Silent PC Advice - Powerful Enough?

[kevin_c]

Hi,

I'm building a little PVR box that will be conected to a TV all the time. I've bought a remote control and a PVR-150 card already to test the setup on my current PC. I want to get a VIA M12000 and a Morex 2600 to build a nice, small quiet system.

I've been searching the forum and some have expressed doubt on the TV quality and power of that board for running GBPVR. Has anyone seen that setup in action or know if it can suit my circumstances.

Any advice would be appreciated, so I don't waste a few hundred quid.

Thanks

[Chris.Day]

I believe that if you use Cyberlink's decoder (which can use VIA/S3's DXVA acceleration) you should be fine.

I have a SFF which is far from being low power, quiet or cool running but it uses the same VIA/S3 Unichrome (aka S3 Savage3D, Savage4, Savage2000, VIA Unichrome, Unichrome Pro, Twister, Twister-K, ProSavage, ProSavageDDR etc etc) graphics and it is fine quality wise.

[shaamone]

I'm using a Via M10000 and that works perfectly Although the TV-out quality is not the best, it's still very useable and suits my needs..

It did take a bit of messing to get the right video drivers at first though. PM me if you have any trouble.

[kevin_c]

Hey folks.

Thanks for the replies. Glad to hear it's doable.

Just trying to decide now whether to go with the M1000, or the M12000, or maybe the SP13000 for something slightly faster. The tradeoff will be they'd be noiser.

Least I have a few options, thanks a lot!

[stefan]

Just doublecheck what wattage you get from the power supply, so it's enough to run the epia, harddrive, and tv-card at the same time :-)

[kevin_c]

Him thanks. I just checked the info page, and it says the power supply is 12V DC. Woul dthat be enough, or will I need to get a different one?

thanks again!

[hasso]

I used to use the M10000 with an external power supply and although it was pretty quiet and worked quite well. I finally moved to a Thermaltake Tenor case with a Zalman CPU cooler, Thermaltake Silent PSU (no fan). I put all the case fans at 7 volts, and it runs almost as quiet as the M10000.

M10000 Cons:
- video out - I could never get rid of the black border all around the picture. Overscan cut off too much of the picture. Anybody come up with a solution?
- Only one PCI slot - I had the PVR 350 and wanted to add another card so I could tape two shows at the same time. No room.
- A bit too slow - just a bit, but got annoying to me after a while, a bit more so when I added an MVP. Response to remote control always lagged.
- Software decoding - I know it had hardware acceleration which I enabled, sometimes there still would be a 'glitch' on playback.
- power supply - must ensure the PSU will need your needs.

M10000 Pros:
- waf - small, relatively quiet, unobstrusive case in living room. A big plus.

I think the 12000 has the same fan/heatsink assembly (I could be wrong) so it wouldn't be noiser than the 10000, and it would probably be just a bit faster to remedy the last two cons I mentioned. But I haven't tried it. I can only base my experience on the M10000.

[stefan]

Him thanks. I just checked the info page, and it says the power supply is 12V DC. Woul dthat be enough, or will I need to get a different one?

thanks again!

According to this thread: http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info....cts_id/412 the power supply delivers 80W. So, now it depends on what you want in your box :-) The VIA board uses (according to http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/mii12000...page=8#s82 ) 28W when in use. A hard drive? To be honest, I don't know what a hard drive requires. Nor a pvr-150. Maybe someone on here knows. And if you want a dvd writer in there too... Of course, if you are handy I assume you can get another PSU with more power, if what the morex delivers is not enough, and you still like the case :-)