[Temar]

Hello,

I want to build a super-silent low power media station and I'm looking for the right mainboard that is supported by Linux. I read many posts in this forum, but most people seem to build high power media stations with dual core processors and 400W power supplies. That is not what I'm looking for. I want a system which is (if possible) completely fanless and consumes not much power.

At the moment I use the following hardware as media station:

AMD Athlon 700Mhz
GeForce MX 400
512 MB RAM
300W power supply

While playing DVDs, I have a system usage of 15% cpu time. The problem with this configuration is, that this old AMD gets really hot (the cpu cooler has 2 fans) and consumes quite a lot of power (compared to what you can get today). A friend of mine uses an Intel Atom Mainboard, which is completely fanless and the whole system only consumes 22 Watt (measured at the power plug). This is more what I'm looking for, but the mainboard he has is not really what I want.

I'm looking for a mainboard with the following features:

- CPU: Intel Atom or compareable low-power CPU.
- PCI-Express Slot (in case I ever want to plug in a different GFX card)
- 2 PCI Slots (better more)
- GFX: Intel G45 (would be my favourite) - must be HD capable
- HDMI or at least DVI output connector
- TV out
- Digital Sound + Analog Output
- GigaBit Ethernet

The reason I would prefer a Intel G45 GFX onboard card is, that I had lots of problems with AMD in the past (their official driver sucks) and Nvidia only has binary drivers. I wouldn't mind binary drivers, but now Nvidia decided to no longer support my MX400 card. I don't want this to happen again, so I want a GFX card, which has fully open drivers. If you know a good AMD chipset, which is supported by the open drivers and is HD Video capable (driver doesn't need to support it yet) then I could live with AMD, too.

I understand that most of you build these 3GHz machines because they want to watch Bluray DVDs. I don't need this yet. I know that the drivers for the G45 can not yet accelerate HD videos but I don't even have a blueray drive and I'm quite happy with DVDs. Someday in the future the driver probably will support it and then even such a low-power system should be enough to watch BluRay Discs.

So do you know any good mainboards, which work with Linux and use one of the low power CPUs (I only know Intel Atom, there is probably an AMD equivalent, too)? I searched a lot in the forums but I'm not quite familiar with all the different CPU types and models and most of what I found refered to high performance machines.

Temar

[assen]

Hi,

I had similar goals when building my HTPC 6 months ago. Here is what I chose:

1. AMD CPU - there used to be a special low-power edition of Athlon X2 series, I think it was BE2400 or something similar. It only uses 45W. 4450e seems to be the current model from that line. Go for a good cooler - large fan at low rpm, or may even try fanless.

2. MB with on-board NVidia HDMI and on-board audio. I opted for Asus, because they were available; other manufacturers have similar products. GeForce 7xxx is pretty enough for XBMC. I don't like 5.1 sound - I only have 2 ears, so I'm happy with a decent stereo sound - therefore, the on-board audio suits me well enough. Intelligent fan control is a must, though.

3. Quiet disk drive. I again opted for Asus, they have some really quiet models indeed.

4. Fanless power supply - a must. I'm pretty happy with Fortron Zenon (although it costs over 80 bucks). It's around 300 W, which is plenty enough for me. Fanless PSUs usually emit the heat not form the back of the unit, but from its top - therefore, check that the case has matching ventilation holes.

5. Flash disk (no spinning hard disks at all) - SDD or a flash module with an IDE interface is ideal, but expensive; my experience showed that regular USB stick, although slower, still does a decent job.

Good luck.

WWell,