Lounge Rack

The case is great, but it doesn’t have sound-dampening panels or any features to actively reduce sound like many of the Antec cases.

I bought the bought the AcoustiPack LITE pack along with the case, which contains two sheets of the 2-layer self adhesive material. As the case isn’t that big, I didn’t need the ‘Ultimate’ pack.

Generally, the material was nice to work with. The adhesive backing is good, and you really can pull it up if you need to reposition. Which I did - it’s tricky to get the perfect fit first time. Much of it was in the measuring - I had to leave space for the case to close properly, while getting maximum coverage for sound absorption.

The hardest bit of the job was to lay the bottom piece, which goes under the drive bays. The screw holes for the drive bays are raised enough to get the AcoustiPack material underneath, but I had to make some incisions in order to get the raised bits through nicely. I also had to cut out a section to allow the flap over the front panel to move freely.

AcoustiPack preparation

The self-adhesive backing was a bit fiddly as it kept ripping as you can see below. As AcoustiPack advertised though, if it’s not quite right you can pull it up and reposition if necessary, which it was.

Self adhesive...

I spent a while covering the power button assembly. While it may not have been necessary for noise, one problem I found when I plugged the power to the LED in (I wanted to see how it looked) was that the blue light spills through to the VFD window, so you can see through it. This doesn’t look very nice, so I made sure the gaps were filled. The same goes the other side so that the light doesn’t come out of the air vent in the case.

Case soundproofing (front)

When it came to covering up some of the unnecessary vents, I didn’t want to leave the sticky backing exposed to the holes in the case. It’s just going to get dusty (the dust will stick) and won’t look very nice. What I did was to get some black paper, and sellotaped it to the case before sticking the AcoustiPack over it. As I didn’t have any, and didn’t want to waste printer ink, the black paper came courtesy of full-page ads with a black backgound in an old Top Gear magazine. Thanks, Vauxhall.

Roof soundproofing

I tested the CPU fan against the open vent and it does make quite an airy whine though the holes. Seem like it was a good idea to cover up the vent which will be above the fan and let the air come in from the one next to it. The only trouble is that there’s only about 1mm clearance between the fan and the soundproofing - a bit more would have been nice I suppose that’s the trade-off with having such a slim case.

Another little thing I did was to get a spare bit of the AcoustiPack material, stuck it to some cardboard, and blu-tacked it to the bottom of my DVD drive. This will help to absorb any sound coming from the drive bay underneath it, and is removable for when I change the drive.

I’m not in a position to compare the noise before and after, as I did this before I’d even ordered many of the components, but it should be a good starting point for a silent computer. This SPCR review shows the difference that it can make - they say that while it isn’t ground-breaking, it does make enough of a difference to be worthwhile for the enthusiast. I’m pretty enthusiastic.

HTPC General AcoustiPack, Antec, case, quiet, soundproofing, VFD

When it came to choosing a CPU fan, there were only two real considerations:

• Quietness (obviously)
• Size (low profile)

In a low profile case, there isn’t much space to work with. Ultimately though, the choice came down to the Zalman CNPS 8700 (or one in that series) or the Scythe Shiruken. These are pretty much the only low-profile coolers I found to be worth considering.

After reading a few reviews, I decided to go with the Scythe Shuriken. I don’t know that it’s any better than the Zalman, but from what I’ve read it seems that Scythe are pretty much leading the field when it comes to silence and Zalman aren’t as strong as they used to be. Plus, I found that the Shuriken was cheaper and more available than the Zalmans.

As soon as I got the Shuriken and plugged it into my other PC’s fan controller straight away. It’s virtually inaudible until it spins at full speed. The heat-pipe technology is pretty hip, so I’m hoping it will perform well at low speeds. My CPU shouldn’t be maxing out anyway, as this machine won’t be used for games.

The mounting screws seem fairly innovative - it comes with every mount you could imagine! Looks quite easy to clamp the heatsink down, which is good because I hate the careful-yet-forceful approach one usually has to use.

The Shuriken has some fancy PWM controls, which the motherboard I’m getting does support, so we’ll see how that goes.

Here is a pretty good review of the Shuriken, with some nice photos and noise testing, if you want to take a closer look.

Cooling, HTPC General, Hardware Cooling, quiet, Scythe Shuriken

I want a very quiet case. This means fans at low speed, for the most part. So, I know that airflow is going to be important. If it’s not coming in/out the right way, this could lead to a lot of heat build-up inside the case. Especially since the soundproofing material is probably not a very good thermal conductor (although I was unable to find any conclusive evidence either way).

One of the main things I’ve realised is that the power supply fan will be crucial to case airflow.

Looking at the design of the case, it has a vent in the floor for PSUs with a 120mm fan to suck air from underneath the case, which will cool the PSU before being blown out the back. Now, this set-up is fairly self contained and doesn’t help the rest of the airflow.

So I decided I need to use a PSU which sucks air from inside the case, and expels it out the back. This needs to be the primary output fan, simply because there isn’t much space in the case for any other fans in any useful position.

