[Regus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by akira I'm not sure what was the conclusion of this discussion. Is it realy need P4 2GHz or more CPU to play music from HDD? Is C3 1GHz enough just to run foobar (unless doing upsampling or any other special filtering)? I remember HTPC people prefered to run not top speed CPU to play DVD even in some years ago. It seems even C3 1GHz can be used for any purpuse we concern here, I mean playing WAV or watching DVD, etc, no gaming. Though i'm not an expert of PCs.

As for playing audio be it wav, flac or you favorite lossy codec there should be absolutely no problem with the C3 1GHz

Considder the fact that they have managed to get audio playback out of small handheld devices no problem, if a 400 MHz Strong ARM CPU in a pocket pc can play audio then surely so can a C3 1GHz

As for video I am not entirely sure, I usually play back from high compression formats of the MPEG 4 eara and the newests ones are starting to be a bit of a problem for my Duron 1.2 GHz but for MPEG 2 (DVD) i think the C3 1GHz is likely to be enough.

If i were doing my audio video pc today i would be going for the smallest AMD sempron i could find... you should be able to get a new sempron 2200+ less than $50

 

[AdamWill]

Samsung HDs are quieter than Seagate. The absolute lowest heat CPUs are VIA C3s, yes, but as someone mentioned, they're slow. Going up from there the Pentium-M is the best choice if you ignore cost; it's stunningly fast, extremely cool (you can run it fanless at moderate speed), and can be built into microATX systems (though there's nothing smaller AFAIK). Unfortunately, both the motherboards and the CPUs are currently very expensive, as it's a small and new niche. Going up, you hit AMD chips. Best choice for noise is an Athlon XP-M and a motherboard that can drive it at the low voltage it expects. This mobile variant of the XP puts out significantly less heat, but if your motherboard doesn't know what it is and drives it at the same voltage as a normal XP, you'll see no benefit. The XP-M 2500+ is a much-loved chip amongst both low-noise fans and overclocking enthusiasts. Then you hit normal Athlon XPs (and Semprons), then the Athlon 64, then the P4 (which as someone pointed out is currently the heat-and-noise champ, in the bad way). But anything up in that area is way overpowered for the application, the XP-M would be way more than you need.

If you go with an Athlon in the end, get a big Thermalright heatsink and the slowest 80mm fan you can find (Panaflo L1A is the best, if you can find one). Seagate or Samsung hard drives, *quiet* optical drives (Lite-On's my choice, other people may have suggestions). A very nice case for a mini-ATX system is the Antec Aria - I just built such a system and it's great. Size is your enemy if you're anal about interference, the closer together the components the more interference there'll be, but so long as you keep a minimal system I don't think it'll be an issue you'll really need to worry about.

I'd say choose the C3 if you think it'll be powerful enough, otherwise an XP-M. Pentium-M is looking really interesting but way to be expensive to be a real consideration right now.

 

[skitlets]

the xp-m is a pretty good idea. silentpcreview has a list of motherboards and the lowest available voltage it can apply to the processor. The lower the voltage, the lower the clockspeed, but also the lower the heat. It would then be possible to run it fanless with a large heatsink such as a thermalright.

 

[AdamWill]

skitlets: lowering the voltage doesn't lower the clockspeed, it just reduces the maximum speed you'll be able to reach. An XP-M 2500+ is rated to run at its nominal speed (1.8GHz) at 1.45v. If you lowered the voltage (dunno if there's any mobos that would run lower, though...) you might not be able to reach 1.8GHz any more. If you increased it, you might be able to overclock, or overclock further than at 1.45v.

I'd never want to run any Athlon fanless, even at 1.45v. Still much too hot to be comfortable. An L1A fan is inaudible outside the case, though, and will cool an XP-M fine.

 

[Cyrillic]

Quote:

Unfortunately, the Pentium M chipsets (all two of them) only support up to 4x AGP, so high end graphics are out.

I have AGP 4x, and it is fine compared to AGP 8x. Comparing framerates, it is only a couple framerates slower to use 4x as opposed to 8x. If you for some reason needed high end graphics, something like an x800 would work and be more than enough for... anything. If you're looking to the future, though, I guess PCI-express would be the way to go, but as of yet, there is no significant difference.

 

[soulblaze]

From what it sounds like you want to use it for a fanless 1ghz C3 would be fine for your needs, especially if you can run linux instead of windows. Only thing you won't be able to do is upsample in foobar. I use a 600mhz C3 as my main system and it's perfectly fine except for a small % of video playback (which would run fine on a 1ghz c3)

I'd suggest the samsung hard drives unless you'd rather go the 2.5" laptop drive route (which if you're going to keep the music on that computer and not have some other server do it, then you're better off with the samsung)

I use a morex Cubid 2699 case and it's fine, though if i were to get one now i'd try to get one of the Hoojum Cubit 3 cases.

