Home theater, want to make my PC more quiet

[KFlint]

Hey,

First i must say that I'm not at all up-to-date on the newest PC hardware available these days. I stopped watching for it a couple years ago because I'm not gaming on my PC and it was more than enough for coding (I'm a web programmer)

So here I am with my 3-4 years old PC, a Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz with 3 Gigs of RAM with an ATI Radeon 256 megs in it.

Works just fine for me on Vista, however, i want to use it as part of my home theater and i find it annoying to constantly hear the fans in it (the hard drive swapping doesn't bother me at the moment).

So I wonder what I should do that wouldn't cost a fortune. I'm not sure which fan is making the more noise, I'm not even sure how many fans there is in the box tbh, maybe some have experience with this?

I don't want to end up changing the whole thing to have it more silent, so any recommendation is welcome

Thx!

[clocker]

First thing to do is isolate which fan is the noisiest...I'm guessing it's the CPU heatsink fan.
If that's the case, a simple swap to an aftermarket sink/fan combo would probably do the trick. P4's are volcanoes and there were lots of options available back in the day, so finding a replacement shouldn't be too difficult.

A second, more involved but not necessarily more expensive option, would be to change cases.
Depends on your access to used PCs, but the older Gateway "toaster" cases had almost full coverage with plastic cladding and are very quiet as a result.
A PC recycling center near me has three such cases in stock that could probably be had for $10-15...they'll just junk 'em, so anything they get is gravy.

At any rate, there are a few different ways to approach this depending on your level of expertise.

[Artemis]

As above with what clocker said, finding the fan is the first step, simply remove the side panel and identify which one is the noisiest fan by ear.
If you wish to go the whole way and drop the db output from your htpc
considerably then look at heatsink/passive cooling combinations or those
that feature low noise fans.
You can get home theater cases that look like stereo components relatively
cheaply these days and these passive/low db cooling solutions built in so the only thing left to select is a quiet CPU cooler.
One other thing though you mentioned you had an older 256mb ATi graphics card, a dedicated htpc would benefit from a graphics card upgrade. It does not have to be a high end gaming card but there are mid level cards that have hardware onboard to decode the various video codecs making playback far smoother. Either look for an ATi card with the HD definition in the name or an NVidia 8000 series card or better since these feature PureVideoHD. You can find reasonable HD cards that are passively cooled as well removing another noise source.

[KFlint]

Thx for that guys, I'll check the CPU fan first, I can handle that i guess

My expertise level is average, I can change parts without much problem but I never changed a case before and I'll leave that as a second move

I just discovered that my pc is too slow to play 1080p files right now, 720p files are played better

The CPU hits 90% and it skips many frames, I understand that having a new card who decode codecs onboard would compensate for the poor cpu performance, discharging it of a lot of operations, right?

[Detale]

K what are all the specs in your PC? What Mobo and exactly what video card do you have like?

[KFlint]

board : http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=1647

video card :
ATI Radeon X1300 Series (AGP 8x) don't have PCI Express

[Detale]

Sure a new card would help alot. How long have you had this bad boy?

[clocker]

Sure a new card would help alot. How long have you had this bad boy?
New card?

What AGP cards are you fond of these days?

[KFlint]

nearly 4 years!

I'm working on a Mac now, so this one was in my closet until i decided to use it as an HTPC

Should i just change the whole damn thing, starting to wonder :dabs:

[clocker]

Yes, you should.

[Detale]

Yes you should change it if it's an option.

I'm not "fond" of AGP but they do have some radeon 38xx cards that would be better than the one he has now.

I only say ATI because you can use HDMI and the audio passes so you don't need another cable.

[Artemis]

Damn that is a fossil, it was the top of Gigabyte's food chain at the time, but that time is long past............

From experience with building HTPC machines from budget to silly I have to say a dual core processor that runs cool ( it does not have to have a high clock speed) and a good graphics card with HD codec decode (do not go for an onboard video solution) are important. This plus a couple of gigs of RAM will ensure smoothe playback even at high resolutions. Also a new graphics card will support bluray decode so you have that upgrade ability for your HTPC as bluray rom drives come down in price.
Next SATA drives obviously simply for the reason that they have far more storage space and are now far cheaper than their IDE equivalents.
Put all this in a nice HTPC enclosure with a remote control and your good to go.
Since I am not from the U.S. or Cananada in your case K, I can't be arsed comparing prices, but bang for your buck an Intel E8200 CPU on a decent Gigabyte M-ATX board with an NVidia 9500GT graphics card would be a nice budget combo which will do everything you need.

