Fanless Fusion - possible?

eddiew · 4 May 2011 at 09:41

fanless fusion mITX?

Hey guys,

Gotten a little out of the hardware loop of late, not sure what the newest gear is quite capable of anymore :rolleyes:

Am presently eyeing up:

- Asus E35M1-I DELUXE (get it please OCUK!)
- 2x2GB DDR3 1.65V (sitting on my shelf doing nowt)
- Slimline blu-ray drive
- 250GB 2.5" hdd (using NAS box for media files)
- some flavour of remote control

Total cost ~£230

Would love to know if it would be possible to run this without additional fans. Frankly I want my housemate's PS3 to envy its media capability and silence

Two questions then:
- can anyone recommend an mITX case with fanless PSU or external power brick that would handle this? (A lot say 60W, which feels awfully low!)
- would it overheat after a few hours of movies?

(If the latter is a yes, any suggestions on a case with good enough ventilation while remaining 'living room quiet'?

)

Additional stupid question: if I ripped my blu-rays for easier access, is a 100mbit network good enough to stream them to an HTPC?

Thanks!

vanandjuanunited · 4 May 2011 at 14:00

I plan using mine fanless except psu in a silverstone ml03 case
Should arrive tomoro so will know better then

eddiew · 4 May 2011 at 14:29

That's quite an interesting case actually - bit bigger than what I was aiming for, but would still fit reasonably on a TV stand and looks to have a lot of vents. Please do let me know how you get on

LePhuronn · 4 May 2011 at 16:51

What's your budget? You could probably get the constituent parts you're after and piece something together, for example getting a Silverstone Sugo SG05 case, changing the front fan for a low RPM Gentle Typhoon, Noctual or Fractal and getting one of the fanless Seasonic SSF PSUs.

I love the size of the heatsink on that Asus board, but you'll need some good airflow to make it effective, hence still needing a low-noise fan. But to be honest even the stock 300W PSU in the Sugo isn't loud, and with a low-noise 120mm fan on the Sugo it's be quieter than a PS3 (at least it'd be quieter than MY PS3 lol).

vanandjuanunited · 4 May 2011 at 16:57

Iused an adapter on the ml03 to fit a slim blu ray drive
Previously had an i3 setup in it but fancied a change- was quiet enough then but will now hopefully be near silent

eddiew · 4 May 2011 at 18:29

LePhuronn said:
What's your budget?

It would be nice to get the motherboard/cpu, hdd, blu-ray, and case for £300 or less. More than that I might as well get a PS3

LePhuronn said:
I love the size of the heatsink on that Asus board, but you'll need some good airflow to make it effective, hence still needing a low-noise fan.

You raise a good point... I think I may be nervous of fans due to my old shuttle from ~2003, which is not at all living room friendly. My desktop PC on the other hand, has 2 case fans, and is almost inaudible above background noise, especially with the window open ^^

SG05 looks good for airflow, but is relatively large and boxy looking for mITX :/

I liked the tiny ness of an APlus Cupid 1, but it does look ever so tight to work with and I'm concerned about it bottling up the heat (although there are vents top and side...)

The In-Win BM648 struck me as cheap and cheerful, but obviously needs a fan to cool it... I wonder if it would manage with that throttled back a bit though ^^;

Stepping up in cost, the Silverstone PT09S-120 Petit looks the shiz, is ridiculously tiny, and has massive and obvious vents top and side...

(If I haven't mentioned, I am unashamedly trying to minimise the size of the beast! I love the idea of packing a good HTPC into a case smaller than the average DVD player

)

LePhuronn · 5 May 2011 at 16:00

SG05 isn't much taller than a standard can of soft drink and only just over 10 inches long. It is a shoebox though.

It depends on what you're after though. Yes you can get the sleek, media equipment style Mini ITX cases, but I've found they're not very tall so use only low-profile cards and have 60mm or 80mm fans to get airflow going, and they're usually quite noisy.

As far as your budget goes (and these are rough figures)

£80 for the SG05 (standard 300W PSU model)
£50 for a 500GB slimline HDD
£50 for a slimline tray-load Blu-Ray drive
£130 for that Asus board (or £180 for a Gigabyte H67N-USB3-B3 board and i3 2100 CPU)

Drop another tenner on the case and you could grab the basic 300W version of the SG06 - same case internally, just with a nicer aluminium facia (although personally I don't like the pot belly thing going on with it).

The Cupid looks nice but I wouldn't want to try the Asus Hudson board in there - no airflow over that mahoosive heatsink.

nkuk · 6 May 2011 at 01:49

eddiew said:
Would love to know if it would be possible to run this without additional fans. Frankly I want my housemate's PS3 to envy its media capability and silence

Two questions then:
- can anyone recommend an mITX case with fanless PSU or external power brick that would handle this? (A lot say 60W, which feels awfully low!)
- would it overheat after a few hours of movies?

