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How Neuros Built Their Nearly Silent HTPC
JoeBorn writes "Neuros has a blog posting discussing how they created their latest 'thin' HTPC to be nearly silent. Instead of using a net-top architecture (Atom or the like) they used a full 2.7GHz CPU and put their effort into making that nearly silent. The article talks about their efforts on fan selection, placement, control, and vibration dampening. This route was chosen to 'give more headroom' for CPU-hungry apps (web and otherwise) including Adobe Flash. Their solution costs $279; is this an appropriate trade-off for a device powering your TV?"
An HTPC is likely to be left on 24/7 for recording, etc. Being power efficient is important under those circumstances.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
i feel sorry for the poor lonely fool who voted this witty comment as 'offtopic'.
Its quiet, not silent. Last silent system I built is carved out of a solid chunk of aluminium. No fans, no moving parts at all.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This is a problem which could be solved through the use of something called a "wire". There's no reason why your wireless receiver needs to be buried inside your computer.
Going completely fanless is often overkill. A decent fan at minimum power will hardly make any noise.
If my computers much quieter than my TV, my Stereo system, and all my consoles, I really don't see the point in crapping out over a power supply.
DVD drives are the biggest problem, which is why I just always copy the DVD to a hard drive before playing it.
a box like this can easily become the primary way to play your stored music. if i had one that's what i'd use it for. i may watch a few movies a week - but music runs all day every day at my place, often very quietly, streamed off several external hard drives attached to a computer in an upstairs closet. silent yes, but impractical to control, and as for remote access, forget it.
...like what the other guy said about ethernet.
What you put in front of the TV is not necessarily the thing you are going to transcode or commflag with.
The whole beauty of not using a Tivo is that you can separate functions like this. The monster Quad Core with 8TB doesn't need to be shoehorned into a silent HTPC case.
It can noisily go about it's business in an entirely different room.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.