Hi all...
First time post [be gentle etc...] and I'm looking for help selecting components for a new build Home Theater PC. But this is going to be a very tough challenge...
1. Target room is 16'x12', lightly furnished, as well as being effectively silent when there is no AV kit running.
2. Audio output from this Home Theater PC will be run through audiophile quality amplification and speakers - circa £10k+ worth - so the sound quality has to be superb - not just in output from the PC, but also in that the machine needs to be silent in operation...
3. Intended uses fall into 2 mandatory and 1 optional tasks.
3.1. Mandatory: needs to operate as a freeview recorder. I'm going to be running ubuntu linux and MythTV [ http://www.mythtv.org/ ] on this machine.
3.2. Mandatory: needs to be able to deliver perfect audio from ripped CDs to the amp. [I'm probably going to use the FLAC Free Lossless Audio Codec] solution, since that's integrated with MythTV. My amplifier can support a variety of audio input sources, but I suspect that something like a Toslink fibre optic solution [for quality] is top of the list. A collection of 350 CDs, combined with freeview recording requirements, will require considerable disc space to achieve this. I'm thinking 3 x 500 or 750Gb drives in RAID-5.
3.3. Optional: it would be nice, if the machine is silent and running 24x7, to be able to keep an SMTP/POP3 mail server and possibly even a web server running there.
I've done quite a bit of reading around [web sites and forums mainly] and come to the conclusion that I can get a silent GPU [passive cooling], put liquid cooling on my CPU and northbridge [but would appreciate advice on best solutions] and that DVD drives will only run when burning recorded TV out to long-term storage.
I recently came across this possible interesting accessory
http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/product.php?productid=1680&cat=555&page=1
which looks like offering a solution to the problem of cooling and silencing internal SATA HDDs.
There are also interesting options for PSUs too:
http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/product.php?productid=3229&cat=7&page=1
So:
CPU - liquid cooled
GPU - liquid cooled
N'bridge - liquid cooled
HDDs - possibly liquid cooled
PSU - possibly passively or liquid cooled
Spotted the problem yet? It's casing.
In order to get all of this to work, I'm going to need a suitable and living-room-friendly case to put all of this in. Ideally it needs to be a HTPC format case, probably with external radiators for the liquid cooling. If you go back to the HDD enclosures, above, you'll see that the dual disc enclosure requires two 5.25" drive bays to be installed. That means that I'd need to find a case with 3 5.25" internal drive bays, plus at least one external bay of the same size.
I've looked, but nothing comes even close to this.
I've now reached a point where I'm contemplating chiselling a cabling run in a concrete floor, just so that I can lay in some Cat-6 cabling and go with remote NAS or SAN solution and use Gigabit ethernet and hope that this is fast enough... which I'd rather not do, as it means that the final solution is not a readily-portable machine.
So, with apologies for such a lengthy opening post, has anyone out there come across a way to achieve a really silent machine that won't look out of place in a living room environment?
Any help much appreciated.
Apologies for the off-site links!
Tx
C
First time post [be gentle etc...] and I'm looking for help selecting components for a new build Home Theater PC. But this is going to be a very tough challenge...
1. Target room is 16'x12', lightly furnished, as well as being effectively silent when there is no AV kit running.
2. Audio output from this Home Theater PC will be run through audiophile quality amplification and speakers - circa £10k+ worth - so the sound quality has to be superb - not just in output from the PC, but also in that the machine needs to be silent in operation...
3. Intended uses fall into 2 mandatory and 1 optional tasks.
3.1. Mandatory: needs to operate as a freeview recorder. I'm going to be running ubuntu linux and MythTV [ http://www.mythtv.org/ ] on this machine.
3.2. Mandatory: needs to be able to deliver perfect audio from ripped CDs to the amp. [I'm probably going to use the FLAC Free Lossless Audio Codec] solution, since that's integrated with MythTV. My amplifier can support a variety of audio input sources, but I suspect that something like a Toslink fibre optic solution [for quality] is top of the list. A collection of 350 CDs, combined with freeview recording requirements, will require considerable disc space to achieve this. I'm thinking 3 x 500 or 750Gb drives in RAID-5.
3.3. Optional: it would be nice, if the machine is silent and running 24x7, to be able to keep an SMTP/POP3 mail server and possibly even a web server running there.
I've done quite a bit of reading around [web sites and forums mainly] and come to the conclusion that I can get a silent GPU [passive cooling], put liquid cooling on my CPU and northbridge [but would appreciate advice on best solutions] and that DVD drives will only run when burning recorded TV out to long-term storage.
I recently came across this possible interesting accessory
http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/product.php?productid=1680&cat=555&page=1
which looks like offering a solution to the problem of cooling and silencing internal SATA HDDs.
There are also interesting options for PSUs too:
http://www.specialtech.co.uk/spshop/customer/product.php?productid=3229&cat=7&page=1
So:
CPU - liquid cooled
GPU - liquid cooled
N'bridge - liquid cooled
HDDs - possibly liquid cooled
PSU - possibly passively or liquid cooled
Spotted the problem yet? It's casing.
In order to get all of this to work, I'm going to need a suitable and living-room-friendly case to put all of this in. Ideally it needs to be a HTPC format case, probably with external radiators for the liquid cooling. If you go back to the HDD enclosures, above, you'll see that the dual disc enclosure requires two 5.25" drive bays to be installed. That means that I'd need to find a case with 3 5.25" internal drive bays, plus at least one external bay of the same size.
I've looked, but nothing comes even close to this.
I've now reached a point where I'm contemplating chiselling a cabling run in a concrete floor, just so that I can lay in some Cat-6 cabling and go with remote NAS or SAN solution and use Gigabit ethernet and hope that this is fast enough... which I'd rather not do, as it means that the final solution is not a readily-portable machine.
So, with apologies for such a lengthy opening post, has anyone out there come across a way to achieve a really silent machine that won't look out of place in a living room environment?
Any help much appreciated.
Apologies for the off-site links!
Tx
C
