[mythtv-users] MB fried - suggestions to replace or upgrade?

[David Murphy]

Shane Hickey wrote:
> Dislikes:
> 1) Case gets insanely hot
> 2) I really want to have at least 2 capture cards so I can watch liveTV while recording.  If I get another, should I get another 350 or is there something better?
> 3) Ideally I'd like to have my video out using another card.  I would get lock-ups when I would FF at 3X while recording another show.  Also, the display of the PVR350 is pretty crappy.
> 4) Room for more drives would be nice
> 5) More CPU would rule.  I've been running mythfrontend on my dual-opteron workstation to archive shows to DVD because the conversion kills the tiny processor in the M10000
> 
> So, I guess I'm saying that I want more, MORE, MORE!  But, my concern is that more will mean bigger and louder.  Bigger I can probably deal with, but louder I can't.  So, maybe it's time to split my frontend away from the backend?  So, if that's the case, what's the tiniest frontend I can make that will still play DVDs without stuttering?

There is this saying that is something along the lines of "Good, cheap, 
fast; pick two."  In this case(no pun intended) I think the current 
reality is "Small, quiet, fast; pick two."

It's not even close to being as small as your existing case but the 
Antec NSK2400 seems to be very well regarded in terms of intelligent, 
quiet design.  You could fit 3 hard drives, DVD drive, 2 capture cards + 
video card or use the onboard video of a modern matx motherboard.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article591-page1.html

The case can be had for ~$90 and includes a nice power supply.

There are a lot of people building HTPCs w/ this case and the 
Thermalright SI-128 heatsink.  The NSK2400 design lets you run 
semi-passive cooling w/ no cpu fan, relying on slow, quiet 120mm case 
fans.  You should easily be able to run one of the latest 65W AMD X2 or 
Core 2 Duo cpus in this manner. For an example of this build see:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=36271

The case, heatsink and maybe even a couple high-end aftermarket 120mm 
fans are in the same price range as the mini-itx case you linked above.
In this case I would say you can get quiet, fast and not obnoxiously huge.