On Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:12:56 +0100 Carsten Koch CarstenKochElsdorf@web.de wrote:
The not-so-good news are:
- The fan is a bit loud and so far I have not found a silent replacement fan.
- I originally set up the system as a diskless (nfsroot) system, but KDE 4 (I am using OpenSuSE 11.2) performs unbearably slow, so I was forced to install a hard disk.
Couldn't you use a much lighter desktop if this is a PC especially for VDR?
[Snip]
I currently use this (actively cooled) main board: http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a455388.html
Using a passively cooled main board would solve the fan noise problem.
I can't tell what's under that fan from the picture. If the heatsink is fixed to the motherboard with pins you could replace it with a Zalman passive chipset cooler, but you would need to make sure there's good airflow through the case (what provision does it have for fans? At least it should be easier to get silent case fans than a silent fan small enough for that chip). Otherwise you could get an adapter (like a square funnel) to fit a bigger, quieter fan on to the heatsink.