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?"

Comments

Damping, not dampening.

[newdsfornerds]

Vibrations may be damped. Vibrators may be dampened.

Re:Damping, not dampening.

[j0hnyquest]

i feel sorry for the poor lonely fool who voted this witty comment as 'offtopic'.

Re:Damping, not dampening.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They once translated "inertial dampers" in one of the Star Trek movies into my native tongue as "inertial dampeners". In another movie, a different translator translated it as "inertial sordinos" - or is it "muffler" in English? (Not to mention the "overcoating/topcoating device", DS-9's "Bullet-head" starship, "rotating drive" and many other jewels...)

Re:Damping, not dampening.

[zach_the_lizard]

My good sir,

I request more information on these devices called "vibrators" and how they may become dampened. A quick search through the literature seems to suggest that the female of the human species uses it a kind of cleaning device. I give you my sincerest thanks in advance.

John C. Cluelessicus
Director of Research into the female sex,
Local Dungeons and Dragons fan club

Re:Damping, not dampening.

[Compuser]

Judging by the style of writing I expected the signature to read:

Dildongo Longo
Central sperm bank of Nigeria

Re:Damping, not dampening.

[__aasqbs9791]

Yeah, you don't get SPAM from them, you get something much less desirable.

Re:Damping, not dampening.

[The Clockwork Troll]

Haha, cleaning device, what a douche bag.

Re:Damping, not dampening.

[newdsfornerds]

I'm glad Trek troopers don't wear purple helmets.

Re:Damping, not dampening.

[drinkypoo]

Haha, cleaning device, what a douche bag.

It doesn't look like the moderators like you today, better sit on that one for a while.

What about power?

[Hatta]

An HTPC is likely to be left on 24/7 for recording, etc. Being power efficient is important under those circumstances.

Re:What about power?

[illaqueate]

you can use a picoPSU that come in 90+ watt configurations. there are HTPC that are using only 60 watts at load but it of course depends on what you are using it for. I think a 90 watt picoPSU should be fine with a capture card but I don't capture on my HTPC and don't know first hand.

Re:What about power?

[aliquis]

I would RTFA if it wasn't Slashdotted.

Re:What about power?

[Anpheus]

Shouldn't be 24/7. Modern S3 sleep is very efficient and works well with timers. Using Windows as an HTPC with sleep enabled will let the PC go to sleep, wake up to record, and then sleep again.

Re:What about power?

[JackieBrown]

I would love to capture shows on my HTPC but TimeWarner encrypts everything.

Re:What about power?

[hairyfeet]

I don't know if I would want to go single core for an HTPC. I have built a few for customers and while an HTPC doesn't need to be a monster you also don't want it to become bogged down, especially if they may want to do a little transcoding or light gaming on it as well.

If it were me I would probably build it around something like this as the dual core Sempron only uses 64w but still gives them decent performance. Add a fanless ATI 4xxx series for hardware transcoding, a nice micro ATX HTPC case, And windows 7 HP x64 and you would have a sweet little system.

In the end an HTPC all comes down to trade offs. While some like to have quiet above all, my customers prefer having an onboard burner and a big fat HDD so they can keep all their favorite movies/shows/music loaded and ready to go. With Win 7 HP X64 and a wireless card so they can surf and watch Internet TV as well as their cable/sat they are happy little campers, And if they are happy, then my wallet is happy ;-)

Re:What about power?

[drinkypoo]

If it were me I would probably build it around something like this as the dual core Sempron only uses 64w but still gives them decent performance.

The Aspire Revo (or another Ion-based solution) can do 1080p H.264 via VDPAU under Linux or presumably under Windows as well, costs $199 with HDMI, VGA, 6 USB, 1GB RAM and 160GB disk, and GigE. And probably draws under 30W peak for the whole system... I guess, maybe a whiff more while the disk spins up, but since it's 5400 RPM, that's probably not a big drain either. The only fan in the whole system is a tiny CPU fan. Since we probably won't have to deal with any more arduous video codecs for several years, the Revo nettop is probably the best bet on the market right now. The only thing it's lacking is IR and as we all know you can add that later. So if you REALLY care about power, you'll use Atom/Ion or later Atom/Tegra, which brings full system power consumption down below the TDP of your chosen CPU.

Re:What about power?

[hairyfeet]

Here is why I don't care for the "pre builts" like the Revo: Sure it can handle the media now , but what about in the future? When building an HTPC I MUCH prefer having a PCIe slot so that the box isn't ham-stringed later on down the road. Maybe it is because I also built and sold a few HTPCs before there was a word for it based on the old Geforce 2 with PCI capture cards, but I am proud to say I build machines to last.

Instead of going with an Atom based "pre built" by using a low wattage AMD dual with PCIe my customers won't have to worry about the next big media format or the next version of Flash choking the machine. It also gives them plenty of upgrade options, as they could later on go for one of the 95w quads (Which is what I personally have, an AMD 925 and it is VERY quiet) if they need more processing power, or if they get a larger display or need more transcoding punch they can have me slap in a 5xxx series later on.

The problem I find with pre built solutions is they too often end up like laptops-throw aways. They work good at the time, but then the customer's needs change and the machine simply can't change with it so it ends up getting chunked or passed off to a relative. I prefer to make sure the machine can keep doing the job for many years, which means it needs the ability to change with the times and grow as their needs grow. With a dual core based MicroATX solution the customer can use the PC in a myriad of ways-HTPC, gaming platform, office box, even slap in a decent discrete soundcard and use it as a mini recording studio as one of my customers did for his kid.

For me it is all about providing value to the customer and keeping the machine for as long as possible (because money don't grow on trees around here) which means expandability and plenty of options. If a pre built works for you, great. It just isn't what my customers really look for from me.

Re:What about power?

[drinkypoo]

Here is why I don't care for the "pre builts" like the Revo: Sure it can handle the media now , but what about in the future?

Are you expecting a new HD video format in the next four to five years, the typical lifespan of a piece of consumer electronics? By the time you need to upgrade the video card you'll want to upgrade everything else too, because you'll be able to get twice as much CPU for half the TDP.

When building an HTPC I MUCH prefer having a PCIe slot so that the box isn't ham-stringed later on down the road.

Hamstrung.

It also gives them plenty of upgrade options, as they could later on go for one of the 95w quads (Which is what I personally have, an AMD 925 and it is VERY quiet) if they need more processing power, or if they get a larger display or need more transcoding punch they can have me slap in a 5xxx series later on.

That costs almost as much as buying the Revo in the first place, between parts and labor! It makes far more sense to just buy another PC and leave you out of it.

The problem I find with pre built solutions is they too often end up like laptops-throw aways.

And what will be done with the CPU and video card pulled OUT of the machine? It won't be worth building anything around them; they'll be throw-aways. The Revo barely uses more material than the CPU and video card you suggest upgrading. Meanwhile, the Revo makes a dandy hand-me down, can probably be resold for at LEAST $75 meaning that it will pay for itself handily, and meanwhile uses far less power, saving money on a daily basis.

I prefer to make sure the machine can keep doing the job for many years, which means it needs the ability to change with the times and grow as their needs grow.

I've been using an Xbox for many years. The Revo is more powerful compared to the mainline PC now than the Xbox was when I started using it as a media player, with XBMC. The Xbox was $70 (IIRC, at the time I bought it used) which made it a better deal, but the Revo is still a better deal than expecting people to pay for CPUs, video cards, and labor, when they could simply swap in the Revo and install some live distribution which includes XBMC or MythTV, as appropriate.

For me it is all about providing value to the customer and keeping the machine for as long as possible (because money don't grow on trees around here) which means expandability and plenty of options.

For you, it is all about milking the customer for hourly charges, to pay your bills. That's okay, but don't pretend it's better for the consumer. It would be better if they could simply buy a Revo preloaded as a media center, and they could sell it or use it as a low-end PC when they're done with it. They could have another media player in the kitchen, for example, connected to a sub-$100 LCD. But really, installing Ubuntu, adding the XBMC PPA, installing xbmc-standalone, and setting the login for a user session to XBMC is not very difficult.

Re:What about power?

[bunglebungle]

In general I agree, but that's what RTC wake-on-clock is for (combined with idle shutdown or S3 sleep).

Re:What about power?

[Belial6]

I spent less than half of what you charge for my Revo ($180). Because the video decoding is done on the video card, it easily handles every video file I throw at it, and it runs at 12 watts when not under load, and 20 watts when under full load. The electricity savings alone pay for the entire cost of replacing it every year and a half. Your solution is drastically more expensive in both the short and long run.

