Fanless Fusion - possible?

[eddiew]

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 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!

 

[eddiew]

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

 

[eddiew]

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

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 )

 

[eddiew]

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

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

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...

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 ^^;

 

[eddiew]

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

 

[eddiew]

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...

 

[eddiew]

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 ^^;