Temps, Noise, and Final Thoughts
Thermals and Noise
With Windows 8.1 installed I began testing the thermal performance of the enclosure, beginning with HD playback. While temperatures did rise with both Blu-ray and file-based 1080P video, it should be noted that the noise levels did not increase until I forced a couple of worst-case scenarios by using Prime95 and Unigine Heaven benchmarks to stress the system.
I was able to push the Pentium G3258 (Anniversary Edition) CPU to a maximum of 52.6 over ambient (with a 67 F room this was a measured temp of 72 C using RealTemp). However, the much more realistic load temperature was 35.1 C over ambient (54 C on the hottest core as measured).
Next we look at noise levels, performed using a digital sound pressure meter at a distance of 18". Ambient noise in the room was 35.6 dB.
With the ventilated design of the enclosure noise levels will be primarily component dependent. The PHT HSF was very quiet under normal use, but both the CPU cooler and included 60mm chassis fan became noticably loud during stress testing. The 60mm fan was particularly noticable, with a high-pitched sound signature. In the real world noise levels would probably never come close to what I was able to produce here, however.
Conclusion
Essentially, all enclosures are about compromise. Even a cost-no-object build is going to have the side effect of (typically) larger size and high energy usage. If that is not of concern for the end user, then for them it truly is a “no compromise” result. However, when the primary considerations are small size and silent operation (crucial for an HTPC build) then the tradeoffs become more problematic. For instance for the thinnest enclosures there are significant tradeoffs in CPU cooling due to height and often width limitations of the enclosure. Intel has created a blower style cooler for the thin mini-ITX platform, but not every enclosure will have the lateral room required for the Intel design.
There are more differences with the thin mini-ITX standard, beginning with memory support. Unlike regular mini-ITX which accepts standard DIMMs, with thin mini-ITX only notebook SoDIMMs are supported. Additionally, there is no x16 PCI Express slot on a thin mini-ITX motherboard. Some have a x4 slot, but upgrading the graphics will necessitate a processor swap. Though it’s possible that some sort of x16 to x4 adapter could be implemented, powering it would be a problem since we aren't using a conventional PSU with this form-factor. And here we arrive at one of the biggest issues facing the first-time thin mini-ITX builder: the power supply.
The thin mini-ITX standard calls for an external power supply, essentially a notebook power adapter. (Naturally some boards complicate this by offering an internal power header, but most rely on the Intel external standard.) Unfortunately, this adapter will not be included in the box with your mini-ITX motherboard. I have seen it included with enclosures, but if it is not included it requires very careful selection at this point to track one down. Why? The specifications are extremely, well, specific.
This is the 90W power supply I used with this build
It’s not just a 19V laptop adapter with at least 90W of power, but the tip of the adapter needs to have a 7.4mm outer diameter with a 5.0 inner diameter. If this was simply a standard, and a quick search on Amazon for “thin mini itx power supply” achieved a good result, this wouldn’t be an issue. (At time of writing the search "19V 7.4mm" produced a good result on Amazon, and the adapter I found is around $10.) Hopefully by the time you read this adapters will be searchable as "thin mini-ITX PSU", and not by plug diameter. Perfect Home Theater does offer one on their site at time of purchase, which adds $50 to the total cost.
Strengths
- Excellent construction, beautiful fit and finish
- Premium feel with lightweight aluminum throughout
- Effective use of interior space
- Well ventilated
Weaknessess
- Expensive
- Extremely slim design only permits thin mini-ITX form-factor
- Minimal CPU cooling options available with 23mm height limit
Overall the Perfect Home Theater ultra low-profile HTPC enclosure is an impressive and attractive addition to the living room PC market. It is expensive at $200, but this is in keeping with the higher cost of producing a custom enclosure entirely from aluminum. The width allows for seamless matching with existing components, and the design adds minimal height to any AV stack. The tradeoffs with such a low profile design might make this enclosure impractical for many, but if you are looking for a very slim case (or are ready to embrace Intel's thin mini-ITX form-factor) I would look no further.
I build something similair,
I build something similair, but then fanless, and with a FM2 mobo and APU, and its completely silent.
