completely silent PVR?

[toyotaboy]

I decided to do some research, looking for silent versions of the things that make noise. I was able to come up with this list:

Fanless heatsink (up to 2.8ghz P4) $44
http://www.xoxide.com/scncu10fahe.html



Fanless 350W power supply $150

http://www.compuplus.com/insidepageN...gle&id=1003622


Compactflash to IDE adapter $34 US
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=16


Add 1gb CF disk for $67 (8mb/sec transfer)
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...228-031&depa=0

I believe win2000 only requires less than 1gb of space for minimal install
$296+ (motherboard/cpu/memory/case)

Granted there would likely be no space to actually save shows, you could possibly run a server in another room and mount a drive on the network.. As prices keep coming down, perhaps one day we'll have affordable 64gb compact flash cards, and you can just upgrade.

Another possible option is to gut a 40gb IPOD.. I know there's an article about someone who gutted a creative 4gb mp3 player to get more space for his digital camera.

[onion]

The compact flash to IDE adapter idea will not work.

1. Compact flash is painfully slow compared to a hard drive.
2. Compact flash only has a write/rewrite cycle of only about 100,000 which is nothing if you are using it as hard drive since windows always uses the swap file.

As far as the cpu heat sink goes you still need air to flow through it to cool the CPU. If you have a fanless powersupply and no fans on the PVR case the internal parts like the CPU and motherboard will fry.....You got to get the hot air out of the case and the only way to do it is with a fan....or leave the case opened up.

[ejdriscoll]

Might be cheaper and more feasible to just invest in the technology to let you keep the PC far enough away that you don't care if it's making noise.

[toyotaboy]

well they're building mini-itx computers in the UK with em.. didn't think about the rewrite limit, maybe not as a main drive but as a swap drive (just to record shows), not sure if there's any other solid state memory out there... I think the write/re-write on a microdrive is much higher anyway because it's more like a real drive as apposed to memory. 8mb/sec might not be fast enough as a main OS swap file, but it's certainly plenty of bandwidth for mpeg-2 video (which is typically 500k-2mb/sec). Just an idea, not sure the logistics of it yet.

As far as heat, there's lots of rackmount equipment that runs fanless (usually has vent holes on the top to let the heat escape). Even if you had to run a fan, it could probably be a very tiny one that took little energy and probably very little noise (look at higher end laptops.. they have fans that kick on when it gets too hot). Still many times quieter than running the typical 3-4 fan system of most PC's. My box doesn't make too terrible amount of noise (very quiet 20db cpu fan), but it can be noticeable in a quiet room.. I need to see what a difference a quiet power supply would make.

[DonK]

Rackmount stuff isn't normally built with silence in mind. You should go to a co-location facility sometime and see what I mean.

[RiderFan]

Originally Posted by ejdriscoll

Might be cheaper and more feasible to just invest in the technology to let you keep the PC far enough away that you don't care if it's making noise.

Yes, makes more sense, cheaper too. Why limit your technology? Get the latest and greatest.

[Grasshopper]

I agree with onion, the CF will wear out in a short time due to excessive "write" cycles. It can read an almost infinite amount of times, but you can only write to them 100,000 times or so before they give up the ghost.

I think a workable solution is to use a 5400 RPM hard drive that supports acoustic and power management. By going slower it will be quieter and cooler then a 7200 RPM drive. Acoustic management usually eliminates almost all of the noise. You can also set the drive to spin down when not in use which should also help.

As for the case fan (which I believe would be necessary unless the case was unusually spacious) the way to go is with a large fan that spins slowly. Small fans must spin rapidly to push enough air and when they do they get noisy. Go with as big and slow as you can get.

I've done some research on quiet systems and it seems that you can have completely silent rigs but they are EXPENSIVE. You can make near-silent rigs pretty inexpensively as long as you are willing to sacrifice speed.

[Kilrsat]

Originally Posted by DonK

Rackmount stuff isn't normally built with silence in mind. You should go to a co-location facility sometime and see what I mean.

I'd rather stand next to a helicopter than listen to an IBM dual Opteron 1U server all day.

[onion]

Or get a 4200rpm laptop harddrive and an IDE adapter.

[Grasshopper]

Originally Posted by onion

Or get a 4200rpm laptop harddrive and an IDE adapter.

Yes, this would be even quieter. But I am a cheapskate and would not like to spring for the extra $$

[stephenm]

Vantec case fans, Zalman silent pwr supply and seagate drives. I can barely hear mine when up next to the rack.

[joseph_chapman]

I found a website a while back that had an article about building the silent PC which you are talking about. The author talks about building it specifically for BTV use.

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/42...o_boot_windows

If you are trying to build a BTV Link system, you are definitely on the right track as all it needs to do is boot the OS, BTVLink, have a decent amount of RAM, good video card and a fast network connection.

If you don't want to build a seperate BTVLink system, then you will have to put in an HD and there are several quiet ones out there.

[DonK]

What about a 2.2 gig compactflash hard disk?

[archie]

if money weren't an issue, you could get one of these silent computers.

as for the compact flash for the os, i think you could load the os off the cf to a ram disk and avoid the constant reading/writing. but i've never tried it.

[SwissMoose]

If you want to get around the read/write limitation issue with CF you could just load an OS like XP Embedded that runs entirely from memory after initial read. So unless you are rebooting over 100,000 times or making way too many changes to your boot image you should be fine. XP Embedded also allows instant shutdown because the boot image never changes, so there is no pesky scandisk.

Another cool option would be to have the CF slot available from the front of the machine and you could change OS with a new CF card and a 12 second reboot.

As for the fanless CPU heatsinks, I think a stealth 120mm fan turned down even lower (~800rpm) would give a lot of piece of mind and would be quieter then the line noise on a set of speakers in standby.