[mythtvnz] Advice/suggestions for quiet HD setup

[Rick Hudson]

On 7/06/2011 9:28 p.m., Kerry Baker wrote:

> I like the idea of a self-contained frontend/backend system that is quiet
> so have been considering basing it on an Asus AT5IONT-I mobo -- mini-ITX
> form factor with passively cooled D525 dual-core Atom CPU with Nvidia ION
> chipset.

I think it's worth noting that passive cooling of certain chips may get you 
variable mileage depending on how you do it and it's hard to predict 
performance before trying it. For example I have a fanless system with an 
NVidia 9400 chipset. This came with its own moderate heatsink but under the 
stress of playing HD video it got way too hot and it would go into partial 
thermal shutdown (video will stop playing smoothly once this happens). 
Meanwhile the CPU was running cold because it handed off just about all the 
work to the 9400 (even 1080p MPEG4 uses like 5% CPU). I fixed it my simply 
running a heatpipe to the case's main heatsink and now it runs at like 40 
degrees lower with no reliability issues.

I suspect that the standard heatsink on chips like this might be fine if you 
have a system fan to remove ambient heat but with completely fanless you 
usually need to pipe out the heat for high performance things like HD decoding.

-- 
Rick Hudson
http://www.kpo.org.nz/                                        rick at kpo.org.nz