Streacom FC5 Evo Fanless black
MSI A88XI AC
AMD A10-7850K Black Edition
Mini-box picoPSU-150-XT
And the Streacom case look real good, at least as good as the one from the article.
http://www.streacom.com/products/fc5-evo-fanless-chassis/
How do you put the heat sink
How do you put the heat sink on your CPU in this thing?
It has heatpipe connections
It has heatpipe connections to the finned parts of the case. Basically, the case is the heatsink.
Every time I look into
Every time I look into something like this, the slim optical drives are what lose me. Given the average cost of an internal one, its easier to go external (or set top) with a NUC type box or build a bigger machine that can hold a 5.25 drive.
There is a version without
There is a version without ODD drive and without slot as Sebastian mentioned in his review – T-ITX-5
What a horrific use of
What a horrific use of limited space. 3.5″ hard disks? Full-size (as opposed to slim) optical drive? Really?
They could’ve removed those, put in (or at least left space for) a full-size graphics card, used 2.5″ HDDs and a slim ODD instead.
The Steam Machine beta prototype that Valve shipped is still by far the best ultra-compact, single-card system.
This case only supports a
This case only supports a slim optical drive. It's a standard slot-load notebook drive (I'm using a DVD-RW drive from a Dell laptop for this build). Full-size ODD wouldn't fit.
Also, the Intel thin mini-ITX format doesn't support full-size graphics cards. You'd need a little more height to support regular mini-ITX and a dual-slot video card.
I think thin mini-ITX boards
I think thin mini-ITX boards do support GPUs (of course with a bandwidth cap of only x4 instead of x16) but their slot doesn’t provide 75w of power (only 25w instead), which means that an aux PCIe power is required fo the card. Granted, all this kind of defeats the purpose of sff, but I’m just saying…
I also agree about the lost internal space for the HDDs. Maybe they also could remove the optical altogether (who uses disks anymore?) and make the power supply internal as well). And perhaps leave some room for say a 2.5″ drive.
Htpc with optical is very
Htpc with optical is very common, specialy for audio-heads. Blue ray is dieing but it ain’t dead yet
While I don’t see the need
While I don’t see the need for 2 (or 3) HDDs in an HTPC, it is because of noise and extra heat, more so than the loss of space. They had the space, since they wanted to make it the same width/depth dimensions of typical home theatre hardware, so they put it to use.
Arguably, moving the power supply out was extremely wise, since now it can be passively cooled, instead of forcing the chassis fans to go into overdrive venting the excess heat. Looking at the temps of a Pentium, without the addition of a graphics card or power supply, they really didn’t have the headroom to put any other heat producer inside the chassis.
The extra cost for 2.5″
The extra cost for 2.5″ storage drives is ridiculous. For a Media Center PC, getting some 3.5″ 2, 3, 4 TB drives or two is a much better use of space.
I agree, but it’s not just
I agree, but it’s not just the cost – it is also the capacity, power, and suitability for video recording. Low-power, video/surveillance 3.5″ drives are available up to 6TB now, while 2.5″ drives tend to max out at 2TB. If you are building a DVR which can record 6 or more programs at once, supporting 1 or 2 3.5″ hard drives (as the reviewer showed) makes a lot more sense than using four 2.5″ drives.
Hellooooooo, Nurse! I built a
Hellooooooo, Nurse! I built a cheap mini-ITX HTPC recently with an embedded Celeron motherboard, but this would be so much more responsive. And look a lot better. (I have a CableCard setup, so I’d never, ever use Windows 8 in an HTPC, though. 7 only.) I’m bookmarking their site for any future builds.
This is not perfect, not even
This is not perfect, not even close, but a good start.
HTPC should be silent. Fans are not acceptable. There are plenty of examples of good fanless design which would give similar thermal performance.
I know not everyone uses an ODD – I still do mostly to rip blu rays down to my NAS. It would be a good idea to have the ODD fixing incorporate some form of anti-vibration/noise dampening as the ODD is the biggest noise in my system.
Like the IR option.
Since this chassis is clearly
Since this chassis is clearly not intended for hard core gaming, but rather as a media player, cable settop/DVR, or streaming video box, the workloads typically do not stress the CPU as heavily and do not require high RPM to cool adequately. There are plenty of super quiet fans on the market which cannot be heard at a distance of 3-4 feet. The optical/hard drive(s) should set the lower threshold for audibility. For this type of application, a fanless design would be overkill and a waste of money.
