Help on custom built PC for a media center/DVR project

[Dio]

www.quietpc.com
Lots of handy gear. When they say it's quiet they mean it. An hour of surgery and it's astonishing how quiet you can make a PC.

Their acoustic shielding material is godlike - a strip of that on the main reflection paths kills noise almost completely - but awfully expensive (more than the average case). I'm picking up some of the Coolermaster shielding this weekend for 1/3 the price, I'll report back how that compares.

 

[Dio]

One other thing I remembered overnight: small cases are much harder to get very quiet than large ones. There isn't the space to pack in the insulation or use low-noise components (hard drive noise bays, large CPU heatsinks, quiet power supplies etc.)

Even MicroATX can be limiting in this respect (if it uses a small power supply, for example).

 

[Dio]

The Coolermaster stuff turns out to be of reasonable efficiency, but you get a bit less than 1/2 as much as the quietpc stuff, so actually the price works out pretty similar.

 

[Mark]

Actually, I have decided I could use 3 PCI cards!

1. M-Audio Revolution. If anyone can recommend me a better CONSUMER LEVEL sound card, I'm all ears. And please don't say Soundstorm (or Audigy 2 for that matter) - there is absolutely no comparison in quality!

2. HDTV Free to Air Tuner card

3. Possibly an analogue tuner/capture card. Not sure if I would use it though. Could also throw a HDTV Satellite card in here .

I could ditch the Revolution if I didn't have analog speakers, but I do, so that's not an option atm. Might look into getting one of those Creative decoders (DDTs-100), which I guess would allow me to use the SP/DIF onboard.

So I guess I could get away with one PCI slot, but that would require me to upgrade my speaker system (more money!)

I don't think I like the Jetway one as much as the MSI one, btw. Just MHO.

Don't get the M-Audio, it doesn't have a proper line-in so it won't work with the All-In-Wonder cards.

 

[AAlcHemY]

Just bumped on to this. Would be perfect for a multimedia box imo.

( Dign-3E case )

 

[PC-Engine]

I already posted the Aphanix products. Those are the exact same rebadged cases.

 

[zurich]

NVIDIA's SoundStorm pretty much rules the HTPC market when hooked up to a good DD-capable receiver over spdif (no DAC involved).