A Truly Silent Home Theater PC Built for Linux

slimrabbit writes "LinuxDevices is reporting on a truly silent home theater PC that comes with its own Fedora 5 based quick install Linux DVD capable of installing a fully-configured FC5 system with LIRC, KDETV, TV-Time and Kradio in about 15 minutes. The most notable features are its "church mouse quiet" 14dba power supply, TV-Out (SVideo and composite), component video, DVI and VGA out, and hardware MPEG support(XvMC). The company also supports and engages the Linux community through its sponsorship program. It is sponsoring knoppmyth and the Debian User Project and makes the mechanical drawings of its face plates available under the GPL."

Re:Replacement for XBOX

[Anonymous Coward]

1) There is no HDMI on the XBox, either

2) The XBox cannot record TV shows

The XBox is just a fancy frontend for you PC (which can sit in another room) - so a HTPC is an upgrade, not a replacement for for it.

Re:Good price tag too

[rolfwind]

Well, you still kinda have to build it yourself.....

TFA:

The Lx8100-MN, available "barebones" (sans CPU, memory, and hard drive) for around $300

Still should come in under $600, depending on your components though I hope they have guidelines on what is necessary for smooth operation and what that socket lets me install on CPUs.

But I don't think this system will save anyone that much cash. It looks like it should be easier to set it up than a diy myth TV though, while still having control of the box.

Truly silent?

[sparrowjk]

1. The power supply is 14dbA? Yea right. The reviewers didn't even test it. That number is highly unlikely, especially from an unbranded PSU.

2. What about case fans? What's the dBA on those? What about the CPU fan, which isn't even included? Both of these will have a big impact on the total overall noise of the system.

3. Not to mention the hard drive! But enough.

This is not a "silent" HTPC. It's a quickstart HTPC. It should be judged on those grounds. Calling it truly silent is just going to confuse people.

See http://www.silentpcreview.com/ [silentpcreview.com] for real silent computing.

6150 Mobo?

[lordofthechia]

Nice that they're prepackaging all this and supplying the drivers and all. But this seems to me to be a 6150 Mobo [nvidia.com] and case w/ remote. Good Mobo (use a 6100 for 2 Linux WoW machines), though sound was a pain to configure (ended up getting a external card).

Not sure how much the case is worth but the mobo is only $60-$80. Still guess it may be a good deal for those that don't wanna mess too much getting their own drivers and tweaking them properly.

Re:Good price tag too

[ozmanjusri]

Still should come in under $600

I suspect it might come in under $560, configured with HTPC AMD® 3000+, 250GB HD, 512MB, DVD/CD Combo, TV-Capture, Hardware MPEG. At least, that's what it says in TFA...

This has already been done and for a cheap.

[peeon]

By following this guide, http://www.silentpcreview.com/article16-page1.html [silentpcreview.com], I have built two machines identical to their setup and modded my power supply cpu with a low rpm fan. These machines have run solid for almost 4 years, until one of my motherboards crapped out. They are quietest piece of hardware I have owned since I sleep right next to them.

Re:Replacement for XBOX

[BoberFett]

I realize bashing MS around here scores you points, but please be knowledgeable before you try to bash them.

http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/ [xboxmediacenter.de]

For people with a modded Xbox, other than lacking TV tuner support it's a pretty full featured system.

I bought one of these

[rcw-home]

It just came in yesterday afternoon, so I haven't had time to get everything running on it yet, however there are a couple things worth commenting on:

I talked to Andy, the guy who apparently is LinuxTechToys, a bit before buying the system. He was very helpful in clarifying questions the website created. When I asked him if my old MatrixOrbital VFD2041 display would fit in the case, that was all the prompting he needed to make me custom mounting brackets for it.

The system came packed in one inch of low-density foam in a cardboard box about half an inch too narrow. As a result, the FedEx ground trip from California to Washington left a sizable dent on the right side of the case, possibly from the slimline CD to IDE adapter which was packaged alongside. I was able to pound this out with a hammer, a block of wood, and some gaffer's tape without any damage to the paint, so no biggie.

Everything is a very tight fit. I had purchased a Samsung SN-S082D DVD burner for this system. I don't know if this drive is slightly larger than any of the others, but using the included IDE adapter, there was literally about a millimeter of space between the back of the floppy power connector's plastic tab and the front of the power supply - not enough room for the other side of the connector. I worked around this by grabbing an old fan power connector and soldering GND and 5V wires directly to the IDE adapter circuit board. (I needed to make one of these anyway for my VFD2041 anyway.) The 40-pin IDE cable rests snugly on the power supply, and I'm glad that power supply isn't a millimeter higher. There's a capacitor on the motherboard partially blocking the VFD2041's serial port, but that's OK because I only need pins 3 and 5 connected, it's the bottom row of pins that's obscured, and appropriately-sized wires will friction-fit into a female DE9 connector.

My first message from the system was from Asus's BIOS, which said something like: "USB overcurrent detected. Locate and unplug USB device. System will shut down in 10 seconds." The IR receiver draws its 5V from one of the USB headers on the motherboard - I'm glad they chose this location instead of directly from the power supply, otherwise I could have let the magic smoke out of something. With the IR receiver circuit board screwed in to place between the VFD2041's mounting bracket and the case, there's enough pressure to cause the very end of that 5V line to make contact with the mounting bracket. I removed the IR receiver, covered the entire receiver circuit board in electrical tape, tucked it in next to the VFD, and taped it in place. Problem solved.

The SN-S082D's tray is, at 13.8mm-ish, slightly wider than the acrylic front panel cutout. I had to sand the front panel quite a bit to get smooth operation. 100-grit sandpaper left the edges considerably smoother than before - they must have been CNC milled and left at that.

I do not have a dB meter or the appropriate room to verify their 14dB claim, however the system has a total of four fans (CPU, power supply, and two case fans) and the only noise I could identify after powering on was from the CPU fan (which is the stock AMD fan). The BIOS does a good job of spinning these only as fast as they need to go.

Debian Etch Beta 3 boots just fine on it, however I plan to netboot it (which the BIOS supports) so it'll take me a bit longer to get everything installed.

Bottom line - the system works, they will go the extra mile for you, but be prepared to put more time into it than you think you'll need.

Not really

[ShimmyShimmy]

if your not using HDMI

I'll overlook the minor typo here, but I think you're still missing something. If you're not using a digital signal, the signal will be downgraded to 540p or something similar (about 1/2 the bandwidth). First, this is not going into effect until around 2010, so this won't be a problem yet. Second, the signal downgrade, caused by the Image Constraint Token (ICT), is only for analog signals, namely Component, and devices that support digital signals, but not HDCP (namely computer video cards). Both HDMI and DVI support the same protocol, and both support HDCP.
Generally, if your TV has either DVI or HDMI, you should be fine. Furthermore, saying "everything" will be downgraded is just not correct. All of the downgrade crap comes directly from the vicious/senseless copyright restrictions of the new DVD generation (bluray/hddvd). Specifically, it does NOT apply to (a) home movies being played back in HD, (b) any HD signals from your cable company or Over-the-Air HD service, or for that matter, (c) any movies/video files in HD that you may have on your computer.

I appreciate your spite towards DRM and the like, but this downgrading is directed specifically at bluray and hddvd.

Re:Insane energy consumption

[Anonymous Coward]

You might consider a Mac. The 20" imacs draw 100W going full tilt, and generally much less. Anyone know of comparable PCs, with reasonable processors (ie, Cyrix is out)?