Placing the motherboard in
Placing the motherboard in the center was a mistake as it severely limits what PCIe boards you can install alongside. Too bad.
Thin mITX tends not to have
Thin mITX tends not to have anything more than a half-width pci-e slot, so you are pretty limited right out of the gate.
For Thin-Mini ITX, the power
For Thin-Mini ITX, the power supply is built into the motherboard and is not sized to power high-end graphics cards. External AC/DC converters are available for Thin-Mini ITX up to 160W. The half-height slot is adequate for low-end graphics cards or TV/cable tuners.
Really awesome!
Really awesome!
I’d recommend that you guys
I’d recommend that you guys check out the HDhomerun prime for your next htpc article. It takes a cable card and rebroadcasts the channels over your network to WMC devices. It was a little bit of a pain to set up with Time Warner, since you need the fancier Cisco Digital Tuning Adapter that the techs don’t have on hand. The upside is that you don’t need a cable card for every device and you can use relatively thin clients to view or record the channels.
I didn’t know that review has
I didn’t know that review has been published already until now, so this is a reason for delayed corrections and comments.
Sebastian, thank you for nice review and award.
My corrections and comments:
1. Price $200.00 was set for few units taken from factory by air (expensive). Actual price for chassis arrived by sea is $160.00.
2. I designed these series of ultra slim chassis, but final technical project was done by Zhiyang (engineer/designer) in China and he deserves recognition as well.
3. We have several platforms good for HTPC application, starting with Raspberry PI. Let’s focus on Intel CPU platforms only.
As far as I know the smallest Intel CPU motherboard is a NUC, then there is Thin-Mini ITX, then Mini ITX and up. Thin-Mini ITX has been designed to fill the gap between NUC and Mini ITX. Some of Thin-Mini ITX don’t have PCIe at all, some of them, have only PCIe x1 and some PCIe x4 like presented here. They are starting with only one SATA port up to four SATA ports. Max CPU TDP is 65W and max power on PCIe is 25W by design.
There is plenty of NUC chassis and a lot of chassis based on Mini-ITX and up, but very few based on Thin-Mini-ITX, so I decided to fill this gap and I designed full width, ultra slim T-ITX 5÷8 series.
4. These chassis have been design for three applications only: Music servers, HTPCs and TV Enthusiasts. With limits mentioned above – this is not for gaming for sure.
5. As a music server chassis can accommodate SOtM tX-USBexp Audiophile PCIe to USB Audio Card and there is a space for SOtM In-Line SATA Power Noise Filter as well.
6. As HTPC or TV Enthusiast this chassis can accommodate Ceton InfiniTV 6 PCIe and up to three 3.5” HDDs.
7. We offer HQ 19V, 150W AC/DC converter made by Mini-Box. This adapter is covered by 12 months warranty.
Reviewer mentioned noise from 60mm chassis fan when he put system to the limit.
From this review I assume that he didn’t use Fan-Xpert to control fans. It is easy to read fans specs and then set up speed properly and safe for CPU and motherboard. Information: http://techsupport.perfecthometheater.com/Slim%20HSFs.htm
I built system around exactly the same motherboard but I set Fan-xpert to control fans speed.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/26-home-theater-computers/1663049-my-new-ultra-slim-htpc-2.html#post27126722
Recently I installed Cave-Tec software and started CaveTec Center. I was recording four and playing four HD programs simultaneously. My HPTPC is ~7 feet from me. I muted sound several times and didn’t hear any noise from HTPC. I will repeat this with CPUID HD Monitor ON and report here after then.
Regards
I’m curious as to whether or
I’m curious as to whether or not the Intel BXHTS1155LP reference Thin-Mini-ITX cooler would work with / fit in this case. It appears that there is sufficient room to the front or left side of the board, but I can’t tell if the chassis has been predrilled for the fan. While I commend the manufacturer for providing a fan solution, I would think that the Intel cooler would provide better heat dissipation (given the overall surface area is larger) at a slightly lower dB level.
What “Celcius” degrees are?
What “Celcius” degrees are? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celcius_%28disambiguation%29 It’s a mispelling acceptable (barely) when coming by a forum poster, not on a PcPer review graph. Thanks in advance for the necessary correction.