media pc, part 7: upgrades

The P4 2.66GHz Prescott wasn't quite fast enough. We experienced slightly choppy TV when burning DVDs, and that was simply unacceptable. Did the super-hot Prescott teach me that I should listen to popular opinion, and upgrade to an AMD processor? Of course not. I upgraded to an Intel Pentium D 805 2.66GHz (Smithfield); a dual-core CPU that's something like two Prescotts stuck together. I also doubled the memory, settling on 1GB. The new processor idles in the mid-30s, but still doesn't exceed the low 40s. Now the media PC is as fast as it should be; we can burn DVDs while watching full-screen TV and streaming music over our network, with no slow-down.

As I said previously, a 90GB partition isn't much for TV, and we filled ours within a week or two. We then added a 250GB (232 actual) Seagate Barracuda 7200.9, but we filled that as well. After several months of diligently deleting watched shows, and being unable to archive everything that we wanted to keep, we realized that we were spending too much energy in maximizing free drive space. Buying for the long-term, we added two 250GB (232GB actual) Samsung Spinpoint drives to the system. Now, space is no longer a concern, and we can archive as many shows and DVDs as we like. A gigabyte is nothing to worry about, and when the minimum file size is 1GB, that's the way it should be. We also created enough space to grow our music collection in a care-free fashion. Our current partitions look like this:

Media PC
OS & Apps - 40GB (on original 160GB Seagate)
Music - 90GB (on original 160GB Seagate)
TV 1 - 232GB Samsung
TV 2 - 232GB Samsung

Kitchen PC
OS & Apps - 40GB (on 80GB Seagate)
Misc File Storage - 40GB (on 80GB Seagate)
TV 3 - 232GB Seagate

We had to move the 250GB Seagate drive to the kitchen PC, since the media PC case only holds 3 hard drives. Although the 250GB drive raised the kitchen PC's temperatures by a few degrees, it has many degrees to spare, and it's no louder, thanks to the sound-dampening qualities of solid wood. This configuration will work well for the foreeseable future.

Note: Our network is wired.

The wireless mouse and keyboard are not used at all, and I've disconnected them from the HTPC altogether. Instead, we use RealVNC (www.realvnc.com) to control the HTPC from the kitchen PC, which allows us to listen to music without turning the TV on.

media pc, part 6: the initial result

The media PC has been an incredible asset to our family life. It's satisfying to know that we are watching every TV show that we pay for monthly. It's even more satisfying to be able to watch any show whenever we want. We no longer miss shows because we're too busy; we just watch them when we're not busy. If that happens to be two weeks after the original air date, it doesn't matter. Our kids can watch their shows when school is over. We can browse our entire music library (30GB+) effortlessly, and everything plays through our 5.1-channel speaker setup. We watch photo slide shows on the TV with friends and relatives. If we're feeling lazy, we can shop online from our couch. TV shows are recorded as separate .mpg files, so we can transfer them, or burn them to DVD. It's everything that the hype promised it would be.

The PC was very quiet and cool. You could barely hear the computer running at around 2:00AM, when all other sounds had ceased. Even then, it was much quieter than a whisper. The hard drive stayed under 36C, and the CPU never exceeded 42C, idling in the high 20s. Everybody was pleased.

media pc, part 5: cool and quiet

A media PC in the living room has to be quiet. It shouldn't intrude upon even the quietest sections of music, TV, or DVDs; or even quiet conversation. Knowing how loud PCs can be, I spent a lot of time online learning how to quiet computers. An honourable mention goes to Silent PC Review (silentpcreview.com), which is a very helpful site, explaining silencing theories and providing some practical examples. However, the majority of my education on the subject came from applying the afore-mentioned theories to my own HTPC. Within the entire HTPC project, cooling and quieting formed their own substantial niche, providing hours upon hours of fact-finding, tinkering and experimenting.

The Silverstone LC-13 case comes fitted with a 90mm front intake fan, and two 60mm rear exhaust fans. The front intake consists of two slots on the underside of the front bezel. It's well-placed, but it could be bigger. The rear fans are mounted inside of the case, and the air that they move exits the case through large perforations. I tried this setup first, along with the stock Intel CPU HSF. Operating temperatures were stable, but the computer sounded like a giant bumblebee, and my wife insisted that I put my newfound silencing knowledge to use. Oh, darn; forced to upgrade the computer!

Here's a summary of what I did:

Intake
I cut out the front fan grille using a Dremel, and I replaced the semi-loud 90mm fan with a 120mm Nexus unit, run at around 9 volts using a Zalman Fanmate 2. Fanmates are expensive for what they are, but not for what they do. I mounted the fan to the case structure using nylon zip-ties. It sits inside the case, a few inches from the front, to reduce noise from turbulence.

Exhaust
I used a Dremel to cut out the rear fan grilles, to increase airflow and decrease noise from turbulence. I then replaced the noisy 60mm fans with 90mm Nexus units, again run at 9 volts with a Fanmate. The 90mm fans were too large to mount inside of the case, so I mounted them on the outside using nylon zip-ties. They move the same amount of air as the 60mm fans, but with much less noise, and they're just small enough that they don't block any of the rear connection ports. CPUI installed the large and awesome Thermalright XP-90 (The XP-120 was too big), and bent the included fan clips to fit a 120mm Nexus fan on top of it, blowing downward. Yes, I employed a Fanmate here as well, at around - you guessed it - 9 volts. The XP-90 looks extremely cool, and cools extremely well.

Other
- The large video card acts as a baffle, so that air from the passive PCI-side intake vent will be directed towards the CPU before exiting the case.
- I used a rounded IDE cable (I should have used SATA), which cleaned things up considerably.
- I mounted the optical drive in the lower bay, since warm air rises, and I put slack cables into the empty bay above it. This looks messy, but it's better in terms of functionality, since cables are less susceptible to heat than are components.
- I cleaned up any remaining slack cables as best I could, using black electrical tape.

Considering the number of components installed, and the number of wires present, I think it looks decent.