extremetech.com — Noise is always a concern with HTPC design because it directly impacts the living room media experience. We used passive cooling where possible, and the quietest components we could find. Cooling and power consumption go hand in hand, so we selected efficient, low-power components where appropriate. We didn't want this HTPC to be a slug either.
Sep 18, 2006 View in Crawl 4
liujiminSep 19, 2006
wierd not to include a graphics card.
Closed AccountSep 19, 2006
nice article. too bad i dont see many of thesewell, thats it until iTV comes out and fanboys rage to protect the same ideals each camp swears by... ugh, i hate flame wars on digg... until thenrock on!
chrizzlerSep 19, 2006
WTF? a 430watt power? First rule for noiseless systems: avoid heat because you need to cool that, so you use parts that your little watt, and then you don't need a big power supply.. for a P4-2.8gig system I use a 200W power supply. And its superstable. Ofcourse you wont want to have a addon videocard.. but I wont play games on my HTPC.grtz,Chris
aitf311Sep 19, 2006
I actually had a shuttle for a while, the form factor is great but when using it at an HTPC it overheated all the time. This may not represent newer shuttles but that's just my experience.
huntrmSep 19, 2006
Overkill to the max by Extremetech. I built a HTPC with a connected media server over 3 years ago - costing far less. I use a P4 2.4 CPU, 512MB memory, Radeon 9600 non-pro (fanless), 100MB seagate drive - the entire system is fast, and the graphics card supports upscaling to 1080i. Point is that one does not have to have a high CPU or a high graphics card - unless you're wanting to do gaming on the TV. Important that one considers their intentions before building one. My intentions were pictures, videos, DVDs, Music, and Weather - with a connected server that allowed for serious expansion of harddrive space (am up to 1.25TB). I personally think people regret building a HTPC without doing the server as well (due to the ability to easily expand storage space and not have to 'mess with the client HTPC).
pabsSep 19, 2006
Where do you buy these, anyway?
pabsSep 20, 2006
In response to my own question, you can find them on eBay. But only on ebay.de:<a class="user" href="http://search.ebay.de/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=t-online+s100">http://search.ebay.de/search/search.dll?from=R40&satitle=t-online+s100</a>