Gathering INfo on Case\MOBO\Chip for HTPC

[LI_Boy]

Anyone have thoughts on what to use to build an HTPC?
I have been thinking about Noise, Speed, Power needs,controllers for hard drives and Wireless Capabilities
Anyone have thoughts of trying a laptop MOBO & centrino penitum M in one of those tiny low power cases not to sure how it would fit. I am just trying to pick others Brains for this HTPC idea. Does anyone have one that works seemlessly looks good and isnt noisy
Thanks in Advance ​

LI_Boy

 

[GavinO]

Generally for the smaller cases (I'm thinking those ITX things from Shuttle, et al), it comes with a motherboard fitted to the case (Most companies give you a choice between and AMD and Intel compatible chipset). You don't really need a video card for HTPC (onboard should be usable), but you'll probably want to look into a TV tuner and a nice sound card (I assuming if you're dumping money into a computer to run it that your home theatre has a decent sound system to drive).

The big deal is drive and cooling noise. Problem is, you need fast HDDs to be able to write video to disk in real time. I think I'd go with 7200rpm drives with big buffers (being an SFF case, 'drive' is probably a more appropriate term). I don't know if you have a DVD player in the system already; if you want to run DVD out of the HTPC, you'll want to look into the slot-loading drives at a relatively low speed (since you're just playing the disc, 1x transfer is all you should need, and the slot loading looks kinda cool).

Cooling, as least in the Shuttle cases, is assisted by an integrated heatpipe solution. Stock, its decently quiet, but if you run into heat problems (depending on the chip you pick) there a pages around showing how to mod it with a bigger fan. To cut out some of the higher-frequency sound, you can cut out the punched metal grille and replace it with a filter and a bolt-on grille.

Having never actually built one of these (I use a full-tower that puts out this noise between a jet engine and a rock concert), I'm speaking mainly from a collection of articles and demos. Good luck with the project