HTPC is a different beast than standard general us PCs. It is generally the case that an HTPC has a fixed purpose. It's hard drive only needs to be fast enough to stream a movie, and it's CPU/GPU only need to be fast enough to run menus and decode video. The Revo meets those requirements, and those requirements are extremely unlikely to change anytime soon.

There is a place for a full power PC in HTPC. If I ever get around to trying MythTV again for recording live television, a full PC in the closet as the recorder/server would make sense. For just displaying on a TV though, a full PC just adds huge up front costs, huge back end costs, lots of noise, lots of space and doesn't improve the user experience at all.

Re:What about power?

[hairyfeet]

Ahhhh...I see your problem, you are figuring my customers are just using it for a glorified VCR, and they are most certainly NOT. With Windows 7 allowing easy media streaming the HTPC is serving up media to the whole house, thanks to the large HDD it has everything they want to watch/listen to, does casual gaming on their widescreen, as well as recording and transcoding video.

And what about the environment? If all you care about is the electricity, and throw it away every 1.5 years (your numbers) you are just gorging our landfills and wasting resource which have been shown time and time again to used the most during construction, not during usage. And the new AMDs are actually pretty frugal when it comes to power, with the duals dropping to below 600MHz during day to day usage and the quads dropping to 800MHz.

In the end it is all about what you want to do with it. if all you want is a DVD player that plays funky formats something like the Revo is just fine and dandy. But my customers want to burn DVDs, have all their media in one spot, be able to stream that media anywhere in the house, all while still being able to enjoy their DVR capabilities. And I'm sure even you would agree that the Revo just wouldn't be able to do the tasks I listed well. But hell if all you care about is power get an ION netbook with HDMI and call it a day. My customers expect looong life and the ability to do anything they can dream up, and that is what I give them.

Re:What about power?

[Belial6]

You seem to be in the wrong discussion. The rest of us are talking about HTPCs, not general purpose computers. The only HTPC task I wouldn't throw at the Revo is Recording. Although, there may be external video capture cards that make it better for that than your systems too.

You are simply rationalizing your over powered CPU choice, and over priced customization for a product that has reached commodity status. For the living room, your solution loses on every criteria except possibly recording live TV, which is becoming less and less of a concern. Of course, your attempt at measuring power consumption by processor speed in MHz, pretty well sums up where your at with computers.

Re:What about power?

[drinkypoo]

Wow, never actually built ANYTHING before, have you?

My first PC was an IBM PC-1. Someone gave me a 6MHz 286 and I swapped that in. Then my power supply was inadequate for my hard drive, so I upgraded the power supply in the case. The motherboard, I believe, still hangs on my friend's wall. So I've actually been building PCs for as long as it has been possible to do so, at least in terms of the technology — the machine wasn't exactly new when I got it. Right now I'm using a Phenom II 720 system with a Gigabyte GA-MA770UD3P 1.0 board, running Ubuntu Karmic.

You just gave credence to EXACTLY what I was talking about when you said 3-5 years for consumer electronics, because in other words you are ALREADY planning on throwing it away. stupid and wasteful and pointless,

Actually, I suggested later in the comment that it be repurposed. You should work on your reading comprehension skills, or at least finish the comment before flying off the handle.

My personal record is a 100MHz P1 that is STILL working 5 days a week as a C&C controller on a lathe.

Yawn, zzz. There's plenty of 286s and 386s out there still operating various C&C systems.

2.-You can buy an OEM quad for $99, and for an HTPC a sub $100 card works fine. Lets say they get two years before upgrading the GPU, and another year they decide to upgrade the CPU.

And they pay you what, $50, $100 each time they see you? There's an additional cost to the customer. Just the price of the upgrades is the price of the whole machine I propose. You don't think that in two or three years that there will be a better model? Oh wait, there already is, now the price just has to drop. By that time, of course, there will be an even better model.

As for what happens to those parts? I actually give a discount to get those parts back, which I then use to fix/upgrade other machines or frankenstein with other traded in parts to make another PC which I turn around and sell.

So that the customer can come back and see you when your frankenputers fail, I see where this is going. Genius.

Finally your own remarks just points out the lameness of going with that particular pre built. You are comparing it mainline PC?

The current atom is basically a Pentium M with SSE3 and, for any non-gaming, non-3d-modeling application, it has more than sufficient video acceleration, including H.264 under Windows or Linux. So yes, I'd say it compares adequately for the needs of the average user. The only place it fails is storage speed, but this is not a demanding application because we're talking about storing and playing back compressed video as the most demanding application. If you keep Windows on it, even Flash runs acceptably, including full screen video. On Linux, you can save videos from YouTube, and still at least play them back on the full screen, though I admit this is slightly suboptimal. I don't care about full screen flash video so much that I would run Windows.

WTF would you want to shell out $200+ for a weak ass box that is little better than a box from 7 years ago? Haven't messed much with the Atom have you?

I have an Atom-based netbook. So long as what you're running takes sufficient advantage of the machine, it runs just fine. Mine even has crap intel graphics.

A 900Mhz Celeron will give you better performance than that in order crap.

I happen to also have a netbook with a 900 MHz celeron. Well, mine has the 600 MHz, but Jolicloud will happily overclock it to 900 and it works fine, albeit with janky power management. You have to use cpufreqd or similar because for some reason the patch breaks the ondemand governor. I'd say that the performance is pretty similar; the Celeron edges out in the "raw CPU" department (e.g. compiling) while the Atom wins in the "multimedia" challe

Re:What about power?

[drinkypoo]

You seem to be in the wrong discussion. The rest of us are talking about HTPCs, not general purpose computers. The only HTPC task I wouldn't throw at the Revo is Recording. Although, there may be external video capture cards that make it better for that than your systems too.

you can buy a Mini-PCI-express card which can handle encoding or decoding (any combination) eight MPEG4 streams at once, I forget what resolution but it was pretty good, around DVD. There were other options which could handle less streams at higher resolutions. You can also get a Mini-PCI-express card for around $50 on eBay (saw an auction which ended recently for this) which will handle the decoding of 1080p H.264, and you can do the encoding with the GPU. Although, free H.264 in CUDA only seems to be available for Windows right now, in coreavc. Maybe I'm wrong?

Re:What about power?

[hairyfeet]

Why don't you just admit you are a fanboy, and whatever I say won't matter, because your answer is "Revo roxorz!" simply you obviously don't actually have to deal with customers AT ALL, or have most likely even sold a single HTPC.

Because if you had, you would know that folks want that "total media experience" that ties everything together and makes it cool and easy to use. they also don't want some OS they have never heard of, especially since many have switched to Windows 7 and have seen the cool WMC and want that as well. can't really run WMC with the bells and whistles on an Atom, now can you? well you can but it will be slow as hell and run like ass, and you sure aren't gonna record with it.

And you DO realize that yet again, without even catching the irony (probably the fanboy koolaid) that yet again you made one of my points for me? did you catch it? I said if you want nothing but a glorified DVD player then the Revo is fine, and then there you go admitting you wouldn't want to record with it, making it....drum roll...a glorified DVD player!

But my customers want more than a glorified DVD player, and are willing to pay good money for it. The last 3 that left my shop even had dual tuners, so they can record one channel or input while watching another. And while I AM talking HTPCs, you are talking DVD players. An HTPC should be the center of your media experience, not just a box you play pre-recorded crap on. If you only care about that get a DVD player and save some REAL power! My customers watch and record, stream all over the house, do some light gaming, the HTPC takes the place of a streaming server, a game box, a DVR, lets them check their webmail and do video IM, all from the comfort of their couch.

But don't worry, I'm sure if anybody actually walks through that door and actually cares about nothing but wattage I'll be happy to sell them a netbook or a cheapo like the Revo. I just don't actually have any of those people actually walk through my door, probably because I have a rep for quality and not cheapo junk. The shop down the street cared only about price, I got some great deals from his going out of business sale. Can't really lowball against Dell, you know? But generally I've found that folks wanting HTPCs have spent many $$$$ on their monster TV and don't want to skimp on cheap shit just to shave a few bucks, kinda like how you don't see many folks walking into Apple and looking for $300 specials.

