Building A Home Theatre PC For The Complete Beginner, Part III: OS and HTPC Software

In the second part of our series on building your own HTPC, we talked in some detail about installing your components in a way that’d keep all the whole affair as quiet as possible. In this part we will look at installing your operating system to get the best out of your new setup. If you haven’t read any of this, you can find the very first part here.

You have a few options here depending on your own personal preferences. We did take the time to tinker with a few different options so we could offer some advice on each of the different OS situations you might encounter. We tried out three different options in the form of Windows Vista, Windows 7 (RC) and Linux (Ubuntu).

For our media centre software we’re running with XBMC (that is, Xbox Media Centre). The biggest reasons for making this choice were that fact that it’s open source on both Windows and Linux OS and it boasts the pleasant bonus of having a rake of pretty skins/themes to choose from. Normally the number of skinning options won’t be a pronounced part of a reasonable person’s OS decision-making process; but in the case of a HTPC, you’ll want the whole affair to be as smooth, seamless and personalised as possible.

We’re going to go right ahead and advise against running with a Linux installation. This is mainly because of the fairly awkward fact that that, once XMBC was installed, there were some pronounced sound issues that caused a crop of problems. This meant the whole affair required more and more tweaking just to get things rolling. In short, it just wasn’t conducive to the kind of easy-living situation you’d like to find yourself in with a HTPC. So we went ahead with a Windows installation; there was more support and an easier experience overall.

Next we ran with an install of Windows 7. It’s important to note that install process is identical to the installation of Windows Vista and XP. Make sure you have a product key and a ready supply of patience ready when installing a new operating system and keep a close eye on all the on-screen instructions.

 

Installing the OS – Windows 7 RC

We chose windows 7 RC for this build as it’s relatively stable and due for release soon enough; however this section will be much the same if you’re installing Windows Vista.

 

Step one of the installation is the usual – primary options, keyboard and language.

 

Once you’ve selected your install language you’re ready to move on to actually installing the OS itself.

If you’ve been building your HTPC from scratch, you’d do best to format the whole hard drive. After this has been completed, select “New” (as highlighted above). In Windows 7, the system will partition the hard drive as required for its system and leave the rest as normal HDD space to be used as usual. You can see this from the above screenshot.

 

 

After the hard drive options have been selected windows will begin the long and tedious business of actually installing itself. At this point you’re faced with a choice; you can either watch the install, or go get yourself a cup of tea or coffee even a quick beer. Windows should happily continue to install as normal without further intervention.

 

Windows has now completed its install. At this stage you may enter any username and PC name you desire and then click next

 

As Windows 7 has detected a network it will ask what type of network it is. It is best in this situation to select Home network as it will allow network permissions to be set with the click of a button.

 

By the time you’ve seen this screen you’ll know that all is well and your desktop will be prepared for its first use.

 

After the installation this is what you’ll see as your standard desktop and layout. Since this is Windows 7 you’ll notice that a few things are different. However, the layout will roughly be the same in Windows Vista.

 

Installing XBMC

We chose XBMC due for many reasons, one reason that stuck out was that it plays virtually all formats without any major issues and is very flexible and (above all) very skinable. There are plenty of themes etc. out there for those interested.

 

In order to obtain XBMC, you need to point your browser to www.xbmc.org and follow the download instructions for Windows. Above is a screenshot of the downloaded installer. Once downloaded, click Run as highlighted in the image above.

You’ll be presented with a completely normal install screen, if you wish to install XBMC you click Next. Obviously enough.

 

You can blindly click next throughout the whole install process without any worry, we used all default settings.

On your first run of XBMC you’ll be greeted by the screen shown above. This is a very clean and simple layout and many will prefer it to some of the other options. However the end user has endless options and one of them is themes. We used a theme called Aeon, which we’ll show you in more detail shortly.

Shown above is the Videos screen.

 

There’s also a nice music screen.

Adding folders that contain media

Adding media folders is nice and easy too.  In order for XBMC to see media, you need to add a source. The source can be local, or shared on a network drive or another PC connected to your home network – which means you’re not limited to internal storage on your nice, quiet HTPC box.

