Comments on: Building Silent 1080p Full HD Media Center HTPC. Part 2.

By: Building Silent 1080p Full HD Media Center HTPC. Part 1. | Mini Motherboard

Building Silent 1080p Full HD Media Center HTPC. Part 1. | Mini Motherboard — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:07:06 +0000

[...] Part 2 has been posted here. digg_url = [...]

By: admin

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 10:45:37 +0000

MythTV with XBMC is a good choice. You may check for Freevo as an alternative as well.

Zotac ITX-A is capable to do all thing you are writing about at once. Recording TV (best with hardware encoder) use really a little of the CPU – if you are not reencoding it in real time and cpu usage for serving files/firewall in my home server is totally invisible.

By: Alex Chamberlain

Alex Chamberlain — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:40:24 +0000

I’m probably going to build 2 computers over the next year; one attached to the TV and a server.

The one attached to the TV should be completely silent… SSD etc…
The server can be more noisy, but doesn’t need the graphics capabilities… 1.5TB HDDs galore…

I was thinking about a MythTV backend with XBMC frontend. What do you think?

Also, I’ve got a ZOTAC ITX-A, it is quiet and if you have something playing (BBC iPlayer – I’m British…), I can’t remember ever thinking I can hear that fan going…

Would the Zotac ITX-A be capable of recording TV and serving files at the same time? What about if I asked it to run a firewall as well?

By: admin

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:18:47 +0000

If you are not going to use it as a machine to play games – dual core atom is really enough for your media center (mostly due of NVIDIA ION chipset).

By: Danny

Danny — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:33:45 +0000

I appreciate the information. I'm looking at building a HTPC using Windows 7 as my OS so I am not sure if the Dual Atom would be ideal without feeling too sluggish with the Media Center. I am looking forward to your future blogs on this topic.

By: Jorge Alban

Jorge Alban — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:30:52 +0000

Cant say much about Atom motherboards as I like multipurpose equipment, not just htpc limited, but my last Zotac 9300 ITX WiFi build (dreaded version 1 bios) has been working flawlessly & without a glitch for over a year inside a Travia C-138. I chose a $350 Corsair SATA II 3.0Gb/s 128 GB Performance Series Internal Solid State Drive (CMFSSD-128GBG2D) due to its huge buffer & high performance Samsung controller. My AVLinux (LXDE) Core2Duo E8400 system boots in 18 seconds flat. I understand there is a new Corsair NOVA SSD series that supports TRIM and drops the price 30$ (not a difference for me as when write performance degraqdes (if it ever does) I load a Gparted Live CD Linux & perform a secure erase via HDPARM. No more HDDs, nor Windows or GAtes around here...

By: admin

admin — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:55:50 +0000

I have been using PS3 only in some noisy room. So it is hard to say. But comparing it to XBOX - ZOTAC motherboard is very quiet. It is 60mm fan so it is better than smallest one 40mm on ASUS. If you want something very silent you should consider fanless ZOTAC ITX C.

By: Danny

Danny — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:53:04 +0000

I am looking at the ZOTAC ION-ITX-A for building my HTPC. You rate it a one for noise, I was wondering what would this compare to the PS3. It would give me something to compare it to with your scale.