But if tossing a couple of hundred every year and a half (your words, remember?) is what gets your rocks off, far be it from me to point out the money you are pissing down the drain. I seem to remember a saying about that, something about a "fool and their money" I do believe? Oh and feel free to mod down, don't change the fact that blowing a couple of hundred (his words) every year and a half on cheapo junk is why we have landfills choked full of poisonous E-Waste, while my HTPCs are just like a certain bunny, they keep going and going and...

Re:What about power?

[Belial6]

Are you really accusing someone of being a fanboy for a particular model of PC? Really?

silentpcreview

[illaqueate]

silentpcreview.com is where users should go. the linked story isn't any different from the many forum posts describing silent systems people have made

Re:silentpcreview

[Colonel Korn]

It's pretty easy to make any non-gaming system completely silent. Just get a giant heatsink, a 120mm Nexus or similar fan for it, and a fan controller, and put it in a nice vibration mitigating case like an Antec Solo. silentpcreview.com is definitely a great source of information for making it all work.

Re:silentpcreview

[illaqueate]

Even gaming, if you aren't massively overclocking a good tower heatsink is good enough to run with little air flow. The main issue is the video card, however one would not hear the video card typically over sound unless the ambient temperature is high. There are of course aftermarket parts for the video card as well.

Another issue with any system, not only game systems is the sound of the hard drive. Many hard drives, especially older hard drives become loud over time. It doesn't matter how much you dampen the vibration. The best results depend on getting the right model (some Samsung and WD are popular right now if I'm up to date)

Re:silentpcreview

[pthisis]

Once you put a fan in it, it's not silent. Even underclocked 120 mm fans with good bearings make some noise.

When I built my htpc 9 years ago, finding a suitable fanless power supply and silent drives were the major hurdles. The second is easily solved without searching nowadays; the first still requires a bit of digging.

Re:silentpcreview

[illaqueate]

Technically yes, it's not silent, however most are aiming for quiet not so much perfect silence (good fans running in 800rpm are relatively quiet). It's possible to do silent, however you run up the price sometimes in aftermarket parts doing that. Once you get fanless then you notice the sound of the hard drive, so you put in an SSD instead, etc.

The ghetto method to do perfect silence is to put the computer in another room, for example in the closet of an adjoining room then run an hdmi cable (to the receiver) and usb (to a hub) through the wall (also optical/analog sound if the sound is not hdmi). It's what I do.

Re:silentpcreview

[Shadow of Eternity]

This is true but the barely there air movement noise my Noctua 120mm's make when running for example is so slight that the high pitched squeel of a powered up electronic device is noisier.

Re:silentpcreview

[zach_the_lizard]

Sometimes home theater equipment has its own fans already, so they will make some noise, just like any fan will. They key is to make everything very quiet, so that it does not disturb you. That is very doable.

Re:silentpcreview

[Latinhypercube]

My thoughts exactly. Don't put a fan in a 'silent' pc. I am currently running an overclocked 3Ghz 4 core intel chip with PASSIVE cooling, so no noise. If that can run without a fan, I'm sure a media pc can run without a fan.

Re:silentpcreview

[illaqueate]

Some HTPC cases are compact. With all the components in a limited space the temperature of the components can rise more than systems built into larger cases. The ambient temperature in your environment may also be lower than what other people are using their system in.

Re:silentpcreview

[blackpaw]

It doesn't have to be silent, just quieter than the *ambient* noise. Most living rooms etc have enough noise to drown out a quiet PC. Once you start watching a programme you definitely can't hear it.

Re:silentpcreview

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Except your speakers, of course.

If you have a good speaker system, and a taste for Black Metal or similar, you should be able to use unmodified 1U servers, 15K RPM fans and all, as "comparatively silent" set-top hardware.

Re:silentpcreview

[LordVader717]

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.

Re:silentpcreview

[PopeRatzo]

There's silence and then there's silence. I've built a half-dozen system for my little project recording-studio and none of them register over 20dB. With a little baffling, they don't register at all anywhere near the microphones or audio monitors.

And they're really nothing fancy, built mainly in rack-mount server boxes with some additional soft stuff inside. I've got a new i7 system that has a lot of horsepower and it's still right around 20-25dB. SSDs were key because the loudest thing were the rumbling hard drives. Still pretty expensive, though.

On the other hand, my wife does fluid dynamics modeling (other side of the house) on an HP workstation that sounds like a '67 Harley Shovelhead in comparison. I'm going to have to get her a pair of those ear protectors the guys who work on airport runways use so she doesn't go deaf.

Re:silentpcreview

[penalba]

I'm writing this, quietly, on a machine from End PC Noise; great stuff.

Re:silentpcreview

[mcvos]

Even gaming, if you aren't massively overclocking a good tower heatsink is good enough to run with little air flow. The main issue is the video card, however one would not hear the video card typically over sound unless the ambient temperature is high.

The Arctic Cooling Accellero S1 is an excellent passive cooler for many graphics cards. A few years ago at least, when I got mine for my ATI HD3850.

For most games, you really don't need the latest power guzzling high-end graphics card. I'm a gamer and I'm quite happy with this setup (although I stay away from high-powered FPS games).

Another issue with any system, not only game systems is the sound of the hard drive. Many hard drives, especially older hard drives become loud over time. It doesn't matter how much you dampen the vibration. The best results depend on getting the right model (some Samsung and WD are popular right now if I'm up to date)

They were when I got my machine, at least. And there's the WD Green Power line that's quieter and uses less power (funny how those two often go together) than most harddrives. For real quiet, you'll need a SSD instead of a HD.

The noisiest part of my machine in the optic drive, and there's just no solution for that, except making it rotate more slowly. Fast moving parts make a lot more noise than slow moving ones.

Re:silentpcreview

[drinkypoo]

The only 1U server that wasn't horribly loud that I've ever seen was a Cobalt, and they had gimpy processors. Not long ago I sold an IBM eServer 325 and it was probably louder at full fan (which it pulled on every cold boot for a couple seconds) than my former Cisco Catalyst 5000, 8U and full of fans. This is typical, because servers usually have full-power componentry, and poor airflow, meaning they have high-speed fans.

what is the power use of a cable card tunner?

[Joe The Dragon]

what is the power use of a cable card tuner?

Re:They've been Slash-dotted.

[illaqueate]

if you refresh it could load; not quite dead yet

Slashvertisement

[migla]

"This is one slashvertisement I'd like to read", I thought to myself, but I was disappointed, because I expected lots of pictures and details, which I didn't get.

Re:Slashvertisement

[illaqueate]

An aside: the dB ratings from manufacturers are often false (ie outright lies)

Re:Slashvertisement

[JoeBorn]

Here's a review of the device with pictures, etc: http://www.geardiary.com/2010/04/10/review-neuros-link/

Re:Slashvertisement

[JoeBorn]

That's been my experience too, that the dB specs are meaningless because they are so filled with lies. This device is about as quiet as any fanned system gets and in any normal ambient environment you can't tell if its off or on from 3 feet away. You'd all but need to be in a sound proof room to hear it from 6 feet away.

Oops

[TubeSteak]

Fatal error: out of dynamic memory in yy_create_buffer() in Unknown on line 0

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 10747904) (tried to allocate 77824 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/modules/webform/webform.module on line 1029

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 8650752) (tried to allocate 4864 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/modules/taxonomy/taxonomy.module on line 779

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 11010048) (tried to allocate 77824 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/modules/pathauto/pathauto.module on line 182

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 4718592) (tried to allocate 19456 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/modules/img_assist/img_assist.module on line 730

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 10747904) (tried to allocate 2 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/modules/webform/webform.module on line 688

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 262144) (tried to allocate 19456 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/includes/cache.inc on line 151

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 524288) (tried to allocate 19456 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/includes/path.inc on line 70

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 11272192) (tried to allocate 59 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/includes/menu.inc on line 211

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 4456448) (tried to allocate 5 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/modules/image/contrib/image_attach/image_attach.module on line 132

I gave up hitting refresh after so many memory errors.
Try the Coral Cache until their server comes back to life:
http://open.neurostechnology.com.nyud.net/content/Silent_HTPC

Re:Oops

[sgbett]

Hah, the coral cache has cached the error!

Re:Oops

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anon:

A Silent HTPC
Tue, 04/06/2010 - 22:13 -- Joe

We've just released a practically silent Neuros LINK v1.2 (codenamed "Phantom") and figured some of you would be interested in the process.