 

This is just what the “add source” button looks like.

 

As you can see we have a variety of options, we can browse for files on local disks and add folders, or on a network share. We selected Windows network share for this example to add some folders from a PC connected to the same network as our box.

 

You can see from the above that once we had selected the Windows network share that we’re presented with a list of PCs on the network that we can connect to and browse for media that we might want to add.

Note that you might well find PCs on your network that aren’t sharing by default. You will be prompted for a username and password for a machine in order to allow your HTPC to connect to it.

In our case the media shared on each PC is viewable by any PC connected to the network for example purposes.

 

Above is an example of some of the media to be found on a machine. In this case we are viewing the “Movies” folder of a machine on our local network.

 

Above is a quick example of how the share path would look before we click on OK. Since we’ll want to browse all the shares from this PC rather than just the Movies folder, we have selected the root folder of the shared PC.

Once all that’s done you will need to do the same for any other media you wish to add to XBMC. Remember that the media is on a network share in this example, so the host PC would still need to be on, as the media is being streamed from the networked PC to XBMC. It seems obvious now, but it’s the biggest reason for “half my movies are GONE!” syndrome.

We like the standard interface a lot, but we wanted to highlight another interface that will turn your HTPC into something a little different and (depending on personal tastes) perhaps more attractive.

Before we begin, the theme can be downloaded from www.aeonproject.com

Below is some screenshots of the interface.

If you have any questions or are just looking for more information about the project and interface in general then feel free to ask us on our Boards.ie forum, or follow us on Twitter or on Facebook.

If you already have computer components that you would like to add to your PC, why not register for and bring them along with you to one of our Build your own PC classes and we’d be happy to show you how to do it! Visit http://www.komplettblog.ie/events/ for location and dates.

Crazy Week – Free Pick Up Point Delivery On Everything

There’s a week long sale going on at Komplett, and as well as the range of items reduced in price we’re also offering a free pick up on every item, from the smallest graphics card to the biggest TV. Happy hunting.

Alienware vs Komplett.ie, May 2009 Edition

We’ve gone ahead and done a comparison with Alienware for the first time since Christmas of last year, with some fascinating results outlined below from two builds: The first, a high-range gaming PC and the second an uber-high gaming PC with Core i7 and the works in it.

The savings on offer by shopping with us and building it yourself are massive. And did we mention that we do a free build your own PC class for anyone interested in finding out how to do it themselves? Or we can pass you on to reputable people who will build the machine for you, for a far smaller fee than the €350 – €1,000+ Alienware will charge you for. And yes, we have a 1-year warranty on everything too.

We’ve attached the below table as a PDF for easier reading.

Alienware – Komplett Comparison May 2009

Components	Aurora AMD “Value and Performance” Comparison	Alienware	Komplett	Saving
Processor	AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition		€145.00
Case	Alienware P2 / Antec Nine Hundred		€95.00
Power Supply	750 Watt		€109.00
Graphics Card	Radeon HD 4870 X2		€429.00
RAM	2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz		€33.00
Motherboard	MSI 790FX-GD70, 790FX+SB750		€165.00
Operating System	Windows Vista® Home Premium 32-bit with Service Pack 1		€204.99
Hard Drive	Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB		€79.00
DVD Drive	20X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Writer		€20.90
Sound Card	N/A		€0.00
Total System		€1,632.90	€1,280.89	€352.01
Monitor	22″ Dell UltraSharp 2208WFP / 22″ Samsung Syncmaster T220		€188.00
Keyboard	Logitech Classic (included) / Microsoft Wired Keyboard 500		€13.96
Mouse	Logitech MX 518		€37.00
Total Including Accessories		€2,015.68	€1,519.85	€495.83
Components	Area-51 X-58 Intel Core i7 “Benchmark Destroyer” Comparison	Alienware	Komplett	Saving
Processor	Intel Core i7-940		€529.00
Case	Alienware P2 / Antec Nine Hundred		€95.00
Power Supply	750 Watt		€109.00
Graphics Card	Dual 896MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260		€438.00
RAM	3GB DDR3 SDRAM at 1066MHz		€81.00
Motherboard	Asus P6T Deluxe V2, X58, Socket-1366		€252.00
Operating System	Windows Vista® Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1		€112.00
Hard Drive	Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB		€79.00
DVD Drive	20X Dual Layer DVD±RW/CD-RW Writer		€20.90
Sound Card	N/A		€0.00
Total System		€2,577.02	€1,715.90	€861.12
Monitor	24″ Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP / Samsung 24″ LCD Syncmaster T240HD		€355.00
Keyboard	Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard		€75.00
Mouse	Logitech G9 Laser Gaming Mouse		€49.90
Total Including Accessories		€3,343.68	€2,195.80	€1,147.88

