06-28-2006, 08:55 PM
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Joshua Driggs
Member
Location: Austin, TX
Join Date: Jun 2006
Local Time: 01:59 PM
Local Date: 12-03-2008
Posts: 3
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Rustic HTPC with fanless AMD Turion 64 Processor
Long time lurker, first time poster.
I wanted to make a PC with a rustic look. It needed to look good in the living room without screaming "I'm a PC!" or looking like a disco jukebox full of lights.
I had lots of wood left over from the Redwood PC mod, it is very pretty wood and a shame to not use. This time I went for a matte finish. The wood was sanded, and a thin coat of polyurethane was applied and left to dry. Then it was lightly sanded back to a matte finish.
The faceplate is 1/4" Paduak hardwood. Laser Etched with a Texas Star. The shell is covered in Paduak veneer (real wood). The veneer overhangs the front to ensure no metal is visible underneath. The vent holes on the side were laser cut to match the existing shuttle vents.
The black bands are brass strips, powdercoated black. They cover up the seams in the veneer which expand and contract based on temperature.
The processor runs completly fanless all the time. Only when doing something intense such as ripping at DVD or CD does the ultra quiet fan kick in.
The harddrive is small, only 40GB, but it is also nearly silent.
Even though this is a HTPC, all large data files are offloaded to a network server with 750GB of space. In fact the entire My Documents folder has been moved to a network share. This also allows the same copy of iTunes to be run off both the server and the HTPC.
Specs:
AMD Turion 64 30-watt 2Ghz MobileProcessor.
1GB of DDR Memory
40GB Harddrive
ATI Radeon All-in-wonder (modifed to be fanless)
Shuttle socket 754 System (Via chipset)
16X DVD Burner
The faceplate was laser etched.
The screws are the original shuttle faceplate screws, but powdercoated matte black.
The DVD Slot was laser cut.
There is no eject button, power button or lights.
DVD eject is done via a keyboard shortcut, and this PC runs 24/7 anytime power is applied, so no power button was needed.
This was a quick project I put together to have a nearly fanless HTPC in the living room.
I say nearly fanless, as the only fan spinning 100% of the time is the quiet powersupply fan.
The CPU is a 30-watt Turion 64 Processor. This CPU runs with no fan 90% of the time. It only spins up when ripping at DVD or CD. Even then the fan used is a ultra quiet 60mm Zalman.
It does this by staying clocked at 800mhz 0.9volts unless more power is needed.
When needed a program called "Rightmark CPU Clock Utility" cranks the speed up to 2Ghz. Speedfan is used to monitor the temps and turns the fan on as needed.
In reality the fan never spins to a noticable level.
That is one of our member's hats.
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I have some future plans to build a DIY amp and mabye speakers in a similar style.
My plan is to use a Creative X-FI Sound card as a digital sound processor.
After all it has Dolby Digital EX, DTS ES, and is THX certified.
It can output 7.1 audio, and can decode external digital inputs.
That way all I should need is some straight amps and speakers.
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