I have for years been using a mediacenter PC in my livingroom, it started back in the days of the 4Mbit wireless days (before the wireless standards were approved) and up till today on wired 1Gbit with a NAS and dedicated TV server in the basement. All through the years it has been very important to me to have a noiseless computer, fan noise and CD chippering is just annoying!
Acer Aspire Revo 100
Last few years I have been trusting and loving my Acer Aspire Revo 100 and this has proved very durable and good. Lately it has been having issues with cooling and now I need give it a good vacuuming from time to time to be performing OK. Also the CD/BD-rom player was just too noisy!
Not so long ago I got a killer offer on a new computer cabinet with passive cooling, the Streacom FC5. I got it for 500 NOK (retails at 2000 NOK) so I could not decline the offer. When I got the cabinet I searched around for a mainboard that would be compatible as that is very important with the type of cooling used. The passive cooling is heatpipes connected to the side of the cabinet and this is only suitabe for low-power CPUs up to about 75Watt. This in mind I decided to go for one of the new Haswell CPUs from Intel (Generation 4) as these are super low-power and also come packed with a new GPU, the Intel HD that would be perfect for a HTPC.
First is first, for the Haswell CPU I needed a mainboard with Intel socket 1150. I searched around and many have an issue that they have components directly in conflict with the installation of the heatpipes. One recommended option for this case is the ASRock Z87E-ITX, this also boasts a wireless network card for the new standard 802.11ac that can give speeds up to 5/600Mbits/s (with two antennas) so with all this in mind I decided to go for this motherboard.
The CPU was easier, I selected the Core i5-4570T, this has a power consumption of only 35Watt, that is just spectacularly low! This CPU also come packed with the Intel HD 4600 graphics integrated, support for 4K resolution and all else I would need in the very near future. The rest of the specs was 8 GB DDR3 memory from Kingston, SSD from Crucial (240GB) and a Sony slim blu-ray player. For power I got the external power adapter from Streacom with Nano-150 PSU support. Actually, I got enough space inside the chassis to put the whole power-adapter part inside so no big “lump” left outside (I forgot to take a pciture of this, but I did get it in, for real!), very cool!
How did it all work out? Well have a look at the pictures. Everything plugged together almost like clockwork, it was all set in just a few hours on the table and the thermal heat is just 45 degrees for the CPU under max load. Actually during the installation I did not have enough thermal paste for the CPU cooler so I think I can get even better performance if I clean it up and reapply, maybe I will do that, but seriously, temperature here is not an issue. The cooler “rods” that you connect to the chassis were a bit too long for a perfect fit, they “bumped” into the CMOS battery. This was easily fixed by just cutting them with a metal-saw. Performance, well the performance is nothing less than supersmooth. I have not yet been able to test 4K material but I hope that will work just as well. The machine boots into windows in just 6-7 seconds and after a about 15 seconds MediaPortal is up and running. Not too bad 🙂 And the ambient noise, well, it is not there. It is just totally silent, bliss!
Here is the kit list I have used if anyone is interested:
Streacom FC5 OD
Streacom NANO150 PSU
Asrock 1150 Z87E-ITX
Intel CORE I5-4570T
Kingston DDR3 8GB PC1600 CL9
Crucial M500 240GB SSD
Sony BC-5600
Cideko Air Keyboard
I did all my shopping at these shops htpc.no and deal.no and it was htpc.no that gave me the killer offer on the Streacom cabinet (Facebook campaign).
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