Evolution of the HTPC

HTPC or Home Theatre PC's have been on the market for quite some time and my first attempt at building a "silent" computer back in 2004 failed miserably. I had spent a considerable amount of time sort of researching, and bought a $200 Silverstone full size HTPC case, model LC03

I added a 500W fanless PSU which cost almost the same as the case, and then started selecting the core components based around an ASUS motherboard and PCIe video card and an ATI HDTV Wonder complete with it's own antenna to pick up ATSC digital signals.

This first HTPC was an expensive but educational exercise, a success in that it did what it was supposed to do, stream movies to our TV, play music through our amplifier, pick up the single ATSC channel at the time, which was City TV from Toronto and it could also be a DVD player.

It was a failure because it could not be silent. The fanless PSU produced a lot of latent heat and I had to have a case fan running with a speed control to keep the heat down. In addition, the CPU fan added it's own little slice of low level noise, plus the quiet, yet noticeable hum of the hard drive.

In a quiet home theatre environment, my first HTPC sounded like a freight train.