MaximumPC 2007 07

As much as we’d love to just strap a few fans into our case and call it a day, we can’t—a media center PC

should be as quiet as possible. Instead of digging through a ton of fans to fi nd one that performs well and

runs silently, we’ve come up with some clever ways to keep this rig’s components chilly.

At least we’re only looking at chips on the motherboard, which simplifi es our situation somewhat. With

the rest of the rig’s parts operating at nominal temperatures, we won’t have to take into account the noise

created by cooling, say, a hard drive. That leaves us with a little bit of acoustic wiggle-room for the rig.

6 MAXIMUMPC july 2007

74.

70.

65.

60.

55.

50.

45.

40.

35.

30.

25.

20.

̊C

UNDER THE HOOD

CPU 2GHz AMD Sempron

3500+

MEMORY 2GB DDR2 Corsair

RAM, 800MHz

VIDEOCARD Integrated graphics,

ATI Radeon X1250 GPU

HARD DRIVE Seagate Barracuda

7200.10 750GB

COOLING One stock CPU cooling

fan, two 1.2cm fans

CASE Antec Fusion

NORTH BRIDGE BAKE SALE

The area around our north bridge runs

superhot in our media center case. Not only

does the chipset itself hit 55 C, but it’s sur-

rounded by two smaller superhot chips that

run around 70 C. With no fans to direct air

around these critical parts, this area is too

warm. We need to get some air across this

little part, and the case’s two side fans just

aren’t getting the job done.

WHO NEEDS SPEED?

Our media center PC can’t double as a high-end gaming system, and therefore, it comes as no

surprise that our silent heatsink is more than able to cool the rig’s 2GHz Sempron proc. Even the

electronic bits around the CPU are running at just 40 C or so. We can only imagine what might

happen were we to, say, strap a Zalman CNPS9700 to the processor.

POWERED AND PROBLEM FREE

It’s interesting that our rig’s power supply is

one of the cooler areas in the case. That helps

in part because we used a low-powered

CPU that doesn’t require a ton of juice from

the PSU. Less work equals less heat, which

directly affects the ambient heat levels of the

lower half of the case. Our case is a mere

10 C or so above the Lab’s room tempera-

ture—not bad at all!

WHERE’S THE VIDEOCARD?

It’s nice that our media PC sports integrated graph-

ics—that frees up space in the case and generates

less heat than a discrete card. But the bare graphics

chip is still one of the warmer components in the rig.

And remember, using a big-ass aftermarket heatsink

just won’t work here; the low-profile case won’t

accommodate one, and anyway, most people don’t

want their media PCs to sound like a jet engine.

COOLINGCOOLINGCOOLINGCOOLING

Master’s
Guide to

3 THE MEDIA CENTER MACHINE

You’re kidding, right? You mean we can’t just attach a 22cm fan to the side of our media PC?

TEST

CASE

SCALE

The

temperature

scales in

all photos

of this rig

have been

normalized

to match

the scale on

the right.