Knowledge, Not Awareness, Is The Biggest Barrier To VOIP Adoption In Small Businesses

Another one for the business people in the room – we’ve asked some of our small business customers about VOIP – whether or not they’re aware of the service and its potential savings, and why they would or wouldn’t adopt VOIP in their organisation to reap the savings on offer.

Below is the key detail we got – we basically want to talk to anyone who has an interest in adopting VOIP in their organisation, no-strings-attached. We’ll give you advice and hopefully you might come away from the conversation thinking “I could do that by myself.” If not, hopefully we can help you to achieve it.

Key Facts

• Komplett is helping small business owners achieve the savings on offer with a well-implemented VOIP solution
• A sample study of Komplett customers <-10 employees shows that the main barriers to adopting VOIP are:
  • Reliability concerns
  • Knowledge barrier to entry
• Awareness of VOIP and the savings it offers is high – the barrier to entry is in knowledge
• Informed advice and solutions tailored for individual needs can allow small companies to save large amounts on their telephone bills
• Komplett is offering free consultations to any small or medium business manager who wishes to find a VOIP solution suitable for their organisation

In Detail

Komplett has conducted a sample study of its small business customer base (<-10 employees) and found that while many small business managers are keen to make the savings afforded by Voice Over IP telephony, they are turned off by a lack of available and affordable knowledge on the subject.

They are worried about the reliability of VOIP in their business and find themselves lacking relevant knowledge to put together a VOIP solution that is scaled to their organizational needs.

The feedback indicates that while small business managers are aware of the potential savings in utilizing VOIP, they do not know what options are available to them and which are most suitable; ranging from a simple Skype setup to a more advanced enterprise solution available from companies like Blueface. They lack knowledge on the correct hardware setup or the best package to subscribe to, and so continue to use traditional carriers like Eircom.

“As is often the case in IT, awareness of the availability of a cost-saving service is high. Where companies are lacking is in the knowledge of how to implement this service in their organization,” said Aaron McKenna, Country Manager for Komplett Ireland.

Komplett, through its Clear Technology venture to provide low-cost IT services to small and medium sized businesses, is offering free consultation to any small or medium business owner on the best kind of VOIP fit for their organization.

“Nine times out of ten a small business owner with a bit of IT savvy can gain the confidence to go ahead and implement a VOIP solution based on a bit of knowledgeable advice,” said Fraser MacLeod, IT Director of Clear Technology in Komplett. “Our angle here is to get that conversation going and give them that confidence and that knowledge to go ahead and do it themselves. In organizations that need a bit of a more complex solution, or that feel they need an extra helping hand, we can step in and win some business with our low-cost consulting service specifically aimed at these types of businesses.”

Anyone interested in finding out more about VOIP, or any of the other low-cost IT services that Komplett is now providing through Clear Technology, can email amk@komplett.com to find out more.

Affordable, Reliable IT Services For Small And Medium Businesses

This one will be of interest to people in business or in IT, you have been warned.

We’re bringing to market a set of IT services aimed at the SMB market, offering up relatively cheap IT services, such as outsourced IT, helpdesk, IT audits and hardware installs amongst other things, in a flexible, non-binding way: No restrictive contracts, no time commitment, and no commitment to even buy Komplett hardware.

