Will this all work together ?

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square_wave

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Buy Online Antec ISK300-150 AP Mini ITX Cabinet in India

http://www.flipkart.com/msi-fm2-a55...5KVX&ref=12941e78-6b96-41a5-80d0-b2bcc001986a

AMD A6-5400K APU 3.6Ghz Processor AD540KOKHJBOX: Amazon.in: Computers & Accessories


G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3 4 GB (1 x 4 GB) PC RAM (F3-12800CL9S-4GBXL) - G.Skill: Flipkart.com

Looking to make a small PC. Looking at these. Not sure if they will:

1. Fit into the Antec case and work together.
2.Will the built in 150 watts do for these components ?

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I was actually planning for this cabinet:
Buy Online Cooler Master 210 MIN-210-KKR300 Slim Mini-iTX Cabinet in India

It is out of stock all over the place :mad::mad:
 
The 150W should work for basic HTPC and less number of HDD but the Antec case accepts only Mini-ITX motherboards, so you need to look for compatible motherboard for this case. There are very good reviews for this case for a small factor PC.
 
Thanks guys. I will look through the links. It has been a long while since I have assembled a PC. Completely out of touch with the new terminologies.
 
If you want low noise, then you should go for bigger cabinet. The biggest noise contributor in PC are the cooling fans. Small cabinets do have crammed spaces, reduce airflows and fans come up full speed. So, the key is to use small motherboards/cpus in big case, big fans (120mm) at very low speed. Also, keep all the wires inside cabinet neatly tied up.

It's the question of foot print vs noise. Big footprint is bad, but in the long run its better than fan noise. :D
 
if you have budget then go for silverstone cabinets, one of the best but in low cost zebronics make lot of mini cabinets (less trhan 2k with psu)
 
Be wary of high-power CPUs. They draw a lot of power and they produce a lot of heat.

I'm not familiar with HTPC requirements --- but I doubt that it needs >3Ghz processors. Audio, of course, will work fine on machines form over ten years ago.
 
square_wave, for the most silent performance, I'd suggest getting a fanless AMD E350 (or E450) motherboard, an SSD, a well ventilated cabinet, and a picoPSU. This build will have no moving parts (if you switch the cabinet fan off and keep it in a well-ventilated area) and will run completely silent.

Like Thad pointed out, the lower powered boards would run cooler, and would need lesser (or zero) active cooling from fans.

I'm completely out of touch with the current equipment, but maybe the current gen Atom boards (which are usually fanless) will do HD.

An AMD E350 board such as this (this listing is way over priced IMO) would do HD, without needing a CPU fan. A cabinet fan would help keep the heat down, but you will be able to run that fan slow enough to not generate too much noise. The E350 boards are quite old, but they will do the job well enough, as long as you don't need 3D.

If budget is not an issue, you can get one of the current-gen entry-level i3 boards with HDMI outs and put a fanless heatsink (= expensive) on it.

Swapping the stock cabinet fan to something like a Noctua (more expense, yes) would lower the dBs significantly. Actually, depending on how well ventilated the area where the cabinet is kept is, you might be able to completely disable the cabinet fan.

A 2.5" HDD would be more silent than most 3.5" hard disk. With a mini-ITX cabinet would most likely need a 2.5" hard disk.

A 2.5" SSD instead fo a HDD would be completely silent (no moving parts), but also quite a bit expensive in terms of GB per rupee. If you will be using an external HDD or a NAS to store the movies, I'd strongly suggest using a 64GB SSD.

I use an Asus E350M1-M board with an SSD (OS and music s/w only) in an AVR-sized Silverstone Cabinet. I used to use a fan controller to lower the fan speeds, but nowadays I keep the fans off. I don't have a NAS (and I don't like external HDDs), so I need to keep a 3.5" HDD in it and the loudest noise the machine generates is the noise of the HDD spinning. Even this can't be heard 7 feet away from the machine, where I sit.
 
Thanks Baiju - I have been looking for this particular Micro ATX cabinet all over the place. I have send them a message to confirm.
 
Square Wave,

All nice suggestions above. Especially with processing power and heat generated.

I have one more suggestion - since you are looking for Hi-Def playback, make sure that the motherboard you want has some decent onboard GPU. If you do, then the video processing is done by it and cpu remains idle. If GPU is not decent, then windows will offload it to cpu, causing it to pull more power and generate heat. Also, since cpu is multi-tasking, it may give choppy performance as well.

I haven't kept up with current cpu/mb combo's for HTPC, but you definitely need decent gpu and then go for low power cpu. That's best.
Update: Just read some more things on web. Currently, there are very low power cpus having dedicated gpu inits in them. Especially the 32nm die ones. AMD A series is one of them. I guess, there are some nice low powered alternatives out there.

Also, what are doing for audio? bitstream out?
 
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@Manoje,
Thanks. That is the advice I was looking for. Next is to find an AMD chip which is the best fit for my needs. I will look at the A series and post back.

For audio as well as video, it is going to hdmi out.

Bitstream is basically the raw undecoded data being sent to the receiver for it to decode. I guess this is a setting for the hdmi out right ? Should I be giving this much importance since my av setup is not reference grade at this point of time.
 
square_wave said:
Zoomed into this ASUS mother board for Micro ATX.

ASUS F2A55-M-LK-PLUS Motherboard - ASUS: Flipkart.com

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/F2A55M_LK_PLUS/

This is an AMD M-board.

What chip from AMD should I go for ? I need smooth HD playback of movies but no gaming. Trying to keep a balance between costs, perfomance and noise levels.
Click to expand...

This motherboard doesn't have a HDMI or optical port. Not much useful for a HTPC. Try to get a motherboard in the same series with these ports. For processor, go for AMD A4. But I'm not sure if it is still in market.
 
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