Silent SFF PC

Coln · 21 Aug 2011 at 13:56

Had my desktop for about 3 years now and looking at building a new rig shortly. Not interested in overclocking anymore so basically looking for something vey quiet, if not silent.

Running an E6600 core duo 2.4ghz at the moment, so probably better going for something newer plus an ssd for win 7 install.

Anything else i need to know, having never built a ssf or silent pc before.

Cheers,

Coln

Participant · 22 Aug 2011 at 12:01

I'm building a S775 HTPC from old bits at the moment and am trying to run the CPU and the GPU fanless. However most people have said don't kill yourself trying to make everything fanless, as if you use the right fans in the first place, you won't be able to hear the HTPC even if everything else in your living room is off. Your E6600 would be ample for most HTPC scenarios apart from high end gaming, so some questions:

- What do you want from this PC? Will you be gaming or just using it for HD media?
- If gaming, what resolution is your TV or the screen it will be feeding?
- Do you need to be able to bit stream DTS-MA / True HD to an AV receiver?
- What is your budget? As the prices for HTPC cases varies massively.

Coln · 25 Aug 2011 at 23:36

Don't really use the PC for games anymore so just for listening to MP3's/FLAC's, surfing and watching the odd film.

Using a 20" widescreen monitor atm in 1680x1050, can maybe hook it up to the tv which is a Sony 1080p 40"

Sound at the moment comes fron a Sounblaster X-Fi car via an optical cable into a Marantz amp

Unsure on budget, i'm not too bothered about the biggest and best, just something that will last a couple of years, is quiet (unlike my Lian-Li midi case with loud fans) and that looks half decent

Participant · 26 Aug 2011 at 08:56

Your E6600 will be more than enough for those purposes.

Keep the CPU, get a passive cooler, and a motherboard with onboard graphics like the Zotac 9300 ITX board, which handles hardware decoding of Blu-ray H.264 just fine, especially with that chip. This will also do sound over HDMI, but if you don't have an AV receiver and don't want to use your TV's crappy speakers for sound, you would probably run the video straight to your TV via HDMI and the sound via optical from the motherboard (or your X-Fi, if your case ends up fitting full size expansion cards) to your Marantz amp.

Which Marantz have you got? If it is an AV receiver, you can just run the sound and the video via one HDMI cable, then pass the video through to your TV. If you wanted to bit stream True HD or DTS-MA over HDMI from your HTPC to your amp (if your amp supports it), then a 5xxx or above ATI card would be ideal. Again you could get a passive one to save on noise levels.

Case-wise, you don't need a discrete GPU unless bit streaming HD audio is amust for you, so I would personally favour the flatter ITX cases that look like set top boxes, as imo they fit in better with other hardware in a 'modern living room'. Many set top box-style cases also house low profile GPUs anyway.

If the case fans turn out to be too loud for your tastes, you can upgrade them to low rpm Noctuas or something.

Coln · 28 Aug 2011 at 00:23

Thanks for the replies. The amp is a Marantz 6003 which is an AV receiver which does Dolby True HD, etc and is used to connect up SKY HD, blu ray, Xbox 360 via hdmi at the moemnt with sound coming from an optical from the X-Fi.

Lots to think about, many thanks. My main gripe about using the pc atm to listen to audio is the noise from the fans hance the looking at a near silent build.

Cheers again