Just the services up front, price agreed, honesty guaranteed in order to cement our long-term relationship and interests with our large SMB customer base.

Offering up IT services is something we’ve alluded to in the past, and something we’ve been fiddling with for a little while now on the B2B side of the business.

We almost accidentally stumbled on a market for it in schools and we’re now looking at our large constituency of small and medium businesses, those “Large enough to have IT problems, but not large enough to have an IT department.”

We want to present to you, and get feedback on, what we’ve come up with: Clear Technology, a partnership between Komplett and a company called Cloontagh Technology, who are our technical brains. We’re not a fly-by-night set of cowboys, as guaranteed by the nature of Komplett’s business; and we’re not a gold-plated, €1,000-a-day consultancy firm.

We’re Tesco, in between Marks & Sparks at one end and Lidl at the other (with all respect to both.)

The services on offer are wide ranging:

• The IT Audit – Our engineers look over your existing IT infrastructure, listen to your comments and queries and wish list, and generate a report of suggested actions and their costing
• Managed IT Department – We run your IT department top to bottom, based on your needs. Do you need a tech guy on site once a month? Or once a week? Or just on the phone? Or on a flexible basis? We can meet your needs, from dealing with IT problems to helping you form an IT strategy for the future
• Project Implementation – From installing a wireless network to setting up your organization with a fully integrated system like SAP, we can quote you for just about any project, big or small
• Disaster Recovery – We can put in place a fully comprehensive disaster recovery solution to suit your business size, requirements and IT budget
• Website design and hosting
• …And many more…

I like being called a straight shooter, so allow me to shoot straight: We have an hourly rate of €50 for most jobs, and we have trusted consultants who can work on anything from a simple IT audit all the way up to quoting you for complicated install jobs, hardware and software. We can haggle on price, for example if you retain us for a certain number of days a month or such, but that’s the basic rate. It’s not the cheapest as chips, and it’s not gold plated.

This is an honest attempt to provide quality services alongside our hardware offering. We feel we understand the needs and pressures on a small business manager, and we hope that this sort of a service would fit right in. Even if you have an existing IT support firm, maybe we can do you a more competitive deal?

I’d love to hear some feedback on this. Business.ie@komplett.com is where you can hit us, and we’d be happy to give you a call and have a chat about it if you’d like.

Aaron McKenna, Country Manager Ireland

nVidia 7950 GX2: A Piece Of History Crosses Our Desk

A few days ago we had a fairly special piece of hardware history come across our RMA desk; for those of you who didn’t guess it from the title, it’s the nVidia 7950 GX2. Released just two and a half years ago (ish), the 7950 GX2 is already an important slice of graphics history, thanks in no small part to the sprinting pace of graphics technology updates.

While dual card solutions have been an option for quite some time, this was the first time that a two-in-one card had successfully been marketed… and its performance was always going to be significant. Some of our readers may remember that the card was originally debuted as one of the few setups capable of making any real use of the Matrox Triple-Head 2 Go, an external power adaptor that allowed a single GPU to span three monitors with a super-wide resolution.

I was about to say she’s not much to look at, but it actually looks pretty good.

The 7950 GX2 was an important step forward in GPU technology. Aside from opening a new market for two-in-one graphics cards (new models now use a single PCB as the designs have been fine tuned) it also paved the way for things like Quad and Triple SLI setups. This, in turn, forced ATI to return fire with things like its own QuadFire solution, some of which have proven to be surprisingly capable, even taking the performance crowns of their time in games like Crysis.

As a total and self-admitted nerd/techie, my only regret is that the card that crossed our desk was genuinely faulty and I there wasn’t any way for me to sit and play with it a bit more…

/nostalgia

Shelton Romhanyi, RMA Labs Manager

Competition Results: You All Win Something

The response to our social networking competition has been really phenomenal, and we’re naturally very happy about it… So happy, in fact, that we’ve decided to give away something to everyone!

