I am on a quest to make a HTPC for my personal use. Even though I have finalised on the components I need to purchase, the purchase will happen in about 10 days time. In the meanwhile, I was wondering if it is possible to make the HTPC silent so as to avoid the irritating noises which will be there while watching movies.
I already have the following with me:
1. MSI HD 4670 (Comes with a fan)
2. 2x2GB Corsair DDR3 RAM
3. Corsair VX450
I also have a CM 590 PC chassis which I was planning on using as a stop gap arrangement while I could collect some money to upgrade to a decent HTPC chassis. I had the Elite 360 in mind but I can forfeit this.
I had finalised on the following:
1. AMD AthlonII 250 Proccessor
2. Gigabyte GMA-880-UD2H Mainboard
3. 500GB Hard Drive
I don't intend to connect an optical drive for now as I will be playing all my media off my NAS. In future however, I intend to get a Blu-Ray drive when pirated Blu-Ray discs are available for under 100/- bucks. :bleh:
I will use a cheap keyboard/mouse combo for the time being and get a diNovo Mini in a couple of months. I already have the MCE Remote and Receiver and will be using this.
Now my questions. What can I do to make this build a silent one? Noise will be coming from the PSU, the CPU Cooler and the hard drive. I can eliminate the noise from the GPU by not using the HD4670 as the Gigabyte board has HD4650 and is sufficient for 1080p and blu-ray isos. The mainboard has no cooling fan for the north and south bridge which is a bonus.
Now, is there any passive cooler available for the processor and is it available in India and what will be the approximate price for it? Will it be okay to use this cooler with the processor? I don't intend to use this HTPC for anything other than playing 1080p & 720p mkv files and blu-ray isos. I will use Windows 7 x64 with XBMC shell.
About the noise from the PSU. I do understand that a few HTPC chassis' come with their own PSUs. Is there any such PSU which has passive cooling and are these available in India and at what price?
Does a SSD make any noise? Which is the cheapest SSD available in India and what is the capacity? I think a 40GB/80GB SSD will suffice for the build as all my data is stored on the NAS.
Please recommend me before I blow my money on something which will make me regret the decision later. Also, please understand that I don't have a huge budget. At the most, I can spend 20k on the components and that too, in instalments of 10k in 2 months. This excludes the diNovo Mini which will be taken care of by other resources.
Thanks for looking.
I already have the following with me:
1. MSI HD 4670 (Comes with a fan)
2. 2x2GB Corsair DDR3 RAM
3. Corsair VX450
I also have a CM 590 PC chassis which I was planning on using as a stop gap arrangement while I could collect some money to upgrade to a decent HTPC chassis. I had the Elite 360 in mind but I can forfeit this.
I had finalised on the following:
1. AMD AthlonII 250 Proccessor
2. Gigabyte GMA-880-UD2H Mainboard
3. 500GB Hard Drive
I don't intend to connect an optical drive for now as I will be playing all my media off my NAS. In future however, I intend to get a Blu-Ray drive when pirated Blu-Ray discs are available for under 100/- bucks. :bleh:
I will use a cheap keyboard/mouse combo for the time being and get a diNovo Mini in a couple of months. I already have the MCE Remote and Receiver and will be using this.
Now my questions. What can I do to make this build a silent one? Noise will be coming from the PSU, the CPU Cooler and the hard drive. I can eliminate the noise from the GPU by not using the HD4670 as the Gigabyte board has HD4650 and is sufficient for 1080p and blu-ray isos. The mainboard has no cooling fan for the north and south bridge which is a bonus.
Now, is there any passive cooler available for the processor and is it available in India and what will be the approximate price for it? Will it be okay to use this cooler with the processor? I don't intend to use this HTPC for anything other than playing 1080p & 720p mkv files and blu-ray isos. I will use Windows 7 x64 with XBMC shell.
About the noise from the PSU. I do understand that a few HTPC chassis' come with their own PSUs. Is there any such PSU which has passive cooling and are these available in India and at what price?
Does a SSD make any noise? Which is the cheapest SSD available in India and what is the capacity? I think a 40GB/80GB SSD will suffice for the build as all my data is stored on the NAS.
Please recommend me before I blow my money on something which will make me regret the decision later. Also, please understand that I don't have a huge budget. At the most, I can spend 20k on the components and that too, in instalments of 10k in 2 months.
This excludes the diNovo Mini which will be taken care of by other resources.Thanks for looking.