 

[akira]

Thanks PC-gurus for showing your deep knowledges. I'd really appreciate your comments. What I understand is as follows. If I took anything wrong, please let me know.

1. Just playing music from HDD, C3 1GHz (or even slower) CPU must be enough. I think even using USB output (I understand it consumes more CPU power than PCI/FW), it would be enough, right?

2. At the moment, C3 1GHz is very cost effective solution and Pentium-M is very costly (maybe more than P4), although it has very good speed/energy performance.

3. Samsung HDD is the quietest now.


To use minimum GHz CPU would be better for high sound quality, with reducing electical noise. Of course lower heat = less or no fan noise is always nice.

I think I can start building one with C3 1GHz and when XP-M/Pentium-M's price goes low enough, I can introduce it. Or whenever I feel lack of CPU power for my ? purpose, I can go to them. Anyway I don't lose so much money for C3 now since it's so cheap. The only queston of me is upsampling. I don't think I need it (actually don't know how it's usefil) but I'm just intrested in it.

For HDD, I wonder how big drive of Samsung is avairable. The maximum Samsung I found was 160GB in Japan, although 250GB or more Hitachi, Maxtor or Seagate were easily found.

 

[akira]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soulblaze From what it sounds like you want to use it for a fanless 1ghz C3 would be fine for your needs, especially if you can run linux instead of windows. Only thing you won't be able to do is upsample in foobar.

I have no knowledge of playback software on linux. I'd rather prefer to go with Windows XP since my wife may use this system (if she can). And I can't run linux from religious reason, because I'm a BSDer My music data will be stored on my server running FreeBSD. Just for my burning curiosity, how is the music playback application on linux? easier interface than foobar?

 

[Mr.Radar]

If you want to run a C3 processor you should use FLAC because it's decoder is integer-only leaving the floating-point unit free to do DSP processing.

 

[sethk]

From experience I can tell you the 1Ghz C3 is a very slow processor in everyday use. It's slower than a Pentium 3 when it comes to many things. Sure you may think you're "just playing music" on it, but you may find playing software, interfaces, DSP settings etc will make you wish you had a faster CPU. I agree the pentium M is very expensive in desktop use. It seems a shame when buying something new to already be thinking about the compromises you'll have to make to use it.
Instead, I again suggest an Athlon XP-M processor. This was meant for mobile use and can be run at very low voltages / low heat dissipation and is still monstrously fast compared to the VIA. Clock for clock it is as fast as a pentium M and it is very inexpensive.

Here is a MicroATX Nforce 2 motherboard link:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...138-234&depa=0

Here is an Athlon XP-M processor link:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...103-439&depa=1

 

[soulblaze]

I have had no problems running my C3 600mhz for everyday use. Word processing, some games, emulators, web browsing, etc. Linux has good audio playback using just about any of the music players that use alsa (i use xmms which is like winamp) but I just noticed that you have an emu card and those don't currently have linux drivers.

Though I'm also used to running slower computers, before i had this i used a 900mhz athlon. Only slow downs I get with my computer are related to running it over the network.


akira: pretty much all the linux music players are also available for BSD. Since you'd be playing the music from the server I wouldn't think having a large amount of space available on the music computer would be of much use. But if it is, I would go with the seagate.. I believe they just came out with a 400GB Model

 

[flambo]

Quote:

I'd never want to run any Athlon fanless, even at 1.45v. Still much too hot to be comfortable. An L1A fan is inaudible outside the case, though, and will cool an XP-M fine.

Did you know that there is a AMD 2400+ XP-M that runs at 1.35 V? If you use multiplier of let's say 5X166 (830MHz) you might be able to run as low as 1.1 V (using a motherboard like DFI NFII Ultra Infinity.) With a massive heatpipe heat sink like Thermalright SI-97 Heatsink (get it here http://www.crazypc.com/Merchant2/mer...uct_Code=50961
perharps you could run it without a fan. If a fan is needed, you could get a super silent fan like a Thermaltake Combo Cool DIY Series Silent Cat 9CM fan (21 db) or Vantec "Stealth" 92mm Smart Case fan, Model "SF9225L" (20db).

 

[AdamWill]

flambo: might work so long as you have a case fan, I guess. And never buy a Thermaltake *anything* is my rule of thumb

. The L1A is rated the same dB (21dbA), and besides, manufacturer dbA ratings mean precisely nothing. I've owned ten different 'quiet' 80mm fans and the only one I liked was the L1A.