[BacklitVillain]

Hi all, can I pick your brains for a second..

I currently have my main pc in my living rom as my HTPC but want to move away from that and get the big ugly box out of the way.

My initial thought was to get a Revo or something and sellotape it to the wall behind the tv.

but now im thinking of building a htpc with a little more oomph incase i want to do anything else with it.

My problem is that I keep all of the AV equipment in a closed unit under the tv, things get a bit hot! The router and switch in particular, and especially the 360, I have to keep the door open whilst playing on it.

Has anybody got any ideas or seen anything that I could do to keep the pc cool? I thought about cutting hole in the back of the unit and fitting some fans to create some airflow, but with it being against the wall I dont know how much it would help, plus it would be quite noisy.

Thanks to all in advance.

[TugboatBill]

You can either not create the heat or find a way to get it out. Getting the heat out almost always requires fans or a pump.

If you have enough room you could avoid fans with the proper amount of ventilation via openings in the cabinet. A screen for the panel in the door and a screen in place of the back of the cabinet (or no screen at all) MAY give you enough passive ventilation to keep things cool enough. It all depends on how much heat your equipment is generating, how big the openings are, obstructions (IE If the back of the cabinet is close to the wall), ambient temps, etc.

[maxinc]

I got all my gadgets inside closed cabinets in the living room and that includes 3 gaming consoles, AV Receiver, Sat box and HTPC. Solution was to remove the back of the cabinets and distance the cabinets about 15mm from the wall.

The hot air easily escapes and all my gear is lukewarm at best. PS3 and Xbox360 which are the hottest, don't feel much different compared to open space. Not to my senses anyway.

For those cupboards that have multiple units, I put them on separate shelves with plenty of space around them, to prevent them from heating each other.

[defiler]

You could always go down the Zalman Reserator route for your HTPC. I know, I know, they're rather frowned-upon in watercooling circles on account of the fact that they're aluminium (and you get all kinds of nasty galvanic crap going on if you mix it with *any* copper parts), and they're quite expensive, but I put my old Phenom 9950BE (140W) plus 2x Radeon HD4850 video cards and it coped unless it was on full load for more than a few hours. For an HTPC setup it'll run no problems at all (in fact since I swapped out the 140W Phenom for a 65W part it deals with it easily).

With this it pumps the heat out to an external radiator. There's virtually no noise at all, as there's only a tiny pump running.

And it looks cool!

[BacklitVillain]

Cheers guys,

I might try taking of the back of the cabinet, it sits off the wall slightly any way thanks to the radiator pipes. I had plans to reroute them one weekend to get the cabinet sitting flush but I might not bother now.

What is the best/easy/cheap option for monotoring the tempreture of the HTPC, and what components are most likely to get damaged due to over heating?

[TugboatBill]

cheers guys,

i might try taking of the back of the cabinet, it sits off the wall slightly any way thanks to the radiator pipes. I had plans to reroute them one weekend to get the cabinet sitting flush but i might not bother now.

What is the best/easy/cheap option for monotoring the tempreture of the htpc, and what components are most likely to get damaged due to over heating?

cpu, hdd.

[poofyhairguy]

HDD by far, get a SSD if you are gonna do that.

[defiler]

Speedfan will let you monitor the temps of the systems inside your computer in Windows. The LMSensors package should let you do it in Linux.

In an ideal world you'd export the data via SNMP to a logger (I use Cacti at work - it's free), and then you can generate data for the day, week, month or year. And draw pretty graphs. And log your free drive space for your media store. And bore your friends and family with these details instead of just letting them watch a movie!

[BacklitVillain]

Right, I'll check out Speedfan, and ill go spend some moneys on a SSD.

When it comes to CPUs GPUs etc, how does it work, the more powerfull one I get the cooler it will stay as it is working less hard?

[maxinc]

When it comes to CPUs GPUs etc, how does it work, the more powerfull one I get the cooler it will stay as it is working less hard?

No really. A slower, more energy efficient cpu, will use less power and radiate less heat compared to a power hungry ultra fast cpu. It will be slower so complex tasks will take longer to finish.

The key here is to get the slowest CPU possible that will offer you the best performance for the tasks you expect it to do.

For example, if you expect to do real-time transcoding, a high speed multi core cpu might be necessary. If you download and unrar while watching movies on the same machine, a medium power cpu will suffice. For media playback only, most of the work is done by the GPU so you can get something lighter.

But really, any modern CPU from core 2 duo will perform reasonable in a well vented PC inside a open back cupboard. You also have the benefit of reducing some of the noise by closing the door.

My i3 HTPC sits in a mATX case at the moment with stock cooler + PSU fan to cool the box. Really quiet once I close the door

[defiler]

Bear in mind that there are "low power" versions of mainstream CPUs. For example I have a low power Phenom II X4 in my desktop and a low power Athlon II X3 in my server. In these cases they've picked some of the best chips off the production line and clocked them at a relatively low speed. So my old Phenom 9950 ran at 140W, but my new one is 65W and just as fast.

If you're concerned about heat and you're not going down the Atom route, it's worth considering one of these low-power chips, because every Watt of power they use contributes to the heat generated.

[BacklitVillain]

Right, starting to get there I think. Tanks for all the advice so far.

Can you guys reccomend a mid range build (price & power) that would keepas cools as possible?

I would like to go down the live route, but may still just install XP and use the windows version of xbmc untill I have clued my self up a bit more on LINUXy stuff.

I wont be using the HTPC for anything other than TV/MOVIES/MUSIC but I do want it to run nice and smooth with all the fanart and stuff.

What Motherboard/Processor/RAM/GPU/PSU should I be looking at? I am capable of building it myself but I am just not clued up on the current components market.

Sorry for turning this into another 'WHAT SHOULD I BUY??' thread.

Thanks

[defiler]

See, if you're going down the Live route then you're basically treating it as an appliance. At that point there's not much point in speccing it higher than you absolutely need to, so you're back to Atom/ION. Just the way I see it.

As for a bespoke build, I'll stand well back because others know better than me...

[BacklitVillain]

The only reason I fancy a self build over an Atom/Ion is incase I want to do anything else with it in the future, so i just want to spend my money wisely, kind of a 'right first time' approach.

I do fancy going down the Atom/Ion route for the bedroom though, although i have a laptop knocking about somewhere with a smashed screen that i might just butcher.

[Mallet21]

I think any of the AMD Regor processors would suit your needs for best performance with a lower thermal output. An Nvidia GT210 graphics card would provide low heat and the ability to use either Live or Windows. For the motherboard, just make sure it uses DDR3 memory.