Of course, there are easier ways to create a silent computer, the easiest being a net-top solution, with an Atom processor or the like. We've decided not to go that route with the LINK simply because we didn't want to make the sacrifice on CPU horsepower. Sadly, as we all know, there are still plenty of web apps and inefficient video streams that require CPU cycles. Instead, we architected a full power PC to be silent (or silent to an excellent approximation anyway) Click more to see what it took, or if you just want to buy, go here: we're good with that too.

1. Low power components: (45W CPU, no optical drive or HDD, nothing extra) less power means less heat generated in the first place, thus less for fans to need to remove. Although its a 2.7GHz CPU, the Sempron 140 still only consumes 45W, so we felt that was a nice tradeoff between performance and a manageable amount of heat.

2. Better Fans: We employed large, expensive, 120mm fluid dynamic bearing fans that are about as quiet as computer fans get. In fact they are pretty much silent save for the air they move.

3. vibration dampening neoprene mounts dampen any vibration before it causes noise. Vibrating sheet metal is a great source of very annoying noise and strategically placed vibration dampeners are very important.

4. Intelligent Fan control: We implemented the PWM (pulse width modulation) scheme to control fan speed throughout the system so that the fans would spin down (in a coordinated way) under normal use and only spin up when needed under heavy load (or in a closed cabinet where airflow is limited).

5. Elimination of most moving parts in addition to reducing power (and heat), the elimination of optical drives and harddrives means the elimination of the noise they generate. The flash drive used on the LINK is obviously silent (certainly to the unaided ear anyway)

6. Intelligent fluid dynamics of the entire system. One of the obvious benefits of controlling the whole system is that we have access to architect all the assembled parts when together, not just individual pieces. Thus we were able to replace the 70mm CPU fan with a larger, quieter 120mm fan that generates enough excess airflow that it can be used, in conjunction with a well placed power supply fan, to draw air to cool the north and south bridge chipsets of the motherboard well. If you open the case of the LINK, you'll find the components form a carefully developed airflow channel that covers the CPU, GPU, memory and power supply. Although the power supply is capable of running passively without a fan at all (it only operates at maximum ~40% of capacity in the LINK) we placed another fluid dynamic bearing fan to draw air into the power supply because it aided in creating the airflow channel needed. It also gives more headroom in case you do want to expand the LINK.

Although not obvious at first glance, there are a host of important details that were necessary to reduce noise levels to the level you'll find in the LINK. As one example, open the LINK case and you may notice there are standoffs that separate the main fan from the case by 10.5mm This distance was arrived at through careful research and testing. Place the fan too close to the case vents and turbulence is created that generates audible noise, too close to the heat sink or other components and you disrupt the airflow channel and not only generate noise, but also adversely affect the cooling.

So how quiet is the Phantom? 20 dB or less typically, but if that means

Re:Oops

[nabsltd]

3. vibration dampening neoprene mounts dampen any vibration before it causes noise. Vibrating sheet metal is a great source of very annoying noise and strategically placed vibration dampeners are very important.

If your case has issues with vibrating sheet metal, then it's not a very good case. Good HTPC cases are made of aluminum so that each surface can be much thicker while still keeping the weight down.

4. Intelligent Fan control: We implemented the PWM (pulse width modulation) scheme to control fan speed throughout the system so that the fans would spin down (in a coordinated way) under normal use and only spin up when needed under heavy load (or in a closed cabinet where airflow is limited).

This is purely my opinion, but I have found that disabling any system that changes the fan speed on the fly leads to a less annoying HTPC. Although it might be slightly noisier all the time, the ramp up and spin down can often be more noticable. It's also possible to hit a boundary temperature where the fan spins up/down/up/down/up/etc. in a rapid cycle (around 4-10 seconds), and this is really annoying. It's only really a problem if there's a large difference in noise between the slow and fast fan speeds, and PWM does reduce this effect.

5. Elimination of most moving parts in addition to reducing power (and heat), the elimination of optical drives and harddrives means the elimination of the noise they generate.

This also seriously reduces the utility of the unit. First, it means the network will be the source of all your content, which means you need to have a "server" somewhere else in your house for your personal content. That means you could forgo the HTPC completely and just use long cables from the "server" and get the same results.

It also means that you'll need some other device to play DVDs or Blu-Ray, or else be forced to rip everything to your server before playing. For media you own, this is not a hardship. For rentals or when a friend brings a movie over, it's a real pain.

It's not hard to build a high-performance HTPC that is very complete and still very quiet, but you can't do it for under $300, since a good, solid HTPC case is at least $100. But, for around $600, you can not only have a quiet HTPC, but one that will play most games, too.

The Full Article

[theY4Kman]

We've just released a practically silent Neuros LINK v1.2 (codenamed "Phantom") and figured some of you would be interested in the process.

Of course, there are easier ways to create a silent computer, the easiest being a net-top solution, with an Atom processor or the like. We've decided not to go that route with the LINK simply because we didn't want to make the sacrifice on CPU horsepower. Sadly, as we all know, there are still plenty of web apps and inefficient video streams that require CPU cycles. Instead, we architected a full power PC to be silent (or silent to an excellent approximation anyway) Click more to see what it took, or if you just want to buy, go here: we're good with that too.

1. Low power components: (45W CPU, no optical drive or HDD, nothing extra) less power means less heat generated in the first place, thus less for fans to need to remove. Although its a 2.7GHz CPU, the Sempron 140 still only consumes 45W, so we felt that was a nice tradeoff between performance and a manageable amount of heat.

2. Better Fans: We employed large, expensive, 120mm fluid dynamic bearing fans that are about as quiet as computer fans get. In fact they are pretty much silent save for the air they move.

3. vibration dampening neoprene mounts dampen any vibration before it causes noise. Vibrating sheet metal is a great source of very annoying noise and strategically placed vibration dampeners are very important.

4. Intelligent Fan control: We implemented the PWM (pulse width modulation) scheme to control fan speed throughout the system so that the fans would spin down (in a coordinated way) under normal use and only spin up when needed under heavy load (or in a closed cabinet where airflow is limited).

5. Elimination of most moving parts in addition to reducing power (and heat), the elimination of optical drives and harddrives means the elimination of the noise they generate. The flash drive used on the LINK is obviously silent (certainly to the unaided ear anyway)

6. Intelligent fluid dynamics of the entire system. One of the obvious benefits of controlling the whole system is that we have access to architect all the assembled parts when together, not just individual pieces. Thus we were able to replace the 70mm CPU fan with a larger, quieter 120mm fan that generates enough excess airflow that it can be used, in conjunction with a well placed power supply fan, to draw air to cool the north and south bridge chipsets of the motherboard well. If you open the case of the LINK, you'll find the components form a carefully developed airflow channel that covers the CPU, GPU, memory and power supply. Although the power supply is capable of running passively without a fan at all (it only operates at maximum ~40% of capacity in the LINK) we placed another fluid dynamic bearing fan to draw air into the power supply because it aided in creating the airflow channel needed. It also gives more headroom in case you do want to expand the LINK.

Although not obvious at first glance, there are a host of important details that were necessary to reduce noise levels to the level you'll find in the LINK. As one example, open the LINK case and you may notice there are standoffs that separate the main fan from the case by 10.5mm This distance was arrived at through careful research and testing. Place the fan too close to the case vents and turbulence is created that generates audible noise, too close to the heat sink or other components and you disrupt the airflow channel and not only generate noise, but also adversely affect the cooling.

So how quiet is the Phantom? 20 dB or less typically, but if that means nothing to you, put a different way, sitting on the couch 6 feet away, its probably less

Re:The Full Article

[Pyrus.mg]

The Phantom? Isn't that the game console that Duke Nukem' Forever is going to launch on? Someday. In a parallel universe.

Re:The Full Article

[theY4Kman]

Uh, I don't know if you guys realize, but that's just a direct copy and paste from the article. The site isn't loading very well, so I grabbed what I could and put it up here.

Re:The Full Article

[cynyr]

in 2005 linux journal beat them to it.... http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8292 Silent(yes, no movement at all) so i guess the only noise would be from high frequency electronics.

Re:The Full Article

[thsths]

> So how quiet is the Phantom? 20 dB or less typically

That may sound low, but as geeks should now, dB is a unit of acoustic power, which is only a very rough indication how loud it is perceived.

If you are so much into technically details, why don't you give the sound level in Sone? That would make a lot more sense - and the number would be impressively low, I assume.

