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

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.

 

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).

 

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.

 

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.

 

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







( Dign-3E case )

 

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

 

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