[Detale]

Now you guys know Im a Nvidia man, but with the HTPC I still would go AMD because of the audio ovet the HDMI is easier ;)

[Artemis]

Now you guys know Im a Nvidia man, but with the HTPC I still would go AMD because of the audio ovet the HDMI is easier ;)

check your facts first, this is why I specifically suggested the 9500GT several manufacturers release this card with DVI + HDMI outputs I installed one a week ago into an HTPC setup. NVidia cards offer HDMI out just the same as ATi, it depends on the manufacturer whether this is offered with their product.

[Detale]

Well that wasn't nice at all Art :snooty: Link to one?

[Artemis]

Well that wasn't nice at all Art :snooty: Link to one?

Hmmmm came out grumpier than I intended :pinch:

MSI have released a 9500GT with HDMI:
http://www.itbankeurope.com/MSI+GF+9500+GT+PCI-E+512MB+DDR2+DVI+HDMI/

Sparkle are another one:
http://www.hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=11506&cid=6

Galaxy and Palit are other suppliers but these were the first international rather than local links I found.

Actually I was browsing Palit's website while composing this post and although I have not dealt with it this card seems an excellent HTPC solution:
http://www.palit.biz/main/vgapro.php?id=1081

One thing to remember though if you are thinking of playing any games on the HTPC then a faster 3D card is recommended, the card links I am giving are to passively cooled HD codec cards optimised for HTPC usage.

[KFlint]

I don't want to change my PC at the moment so i need an HD AGP card as a quick fix, not a PCI-E one

I found a used one in this ads for 50$, an HIS HD 2600 Pro 512 Megs with HDMI output (with the DVI to HDMI adapter)

I'm supposed to have news about it tonight, that would be just fine

I also added a cheap PCI 5.1 sound card (paid 10$ online) and now 720p movies plays just fine on my system, no more out of synch audio

Finally, have a question for you. I just purchased a 1 TB External HD eSata and USB 2.0...Can i connect the eSata connexion to the internal Sata connectors? I purchased a eSata to Sata cable for that, so I'm assuming it works, but I don't want to fry my new HD or worse

Thx!

[clocker]

.Can i connect the eSata connexion to the internal Sata connectors? I purchased a eSata to Sata cable for that, so I'm assuming it works, but I don't want to fry my new HD or worse

Thx!
Yes, you can.
The only difference between the two cable types is the configuration of the connector...the data lines are identical.
So go ahead, plug 'er in.

[KFlint]

Thx!

[KFlint]

just thought i'd give an update

I installed the HIS HD Radeon 2600 Pro 512 Megs in my P4 and I can play 720p files without a hiccup now.

1080p requires too much CPU resources for my poor P4, but we are really satisfied with the display of 720p files on our 50'' TV :)

I still have to change the fans to make it more quiet now...

[Artemis]

When you go looking for quieter fans the Zalman low db fans are good quality at a very good price, and in most situations virtually silent.

[KFlint]

Good to know, I'll check for this

[clocker]

When you go looking for quieter fans the Zalman low db fans are good quality at a very good price, and in most situations virtually silent.
One must be careful...
Low db- or "silent"- fans achieve this by also being low flow fans.

Yes, blade design/alignment and to a certain extent, housing design, can help, but usually a fan is quiet because it simply isn't moving much air.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as the fan is paired with a low restriction sink.
Typically, such a sink would have greater spacing between the fins and thus require less pressure (or flow) to properly evacuate the heatload.

And example of this would be the longtime "king-of-the-hill" Thermalright TRUE series sinks.
Very effective but very densely packed fins, so it needs a high flow fan to work properly.
Great cooling potential but not especially quiet.

A few hours spent perusing SPCR (http://www.silentpcreview.com/) will give you some excellent ideas to pursue.

[tesco]

just thought i'd give an update

I installed the HIS HD Radeon 2600 Pro 512 Megs in my P4 and I can play 720p files without a hiccup now.

1080p requires too much CPU resources for my poor P4, but we are really satisfied with the display of 720p files on our 50'' TV :)

I still have to change the fans to make it more quiet now...
I highly recomend the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev 2 (http://ncix.com/products/?sku=27878&vpn=ACCELERO-S1-REV2&manufacture=Arctic%20Cooling) for passive vga cooling, if it fits your card.

I installed one of them and not only eliminated the need for a fan on my vid card but lowered the temps quite a bit as well.:)
The vid card fan is usually one of the loudest since it's usually small. Smaller fan = higher rpm to blow the air = more noise.

