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[Trond-Eirik]

Hi
Looking to upgrade my htpc.
It's going to be in a full sized atx box.

- I would like it to be fanless
- I see 4k coming, but not before a couple of years in the future (need projector for that - and that will not happend jet)
- I have a quite nice/good surround setup
- Will do digital out into external dac for stereo
- might do analog out to external stereo preamp, and then also room correction
- Will do hdmi out to receiver for movies (for now 7.1 setup)
- Will do full 1080p at 60hz
- want to have the option to add pci-express cards
Music is a priority!
Will not be used for gaming.
- Windows 10

Anyone that can recommend motherboard, processor, graphic card and psu?

[astromo]

To my mind the key to a fanless build from components is the case it will all live in.

What do you have planned?

[Arindelle]

To my mind the key to a fanless build from components is the case it will all live in.

+1 yes

my favorite (but expensive^^) boxes are Streacom and HD Plex. These will handle ATX -- just be careful of expansion card limitations (you can use them though -- they use foldable risers) and number of drives you need. Micro ATX will give you more space for drives/cards than full ATX. They are really nice looking and will fit in with high end gear. As you can stick two 4Tb drives plus an optical drive, this is pretty nice for a primarily audio playback/media server machine. It can stand alone or be configured to WoL for a network. If you use a NAS, or if you need powerful graphics cards might not be the best choices tho. With a NAS you can go much smaller; with tuners and GPU cards, might not be enough space or power.

http://www.streacom.com/products/fc5-alpha-fanless-chassis/

http://www.hd-plex.com/hdplex-h5-fanless-computer-case.html

Streacom I find prettier, but HD Plex runs cooler and uses its heatsync better (both sides are used to cool the cpu) also has a heat sync package for video cards.  HD Plex used to have more models ... doesn't appear to have a model that houses an optical drive for the bigger box ?!

Out of curiosity, why a full size ATX if you are not using it as a work station, gaming, (there are smaller mobos that can handle lots of hard drives)?

My theory which you can take with a grain of salt of course, is that fanless is most of the time not worth it IF the reason is to have an HTPC as your main storage area or you need a bunch of full height expansion cards (I abandoned using a NAS and have a Lian Li mini tower with 7 hard drives in it which runs silent and goes to sleep). If you are looking in this direction I would not mess with fanless cases. Fanless set-ups for audio again IMHO have their place when recording is top priority (in a studio or room with a very low noise floor). The key for me is to have large fans that run at very slow RPMs or that you can dial down. Spending a lot of money on highend coolers is not as important as larger fans in my experience. If you use slow, "green" drives they will park themselves so most of the time they will make no noise. If you are mostly audio, and get a good on board HD graphics chip, madVR on minimum/medium settings I find work fine.

My room's noise floor is around 30db. My Lian Li setup runs lower so no issues (measured at 17 to 25db, during playback and runs cold; uses positive cooling, unlike gaming PCs - air gets sucked in and pushed out). What makes noise? non-green, fast drives or red drives; GPU fans; a lot of stock cpu cooler fans; most optical drives. AND dirty fan blades ... these get dirty over time and they start to wobble which makes noise. sometimes are a PITA to clean short of dismantling them ... they are not expensive so I replace them when they really get gunked up.  

[Trond-Eirik]

Hi

Thanks for your great input!
Arindelle: Great looking cases! I really liked the looks for the streacom cases.

Why fyll ATX? Good question, and I might be open to review my view on this.
First of all I want full ATX to be able to add cards, that is graphics card or sound card as needed in the future. I will for example like to be able to add a Lynx card if I think that is a good solution. I would like to be able to be able to change between different graphics cards when that is needed - for example to get 4K support in the future. And of course, TV cards if that is needed...
So, it's mostly about beeing flexible. From what I have seen so far I assume that the case, and power supply, will outlive the rest of the components I'm going to get now.

My HTPC is not going to have any hard drive, except one or two SSD's. It will be connected to a NAS server holding quite many TB of data. Scanning disks will be done from the HTPC, so I will need a blue-ray disk drive.
When it comes to fanless, I'm not obsessed by it - but I would really like to avoid it. I currently have a chassi with several big (120mm) fans running at low speed. It does not make a lot of noice, but it does noticable add to the background sound of the room. I would prefer to avoid that.

One case I'm looking at is this: http://www.modushop.biz/site/index.php?route=product/product&path=70_126&product_id=269
I have some amplifiser boxes from modushop, and those are really high quality. But you will have to do quite some bit of work to adjust it yourself as it is a quite "raw" box.
I will probably not go for this as there is to little information about it.
The FC12 looks interesting, but is for fan and does not have an optical driver slot. I think the last one is a deal breaker for that box.
Fractal design Node 605: http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/node-series/node-605, but this does also seems to not have a optical driver slot. It says "1 slim-line ODD (only supported with mATX or smaller motherboards)

So, I think my case will be:
The Streacom FC10: http://www.streacom.com/products/fc10-alpha-fanless-chassis/
I'm a bit conserned about it beeing a bit low - but I hope it's good enough!

So, if we start from this and build it up:
Case: Streacom FC10
Powersupply: ? *
Blue-ray reader: ?
Main board: ?
Processor ?
Graphics card: ?
Sound card: ?
HD: SSD (already have)
Accessories: ?

* Found that the Streacom ZeroFlex 240 Netzeil will limit the motherboard to Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX when used in FC10 Alpha...
I guess that the best time to select the power supply is after selecting the other parts - especially main board and processor.

[Arindelle]

* Found that the Streacom ZeroFlex 240 Netzeil will limit the motherboard to Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX when used in FC10 Alpha...
I guess that the best time to select the power supply is after selecting the other parts - especially main board and processor.

YES select all your components first ... very important with these type of cases. You need to calculate how much power you are going to need - including future cards. A workstation computer you can err on the side of having too much .... not with passive. You want low power cpu to give you low heat.  Although the heat sinks are massive, they are made for TDP speced power supplies ... so if you need a top of the line NVidia graphics card to run full MadVR video -- forget these passive cases. Even a 300 watts PSU is a big one. I can give you a link to a TDP calculator if you want  - saves a lot of looking at specs.

If choosing a passive case (or a very quiet fan PC) think about ventilation. I don't have the time right now to look into fractual, but when I was looking for myself and my friends only Lian Li and some Silverstones were making positive pressure venting boxes (eg if you blow smoke in the intake fans, the smoke leaves by the outtake fans. Most boxes aren't setup this way or are not hermetic. Gaming type enclosures are made to get large amounts of cool air inside - extraction of hot air is not usually a priority. For the Streacom/HD Plex cases you want to be real sure where you are going to put them. They are not made to be put into a closed cabinet, nor stacked on amps or preamps, dacs etc.!! They can through off a considerable amount of heat to keep their insides cool. If you look at fan ventilated pcs, the position of the outtake fan(s) are important. If they vent from the back and you stick it flush against a wall .. euh not a good idea.

If you are running a NAS you don't need hard drive space. The streacom you selected handles full height expansion cards, which is good for modularity, but is actually going to be pretty big. Like a mini tower on its side. Its only 10cm though but the other is very svelte.

Also I find that an optical drive is VERY noisy. I've heard of "quieter" ones, but they are very expensive - especially blueray. If you are using these only to rip, no problem. If they are to be used to replace a cd/dvd player that is another thing. The silent thing goes right out the window