On 8/21/07, Jouni Karvo jouni.karvo@tkk.fi wrote:
hi,
covert covert writes:
About to step into the deep end and build my first VDR box. In fact 2 of them at the same time both with the exact same specs.
All parts are going to be new.
New CPU's are a lot more confusing than the simple days of single cores at fixed clockspeeds.
I can't help on the choosing CPUs part, but I can share my experience with a P4 for a VDR. The thermostatic control fans reduce noise, but are not really silent. I replaced both the power unit to a totally fanless one, and my CPU cooler is Scythe Ninja Rev B, which is totally silent (had a Zahlman AlCu7000 if I remember correctly, before).
My natural progression will be to chose a fan solution after choosing a CPU. Thanks for the tips about fan less. I will seriously consider it.
Then I have an additional 120mm fan running slowly inside the box, but that I cannot hear outside.
The one single large fan running slow seems to be a common theme for VDR. It must be a winning solution.
The most noise right now comes from my Seagate Barracuda hard drives, which are pretty quiet, but still noticeable. Especially one of them which has probably bad bearings.
I also tried throttling / underclocking the CPU to reduce heat, but my MB starts an annoying whining noise if I do that, so I could not use that.
But my advice, if you really want to reduce noise in a VDR, is to go for fanless choices.
If you don't do other processing, any current desktop processor would have enough processing power. For Full HD it could be different, though.
I want it to do some DivX encoding at night to save drive space so I will want the grunt there when I need it.
Thanks for your advice.
yours, Jouni
vdr mailing list vdr@linuxtv.org http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vdr