First of all, we’re upping the amount of copies of games we’re giving away, from 20 to 30 – 5 extra copies of H.A.W.X. and Far Cry 2 each. The winners are announced at the end of this post, and if they could get in touch with us to business.ie@komplett.com, referencing “Social Networking Competition” and your addy in the email header, we’ll arrange to post the games out to you.

Everyone’s A Winner

Secondly, we’re offering up a free Pick Up Point delivery to everyone in the audience; and everyone who joins the audience between now and 5.30pm tomorrow, Wednesday, May 13. At current count that’s about €1,600 of a giveaway to our social community on the table. We hope that this will push the numbers up and it’ll be €2,000 worth of a prize on the table. So tell your friends about us!

Of course not all of you are based in Dublin, and we’d like to give you a free AnPost delivery… But we can’t (it’s to do with us controlling internal freight and not external.) But for you my friends, we’re going to do our very best to give you a discount on your next order to the same tune as what the Dublin folk are getting. It’s a bit more complicated (we like complicated, so we do). The full T’s & C’s are below.

If you want to avail of the offer then you can email in your account number and your Facebook / Twitter addy to business.ie@komplett.com, referencing “Free Delivery Prize!” in the subject line. If you could save a shopping basket in your account then we’ll place that order for you. Delivery to the PUP takes 2 working days if ordered before 1pm, 3 if ordered after; and when there you can pay via credit card or Laser.

The Winners

And now, for the winners… As there’s a nearly even split between Facebook and Twitter at the moment, we’ve done it 15:15. The choices were taken randomly. So there. If it turns out that you don’t want the game you’re getting, let us know. We might, just might, maybe, kinda, might, no promises but we’ll try and be able to change it. And if we got you on both lists (lucky devil), let us know and we can spread the love. We’ve also got some extras we’ll fire along to people.

On Twitter:

1. @WolfeatingRaven–Far Cry 2
2. @davidmcavinue–Far Cry 2
3. @TheChrisD–H.A.W.X.
4. @katherinekenny–Far Cry 2
5. @Spaghettihoop–H.A.W.X.
6. @DannieOBrien–H.A.W.X.
7. @vbr84u–Far Cry 2
8. @Twistedlilkitty–H.A.W.X.
9. @feylya–H.A.W.X.
10. @IRLConor–H.A.W.X.
11. @CathalRodriguez–Far Cry 2
12. @calvin141170–H.A.W.X.
13. @adamkmccarthy–H.A.W.X.
14. @irishstu–H.A.W.X.
15. @Kromm–H.A.W.X.

On Facebook:

1. Bernard McKeever–H.A.W.X.
2. Amit Wadhwa–H.A.W.X.
3. Richie Flynn–H.A.W.X.
4. Niall Bermingham–Far Cry 2
5. Corinne Flynn–H.A.W.X.
6. Dean Whelan–Far Cry 2
7. Hariharpal Singh–H.A.W.X.
8. Stewart Curry–H.A.W.X.
9. Dan Fox–Far Cry 2
10. Lindsey Finnegan–Far Cry 2
11. Paul Burke–H.A.W.X.
12. Jen Murphy–H.A.W.X.
13. Kevin Mac Uistin–H.A.W.X.
14. Chris Noble–Far Cry 2
15. Damien Gerard James Rhatigan–H.A.W.X.

Terms & Conditions

And finally, the T’s & C’s for the “Everyone’s a Winner” thingy (you got a better name?):

• Offer is available to anyone who is a follower on Twitter or a fan on Facebook before 5.30pm on Wednesday May 13
• Offer extends to 5.30pm on Friday May 15
• Offer extends only to genuine user accounts – IE active Twitter and Facebook users; not accounts set up for the primary shell purpose of availing of the offer
• The offer of a discount is subject to availability/margin on the specific order; for example, we cannot offer €8 off of a €10 item
• One per customer
• All offers only available in the Republic of Ireland
• Sorry if you don’t qualify this time… We’ll do something again!

