[科技]Built an ultra-low profile PC with Zero Noise(0db) – Part 1: CPU & Casing

Few weeks back, I killed one of my PC(which serves as the Home NAS + Download station) while attempting to replace its harddisk.

This machine had been running for 3-4 years on 24×7 basis, and its hardware specs were quite aged(P3, 256MB RAM, 40GB HDD).  ~~~ (Rest in peace).

I need to rebuild a new machine as replacement.

The main functions of this machine will primarily be the Home NAS(Network Attach Storage) and as the Download Station. I also want it to be the HTPC(Home Theater PC) in the living room.

With these requirements in mind, I am looking for machine that must be ultra-low profile, in terms of form factor(size) and power usage, but yet powerful enough to play the 1080p contents. I am not going to play games or do any video editing on it, so I don’t need a powerful CPU or GPU.

The Intel ATOM processor series came across my mind. After some research, I found that the new Intel D510MO fits the above requirements.

This CPU is rated at 13Watt. According to another owner of D510mo, the total load is around 40Watt when playing 1080p movie (with other peripherals like harddisk, etc).

Note: 40Watt is equivalent to some household light bulb. The average power consumption of the Desktop machines I have, are running about 200+Watt. This is 5x times savings in terms of energy ($$$).

As with other Intel ATOM motherboard series, D510mo form factor is also Mini-ITX. The CPU is dual-core with Hyper-Threading(4 CPUs shown under Windows Task Manager).

What attracts me most is, this board is Fanless. Without the CPU-Fan, there is significant reduction of noise, which is very important because I am going to place the machine in the living room.

So, I went to PJ Digimall the other day to buy the motherboard and couple of other parts.

D510mo with 1Gb DD2 RAM

Notice that it has no CPU fan

Mini-ITX Form Factor – It is only slightly larger than the size of a CD

Rear Panel

At the rear panel, there are built-in Video, HD Audio ports, 4x USB, Gigabits LAN, PS2 Keyboard & Mouse, VGA.

It makes no sense to get this mini-ITX board without a small casing.

Here is the picture of the D510mo installed in the casing. The casing can nicely fit in one 3.5″ HDD and one DVD-ROM drive.

I really need the casing to be small, so that it doesn’t look too intrusive in the living room.

Casing

Storage

This machine will be used as the Home NAS cum Download station, so it needs to have a large storage space.

I throw in a Samsung 1TB HDD for this purpose.

The casing comes with a power supply unit(PSU). Though it is smaller than the normal ATX PSU, the noise from the PSU fan is still quite noticeable.

My objective is to build a ultra-low profile machine with Zero Decibel (0db), not even low decibel. YES, I want it to be totally silent.

There are couple of Ultra Silent PSU in the market now. They are expensive, and they won’t fit into this small casing. Of course they are also not noiseless (0db).

I will talk about the solution for the noise issue in the next blog.

Price Summary

Intel D510mo motherboard: RM265

Kingston 2Gb DD2 RAM: RM70

Casing: RM170

Samsung 1TB Harddisk: RM180