First, the heart. Of course, it's an Athlon64, but not just any Athlon64. It's a Mobile Athlon64 2800+ (1.8GHz) with TDP -- thermal design power, the absolute maximum this class of chips (true mobile Athlon64) will output -- of 35 watts. Since 2800+ is the highest rated true mobile part in 130nm process, that 35W applies to this particular chip.
Notice the lack of a lid unlike a regular desktop Athlon64 chips. Due to the lower height, I had to hack up the heatsink little bit. No big deal.
This chip is qualified for:
1,800MHz 2800+ 1.20V 35.0W 1,600MHz 2700+ 1.10V 26.0W 800MHz ----- 0.90V 12.0W
There's a newer 90nm part out now that is even better at:
2,200MHz MT40 1.20V 25.0W 800MHz 0.90V 7.8W
I'd be lying if I said I'm not at all tempted to get the new 90nm part, but seriouly, even the current one is plenty low-power and more than fast enough for my HTPC use. Actually, I also own an MT-32 (1.8GHz 512k), an MT-30 (1.6GHz 1M), and an MT-37 (2.0GHz 1M) which are used on other machines.
Did you know that even a VIA Nehemiah 1GHz has maximum power usage of 15W? Do you realize that 800MHz Athlon64 at 7.8W is probably an order of magnitude faster than that crappy Nehemiah for most things? Not only that, VIA's northbridge chip with DDR controller actually eats almost as much power as the CPU. Athlon64's heat dissipation figures include DDR controller! The only downside of the Athlon64 compared to the VIA is that there are no motherboards smaller than microATX (unless you went with a proprietary SFF solution) and that it costs a lot more.
I purchased an Antec Sonata case. It is well designed and extremely quiet case. It also comes with a special version of their True380 power supply. The difference between this version and the regular True380 power supply is that this one has only one fan.
The only fans I trust with my life are made by Sanyo-Denki, and you won't find anything else in any of my computers. Here, I'm replacing the BLAH fan that came with the True380 power supply with a genuine, made-in-Japan, Sanyo-Denki fan.
Close up of the CPU heatsink (Thermaltake) and fan, as well as the exhaust fan. Obviously, CPU fan is replaced with a Sanyo-Denki fan. Exhaust fan is also a Sanyo-Denki 120mm fan and is connected to True380's fan-only (voltage controlled based on heat/load) connector.
CPU fan is connected through two 150-ohm resistors in parallel, making it 75-ohms. Why not just use one 75-ohm resistor? Because, with two, even if one fails, the fan will continue to run, albeit at an even slower speed. Actually, I only did it this way because I ran out of 75-ohm resistors. ^_^;;
Everything hooked up.
If I may say so myself, I think it's pretty neatly done. Motherboard is ASRock K8S8X. I'm a fan of SiS chipsets for AMD processors, but it's hard to find good quality SiS-based boards. Obviously, I'm not touching an ECS board with a million meter pole. Thankfully, ASRock turned out to be great.
Back of the completed HTPC.
There's a Radeon 9600 (fanless, of course) with DVI going to Optoma H31 projector and RGBHV going to console LCD monitor.
Next card is PDI-Deluxe Holo3DGraph(TM), the original, not
the II crap. Component cables are coming from Panasonic RP-82,
which I rarely use. S-Video is coming from Yamaha HTR-5760, which
is switching for Pioneer Elite DVL-91 and a VCR, none of which I
use much these days.
Next card is Sigma X-Card. You can actually see them in the previous
image, with the PDI cable going from X-Card to PDI-Deluxe
Holo3DGraph(TM).
The Molex connector at the back of the power supply feeds two fans I mounted on the sides of my projector. They're not required, but they're sure to extend my projector's life. They're slow fans, so do not add any noise.
There aren't that many other things in this computer.
There's a 512MB stick of Corsair in there. Of course, since this is strictly an HTPC, there's never a time when it's using more than about 100MB, but I couldn't justify buying anything smaller.
Then there's a Seagate ST380013A (Barracuda 7200.7 with 8MB cache). It's a single-platter, 2-head drive that is extremely quiet.
DVD+-RW drive is NEC ND-3500A BK with hacked firmware, but with riplock intact (runs at 2x speed with pressed DVDs).
Basically, my "DVD Player" is extremely reliable and the only mechanical things that can go bad (HDD, DVD drive) are easy to replace. No, those fans are not going to die in my lifetime.
So, how is this thing? In one word, awesome.
Speaking of low power, I can't risk latency unpredictability associated with Cool'n Quiet, so it is disabled, but since compute requirement is negligible with Holo3DGraph(TM) hardware, it's underclocked to 1.0GHz at 0.90V. Note it's actually below the official spec.
Any questions?