Cooling
Heating/Cooling, your room
Have you ever really figured out how much power your computer used? Mine takes about 200 Watts. At $.08/Kilowatt cost for power, that's $140.16 a year I pay in power for the system. Then there is the cost of cooling it. By this I mean during the summer, you'll be needing to cool your home and cooling the air your computer is heating. You may not think this is much, but it adds up. For ever watt you use in your home, you're generating 3.414 BTU's of heat per hour. So for every hour my computer is on, it create 682.80 BTU's of heat, or 16387.2 BTU's of heat per day. An air conditioner cools 36000 BTU's per hour for every "Ton". Average air conditioners are 3 "Tons". Most homes also leak about 90000 BTU's per day. So by having my computer run 24 hours a day, it adds 20% more to my cooling bill. This is something to consider for any electronic device you run, but home computers and HTPC's are taking more and more power with each generation when compared to a DVD player, stove, etc. This is another hidden cost in your budget that isn't bad to know about. Almost no one will think of this, and no, the heat generated in the winter won't offset the cost. Cooling is more expensive than heating, and most climates only heat 1/4th of the year. Just be aware that this could be an issue and plan accordingly for your HTPC.
As for picking a good fan, you can find the specs of just about any fan online. Try to find a model number and google for that, or parts of it. Many fans are rebadged as different manufacturers and models, even the one in the ST46F power supply I reviewed. Pay attention to how much pressure the fan can handle. In most cases air doesn't move 100% freely and many fans only move half what they normally can if there is a fair amount of air resistance. A good tip though is larger fans can be much quieter when moving the same amount of air as a smaller one. A 40mm fan may move 35CFM at 28DB where a 120mm could move 35CFM at 20DB (or move 120CFM at 27DB). Typical 40mm fans move 15CFM, 60mm move 25CFM, 80mm move 40CFM and 120mm mvoe 80CFM. You will also find fans that move few CFM (8) and are very loud (30DB), so be cautious.
I personally don't like variable speed because they often only monitor the air temperature as they come through the fan and at certain speeds could leave another part of the case warm. These fans are also usually only quiet when at the lowest speed and quite noisy at the highest. If you can buy a control unit that changes the speed then those are a good choice, but they do cost a little extra. The best choice is find the highest CFM and quietest fan you can (say a 120mm 100+CFM at 30DB or less) and use a control unit to adjust it to a lower speed to make it even quieter.
Large heat sinks for CPU's are a good choice, but ONLY if you can make sure there is a lot of air movement from the case fan and PSU fan over that heat sink, and that air is pulled right out and can not flow back into the case.
Make sure you check the temperature around your video card for the first few days. Still air around that can often lead to video card memory going bad or problems with the other PCI cards near it. I had a video card go bad in my Antec Overture case that was likely because of such a problem (There was no fan, just a heatsink on the graphics card).
Make sure your case has atleast 12 inches of space behind where it vents. If you can keep your HTPC off the floor and and placed so that air can flow up from the ground that is lower than the case to help make a airflow to move hot air away. I don't recommend putting a HTPC in a stereo cabinet that has a solid back because all HTPC cases vent to the back right now. Also be careful to check that hot air is not somehow recirculating back into the case. If you are putting the case in something with a front door, monitor it's temperatures when the door is open and closed and compare them.
Another trick, if you have the money, is get a well cooled and noisy tower and toss it and all the disks and other hardware in a cool room somewhere in the basement. Then get a small HTPC with a slow 5400 RPM drive and other cool running hardware and use that as the frontend and stream everything from the backend. This is ideal, has almost no drawbacks, but does cost more. This type of frontend could be virtually silent.
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