high on solder

My first HTPC consisted of some leftover parts I had laying around integrated into a Shuttle XPC barebones system. My replacement for that system was a Dell Studio Hybrid which performed well, was relatively quiet, and used little electricity. The main limitation for both of these machines were their reliance on external hard drives for storage expansion. I wanted to build something with more storage and upgrade flexibility.

The following were my goals for my HTPC/media server build:

• Storage Expandability - plenty of internal 3.5" slots so I can reuse my current content storage drives and add more as needed in the future
• Adequate Onboard Video - although not as powerful as nVidia's or ATI's products, Intel's integrated graphics are fine for home theater use when paired with a decent CPU, they also use less power, and their Linux compatibility is generally better
• Low Power - this system will be on 24 hours a day so it needs to be as efficient as possible
• Quiet - this will sit next to my TV so it has to be as quiet as possible

Parts

• Antec Mini P180 Case (MicroATX Mini Tower)
• Antec Earthwatts Green 380W Power Supply
• Intel BOXDB43LD Motherboard (MicroATX, X4500 graphics, DVI, 6 SATA ports, 6 channel audio)
• Intel Celeron E3300 CPU (2.5 GHz, Dual Core)
• G.Skill DDR2 800 RAM (2GB)
• LG 22x DVD Burner
• Xigmatek HDT-SD964 CPU Cooler (with XIGMATEK ACK-I7363 mounting kit)

The Antec Mini P180 has 5 internal hard drive bays, plenty of ventilation (120mm & 200mm fans) and sound reducing panels. While this case is much larger than either of my previous HTPCs, I was more than willing to sacrifice space for a better all-around system. The Intel BOXDB43LD motherboard has decent onboard graphics (an upgrade over the Studio Hybrid's X3100), plenty of SATA ports for storage expansion and a decent assortment of AV ports. The Celeron E3300 processor fits my requirements for a processor that is cheap, powerful enough, and uses relatively little electricity. In order to make this build as quiet as possible I decided to use a fanless CPU heatsink. This is possible because the thermal dissipation required by the Celeron E3300 (65W) is low, the heatsink I chose is fairly large, and it should get plenty of airflow from the two case fans even when they are run at their lowest setting.

Assembly

The build for this machine was fairly straightforward. The case has enough room to creatively route cables behind the motherboard to minimize air blockage. I mounted the DVD burner on the bottom because the top slot's depth is limited by the huge 200mm top fan. I also rotated the CPU's heatsink from its normal orientation to take advantage of the top fan's airflow.

In order to take advantage of the SPDIF connection on the motherboard I built myself a coaxial SPDIF bracket using an old PCI bracket, a female RCA jack, some single conductor shielded cable, and a 3 pin female header. All you have to do is wire the center of the RCA jack to the pin of the header that connects to the signal pin on the motherboard using the center conductor of the cable. Then connect the cable's shield to the outside of the RCA jack and the ground pin of the motherboard header.

Input Devices

I have used this control setup for a while now and it works very well for me:

• Apple Wireless Keyboard - great Bluetooth keyboard
• Microsoft Explorer Mini Mouse - the BlueTrack system is the only one I've found that works consistently well on surfaces around a living room (wood, fabric, etc.), it has great wireless range & battery life, and this mouse is just the right size (small but not too small)
• Logitech Harmony remote (set to emulate Windows Media Center remote) - I use the Harmony 610 which isn't the most advanced Harmony remote, but it also isn't ridiculously expensive

Performance

Superficially this machine performs about the same as the Studio Hybrid. I noticed slightly less CPU utilization when playing videos. This could be attributed to the improved graphics processor, although the X4500 does not support CPU offloading of video decoding other than MPEG2.

Here's a performance comparison between this build (bold) and my Studio Hybrid (in parenthesis):

• Boot Time - 0:55 (1:00)
• CD Rip to FLAC time - 2:16 (3:41)
• FLAC to MP3 Compression time - 1:16 (1:31)

Based on this info it seems that the Celeron E3300 is somewhat more powerful than the Core 2 Duo T5800 in the Studio Hybrid. Some of the performance difference could be attributable to the slower hard drive in the Studio Hybrid and the CD ripping performance was definitely affected by the much faster DVD drive in the HTPC.

 Here's the power usage I observed during some typical usage scenarios:

• Idle - 42W
• Play 720p Video - 51W
• Play 1080p Video - 55W
• FLAC to MP3 Compression - 64W
• Average over a week - 45W

Previously I determined that my Studio Hybrid used an average of 27W over the course of a week. This is 40% less than the 45W used by my new HTPC, however it doesn't take into account the two external hard drives I had attached to the Studio Hybrid that are now mounted internally. When you add in the 5W each for the two hard drives that means the Studio Hybrid used only 18% less power than my new HTPC. That's pretty good considering this new system is faster and uses desktop instead of laptop components.

I am very happy that all of my attempts to keep this machine as quiet as possible were very successful. In terms of absolute volume its probably about the same as the Studio Hybrid, however, the fans on this system are much lower pitched and therefore blend into the background noise of the room a lot more. Another advantage is that when under heavy load the fans won't spin up and make more noise like they did on the Studio Hybrid because the default cooling is more than enough for the low level of heat generated by this system.

• Check out the Software portion of my HTPC.