I'm starting to think seriously about upgrading my MythTV box to gain some expansion room and am not quite sure which way to go.

- micro ATX motherboard / mini case - anything from the very reasonable Athenatech A100BB to the fairly pricey Antec Aria. To echo Xsecret's query from the other day, what case and heatsink/fan combos work well here?

- mciro ATX motherboard / small mid tower case - say for example the Antec SLK1650B. This avoids heatsink problems, gives more room to space out drives and cables, ...

- standard ATX motherboard / small mid tower case - there's not really a price premium for the full size boards after all... And having more free slots avoids the next expansion crunch...

Obviously I'd like the box to be relatively small, quiet, and to run cool, as well as providing more expansion space and room to work.

Thoughts? Discussion?

Speaking of standard ATX motherboards these look promising

- Albatron "KX18D PROII"
- ABIT "NF7-M"

Both have been mentioned in tier 2, and are very highly rated by users over at NewEgg. Both have SPDIF out, ...The Albatron offers an extra PCI slot and SATA but then chews up a slot with a dummy to get all the sound connectors installed. The Abit adds IGP (but with no TVOut!) and keeps all the sound connectors on the motherboard.

I recently posted in Tier 2 about my system using the Abit NF7-M. You're right, of course, about it lacking TV Out. I'm using the VGA output to connect to my HDTV monitor. Another option would be to use a VGA-to-Component transcoder and run component video to the set.

I'm using the Silverstone LC01 case and the combination looks very professional in my entertainment center. I looked at the "cube" cases and the Shuttles, but they didn't really fit in the rack with my other entertainment gear. The LC01 has similar overall dimensions as my receiver and laserdisc player. It's somewhat large, but I put that to good use by installing a DVD RW drive and three hard disks.

If there is anything I'd do differently next time, I might put my disks and capture cards in a separate Antec Sonata case in the closet and have a very small frontend-only box in the entertainment center. In that scenario I'd use something like an EPIA mainboard for the frontend and any old board for the backend.

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I'm very happy with my Coolermaster ATC-620. It takes full size cards and a full size power supply! It's very sturdy and has metal clickable doors on the front. This makes for a very aesthetically pleasing media center PC.

It's been running non-stop for 7 months and I've never had any heat problems. I went with a Biostar M7NGC 400 Micro ATX MB w/AMD 2800+ XP.

baseclass what kind of cpu heatsink/fan are you using? I have a coolermaster 620 with an athlon1700+ and I'm having some heat issues.

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I'm just using the factory CPU fan. One thing I did do for better ventilation was run all round cables.

I just got the Coolermaster 620 after having the Antec Aria and one of the entry level mini-towers from Enermax...

No doubt about it, the ATC-620 is the best case I have ever had. Directron has them for $75 and coupled with a 350W PSU, the cost was nearly the same as the Aria.

Why the swap? Though I liked the compactness of the Aria, I found the need to actually use 3 hard drives in the system. With the Hauppauge PVR-250s (2 of them) installed, this made it impossible to mount the 3rd drive in the Aria.

It is interesting to hear you mention the heat issues you are facing. I am using a Athlon 2500+ with stock heatsink and fan on a Shuttle MN31/N mobo. I find that even with the northbridge fan and the ATC-620's included 60mm fan disabled the system is still ranging 40-50C which is totally feasible for me.

Now if I could only get the USB issues with my system resolved.

wow that's really surprising, particularly with two pvr250's in there, I think the pvr250 is one of my biggest heat factors. It gets really hot. Now for the big question, how do you know what temp it's running at? only way I knew was it reached it's limit and shut the system down, and I wouldn't have known that if I was running one of the stable versions with acpi turned off.

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I have a VERY unscientific method which my get me laughed at. I run the system at near to 100% by doing a combination of watching and transcoding. As soon as those processes are over I reboot into BIOS and check the stats there.

Hehe, I know...very ghetto - but what esle do expect from a Linux noob? The system isn't overclocked at all and is set for a 70C thermal shutdown.

I noticed the heat coming from those PVR's yesterday as I was working with the lid off. I have them seperated now so that the only empty PCI slot is between them. One thing about the Aria case that was nice was that PCI blower...it was able to suck the heat right from the closest card.

This case is great though. Just the right size with enough room to work/grow.

After much shopping I'm pretty sold on this case, even though >16" is a bit taller than anything I'd call a "mini tower" :

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-129-150&depa=1

Now I'm trying to decide on a motherboard to go in it. Any thoughts on this Albatron or other suggestions? I'm deliberately skipping onboard video with the intent of using a PR350 and/or tossing in a cheap FX5200 based card.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-170-122&depa=1

Maybe this DFI?

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-136-137&depa=1

Or possibly one of these lower spec. boards?

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-136-139&depa=1

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-166&depa=1

I'm very happy with my ANtec Aria case. My mobo is a chaintech CT-7NIF2, with integrated Nvidia tv-out, and Nvidia chipset. Add a PVR-250 and you have a nice mythtv box.

--splashd

I'm not keen on the Aria. It was in the early running but:

- It's more than twice as much as the other ones I was considering.

- It's doesn't provide much if any more room for disks than the Shuttle I'm upgrading from, and one of the disk locations interfers with one of the card slots.

- I'd gain at most two PCI slots and have to chose between a disk and one of them as it is.

- You have to be rather careful in your choice of CPU heatsinks.

- It's still a crowded box with potential thermal issues.

I just never though the cube boxes would look good in my living room that's why I went with the coolermaster 620 looks just like another stereo component, it's almost the exact same size as my receiver, a little deeper, but you don't notice that from the front anyways.

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It sure does look nice, but it only supports microATX and for $80 doesn't even have a power supply. To get the same 350W one as in the case I'm looking at is another $40. How is it acoustically?

can't tell cause my harddrive sounds like a jet engine. at least I think it's the harddrive, because it definitely starts when the drive is spinning up. I know all fans are low noise other than possibly the chipset fan, and it's insanely noisy, I will have to try putting the drive in powersave mode and forcing it do spin down and see if that's it. I just haven't had time to play with that.

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