paging SimonK (was OT cooool computer or whatever)

Discussion in 'UK Motorcycles' started by darsy, Dec 22, 2004.

  1. darsy

    darsy Guest

    re: this Shuttle you flogged me.

    I've replaced the power supply with a SilentX one, replaced the main
    case fan with a NoiseBlocker UltraSilent one, and yeah, it's really a
    lot quieter than before - in particular you can't hear the main fan
    stepping up and down, which was the irritation before.

    That fucking Northbridge fan still makes quite a bit of noise - how
    confident are you that it's OK to replace the fan with a heatsink? My
    concern is that there's very little free space inside the box for the
    heatsink to actually dissipate it's heat...
     
    darsy, Dec 22, 2004
    #1
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  2. darsy

    simonk Guest

    Cool, thought it might improve things
    You can run with neither heatsink nor fan if you're not using the on board
    graphics, but a heatsink should be fine for normal use. I seem to remember
    that I put one in my new one, but I can't be arsed to take the lid off just
    now ...

    http://forums.kustompcs.co.uk/showthread.php?t=16468
     
    simonk, Dec 22, 2004
    #2
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  3. darsy

    darsy Guest

    it's really much much quieter - you couldn't actually hear the
    northbridge fan over the whoooo--whooooh noise of the case fan ramping
    up and down responding to CPU temperature. I've also put a near-silent
    Barracude hard-drive in it, and that doesn't make much noise at all -
    even giving it a full format didn't make it make a noise, and there's
    never any tick-tick-ticking even when recording one video whilst
    playing another.
    I am using the onboard graphics, including the TV-out (which, finally,
    *finally*! I managed to get working in composite out, rather than
    s-video, and so although I wasted 20 dollars on a silly cable from the
    states, means I've got a decent TV picture for DVD playback).

    TBH it's not *that* loud, it'd just be nice having made the effort to
    get the cpu and case fan nice and quiet to have the machine as near to
    silent as possible. The power supply and fan were easy to swap - doing
    the Northbridge appears to need a lot of disassembly of the box, and
    probably re-routing some cables. I'll probably get around to it
    eventually though.
    smashing, ta.
     
    darsy, Dec 22, 2004
    #3
  4. darsy

    darsy Guest

    I already have a Zalman northbridge heatsink - it's just such a pain in
    the arse to fit it[1] that I haven't done it yet. The box is a Shuttle
    case - there isn't space to fit a standard sized power supply.
    the box doesn't need to be completely silent - just pretty quiet. It's
    a living room media-centre style PC, and the room it sits in is rarely
    occupied without the TV being on, so it just needs to be quiet enough
    to be inaudible in comparison to - say - fairly quiet movie dialogue.
     
    darsy, Dec 22, 2004
    #4
  5. darsy

    Champ Guest

    <snip>

    On the subject of Shuttles...

    I pulled the case off mine, and found that it does have two HDD drive
    bays. One is in the 'normal' fore<->aft orientation. The 2nd one is
    slung under this bay, in a left<->right direction. The 2nd bay is
    suspended to the main bay using some interlocking stud gizmos that
    slot into groves on the bottom of the main bay. Dunno if you can
    order this bay/carrier separately.

    I also fitted the gen-u-ine shuttle wifi card. What a fucking pain in
    the arse that was! The instructions don't match the chassis/mobo I
    have *at all*. There's a daughterboard supplied who's sole purpose
    seems to be to convert from a 5-pin USB cable from the wifi board to a
    9-pin cable that connects to the mobo. However, the internal USB
    ports on my mobo are 5-pin anyway - I only realised that I could plug
    the board straight in and ignore the daughterboard after extended web
    searching. And, there's nowhere on the chassis to suspend the card
    that I can see - I've got it held in with one screw. And once
    installed and drivers loaded, it was piss poor at picking up a signal.
    And then crashed the machine with a driver error. Twice.

    Still, onward and upward. In the new year I'm going to bend your ear
    for info on setting up the PVR software. As a kick off, are you
    running XP Home or XP Pro?
     
    Champ, Dec 22, 2004
    #5
  6. darsy

    darsy Guest

    doubt it. They're all different. Mine's pretty much the "original"
    design, and yours is very modern - they've probably done a lot of
    optimisation in case layout since mine. I *could* put a second drive
    where the floppy should go, as I've no need for a floppy drive (who
    has, FFS).
    [snip]

    Well, that little tale makes me pretty happy I decided to go for the
    external USB wifi route. It took 2 minutes to install, 30 seconds to
    type in the WEP key, and bingo - "high connection strength, 54Mbps
    connection speed" straight away, despite there being a ceiling and
    floorboards between the machine and the base station.
    XP Pro. And using GB-PVR for recording/playback and XMLTV (oh, and a
    batch file and a scheduled task) for programme scheduling. And
    Intervideo WinDVD for - duh - DVD playback.