Re:The Full Article

[Coren22]

That was the older version of the hardware. They just released a new unit along with an upgrade for the older unit that utilizes a fan. The old unit used an ATI video card which could not handle 1080i, the new one uses a nVidia chipset which can.

silent HTPC and silent site

[roman_mir]

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 12058624) (tried to allocate 35 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/includes/menu.inc on line 1224 ...
Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 1048576) (tried to allocate 4864 bytes) in /var/www/open.neurostechnology.com/includes/theme.inc on line 890 ...

- it's so silent, nobody can hear it scream.

Atom

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I know I've posted this on every single discussion involving the Atom ... but I have to say it again:

The Atom processor is amazingly powerful. The Atom 330/510 are dual core, 2 threads per core processors @ 1.6ghz. They are fucking amazing. And if your apps are well developed, and they can take advantage of multicore machines, it's a very powerful platform. I've seen some netbooks (based on Atom 270, single core, 2 threads) with windows that just crawl at doing just about anything but basic web browsing. But that's because windows sucks, not because Atom sucks. Try getting an Intel mini-atx Atom 510 based mobo and put 4 gb of ram in there. Using the embedded GMA intel card, I can run compiz at full speed @ 1990x1200 with all visual effects turned on, plus chrome with 30 open tabs, while gcc is compiling something on the background and still have a great performance. One of the appliances I develop (security) is based on an Atom 330, and we can run 16 ffmpegs encoding MPEG4 video @ 720x576 just fine. And you can run the 510 essentially fan-less by just adding a slightly better heatsink. It uses very little power, it runs very well, and completely quiet. For a completely silent machine, all you need to do is get one of this mobos in their 12v version, add an external laptop power brick, remove the fan and add a better heatsink. Or just use the 270 version (single core, 2 threads) that is completely fanless out of the box.

Noone needs a fucking 2.8Ghz dual core processor just to run flash video, all you need is a better OS and a little optimization.

BTW: This Intel mobos I'm mentioning are mini-atx and retail for ~$80, processor and everything. That is, mobo+cpu for 80 bucks. Nothing beats the Atom.

Re:Atom

[illaqueate]

The other point is that there are decent GPU including onboard designed for HTPC which will hardware accelerate and diminish the need for CPU.

Re:Atom

[djrogers]

"Noone needs a fscking 2.8Ghz dual core processor just to run flash video, all you need is a better OS and a little optimization." An Atom alone is fine for the 360/480p YouTube stuff, and low res hulu, but try watching some 720/1080p flash on that n270 and you'll learn what a slideshow is.

Re:Atom

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The trouble is, if you want to, say, run Flash video, you don't really get to choose how much optimization the producer of that particular video did.

If you look at Neuros' previous product in the same vein, it was a totally silent, totally fanless, passive-cooled-in-a-plastic-box type of affair, based on some embedded ARM media SoiC. Why did they switch to an x86 board whose processor sucks down more power than their entire previous design?

Because, being a fairly small outfit, they can't control the media market. If you are huge, or your product is vastly compelling in other respects, or you are building an embedded system of some sort, where you define the use cases, you can get away with specialized solutions. In the case of your security appliance, you choose what to encode, and thus what you'll have to decode. When Apple decided to ditch flash on their mobile devices, they got Google to spin them their very own youtube substitute, with a variety of other video outfits following suit.

If you are Neuros, though, your only hope of shifting units is pretty much supporting whatever crazy media your customers want. An x86 core fast enough to do HD Flash video, along with the full codec support of a desktop Linux distribution(complete with compatibility with the various questionably licit guides to installing proprietary x86 decoder dlls) is pretty much the only way to do that, as technically crude as it is.

Re:Atom

[spire3661]

For MY personal PVR needs, an Atom just isnt going to cut it. My HTPC server uses alot of CPU power to detect and edit out commercials as well as compress the video into various formats. An Atom would choke on that workload. Also, encoding is the wrong word to use there, you are NOT encoding 16 streams, you are merely laying down 16 data tracks. Thats about as impressive as saying you have 16 torrents going at once.

Re:Atom

[illaqueate]

I don't know how much CPU is still utilized but the current flash betas are GPU accelerated.

Re:Atom

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In all probability, then, if GPU accelerated Flash is fully baked by the time they start shipping these as a full commercial product(rather than the current "gamma" geek/prerelease stuff), they'll take advantage of having a socketed board, and just stuff it with a cheaper, slower, lower-power CPU.

My understanding is that this product has been in development a while, and that GPU accelerated flash has been, at best, a roadmap item for much of its history.

Re:Atom

[illaqueate]

That said, the GPU acceleration is at the moment only for video and requires a GPU that supports DXVA. Eventually GPU acceleration will apply to more software. For example, firefox and Internet Explorer will soon have GPU acceleration of their rendering.

Re:Atom

[cynyr]

get that broadcom crystal HD mini-pci card thingy, flash can offload to that for the decode.

Re:Atom

[nxtw]

The Atom processor is amazingly powerful. The Atom 330/510 are dual core, 2 threads per core processors @ 1.6ghz.

And each core is about four times slower than my 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo. No thanks!

Re:Atom

[BikeHelmet]

Noone needs a fucking 2.8Ghz dual core processor just to run flash video, all you need is a better OS and a little optimization.

Hehe... I need a 3.5ghz quad-core. But I actually encode H.264 in realtime from time to time.

Those Atom 330's and D510's really are affordable, and quite powerful. They come close to Pentium D's in performance, but without the 100+ watts power consumption.

A lightweight OS with efficient multiple-core usage (*cough* Linux) can make good use of them. They're a tad weak in Vista/Win7, but still better than anything single-core.

P.S. Did you mean 1920x1200?

Re:Atom

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Actually, it's 1980x1200.

Re:Atom

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

No, I used the right word, I am encoding.

I use a card with 8 SAA7134 chips that deliver 25 FPS (PAL) @ 720x576. That's 8 V4L devices delivering MJPEG video. I do motion detection on all 8 channels, and re-encode that as both Theora AND FLV at the same time. So I have 16 motherfucking ffmpegs doing encoding. The motion detecting daemon delivers raw video to all 16 ffmpegs, 8 output Theora and 8 output FLV. So, yes, I am encoding 16 videos at a time.

Re:Atom

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I am playing back 8 720x576 channels at qmin 1 qmax 1 on that machine. How about that?

Re:Atom

[Albanach]

As others will say - offload the video. My Atom n270 with 1gb ram can comfortably play 1080p video. CPU load average might hit 20%. Video is handled by Nvidia Ion.

Re:Atom

[DavidRawling]

Perhaps not. 1920 x 1200 is the standard "super-high-res" single screen, and 1920x1080 is the FullHD resolution (or whatever they're calling 1080p nowadays - probably true full high def or something). The next res up is 2560x1600 (I think) which you'll get on your 30" Dell/Apple LCD display.

Re:Atom

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Many displays have unusual resolutions, and a weird aspect ratio (i.e not 4:3 or 16:9). The display I was talking about is an LG Flatron W2243S. It's native resolution is 1980x1200, that is an aspect ratio of 1.65 instead of 1.77777 (regular widescreen or 16:9).

Re:Atom

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Oh, and, also, there is only one defintion for HD: 1080p/i vertical resolution. Many people called DVD "HD" too, but that's not correct (DVD is limited to whatever resolution that norm uses, for example, 720x576 for PAL). There's a difference between saying something has a "high definition/very high definition/super-uber-amazing definition" (all coloquial terms) and the actual definition of HD which is 1080p/i.

Re:Atom

[JoeBorn]

I'm from Neuros and as others have suggested, we'd LOVE to use an atom solution. The issue, as fuzzyfuzzyfungus suggested is that we can't anticipate what users will want to use the machine for, and sadly much of that is not optimized. flash 10.1 did not completely solve this problem (and its not available in 64bit yet anyway). Further, flash isn't the only inefficient application out there, and the entire point of our box is flexibility, and that you can run virtually any application you want without hassle. I would love to do what you are doing and go with an atom solution, it would save us money and hassle, and be more efficient. Its very close, but just not quiet there for what we're trying to do just yet. No one will be happier when that day comes.

Re:Atom

[BikeHelmet]

Wikipedia says 720p+ is HD. Microsoft and Sony seem to say the same for their consoles.

Since wikipedia lists resolutions up into the thousands, I'm going to say 720p+ is the correct definition of HD - not merely 1080p/i

Re:Atom

[Anonymous Coward]

How about noticing the word "flash" in the post you replied to?

