Digitek

A re-write of one of our previous articles, this will detail our project to build a silent Home Theatre PC using the Silverstone ML02 case.

For anyone not familiar with them, a Home Theatre PC (HTPC) is a personal computer that is designed to operate primarily as a Personal Video Recorder (PVR). Much like a TiVo box or Foxtel IQ, a HTPC records television to a hard drive thus giving you access to features such as scheduled recordings and pausing live TV. Windows Media Center PCs are in a world of their own however. Not only do you get a PVR but also a wealth of internet content and access to any and all functions of a typical home computer.

The key requirement for any Home Theatre PC is that it has to suit your living room. More specifically it needs to look good, and it needs to be silent.

The former is not too difficult to achieve, simply choose the home theatre case of your choice. Making this system quiet however will require a careful selection of components that are both silent and deliver the desired performance.

We decided to go with the aforementioned Silverstone ML02 which at 82mm tall is one of the shortest Micro ATX cases available. The ML02 looks much like a DVD player or Personal Video Recorder and right at home in the TV cabinet. It also utilises an external 120 watt power supply to keep the noise down but this also means that the system will be limited to a low power processor, and onboard graphics.

Case: The ML02 is a low profile case and at only 82mm tall it cannot fit a full height graphics card, a stock CPU cooler, a full size optical drive, or more than one hard drive. On the plus side it looks fantastic, has a 52 in 1 card reader, and it has an external power supply making it nice and quiet. The ML02 also comes with the Soundgraph iMon IR receiver and LCD display built in, as well as the iPad remote control.

Motherboard: The Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H – This AM2+ motherboard is based on the AMD780G Chipset and features onboard Radeon HD3200 graphics. It also has HDMI and Optical out, required for High Definition and 5.1 Surround playback, and the onboard graphics are easily capable of 1080p playback.

CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4850e – The e range of X2 processors come with a thermal power design of just 45 watts making them ideal for a low power system.  With a clock speed of 2.5GHz and 1MB of L2 Cache it should be capable of all media playback and also some light gaming.

CPU Cooler: Silverstone NT07-AM2 – The ML02 case requires a low profile, silent cooler. Silverstone make the NT07-AM2 especially for this case. Sourcing the AM2 version was particularly hard in Australia so we bought one from the US.

RAM: 2 x 1GB Corsair Value Select PC5300 – Cheap and nasty.

Hard Drive: The Samsung Spinpoint  HD103UJ – The HD103UJ is a 1TB hard drive with a rotational speed of 7200RPM, 32MB DRAM Buffer, SATA 3.0, and a max transfer rate of 300MB/s. The Spinpoint hard drives are fast, quiet, and reliable.

Optical: Pioneer DVR-K06 – The DVR-K06 is a slot loading R/W DVD drive. There are slim line Blu Ray drives available but we did not feel the need.

Tuner: Hauppauge Nova-T 500 MCE – The Nova-T 500 MCE is a Dual Digital, High Definition tuner.

Remote: Genius 300 Universal Remote – The ML02 comes with a built IR receiver and iMon iPad remote. Sadly these are not the best products available so we have gone with this cheap alternative.

Keyboard: The Logitech Mediaboard Pro – sold as a PS3 keyboard, the Mediaboard Pro is a stylish, Bluetooth keyboard with a touchpad.

OS: Windows 7 RC

The Build

Putting together our low profile, Micro ATX system was not too difficult although we did have some difficulty with cabling. Most of the wires need to be routed under the optical drive and along the right hand side of the case to avoid being too close to the processor heat sink. The cable for the 4-pin ATX Power was too short to be routed around the outside so we purchased a 30cm extension cable online.

The case can only fit one PCI card via a riser-slot and this needs to be used by the TV Tuner. The hard drive is seated on rubber grommets to dampen the sound but as anyone who has used these before will know, they rarely leave a hard drive silent. Sure enough once running the vibration of the hard drive caused a noticeable humming sound. Given that this is a low profile case there is not enough room to soft mount it so our solution was to simply place two pieces of sponge under the rear stand. Thankfully this has worked well with the humming noise eliminated and the sponge safely hidden at the back of the unit.