We hope you enjoy, and remember, you can follow us on Twitter, on Facebook, subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed – where we’ll be posting more competitions, articles and the likes – or you can go and holler at us over on the Komplett forum on Boards.ie

Best,

Aaron McKenna

Country Manager Ireland

Registration For Free Build Your Own PC Classes

Komplett offers up a free build your own PC class in our Dublin office on Saturday’s, taught by our labs manager Shelton Romhanyi (who used to work as a labs manager for Tom’s Hardware Guide and has forgotten more about tech than most of us know); and we’re opening for registration of the following dates:

May 23rd, June 6th, June 20th, July 18th and August 1st.

If you’re interested in attending then please email business.ie@komplett.com and let us know which dates you’d be open to attending, and we’ll try and fit you in. It’s a first come, first served basis; but we keep in touch with everyone who shows an interest to keep them informed of upcoming dates.

The classes are small, usually around 5 people, takes about two hours (sometimes more, depending on the Q&A) and involve a show-and-tell by Shelton, a hands-on tutorial where everyone can get their hands on some kit; and finally a questions and answers session throughout. All you need to bring is a pen and paper, but if you’d like we can incorporate your machine into the class if you have some parts you’d like to upgrade it with. Entirely up to you!

Competition Time! Win A Copy Of H.A.W.X. Or Far Cry 2 Every Day

We really want to make an effort to connect with you all out there, and to help in that we’ve set ourselves up with this blog (don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed), a facebook account and a twitter account. We’re going to be using these to regularly update you with interesting stuff, not using it as a trumpet to blow deals all the time!

The more people we get involved in this effort, the better it will be for all – the more feedback we get, the better we figure we can be at meeting your needs.

To this end we’re offering up 15 copies of Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. and five copies of Far Cry 2 for PC, as well as other goodies, to people who deign to follow us on Twitter or Facebook. The copies come in special promotional packs; with H.A.W.X. including a duffel bag, mousemat and coaster; and Far Cry 2 coming with a portable torch with built in compass and thermometer. Great, eh?

We’ll be offering the prizes in a draw over the coming five days – three copies of H.A.W.X. and one copy of Far Cry 2 per day – and anyone who follows us on that day will be entered into the draw. All you’ve gotta do is follow us on either facebook or twitter and drop us a message, and we’ll enter you into the draw. And to keep up on the happenings in Komplett, our competitions, deals and articles, don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed of this very blog.

We’ll also be offering spot prizes to people who leave the most insightful or interesting suggestions or comments; and to people who manage to drag along a few friends into the effort. No guarantee’s, but we do have three big boxes of prizes we want to offload!

If you win, we’ll post the prize out to you or you can come up to Blanchardstown and collect it from us, whereupon we’ll give you the quick tour of the place. Of course we’ll give anyone a tour of the place, but just so as you know it’s available…

Naturally some terms and conditions… The offer is available while stocks last, the managers decision is final in all awards, Far Cry 2 winners must be over 18 years of age, and anyone attempting to cheat – for example, by setting up 10 Twitter accounts, or by following us, dropping and following again – will not win more than a lump of coal. Maybe. Good hunting!

Building A Home Theatre PC For The Complete Beginner, Part II: Cooling

In the second part of our series on building your own Home Theatre PC, we’ll be concentrating on the all important aspect of cooling, with a bit of a look at keeping the whole affair quiet enough that you won’t need to crank your volume to hear your movie over the fans.

The main aim here is to keep the whole rig as quiet as possible even under stress. Naturally, there’ll be some noise just from air movement through the body of the PC. You’d notice it in a dead silent room, but under normal circumstances the noise from the PC shouldn’t be enough to disturb the normal atmosphere of the living room.

In our previous article we made sure to take some additional care in choosing our hardware that we’d save some trouble when it came to both cooling and quietness of the finished PC.

When discussing graphics, we deliberately opted for a fanless video card. This alone will lead to a great deal less noise, as most video cards will have smaller fans attached, which adds to the overall sound-efficiency of the setup.