Re:Atom

[thijsh]

Awesome, just fucking awesome... I never realized the Atom had *this much* power (and with that I mean processing, the rated power-use is like 8 watts). They should be at least 10 times more efficient as most desktop processors.

/me writes down an Atom based silent PC on my wish-list...

Re:Atom

[moonbender]

The only Flatron W2243S I could is the W2243S-PF which is a 22" wide screen with the standard 1920x1080 (ie 1080p) res. I couldn't find any display with a native 1980x1200, any references to that res I could find were typos. 1920x1200 is the standard resolution of most current 24" displays, which use the standard wide aspect ratio of 16:10. 4:3 is becoming rare these days and it's essentially goen from the low-end market, where 16:9 models are increasingly popular; but I think 16:10 is currently the most widely used/sold aspect ratio.

Re:Atom

[drinkypoo]

Awesome, just fucking awesome... I never realized the Atom had *this much* power

Atom is derived from Pentium M, which had by far the best TDP of its day; the chip has been further optimized for power consumption and process-shrunk substantially. At the same time, they have SSE3, and enough core to actually do it, so it's screaming fast on workloads which can take advantage of same.

(and with that I mean processing, the rated power-use is like 8 watts)

7 for the latest and greatest. AMD Geode pulls about 7W for a slow x86 chip :)

They should be at least 10 times more efficient as most desktop processors.

That's probably a fair guess. If the atom has enough power for what you're doing (the multimedia encoding thing is an extreme example; but it's well-suited to that task) then it's pretty much ideal. Low cost, low power. My next set top box will be an Aspire Revo, if I sell some hardware fast enough to justify buying one, anyway. Otherwise it'll probably be Revo+1.

Re:Atom

[jedidiah]

...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.

Re:Atom

[jedidiah]

Wanting to use a strong CPU is still not a good reason to try and use the worst GPU you can find.

Boxes like Neuros make are the perfect argument for being able to upgrade the GPU.

Re:Atom

[Coren22]

Actually, from experience it is rather difficult to find a 16:10 24" screen, most of them are 16:9 which really pissed me off buying my second monitor. You have to get a high(er) end screen to get the 16:10.

Re:Atom

[JoeBorn]

Well, indeed you can upgrade the GPU, but the GeForce 8200 is hardly inadequate for a TVPC, its fully blu ray capable, in fact its relatively hard to find any kind of *downloaded* video file that it can't play and offload from the CPU. Its really only unoptimized stuff (like Adobe flash) where the CPU goes to work.

Re:Atom

[maxfresh]

That's amazing that you are able to encode, do motion detection, and write to disk, 25fps * 8 channels = 200fps in real time on a low power Atom based system! I would never have imagined that the Atom could do that.

I would appreciate it if you would post the details of the motherboard, encoding card, and storage system that you're using to achieve these results.

Re:Atom

[nxtw]

Awesome, just fucking awesome... I never realized the Atom had *this much* power (and with that I mean processing, the rated power-use is like 8 watts). They should be at least 10 times more efficient as most desktop processors.

Atom isn't really that fast. Everything I've seen indicates that a single core 1.6 GHz Atom compares to something like a 600 MHz single Core 2 or 900 MHz Pentium M; a 25W TDP Core 2 Duo at 2.53 GHz is significantly faster and probably more efficient per watt.

Atom is designed to be *cheap*; Intel's best high-performance low-power CPUs are the Core ULV branded CPUs.

Re:Atom

[moonbender]

Eh, at least 12 to 18 months or so ago I had no difficulty getting a cheap 24" 16:10 display. I bought a BenQ, but I think just about every manufacturer offered one. Maybe it's more difficult these days. I ended up replacing it with a Dell UltraSharp anyway because the TN panels in cheap displays are just terrible. They're really inexpensive, though, I think I paid two times as much for the Dell as I spent on the BenQ.

Fan = not silent.

[Kenja]

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.

Re:Fan = not silent.

[g00ey]

Even a fan-less system is not silent, you have to put up with the humming 60Hz noise coming from the power supply unit.

Re:Fan = not silent.

[cynyr]

just move the PSU outside the computer, and then the computer is silent :P, that brick used to power it on the other hand...

Re:Fan = not silent.

[BikeHelmet]

Err... no thanks. I'd take an internal PSU with a bit of moving air before one of those humming laptop power bricks.

A good PSU is more power efficient, too. My NAS uses 2006 hardware(Via C7-M), but barely consumes 40w even with all those HDDs.

Re:Fan = not silent.

[marol]

Watching a solid block of aluminium. Now that's time well spent. Kids today and their TV sets.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[illaqueate]

yes, many of the wireless keyboard and mouse are design to work well with a reciver within several feet. Logitech isn't any better. It's important to check how good the RF reception is or go with an alternative technology such as bluetooth.

Mod Parent Up

[Sensible Clod]

Has most of the relevant points, and a non-slashdotted link (no pun intended)..

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[Minwee]

my bitch is w/ the 3000 series wireless ms keyboard and mouse. anything approaching 6' and performance just dies.

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.

Re:An HTPC with no drives?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

My understanding, from reading the specs, is that HDD and DVDROM are optional(ie. there is room in the case, ports on the motherboard, and a bit of headroom on the PSU, and the supplied OS will respond appropriately if you add them).

If you do so, you will presumably need to choose the correct components to minimize noise. Luckily, for a fairly undemanding application(in IOPS terms) your bog-standard cheap 5400RPM drive will fit the bill nicely.

Or, because this is the sort of thing that geeks are likely to buy, an SMB/NFS link to your Arbitrarily Large NAS, which can be humming away somewhere you aren't, is silent and offers plenty of capacity.

Optical drives are still an arguable one, since there is a lot of value to being able to just shove in a disk and go, even if somebody just brought it 3 minutes ago, and it hasn't had time to rip to your gigantic NAS yet; but the quest to cram large amounts of HDD storage into a set top box, while actually pretty doable(modern low-RPM drives with fluid bearings are quite quiet, and don't need much airflow at all to stay cool) is increasingly pointless. Gigabit ethernet is nearly free with most motherboards. Wireless N is cheap and getting cheaper. Unless the device has to be completely usable, out of the box, no assumptions about what else is on the LAN, by somebody who is tech-clueless, the correct solution is, almost always, "put them somewhere else".

I am not impressed.

[trum4n]

I, a 22 year old nerd, have been building fanless, high performance machines that are silent since the 90's. My first PC I built when I was 12 was silent. A fanless gaming machine. Rubber o-rings kept the loudest part, the hard drive, from making noise. The power supply fan was removed, and the case slotted to allow passive convection cooling. This is a really unimpressive "break through." My 2 cents.

Re:I am not impressed.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I, a 22 year old nerd, have been building fanless, high performance machines that are silent since the 90's. My first PC I built when I was 12 was silent.

Ok, but you left out one important detail. They are silent, but did they actually ever work?

Otherwise, my parents have an Apple II that has been silent since the 80's. Now beat that!

Re:I am not impressed.

[TeknoHog]

There are power supplies designed to be fanless. In addition, you can use laptop HDs and CPUs; for the latter you generally need a specialized motherboard (usually Mini-ITX), but it's a great way to save power and hence cooling requirements.

"Laptop" CPUs are pretty much the same as their "desktop" counterparts, except they are the best picks of the lot to allow lower voltages, and you can usually undervolt them further.

Re:I am not impressed.

[mirix]

My tabulating machine doesn't have any fans. The relays and card punch solenoids make an awful racket though.

Re:I am not impressed.

[Tim C]

I, a 22 year old nerd, have been building fanless, high performance machines that are silent since the 90's. My first PC I built when I was 12 was silent.

You're 22 now, you built your first PC at 12; it's 2010, that makes your first build 1999 at the very earliest. I'm not sure if that *really* qualifies for "since the 90s".

Re:I am not impressed.

[mr_stinky_britches]

You're 22 now, you built your first PC at 12; it's 2010, that makes your first build 1999 at the very earliest. I'm not sure if that *really* qualifies for "since the 90s".

I second your statement. There is nothing nerdy/impressive about trum4n (982031)'s math skills.

Re:I am not impressed.

[trum4n]

The year has nothing to do with the point. The point is a quiet PC is nothing special.

Re:I am not impressed.

[mr_stinky_britches]

I agree, it certainly doesn't warrant yet another fscking post on slashdot :) Slow news day I guess.

