I have for some while been tinkering with a home built HTPC based on the mCubed hFX case which is a totally passive cooling system. By connecting heat pipes to CPU and GPU and leading the heat to two massive heatsinks on either side of the case you can effectively cool a pretty powerful CPU. Mine is using a Pentium M 740 (1,7 GHz) which the system keeps very cool. I also use a passive PSU that doesnt even get lukewarm simply because the total powerdraw of the system is very low. The end result is a dead silent PC! One very well suited for living rooms! The only thing humming in the device is a 3.5" harddrive mounted in a Vertical Silence. This drive does get very hot though and I really wish I could swap this with a flash based drive so I can get that movable part out of the equation. Will probably experiment some with a SATA CF adapter and a sandisk extreme card.The software that I was planning to use, Meedio Pro, was suddenly discontinued because the people who made it was "bought" by Yahoo. So I looked around and I am now using the open source project called MediaPortal. This works somewhat, although it has required quite a bit of tweaking to get everything up and running as I want. Especially with the XMLTV epg downloading. A part of me want to get Microsoft WinXP Media Center just to make things easier, but I have to check if I get the flexibility I want with it.
Go to my dedicated website - my htpc project - to get more information about how to build an amazing HTPC. :) Dont hesitate to mail me anytime with questions.
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