPU. Anyone know if those are OK for fullscreen video/DVD playback?
As for the hdd & DVD drives, I won't go for anything special there since I probably couldn't afford it. My "old" Seagate 40GB is really very quiet already. What about a low-end but not too loud DVD-ROM drive? Anyone know of some that don't sound like a helicopter taking off and still don't cost much?
Which leaves us only with the case and PSU to decide upon. I spent some time looking for passively cooled PSUs on eBay and they seem to be out of my price range. So are "fancy" cases like Shuttle and other mini-pc type barebones. I'd go for a no-name case (be it ATX or mini-ATX) and put the cheapest "silent" PSU I can get on eBay. Can anyone recommend some specific PSUs which run quietly yet don't cost much?
Well then, thanks for reading so far :-) I'd be very grateful for _any_ suggestions...
TIA,
Andrei
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