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Out of curiousity, do you have TV out from your storage server, or do you have a separate machine to playback?

The server is just a cheap box, with as many drives as I can fit in it (it's noisy). I've been swapping drives a lot because I used to have a lot (4) of those IBM GXP drives that sooner or later will fail (one did so far). Anyways, you are right, 10Mb/s is _easy_ to sustain for this box, and although I've never tried it, I doubt it would have trouble providing streams to multiple boxes.

The box has a RPC-2 drive converted to RPC-1 so I can rip any region code DVD to the harddrives.

The client that I use has a Calm PC enclosure. This one has no fans at all. The power supply, CPU and graphics card have an evaporative cooling system which is dead-silent. (it looks like the company may be out of business though...)

I have a 1GHz P3 in there with 512MB of RAM. Plenty powerful to decode DVDs (although most of that's handled by the graphics chip anyway), but I don't know about Divx.

I use a 512MB CompactFlash with Win98 on it right now, which means, no moving parts at all. I'm using Win98 because at the time I couldn't find enough parts of the puzzle for Linux (I've started this well over 2 years ago). A Linux box could be network booted, which is my ultimate goal.

The video card I use is an ATI All-in-Wonder RADEON 8500DV, with the optional component video output. It actually is quite dissapointing. I'm very critical about video quality, and this thing just doesn't match up with my Toshiba progressive scan DVD player. I've messed with the card for days and days, trying all sorts of things, but I can't get it to output a high quality progressive scan picture. Although in some modes, the TV behaves funny, so maybe it's a problem with the TV as well...

Anyways, I'm sure if you are not _that_ picky, there's video cards out there with reasonable video quality. I'm just waiting until I have enough money to buy a decent overhead projector with a high resolution DVI input. That way the signal stays digital all the way to the LCD.

So, the playback unit is entirely quiet. However, it's buttugly and big. You can move things into a smaller/nicer enclosure with a little creativity.

These guys have been selling this for a long time:
http://www.calmpc.com/. There biggest problem may be the lack of distribution in the US, but ordering from Korea went very smooth in my experience.

OK, maybe this doesn't support a 4GHz P4, but I'm running a 1 GHz PIII in one of these with a high end ATI video card and using CompactFlash for a harddrive.

There's special heat dispensers for the power supply, CPU and graphics card.

It's just amazing. You hit the power on button and nothing happens. Then all of a sudden, there's video, and the OS starts booting. You stick your head in the enclosure and you can just hear NOFFINK.

These guys have been selling this for a while. I have one and it's awesome. Use it with CompactFlash to boot from, and there is absolutely NOTHING that spins or moves, so no sound at all. Great for your home entertainment system.

Unfortunately they don't support the very high end CPUs. When I bought mine the max was 1GHz PIII, which is still ample fast for most apps.

Or this Calm PC

Doesn't support the fastest CPU's but it's as silent as silence gets.

I've been running it for a while now and I love it.

If you're willing to go with water cooling or something like the CALM System's evaporative cooling, you can get even quieter than that. Or you can do what I did and run cables under the floor so you can put the thing in a closet and shut the door.

Yahoo's Silent-PC list and AVS Forum have lots of good info on building PCs a lot quieter than the new Shuttle.

But not as tiny!

Most low-end sound cards have a S/N ration of around 90 dB, which is completely unacceptable for even the weekend audiophile

A weekend audiophile wouldn't even consider doing D/A in the PC since you can get SPDIF (aka Optical/Coax) digital output.

With an optical out (or the coax works just fine too) a PC is a perfect playback device, except that the PC itself makes noise. I solved this by using a fanless calm PC enclosure, with a solid state drive, pulling the audio over the network of a server in the garage.

It's actually pretty weird to turn on a PC that makes no noise whatsoever for the first time. You can stick your head in, there's just silence. You need the LED's to confirm the damn thing is on :-)

An off-the-shelf, self-contained water-cooled computer from Calm PC...

This system is reasonably priced (for what you get), it relatively small, and is completely 'fan-less'. A review of the system can be seen here and it was discussed on Slashdot here.

Of course, this is not exactly a 'mini-PC'; however, I would assume that someone who is fairly instrious and has a bit of time on their hands could mod the cooling system to a different case or simply mod the case appropriately to fit their needs!!!

Just a thought...enjoy!

According to the manufacturer, they are using that thick side panel as a heat sink. Probably any chunk of aluminum (or other good heat conductor) with a large surface would do.

From the webpage...

Cost with shipping to the US 202.70.
Applicable CPU with the case: 1Ghz or less Intel or AMD

So you have to pay 200 bucks for a case that can't handle one of those fancy new processors we all want. That is a shame.

Although conventional wisdom has it at the top so that the heat gets sucked out the top. Which raises a whole question of air circulation in the design that is troubling.

this page says

2. Applicable types for the CALM(CPU , Graphic card)
CPU Less than 1GHz socket type (Intel, AMD)


it must be cheaper now, to buy a >1GHz chip than a slower one and this case.