[Detale]

As far as quiet fans with good air moving I would really recommend the scyth S-flex line. They are a little pricey but they are honestly almost noisless. They have 800,1200,1600,1900 RPM's and the noise as you would imagine go up with the higher RPM's for instance with the 800 (what I use) it's 8.7db and 33.5 cfm which is pretty good really.

[KFlint]

Thx all for the suggestions!

Will have a look at this soon

I didn't think I would but I'm kinda getting use to the Air conditioning-like sound of the PC in the living room
I don't pay attention to it most of the time, I cleaned the heat sink fan of the processor and it's much more quiet now

[Artemis]

On a slightly different tack, one important HTPC component hasn't been been mentioned yet. If you are going to record using the HTPC you need a decent hardware encoding card. Like the decode everyone was mentioning earlier a TV or Sat card with MPEG-2 hardware encoding onboard will give you higher quality TVrips.
This depends on your source (cable, sateillite, terrestrial) and whether you already have another recording source, but just for completeness with the HTPC theme I thought I would mention this final piece.

[Detale]

Hoi you know I was looking at one of those fancy cards there but I get lost in options, could you recommend any Art? I did want one with an HDMI input and output but I don't know if they are available yet or not. Whaddyasay?

Oh and terrestrial??
http://afeatheradrift.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/et.jpgor Extra Terrestrial

[Col. Skillz]

I'm not going to read the whole thread, so this may be disregarded. but heres what i know about teh silence.

BIG fans. the bigger they are, the more air they push at lower speeds

Passive cooling. if you can, get some passive cooling, you can get this for your video card most likely, which might be your fan culprit, I know my old agp video card fan is tiny, and spins fast and loud. you can also get some cooling blocks/chips for hard drives, ram, north/south bridge, etc.

water cooling if you are hardcore

rubber grommets instead of screws, prevents vibration which makes less noise.

solid state discs rather than magnetic HDD's


but most importantly, get some big fans 120mm and set them to LOW settings, you might want to get a fan controller for this. if you get some passive cooling you can set your fans so low they are inaudible from 8 feet away.

also like i said, check that video card, it can get loud, and can be solved with passive cooling which is no noise. take your heatsink into account too, as that most likely has a fan.




Personally, I would spend $300 or so and get a total rig upgrade, might handle 1080p better and you can customize it from the getgo to be silent.

200th post w000t

[Artemis]

Hoi you know I was looking at one of those fancy cards there but I get lost in options, could you recommend any Art? I did want one with an HDMI input and output but I don't know if they are available yet or not. Whaddyasay?



I have always been a fan of Hauppage cards personally, they are designed to work natively with XPMCE 2005 and Vista Premium (with updated drivers) without needing to run an external program to record.
It depends on what input you are using what the card choice is, which is why I mentioned satellite cable or terrestrial or broadcast tv since I did not what the options are up there in moose land. You do not need an output from the card itself unless you are going to use the card in pass through mode, so as I said the broadcast source defines the type of card you are after.
I have an older PVR150MCE card running perfectly under XPMCE and it is recording via the component input on the card.

Actually here is a pic of my setup:

http://i42.tinypic.com/ve2p39.jpg

And because I hate the guess where the remote game is , I bought this to run the system:

http://i42.tinypic.com/2choy82.jpg

[Col. Skillz]

Hoi you know I was looking at one of those fancy cards there but I get lost in options, could you recommend any Art? I did want one with an HDMI input and output but I don't know if they are available yet or not. Whaddyasay?



I have always been a fan of Hauppage cards personally, they are designed to work natively with XPMCE 2005 and Vista Premium (with updated drivers) without needing to run an external program to record.
It depends on what input you are using what the card choice is, which is why I mentioned satellite cable or terrestrial or broadcast tv since I did not what the options are up there in moose land. You do not need an output from the card itself unless you are going to use the card in pass through mode, so as I said the broadcast source defines the type of card you are after.
I have an older PVR150MCE card running perfectly under XPMCE and it is recording via the component input on the card.

Actually here is a pic of my setup:

http://i42.tinypic.com/ve2p39.jpg

And because I hate the guess where the remote game is , I bought this to run the system:

http://i42.tinypic.com/2choy82.jpg


/drool....this is a man with taste. Samsung screen, logitech remote...it doesn't get any better.


I might as well add, to keep my PC even more silent than it already is, I keep in a cabinet with an opening door. My desk is built perfectly for this so I jsut slide in my tower and clsoe the door. Shaves off a ton of noise. It doesn't get hot either, there is a hole in back and I take off the side door to my PC. It makes swapping out Hard drives a breeze also.