Once everything was installed we proceeded with out installation of Windows 7 RC. This went without issue and we proceeded to install our software drivers. We were unable to find a working driver for the Soundgraph iMon software but we have replaced the iMon remote with the Genius 300 Universal Remote, a MCE remote clone. The downside to this is that we lose the functionality of the ML02′s LCD screen but iMon drivers should be available shortly. Installation of the Genius 300 was simply a matter of plugging in the USB IR receiver and programming the power buttons.

Setup of Windows Media Center was quite simple. You can just navigate through the menus with the remote to configure your sound and screen resolution. Our system is running 1080i via HDMI to a Samsung LA32R81BDX 32″ TV, and 5.1 Surround Sound via Optical to our Surround Sound Amplifier.

Performance

Together the Hauppauge Nova-T 500 MCE and the Radeon HD3200 GPU do a fine job of producing television images. TV image quality via HDMI is excellent however the desktop picture quality is rather poor. Conversly if you connect the TV via VGA connection the desktop picture quality is very good, but the TV image quality is poor. We have not been able to find a good answer as to why this is the case but for most users, HDMI will be the best option. The Hauppauge tuner is also quite fast at switching channels. This is an important point to consider as cheaper tuners can be quite slow and this seriously impacts usability. PCI Tuners simply are not as fast as a TV’s built in tuner but you do need to lessen the impact as much as possible.

Another thing to be aware of with Dual Tuners is that they actually split the signal between the two tuners, thus reducing the quality. If your roof antenna has less than 100% reception then both of your dual tuners will receive less than 50%, most likely leaving you with a no signal error in Windows Media Center. This almost entirely depends on the quality of your roof antenna so check to see if that has a good signal first.

The limit of one hard drive can also be a problem if you have an extensive media library. High Definition TV recordings use up quite a lot of space, in the region of 37MB/s. A 1TB hard drive will give you about 420 hours worth of recorded TV in the default WRT format.

Using the sponge solution mentioned above, this Home Theatre PC runs very quiet. The combination of the external power supply, onboard graphics, and the low power CPU mean that the system produces very little heat, and requires very little work from the CPU fan to cool it. Incidentally the CPU fan is the loudest component in the system which at idle is almost completely silent. Under load it produces noticeably more noise but any sound is easily drowned out by the speakers.

The Silverstone ML02 also looks right at home in a TV cabinet. The low profile makes it look very much like a large DVD player or Amplifier, and the black aluminium and acrylic finish suit the dark bezel of most modern TVs.

The Pioneer DVR-K06 is aesthetically pleasing, being a slot loading drive, but unfortunately we found that the build quality was poor. When ejecting discs the pressure of the moving disc against the face plate causes it to become loose and ours has popped off several times. Eventually we decided to glue it to the frame with some Araldite. For anyone not familiar with it Araldite can glue a chair to the ceiling. Needless to say it has not come off again since.

Benchmarks

We have put the system through the standard PC mark 05 and 3D Mark 06 benchmarks:

PC Mark 05	3D Mark 06
4050	1134

This is not a particularly high score for 3D Mark. The Radeon HD3200 is one of the fastest integrated graphics solutions available but it is still only capable of basic gaming. We have found the Project 64 and Mame Emulators to be the most appropriate programs to play. Most modern games are not well suited, for example Street Fighter IV is playable on the lowest detail settings but it doesn’t look very good.

According to ATTO Benchmark the HD103UJ achieves a read and write speed of  about a 110MB/s.

Boot up time from Hibernation is about 35 seconds to the desktop.

As far as system temperatures are concerned, we were able to measure the CPU with CoreTemp but the Radeon HD3200 GPU has not been compatible with any of the software that we tried.

	AMD 4850e
Idle	45°
Load	55°
High	60°

Idling at 45° is on the high side but the high of 60° is very good for the AMD 4850e.

Summary

This HTPC based around the Silverstone ML02 is a very stylish system. It fits in perfectly with any home theatre cabinet, being both pleasing to the eye and remarkably quiet. Our only gripe comes in the form of the poor desktop picture quality through HDMI.