Home theater computers

[zahc]

I want a linux HTPC. I don't figure I need a lot of horsepower. It needs to be something that can stay on all the time, and fanless would be best.

In my parts bin have an old socket 939 mobo, some 2006-era AMD single-core chip, and a couple gigs of ram. There's a decent fanless video card and hard drive too. The only thing I need is a case. The trouble is, this thing has a huge giant Zalman heatsink to make it run reasonably quiet. And not even silent, just reasonably quiet. That means it won't fit in a nice small HTPC case. The cheap option would be to go buy a $25 cheapo tower case and just accept that it's not going to look nice.

Going to a cooler CPU like an Atom would mean rebuying the mobo. And I need a case in any case, so maybe I should look for a complete computer. Like an old Mac mini or something (can you put linux on those)?

That brings me to what to do about hard drives. HTPC needs a lot of storage, or else it needs to have a file server somewhere. Hard drives can be pretty loud, but solid state drives are expensive and small.

Don't they have any small Atom-powered "net-top" computers? I guess those never caught on.

I'm having option paralysis.

[birdman]

Jude a Mac mini for my HTPC, using my big machine as a file server.

[GigaBuist]

A D-Link Boxee-Box is about $200 new.  I got a refurb for $130.

Quiet, has a QWERTY remote control for it.  HDMI output, and it streams a bunch of stuff over the network.  Drop a file sever into the closet for heavy storage (or tote a USB drive between the ripping PC and the Boxee-Box) and you're good.

[Nick1911]

I can't help you on the hardware.  But on software... mythbuntu is what we run here, and it's generally fantastic.

[Calumus]

If you have a PS3 you can skip the htpc altogether. Install PS3 Media Server on your main Windows PC, and stream though your network. I'm running version 1.50 and its been flawless.

[zahc]

I don't buy Sony.

[BryanP]

I dunno, I just went to Newegg and searched "atom htpc" and found several that might fit your needs.

That won't have an optical drive on it, but you could put an SSD in it, or hang a little laptop drive off of USB, or just stream (wired or wireless depending on your requirements) from a louder but heavier duty PC with tons'o'storage.

[RevDisk]

WD TV Live Plus ?  Roku 2 is nice as well, different purposes, of course.

[zahc]

I already have a Roku box. If the Roku had more general purpose hardware, so I could just play media files off a server, I would be pretty set.

It probably makes the most sense to stuff my old parts (which are "free") in a big case in a closet somewhere and use it as a fileserver. Then I can build a home theater computer with a nice 45W processor that will fit in a nice-looking htpc, with a SSD. I would still want an optical drive in the HTPC though, so I can play and rip DVDs there.

It needs to be convenient though. Last time I tried to set up NFS, it was always annoying i.e. never just worked over long periods of time.

Plus, I don't want to add to my electric bill. The idea of having a file server running 24/7 for the 2 hours a week I will be able to use it just seems wasteful.

[Nick1911]

Wake on LAN?  Do people still use that?

[RevDisk]

Wake on LAN?  Do people still use that?

Yes. A lot.