Low-power consumption, need info

[baRt]

Hi guys,

First: introduction!
I’ve been looking into HTPC ‘stuff’ for about a year now, but never really wanted to shell out the money to actually build something. But the time is becoming right and I should stop spending way too much on my car and get my in-home luxuries to a higher level!

Anyway, building an HTPC seems simple enough. Software issues aside, the basics have been covered all over the net and websites like this one are an important source of info.

So, onto the hardware side of things.
There’s several things I’m looking into. Noise is naturally something to minimize in a livingroom / bedroom environment, but again: there’s more than enough info to be found online.
But here’s the problem: power consumption. I want the parts of the system (I’m dividing it into several systems) that are always-on to be as efficient as possible, keeping a certain budget in mind. Paying twice as much for the very last bit of performance or efficiency is not the way to go. (buying a 3gHz P4 when they came out, in stead of the 3.2gHz as that was WAY more expensive for that little extra)
I live by the 80-20 rule so to speak.

Anyway, back to my intended plans, and what I need to know / discuss.

I’m looking into the following systems, all to be built as ‘AV equipment’ in the livingroom next to the TV.

1. Recorder.
always-on, energy efficient, dual tuner (SDTV as we don’t get better than that).
So the dual tuner will most likely be the PVR 500. Harddisks will be either one or two 250GB PATA disks that I have. Mainboard / CPU will be mATX (onboard video etc) / something.

questions here:
– power consumption of the PVR 500. Does anybody know?
– what CPU should I be going for? currently thinking about the socket AM2 Sempron 3000+ EE-SFF (35W) but I need one that will be powerful enough for what it will be doing.
– how much power gets sucked up by the mainboard itself? Can’t seem to find decent reviews / tests on that.

2. Viewer system
I think this should be the most powerful system? Can I get away with another Sempron 3000+ EE-SFF? would be nice to have the same system as the recorder, but without harddisks (boot from compact flash card) and maybe I won’t even need a seperate videocard.

[edit: naturally this system will need a DVD player, possibly a burner, remote control etc. also, this will be an on-demand system, but might be hibernated for faster boot times]

3. File server(s)
on-demand, so not always on. Don’t need them to be, as they won’t be located out of the room. I’ll be using fanless mini-ITX systems for these, as they don’t require much (just file throughput).
At first I was thinking of building a system using eSATA from the recording or viewing system and a port multiplier to attach the disks. This will make file transfers fast, but the sharing to different systems a little more complicated. Less flexible…
Not sure yet on how many drives per-system will be going in, but using a <20W mainboard with 2 3.5" disks should give me systems that'll use less than 50W, even in use.
(mind not set on using either one system with 4 disks, or 2 systems with 2 disks each. In terms of power-usage-costs there's not too much difference, but in terms of flexibility and purchasing cost, there is)

- no real questions, just to give a complete picture 🙂

So, what do you guys think? If you've even read this huge rant of mine 🙂

I'm planning on running MythTV, most likely on Ubuntu. Might go for one of the 'boxed' solutions like knopmyth, but since I'm getting myself in enough trouble as it is (Linux semi-n00b) I guess I should stick to the system I had the least problems with (or better yet, that actually worked for me).

[wow... how's this for a first post :S]

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