Re:I am not impressed.

[Enigma23]

No computer is completely "silent" unless it's turned off at the wall.

I used to play on my Spectrum 48k when I started off playing with computers and even it made a tiny amount of noise. I remeber quite clearly that in a quiet room, you could hear very high-pitched sounds (probably far too too high for me to hear these days) as the processor worked away during a game of Maziacs or Volcanic Dungeon.

All credit to the guys who built that. Given how much processing power it's got under the hood, noise levels of less than 20db are pretty damn good going; a normal conversation at a distance on 1 metre is about 40-60db - and TV at normal volume is about 60db. Every 10db increase is a 100-fold increase in intensity, off the top of my head (the decibel is a logarithmic base-10 scale).

Re:I am not impressed.

[ErikZ]

When doing speed tests on my Solid State Drive, I can hear it make a faint noise that changes when different tests are run.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[illaqueate]

Even then, as he said beyond 5-6 feet many wireless keyboard mouse stop functioning well. I had previously used a Logitech Wave plugged into a USB hub extended as close to the seating as possible and it was still malfunctioning.

Re:An HTPC with no drives?

[Minwee]

Without a hard drive, how does it record and play back TV, downloaded content, etc?

Perhaps they are using something radical called a "network interface". I have heard that people at MIT are doing some radical stuff with what they call "ethernet" which would allow you to access files on one computer from another one which could be hundreds of metres away.

Another approach involves writing "recorded TV, downloaded content, etc" onto flash memory itself. You don't need spinning discs for storage.

Re:uhhhh

[illaqueate]

Most don't bother reading the article anyway. It's an opportunity to talk about quiet/silent computing

flash storage is bad for video a ram disk is to gi

[Joe The Dragon]

flash storage is bad for video a ram disk is to give a box a small live tv buffer / vod buffer with out a HDD but a SDD is to high cost / may burn out.

Re:What the fuck is a HTPC?

[mirix]

Home Theater PC. Always thought it was a stupid name myself. Mostly because "home theater" is an oxymoron in general. TVputer is what I usually call mine.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[zwede]

I've been pleased with my Logitech DiNovo. It uses bluetooth instead of RF and works fine from my couch 14 feet from the HTPC.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[iamhassi]

What do your wireless keyboard problems have to do with a article on silent HTPCs?

Comparison to other systems?

[Midnight Thunder]

I am already using a "Mac mini" for my HTPC solution and it is pretty much silent. While I don't claim this to be the yard stick to measure by, I would be interested in seeing how quiet this computer is in comparison and how other HTPC oriented solutions compare, especially ones with non-netbook processors. I did look at buying the Shuttle X27D a while back, but it ended up being about the same price as the mini for the same, or reduced, features. I also looked at putting my own together with a mini-itx motherboard and a case designed for fanless computing, but I often found the cases were out of my budget.

Re:Comparison to other systems?

[illaqueate]

The idle fan speed (idle or load) and coil whine reported on some units is maybe not up to the standard of quiet enthusiasts but relative to other systems it's good. If it doesn't bother you and there's no coil whine then there's nothing to worry about.

Re:Comparison to other systems?

[jackchance]

I agree. My mac mini is pretty much silent. Unfortunately the cheap external hard drives that i have attached to it are not.

Re:Comparison to other systems?

[AHuxley]

The only sound I get from my Mac Mini is the internal HD or the time machine back up HD.
Easy to fix with a lower cost ssd and network storage solution.
Another issue is ram, 4gb seems a nice number.

Re:Neuros - Crappy UI/hardware products

[PopeRatzo]

The product lies in my junk pile waiting to be thrown out.

Don't trash it, send it to me. I'm not "mainstream", and I like Neuros products.

Wasted money on fluid bearing fans

[fluffy99]

I find fans with ball or "fluid" bearings to be noisier than sleeve/bushing bearings with more noticeable tonals than broadband noise. They are only preferred because they outlive the cheap sleeve type fans. If you compare fans across a given size, you'll find that the noise level is proportional to the cfm/rpm irregardless of the brand.

So the important thing for a quiet fan is go big and go slow. Or for silent, go fanless. Use a heat pipe to channel the heat out to a heatsink on the back of the chassis. There are standard PC power supplies out there that do just this. There are passive cases which pull the heat from the CPU into the chassis. I don't see where this setup is anything special, myself.

Re:Wasted money on fluid bearing fans

[illaqueate]

this is oversimplifying considering all the fans that have comparable cfm/rpm yet have characteristics which makes them loud/annoying

Re:Wasted money on fluid bearing fans

[haruharaharu]

That's because ball bearings are built for longer life; they tend to be loud and annoying after a short while due to the point contact on the bearings. Sleeve bearings don't last as long, but the contact area is larger, so the noise is lower. When I went looking on the silent pc sites, sleeve bearing fans ruled the roost.

Re:Wasted money on fluid bearing fans

[timeOday]

I recently switched to fluid bearing fans and they certainly seem quiet; if they're louder I don't think it's much. But extended life is a huge advantage too. Fans are the #1 failure item on PCs, far more than HDDs in my experience. Granted, replacing a fan isn't too expensive, but the hassle and downtime isn't worth it, and in fact the better fans may even be cheaper if they last at least twice as long (we'll see).

Re:Wasted money on fluid bearing fans

[JoeBorn]

I'm from Neuros (to get that out of the way) You shouldn't lump ball bearings in with fluid bearings. Fluid bearings combined the long life of ball bearings are are practically silent. But you are right about going big and slow. That's why the product uses a 120mm fan that's speed controlled, in typical use its under 1000 rpm and pretty much dead silent.

I don't get it.

[/dev/trash]

Why does it have to be silent? Sure quiet is nice but you're watching LOTR with the 7.1 Surround sound and you're worried about 30dB coming from your HTPC.

Re:I don't get it.

[illaqueate]

First, even loud movies have quiet moments and the ideal for those users is to not hear the hum of a computer at any point. Second, the fact that there is a movie making sound doesn't necessarily prevent one from also hearing the sound of a computer.

Re:I don't get it.

[JackSpratts]

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.

Re:I don't get it.

[/dev/trash]

How close are you sitting to the HTPC.

I'm nearing 40, my hearing is not as fine tuned as it used to be.

Re:flash storage is bad for video a ram disk is to

[bluesatin]

I doubt a good SDD will burn out anytime soon:
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html

I'll sum it up for you, a 64GB drive constantly being written to at 80MB/s will burn out in approximately 51 years.

Re:flash storage is bad for video a ram disk is to

[raynet]

The article is assuming you rewrite the whole drive but there is a faster way to destroy a SSD. What I have seen is that a 64GB SSD drive usually has 64GB available to the user, not 64GiB (this is how much it actually has flash memory). The difference in sizes is used for write leveling and reallocating faulty cells. So the fastest way to destroy this kind of flash is first write 64GB to it and then keep rewriting the same small area continously. The write leveling cannot use already allocated 64GB area, so the writes all go to the area between 64GB and 64GiB (4.719GB or 4719476736B). This can be used up much faster than 51 years. At 80MB/s writes, you reach 100.000 rewrites to all of the cells in 68 days and million rewrites in two years. And SSDs are faster then 80MB/s nowadays so maybe you can kill your SSD in a month to a year. Ofcourse this is obviously not even close to a realistic "normal" usage on a SSD.

Re:flash storage is bad for video a ram disk is to

[Minwee]

So buy a cheap SD card and replace it next year. How is this difficult?

RTFA

[Xtravar]

Power = heat. Their very first point in the article...

1. Low power components: (45W CPU, no optical drive or HDD, nothing extra) less power means less heat generated in the first place, thus less for fans to need to remove.

Re:RTFA

[Skynyrd]

I'd love to RTFA, but the site is down.

Re:RTFA

[Yvan256]

It's part of their power-saving plans.

Re:RTFA

[IndustrialComplex]

I'd love to RTFA, but the site is down.

It's their stress test of their nearly silent datacenter. Right now it is surpassing their estimates and running totally silent.

I once built a fanless system....

[mswhippingboy]

It ran for about 5 minutes before the CPU fried.... does that qualify?

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[mindbrane]

thanks didn't know it existed till you mentioned it. i just checked it out online, looks good. :)

Further cost of Flash

[gig]

The video you see in Flash is ISO H.264.