    I still haven't found a RF wireless keyboard/mouse I like, though.
     
    darsy, Dec 22, 2004
    #6
  7. darsy

    Spike@work Guest

    Have you tried the Logitech stuff?... I have a set that is surplus to
    requirements (keyboard and optical mouse combo), and could be yours for a
    small consideration...
     
    Spike@work, Dec 22, 2004
    #7
  8. darsy

    darsy Guest

    what's the range on it like?

    Ideally, I need a 3-4m range...
     
    darsy, Dec 22, 2004
    #8
  9. darsy

    rb Guest

    Gyration supposedly make some of the best cordless keyboards/mice - up
    to 100ft range and the mouse works in mid air. Not in my price range
    though.

    http://www.gyration.com/mcrsuite.htm
     
    rb, Dec 22, 2004
    #9
  10. darsy

    MikeH Guest

    How does the mouse hover then?
     
    MikeH, Dec 22, 2004
    #10
  11. darsy

    darsy Guest

    v.nice.

    Way too expensive, though.
     
    darsy, Dec 22, 2004
    #11
  12. darsy

    Champ Guest

    Well, the card I bought was only 25 quid, and, d'oh, I was stupid
    enough to buy the 11b one instead of 11g. So, I might just bye a 11g
    external device like you and right the 25 quid off to experience.
    Ah. The box I have has XP Home on it (you recall I got it from Ebay).
    Think I'll bring my MSDN disks home from work and put XP Pro on it, in
    that case.
    Yes, I know that much. Can I blag the batch job and task set up from
    you? Any other config/setup I need to know?
    Me neither. What I *think* I want is a keyboard with a built in
    trackball (for sofa surfing), using RF (not infrared). There's some
    around in the US
    (http://www.fentek-ind.com/rf-wireless-keyboard.htm#kbmrftb) but I
    can't find any in the UK. Googling for this stuff is really
    frustrating - you just get loads of directory style sites that all
    link to the same places and each other.
     
    Champ, Dec 22, 2004
    #12
  13. darsy

    darsy Guest

    sure - it's only invoking XMLTV with the right params.
    Only that it's a good idea to update the PVR-350's drivers to the
    absolute latest version you can find (and this is not necessarily on
    Hauppauge's website - there's a PVR forum (forget URL just now) which
    has more up-to-date versions, though I don't remember how/why this is).
    yup - there are quite a few nice-looking ones in the states but none at
    sensible prices in the UK. There are ways around that, though.
    Tell. Me. About. It.
     
    darsy, Dec 22, 2004
    #13
  14. darsy

    darsy Guest

    bad form etc.

    Just after posting that, I decided to have another look and found:

    http://www.overclock.co.uk/customer/product.php?productid=16790#
    now, it's only IR, rather than RF, but it's pretty cheap.
     
    darsy, Dec 22, 2004
    #14
  15. darsy

    simonk Guest

    Out of interest, is that a DVB card, or just analogue?
    One for the shamurai website, shurely
     
    simonk, Dec 22, 2004
    #15
  16. darsy

    Higgins@work Guest

    Champ wrote:

    Sir might like a nice gyro mouse http://www.gyration.com/ultragt.htm
     
    Higgins@work, Dec 22, 2004
    #16
  17. darsy

    Champ Guest

    Yeah, I've seen that. But, from reading a couple of forums, people
    have said that having to ensure it's pointing at the PC is a bit of a
    pain. Cheap enough to try, tho, I guess.
     
    Champ, Dec 22, 2004
    #17
  18. darsy

    Champ Guest

    Yea, if I have to go for separate keyboard and mouse, I'll definitely
    go for a gyro mouse.

    It's difficult to know how I'll use this machine yet, cos it's a
    pretty new way of using a PC. However, I'm imagining that if I'm
    sprawled on the sofa, with no solid desk to keep keyboard and mouse
    together, it'll be a real pain to switch between keyboard and mouse.
    Hence my preference for a keyboard with built in trackball.
     
    Champ, Dec 22, 2004
    #18
  19. darsy

    darsy Guest

    Analogue only.
    deffo.
     
    darsy, Dec 22, 2004
    #19
  20. rb wrote
    I have a cheapo Microsoft one that works a treat from the other side of
    the room.
     
    steve auvache, Dec 22, 2004
    #20
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