I've never intended building a quiet pc to be an annual event but here's my third attempt in three years. I was hankering for a better solution to playing music and DivX/Xvid movies in my living room. Up until now, I had been using a Medion Wireless RF Transmission System (MD9048) to transmit the audio and video from my desktop PC to my TV. Cheap and cheerful but it just wasn't good enough. Picture was so-so and the audio was terrible and prone to interference.

I was tempted to go with a media streaming solution over 802.11b but it seemed more complicated than I wanted and it had a limited upgrade path. I definitely didn't want to get stuck with something that I couldn't upgrade. So I embarked on building a Home Media PC.

My goal was a small silent box attached to my TV/stereo. I wanted it to have a large hard disk to store music and video. I don't watch much TV so I had no interest in a TV tuner or Personal Video Recorder. I wanted to be able to control this box from another PC in the house. No streaming from a server. No need for a DVD-ROM drive. No Moniter. No keyboard. No mouse. Just wireless.

This project was inspired after reading about the VIA EPIA SP 13000. I've been watching mini-itx for quite a while and this new board just seems to hit a sweet spot for functionality and size. I was tempted to go with the 800MHz fanless board but got concerned it wouldn't have enough power. There's a problem with the Windows DivX drivers not using the onboard MPEG 4 hardware decoder so it does it all in the CPU and 800MHz isn't quite enough.

I bought my VIA EPIA SP 13000 along with 512Mb RAM and a fanless external 80 watt power supply from mini-itx.com  (£264).

To try it out, I hooked up an old 40Mb 3.5" Deskstar, a full-size DVD drive and a regular power supply and then loaded up Windows XP Professional. I had no problem with drivers and it all ran smoothly. I was dead impressed with how small the motherboard was. However, the 40mm cpu fan was too noisy and I wasn't happy about it. It's something I had read about so it wasn't a surprise.

At first I was going to replace the fan with a Zalman Silent Motherboard Heatsink (ZM-NB47J) and then mount a large slow-turning fan above it in whatever case I could find or invent. It wouldn't cost much and it should work.

But then I discovered the answer to my dreams! Tranquil PC was selling their T2e case direct on ebay. This fabulous case has a custom heatpipe solution. No fans! But it was expensive. The reserve price is around £73. You can "buy it now" for £147 which is far too much. Sometimes they let you buy it for £97. Honestly, there's very little to the case so even £73 is too much. After losing a couple of auctions my desire for an elegant solution got the better for me and I paid £95.

It arrived quickly and very well packed. They even throw in a chocolate bar!

It comes with 19" ear racks which I thought was a nice touch. They're easy to remove.

There's not a lot to the case really. For the money, it doesn't even come with a power supply! But it's well built and has nice finish. You can see the cpu heatpipe with a massive heatsink all long the right hand side.

First step is to install the power supply board.

Next you remove the original heatsinks and fan and mount the motherboard in the case. The only issue with the mounting is that it looks like it will be almost impossible to remove the motherboard again. There's no easy way to unclip the pins which hold the heatsink onto the motherboard. As usual, I use Artic Silver thermal paste. It's the best.

The instructions were not clear how to connect the front panel to the motherboard. It took a little bit of experimenting and deduction to get it right. There seems to be a infared connection but since I don't have a remote, I didn't try to connect it up.

And here's the final installation. It's not a small case and has lots of room in it. The hard disk heat sink is very hefty and can hold two 3.5" disks. It's mounted on rubber grommets for a small amout of vibration damping. There's room for a PCI riser and PCI card but I have no need for it yet. There's also room for a slimline DVD drive but I didn't need that either.

On start-up, the temperature monitoring software I was using indicated the CPU was getting up to 70 degree's C. However, after some running in, the CPU started to run cooler and cooler. I believe it was just taking a bit of time for the thermal paste to be effective. DivX playback will take the processor above 80% utilisation and the CPU  keeps under 50 degree's. The heatsink does get quite warm so the box should be well ventilated.

Troubles Ahead

Soon after I completed installation, the 40Gb IBM Deskstar failed. I don't think it was due to the installation in anyway. The same model disk in my server failed around the same time. Lousy drive.

I replaced the drive with a Seagate 250Gb 7200.8 ATA  (£72) and reinstalled Windows XP Professional. The Seagate was much, much quieter. With no fans, the only thing you can hear is the hard disk. It's not silent but I don't think there's any other 250Gb drives that are quieter. The idle noise is a whisper while seeks make a noise that's easy to ignore. I was tempted by the Samsung SpinPoint but I read that the P120 series is noisier than the P80 series. I also read that SATA drives are often noiser than ATA but I'm not sure how true that is.

For WiFi, I've been using an MA111 Netgear 802.11b USB device. I couldn't get it to work for a while until I discovered there was a problem with the drivers and Windows XP SP2. You need to install the "beta" drivers to fix the problem. The really annoying thing with this device is that it will only work once a user has logged in.

If the box was going to be standalone and headless that meant I had to set it up for automatic logon. That's ok but to be safe, i tried to use only a restricted user account with minimal priveleges. After lots of head banging, I gave up. It only seems to work if the user has admin priveleges. Very annoying.

However, if a user is logged on and you try to use Remote Desktop Connection to logon to the box again, the currently logged on user gets prompted to logoff. So you can't use Remote Desktop Connection to logon to a headless box that has automatic logon unless I set up a script to immediately logoff the automatic logon! Doh!

I'm going to dump the MA111 and replace it with an Wireless Ethernet bridge.

Using Remote Desktop Connection to run Windows Media Player to play music works a treat. However, you can't use Remote Desktop Connection to play video on the locally connected TV. At least, I haven't figured out a way to do it. I'm using PowerDVD 6.0.0.1012. Instead, I now plug in a mouse and use the TV for my monitor and setup video playback that way.

Summary

The VIA EPIA SP 13000 is a superb mini-itx board. It's got just enough processing power to make it a decent general desktop machine and it only uses 20 watts of power. I haven't tried running games on it. I'm sure it will run 2D games alright but I wouldn't expect 3D games to be playable on it. Windows Vista will probabley bring it to its knee's. I'm glad I went for the 13000 rather than it's fanless sibling.

However, the stock cpu fan on the 13000 version is too noisy. It's needs a quieter cooling solution to keep the box in the living room and use it for a Media PC.

The Tranquil T2e case provides a superb cooling solution but it's overpriced for what it is. I'd like to see it sell for £50 or include a power supply. However, it was the most elegant solution I could find. It was cheaper than buying a ready built computer directly from Tranquil PC or Hush PC.

Bottom line though is that I finally think I got it right on my third attempt to build a quiet PC.