An AppleTV has only a 1GHz Pentium M and it does full-screen HD playback of ISO H.264 in its NVIDIA GPU. No fan is needed. No special engineering. Same as a DVD player.

The GPU on Atom systems, NVIDIA Ion, has hardware H.264 decoding that can play HD without much help from the CPU at all.

So in this device you're putting a much bigger CPU and an arrangement of fans in your living room to enable Adobe to continue to lock up ISO video behind their proprietary software video player.

Yeah, that makes no sense at all.

And of course, we all know it's not Adobe's fault there is no FlashPlayer on mobiles yet, 3 years after iPhone. It's Steve Jobs that is keeping Flash off your Blackberry, Android, and Palm phones. Right?

When you consider the Flash tool costs $599, it is expensive at every level.

When you add up all of that, it isn't hard to imagine that it costs us all a combined 16 billion dollars a year to use Flash compared to if it didn't exist and we were running bare ISO H.264 video in the hardware decoders that are built into every device. Adobe is only worth 16 billion. It doesn't make sense.

Re:Further cost of Flash

[aaron552]

I hate to break it to you, but on Windows, Flash video is also hardware-accelerated.

Yeah, that makes no sense at all.

It also makes "no sense at all" that Windows is the still dominant PC OS. Complaining about it isn't going to change anything.

Unfortunately, Flash is currently pretty much the platform of choice for web video and I don't see that changing too soon, at least until HTML5 is a proper standard, supported by everything including IE

Re:Further cost of Flash

[JoeBorn]

Agreed, may flash die the miserable death that is so long overdue.

Re:Further cost of Flash

[jedidiah]

> An AppleTV has only a 1GHz Pentium M and it does full-screen HD playback of ISO H.264 in its NVIDIA GPU. No fan is needed. No special engineering. Same as a DVD player.

Not really.

The AppleTV is able to play what Apple specifically feeds it. As the Neuros guy pointed out, the whole point of their approach is to be able to "play anything".

An AppleTV will be quickly brought to it's knees by h264 from other sources or Flash.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[DimmO]

I use a diNovo mini and a logitech harmony remote (IR) for my htpc. (harmony most of the time, then the diNovo mini for occasional webbrowsing.) I found the bluetooth receiver for the DiNovo was rather rat-shit. with it plugged into the rear of my pc, it wouldn't get more than a couple of metres range. I had to run a usb extension cable and sit the receiver at the front of the pc (I didn't want to waste one of the PC case's front ports - they're for cameras and ipods etc).. Now, I get bluetooth reception just find from anywhere in my lounge room - 4-5m max.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[DavidTC]

Yeah. If you have to operate an HTPC with a mouse or keyboard, it ain't an HTPC. It's just a PC hooked to a TV.

You can have those things hooked up, but the thing you should be reaching for 95% of the time with an HTPC is the remote control.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[Penguinoflight]

the article is off-topic, making a pc silent enough is not the issue, peripherals are.

Re:An HTPC with no drives?

[DavidTC]

I've got an HTPC operating off a 8gig USB flash drive. It actually downloads stuff to itself, and then moves it across the network.

I keep the NAS it uses in another room.(I wish I could actually get hellanzb working on the NAS instead.)

It does have a DVD drive, but I can't imagine how that would bother anyone unless they were actually watching a DVD, and there's not actually any way to play DVDs without, duh, spinning them.

Re:Neuros - Crappy UI/hardware products

[Taco Cowboy]

Would love to send it to you. Send the addy

Oh wow ! AC asks for addy but how to send ?

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500, USA ?

Re:They've been Slash-dotted.

[Hognoxious]

Is that a Haiku?

Re:What the fuck is a HTPC?

[psyopper]

Yeah, that's a nickname that's going to take off...

Storage

[coaxial]

It doesn't have a drive (though it does have slots for one), and therefore it expects the user to either stream everything to it, or have a network drive mounted. Most people, even most hackers, don't have a separate file server. Seems like a very low powered, implementing wake on lan, would be good product. Yes, this is a nothing more than a NAS, but most NASs I've seen are loud and not exactly power efficient. (i.e. nothing you want in your living room)

Anyone have any suggestions for this problem?

Re:Storage

[drinkypoo]

Most people, even most hackers, don't have a separate file server.

Most people don't have an HTPC as their only computer. They have a desktop and a HTPC. The desktop box is the file server, it doesn't need to be separate. Oh sure, if it's running Windows, then heavy activity may cause choking, but my desktop system runs Linux and I can be encoding video and building software while I'm streaming a DVD to my Xbox, without any stuttering.

Most "hackers" have something similar available, and your comment is pure nonsense. You can use a used laptop for $100 that makes a dandy little household server.

Re:Storage

[jedidiah]

A "hacker" wouldn't have a NAS in the living room.

They would have some sort of network (wireless or wired). They might not even have a "special" NAS device. They might simply use the networking and file sharing features that have been in the Windows line of products since Windows was a 16-bit DOS shell.

Re:Storage

[coaxial]

Most people don't have an HTPC as their only computer. They have a desktop and a HTPC. The desktop box is the file server, it doesn't need to be separate. Oh sure, if it's running Windows, then heavy activity may cause choking, but my desktop system runs Linux and I can be encoding video and building software while I'm streaming a DVD to my Xbox, without any stuttering.

It's a power and noise problem. It's not a "it can't be done" problem. There's no reason to leave a computer on 24 hours a day, if it spends 20 of those idle.

Re:Storage

[coaxial]

A "hacker" wouldn't have a NAS in the living room.

You have to put it somewhere. Somewhere with a plug and ventilation, so a closet is right out. You can't listen to it when you go to sleep, so you can't keep in a bedroom. So tell me again, why wouldn't you put it with all the other electronics you own?

Hepa

[Deliveranc3]

Filters, every fan should have one. I wish there were standard 120mm mounted filters. Think about all the dust that DOES end up in your case and you'll realize it's a great way to filter the air. Also dampening is awesome.... get with it case manufacturers.

Re:Hepa

[DeBaas]

Filters, every fan should have one. I wish there were standard 120mm mounted filters. Think about all the dust that DOES end up in your case and you'll realize it's a great way to filter the air. Also dampening is awesome.... get with it case manufacturers.

They exist, see here.

Re:What?

[luca]

That motherboard seems pretty good, but it's VGA only, so it's quite useless as a FullHD HTPC.

Identity Theft!

[freaker_TuC]

This is clearly identity theft of Mr. Cluelessicus; prepare for black suits to come and get you.

This man is rich, he's known anywhere around the world.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[drinkypoo]

I have the same keyboard/mouse and even with the receiver on a USB extension cable and sitting in front of my TV with a clear line of sight, eight feet is about the upper limit for its range. If I have too much crap on the coffee table in front of me the signal can't penetrate and I have to lean forward with the keyboard on my knees to type. No joke. I know they say Microsoft on 'em, but I got them with a used PC I bought...

+1 SPCR

[ZirbMonkey]

When I converted my old AMD system into an HTPC, I spent a ton of time reading reviews and How-To's at SPCR. I'm now extremely happy with it, since the TV (on mute) makes more noise than my HTPC. Sitting in the corner of the room, you need to check for the blue LED to know it's on. I'm running an undervolted quad core with a giant heat sink and 500RPM fan (which can actually be turned off) a passively cooled video card (again with a large heat sink) low RPM hard drives for movie storage, all in an acoustically padded case with more 500RPM fans to maintain a minimal air flow.

Anyone committed to making a silent PC can do it with off-the-shelf parts now a days. It's a dead simple formula: Low Power Components + Large Heat Sinks + Low RPM Fans + Quality Acoustic Case = Silent.

What is sound?

[mschaffer]

From the article:
"2. Better Fans: [...] In fact they are pretty much silent save for the air they move."

Well, that is what sound is.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[mindbrane]

Thanks, I looked at the mini as well as the full sized model. I'm usually on the couch when using my HTPC so the idea of a handheld keyboard is appealing. I've no problem with extending the dongle out from behind the box, and, like you, I like to keep my front usb ports open for other stuff. One of things I'll look for in my next box is more than the usual 2 usb ports on the face of the box.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[Chosen Reject]

Who needs a remote? With XBMC, just use your phone which you probably already have and the XBMC remote web API.

Re:One Big Bitch, Then Another

[DavidTC]

Because I am not the only person who lives in my house? Because I also have guests who'd actually like to be able to operate the HTPC? Because my phone is often charging?