The case has two large vents in the roof, to serve the CPU fan, and it has four vents in the side. However, there are only screw holes to mount one 80mm fan by the front left vent. I’ll be replacing the supplied fan, as it’s pretty noisy.

So, cool air in the front left, and warm air out the rear back via the PSU. I don’t see a need for the rear left vent, so I’ll cover it up to reduce noise output. Same goes for the rear right, as the PSU will be in the way anyway (really, I don’t see the point having a vent there.

Although there’s no fan in front of it, I decided not to cover up the front right vent, because there will be hard drives near it, which will benefit from some cool air being drawn through by the PSU.
As for the top vents, I decided that I only needed one, and I covered the other to reduce noise output. I also chose to cover the one nearest the CPU fan. This sounds odd, but let me expiain: One of the main sources of noise is going to be the ‘whoosh’ of air turbulence through the holes in the vents. Roof vent 2 (see diagram) overlaps the fan on the CPU heatsink, and I think that the proximity, while offering good cooling, will lead to more noise. So, I’ve left ‘roof vent 1′ open, because I believe that the CPU fan will still be able to draw air through, and it removes the direct line of sight/sound to the CPU fan.

My airflow design for the Moneual 301

Here’s my little diagram. It shows the ‘naked’ case with the key heat producing components shown. The yellow blocks are the fans. Most of the arrows are the result of direct fan blowing, but the little ones are what I think will happen in that corner.

I’ve tried to think of most things but any tweaks or comments would be welcome.

Cooling, Hardware case, fan, Moneual 301, quiet, soundproofing

This page will give a list of the hardware I’ve bought and installed. As I won’t be buying everything all at once, this list will grow as and when I purchase hardware. Each item will be discussed in greater detail in its own post.

Case

• Monueal MonCaso 301 Black
  

  Monueal 301 HTPC case front view

  This comes as with a Monueal-branded iMON remote control.

• AcoustiPack Soundproofing
  

  AcoustiPack material

  I’ve also bought the AcoustiPack LITE pack which should be enough to line most of the inside of the Moneual case.

Cooling

• Scythe Shuriken
  Very quiet, low profile CPU cooler. Features heatpipes and PWM control.

• Nexus 80mm fan
  This is for the intake at the front. Really nice and quiet. Model number is SP802512L.

Insides

• Motherboard - Asus M3N78-EM
  Onboard GeForce 8300, HDMI and 5.1 output.

• CPU - AMD 5050e
  Energy efficient dual-core Athlon64.

• Memory - 4GB ECC
  2×2GB dual channel from Crucial, ECC for stability

Power Supply

Antec NeoHE 430
Very quiet, good for my airflow, and should be pretty efficient.

Optical drive

For now, a shitty old DVD-ROM I had kicking about. I plan to get a Blu-ray writer for Hi-def loveliness.

Storage

Boot: 80GB notebook drive out of a MacBook.
Main storage: 3x 500GB Western Digital Scorpio notebook drives in a linuxraid RAID5, giving 1TB storage and some redundancy.

HTPC General AcoustiPack, case, Hardware, HTPC, Moneual 301, Nexus, quiet, Shuriiken

I am Will.

My problem is that I have lots of digital media on my home PC, with no proper backup solution.

I decided that I needed some storage to connect to my network, with some sort of RAID configuration to act as a backup for my digital photos, music, movies, TV programmes, et cetera.

I started looking at NAS enclosures, and decided that they’re pretty expensive, and for my needs I thought I might as well build a server to host my own storage solution. One of the other things I like to do is watch movies. I often stream to my Xbox360 (it works surprisingly well over 54g since M$ released the codec update for the Xbox dashboard) but I’ve also sometimes thought that it would be nicer to have a media PC or a Mac Mini or something in my lounge.

The project is born! My basic requirements are:

• Aesthetics - It’s got to look good in the lounge, almost so you wouldn’t know it wasn’t a DVD player or PVR
• Silence - It’s got to be whisper quiet, as it will be a 24/7 file server which should not be heard at all
• High-definition media playback - It’s nearly 2009 so we need to set some standards. The hardware will need to meaty enough to play Blu-rays and high-def media smoothly
• Big, redundant storage - This is going to be my backup, so it needs reliable storage. RAID is a necessity
• Pleasant interface - This means a nice front end for my media, probably controlled with a remote control from the armchair
• Linux OS - As a Linux administrator this will be very much an academic exercise, as I’m always trying to improve my skills.
• Energy efficiency - as the server will be on 24/7 then it needs to be kind to my electricity bill. And the planet, I suppose?

Join me on my excellent adventure while I look at and compare hardware and software for this project, and document the trials and trubbulations along the way. This blog might interest you if you’re a Linux enthusiast, particularly with a/v stuff, or if you’re interested in building a quiet HTPC media center.

HTPC General aesthetics, case, digital photos, hi-def, HTPC, interface, linux, Mac Mini, NAS, power consumption, quiet, RAID, storage, Xbox360