However, there was leeway for people to make their own choices when it came to video cards, and the vast majority of cards on the market do have an onboard fan. It should be noted that these fans will generally be controllable by software, which you can use to reduce extra noise, though naturally you won’t get it to be quite as quiet as a card with no fan at all.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can move on to the issue of the CPU. We opted to use an Intel processor, if only because the Intel option ran a significant amount cooler than the AMD offering. There are plenty of aftermarket coolers on that can be fitted to give a bit of extra cooling to your CPU and have the bonus of being a little quieter overall. The stock cooler on our Intel did a good job cooling the CPU, but the noise generated was considerable, and that was before taking into account the efficiency of the heatsink. For our HTPC build we chose the following Zalman cooler to add a little extra cooling and keep the noise down.

 

Product	CPU	Summary
Zalman CNPS8700 LED CPU Cooler	Socket 775	Copper heatsink with 110mm Fan

 

The above fan consists of a copper heatsink with 0.2mm copper fins for better heat dissipation. Copper is an ideal conductor and is considerably better than the likes of aluminium. The better the conductor, the more efficient our heatsink will be overall.

In addition the heatsink’s fan is a 110mm fan, which will move a far greater volume of air with less noise overall. Zalman also provides a manual fan controller to adjust the fan speed.

You can grab the Zalman cooler, here.

 

Product	Summary
OCZ Freeze Extreme Thermal Compound	Silver based thermal paste for excellent conductivity

 

A heatsink is only as good as the thermal compound used when installing it on a CPU. We chose the OCZ range of thermal paste based on good reviews and reliability.

Given the nature of our HTPC, we may want to reduce the fan’s speed to a crawl (to cut down on noise) and under those circumstances we’d want to have a good, reliable compound that can easily conduct the heat away from the CPU to our copper heatsink without a bottleneck that could cause a build up of heat.

Although you won’t use the whole tube, it’s best to keep the rest of it for future use or, who knows, you may impress a friend enough with your HTPC setup that the rest will come in handy for them.

Once we have the compound and our heatsink installed, we can look at other areas of cooling.

You can grab some OCZ Freeze Extreme, here. At €9 for three grams it’s less expensive than most per gram purchases.

 

Case Fans

Generally case fans come in two flavours, either 80mm or 120mm. While they’ll get the job done, there’s something to be said for getting a different fan to cut down on the overall noise.

Generally the bigger the fan, the more quiet it will be, with the benefit of better airflow.

 

One of the best-reviewed case fans going is the AKASA Amber Series Ultra quiet Fan 120mm. At 18db this is a impressively unobtrusive fan and we heavily recommend installing these to reduce overall noise from the case. The only real issue we have from this fan is its amber LEDs, which (depending on the placement of your HTPC) could be just a little distracting, especially for dramas. That said, who builds a HTPC to watch dramas? We thought not…

You can grab the Akasa Amber 120mm, here.

 

This was a bit of a late pick, but it does qualify by virtue of its quietness. We’re hesitant to use the pun “sleeper hit” but not hesitant enough that we wouldn’t write it.

There’s nothing too fancy here, but it does have a sleeve bearing operation and silicone pins, which mean there’s no vibration transferred to the case. These fans are certainly worth consideration if you’re serious about silencing the whole machine.

You can snag the Zalman, here.

 

Noise Dampening Material 

For the longest time, we had serious doubts about the efficacy of noise dampening materials, but they contribute a surprising amount when used in the right conditions. That said, dampening will reduce noise a slight bit in a PC even if you haven’t done your homework, but in our case we think this is a total preference pick. If you still find that the PC has some noise levels to it, you could do far worse than investing some cash in noise dampening material and some time in a bit of research into how best to use it.

The Nexus Damptek consists of 3 sheets of 40cm x 50cm hard foam adhesive material, which is reportedly enough for 2 midi towers… again, if you have a friend bowled over by your HTPC build you can always pass the surplus their way, we’re sure it’ll be appreciated.

You can grab a bundle of Damptek here.

 

In the next part of our series on building your own home theatre PC we’ll be looking at the OS options. You should subscribe to our RSS feed or visit us on Facebook where we’ll be keeping our followers up to date on the blog.