(If the latter is a yes, any suggestions on a case with good enough ventilation while remaining 'living room quiet'? )

Its definitely possible to run the ASUS e35m1-i board without any fans. I have one installed in a Noah mini-ITX case with a 2TB green HDD, 60GB SSD and 4GB DDR3 ram. The system runs fine without the case fan on, but the slimline fan is almost inaudible so it makes sense to have the fan on to create a bit of airflow through the case.

Most reviews state that a system with an e35m motherboard will use 40-50W power, so a 60W power brick should be OK but an 80W power brick (such as the one with the Noah case) may be a safer bet.

I'm really pleased with this board. Packing all the components into the mini ITX case and having it still run cool using a tiny amount of power was the most fun PC build I've done in many many years.

- Asus E35M1-I DELUXE
- Noah mini-itx case (it was the smallest case I could find with an expansion slot)
- 1x4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3
- Slimline blu-ray drive
- 60GB OCZ Vertex 2E SSD
- 2TB Samsung green HDD
- Logitech diNovo bluetooth keyboard/mouse

eddiew · 6 May 2011 at 09:08

LePhuronn said:
SG05 isn't much taller than a standard can of soft drink and only just over 10 inches long. It is a shoebox though.

That does rather put it in perspective

LePhuronn said:
Drop another tenner on the case and you could grab the basic 300W version of the SG06 - same case internally, just with a nicer aluminium facia (although personally I don't like the pot belly thing going on with it).

The Cupid looks nice but I wouldn't want to try the Asus Hudson board in there - no airflow over that mahoosive heatsink.

I'm not particularly budget bound and on further thought I agree about the Cupid. Unfortunately I also agree about the pot bellied look of the SG, and daft as it sounds I'd really prefer something that's not all black!

I find myself tempted by a Silverstone PT-09, which seems to have no fans, an external 120W PSU, is insanely small at 19x14x24 cm, and has an utterly massive vent on the top rear. It's also quite sexy looking

nkuk said:
Its definitely possible to run the ASUS e35m1-i board without any fans. I have one installed in a Noah mini-ITX case with a 2TB green HDD, 60GB SSD and 4GB DDR3 ram. The system runs fine without the case fan on, but the slimline fan is almost inaudible so it makes sense to have the fan on to create a bit of airflow through the case.

That's interesting, the Noah doesn't look the most well vented of cases - but then, there's not a lot of heat comes off an 18W CPU I'd imagine. Could well be a toss up between that and a Silverstone PT-09... Noah is wider and longer, but shallower. Must ponder...

nkuk said:
Most reviews state that a system with an e35m motherboard will use 40-50W power, so a 60W power brick should be OK but an 80W power brick (such as the one with the Noah case) may be a safer bet.

Coolbeans, that's nice to know. I do feel drawn to the massive 120W brick on the Silverstone, as that would give me room to sneak in a low-end graphics card some time in the future should I feel the need

*edit* then I noticed this beautiful thing: http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/p_spec.php?pno=lc12&area=usa ^^;

LePhuronn · 6 May 2011 at 13:06

^ this.

LC12 much drool, although both the SG05 and SG06 come in silver too :-P

Cycrow · 7 May 2011 at 13:21

I'm using the asus ion board instead of the fusion. But its fairly similar

Mine runs fine without any fans
I run it in the silverstone ml02 case. Which comes with a DVD drive lcd display and remote control and a silent pico style psu

I have a ssd in there as well for total silence

eddiew · 9 May 2011 at 08:22

Case looks nice, but being built for mATX is a bit bigger than I wanted to go. Half the fun of this project (for me) is to wedge as much cool stuff into the smallest enclosure possible

Guardsmon · 9 May 2011 at 09:46

Need SSD if you really want silent

If you're going to use a HDD in there you might as well put a low db fan in there aswell.

Ever considered a Hoojum Cubit3?

eddiew · 9 May 2011 at 10:10

To be quite fair, I'd imagine the blu ray drive will make more noise than a 2.5" hdd

But I could consider a cheap 50-60gb sdd it's true...

Hoojum seems a bit taller than I really want - and I'm hanged if I can find a retailer in the UK selling the cases themselves, rather than just a dozen different colours of front plate...

Cycrow · 9 May 2011 at 11:44

if money is not an issue, theres always this

http://www.origenae.co.kr/en/htpc_m10.htm

eddiew · 9 May 2011 at 18:48

Hehe, while that is a lovely case, it tends to retail for the price of a PS3! Would be slightly mad to pay so much for what would ultimately be an XBMC box ^^;