I am fleshing-out an HP d5000t CableCARD HTPC (I intend to transplant into a more CE-style horizontal HTPC that has a touchscreen), and need some suggestions/recommendations on the following final components.  Since I'm planning to transplant this to a CE case and put it in my living room, noise (or rather, lack thereof) is a key desire:

1) Video Card -- The d5000t came with an nVidia 9500GS, but I would like to move to a fanless model (that is perhaps slightly more powerful) and preferably has a direct HDMI output w/audio (7.1 audio from ATI nice too, though will on-board 5.1 be disabled?).  Since the touchscreen will be fed by a loopback of the analog VGA output, there is whole additional question of how cloning of the screens would work on HDCP content (do you set the HDMI as primary and touchscreen will go dark?) and if that argues for either ATI or nVidia.  I have found and am considering the following fanless options:

MSI 9500GT          ~$63.00 (like that heatpipe carry to back side of card where exhaust fans are)
Gigabyte HD4550   ~$58.00
HIS HD4650          ~$90.00 (like that heatpipe carry to back side of card where exhaust fans are)

2) Blu-Ray Drive -- I got the d5000t with a DVD+-RW drive and would like to upgrade this to a BD-ROM that is also a DVD+-RW (since the CE case only has one 5.25" optical drive slot).  If it could do Blu-burn and/or HD-DVD, that would be fine, but since I don't have ANY Blu/HD media, I don't care.  Again, lack of noise is key.  I've found:

LG GGC-H20LK                   ~$150.00
Pioneer BDC-2202B              ~$150.00
Lite-On iHES106-29              ~$130.00
Pioneer BDC-202BK             ~$150.00
Sony BC-5100S                     ~$130.00
ASUS BC-1205PT                 ~$150.00
Blu-Burners:
LG GGW-H20L                     ~$225.00
Lite-On DH-4B1S-08             ~$240.00
Lite-On DH-4B1S-13-VAC   ~$200.00

3) Hard Drives -- The d5000t Motherboard has six SATA ports (with on-board RAID) on it, minus one for the Blu/DVD drive, leaves five.  Since the ability to playback your content-protected recordings on a CablecARD HTPC is reliant on having the same OS (re-installation removes ability to view prior protected recordings), I was planning to have two smaller (~250GB each) drives in a RAID 1 mirror for the OS and then three large drives (~750GB->1TB) in a RAID 5 for recordings/content (though a RAID 1 stripe could also work if I wasn't as concerned about losing all content should one of the three drives fail).  I was planning to use the on-board RAID controller from the d5000t as I don't really need the maximum performance provided by a RAID card (nor do I really want to sacrifice a slot for it).  I will probably have between 3 and 5 total HD tuners (CCx2->3, ATSC/NTSC/FMx1->2, and hopefully future DirecTV HTPC-20x1->2),  and up to four extenders (though seldom will more than two tuners and two extenders being used simultaneously).  Do we think the on-board RAID can handle this?  I was considering Seagate DB35 or some combination of WD AV-GP/AV/GP drives, keeping in mind the need for silence with five HDs inside:

Seagate DB35.4 250GB    ~$45/each   
Seagate DB35.3 750GB    ~$100/each
WD AV-GP 500GB         ~$60/each
WD AV-GP 750GB         ~$96/each
WD AV-GP 1TB              ~$122/each
WD AV (8MB) 250GB    ~$49/each
WD AV (8MB) 320GB    ~$54/each
WD AV (8MB) 500GB    ~$62/each
WD GP 500GB                ~$60/each
WD GP 1TB                    ~$100/each

4) Heatsink for Processor -- Since the CE HTPC case has two 80mm exhaust fans, I was planning to choose the best fanless heatsink that will fit from silentpcreview.com's reviews (I think the top-rated Thermalright HR-01 Plus will fit as the case is large enough for the touchscreen and I think has the needed height, but still need to measure once the stock fanned cooler is removed)...

All opinions welcome, Thanks!

I have done or rather I am still in the process of doing what you are about to do. My d5000t has been transplanted into a Silverstone LC-16M case. Either the MSI or Gigabyte card are fine. I have the that exact MSI card that I bought from Newegg. Works great. Handles my blu-ray movies, and 46" lcd screen with ease. Dead quiet, and so far I've never had an issue with the card or drivers. I would have bought the 4550, but it wasn't available as a passive card at the time. ATI's drivers tend to have issues, but they are usually worked out over time. The drivers are getting better. Once you hit the sweet spot stick with that version of the driver and don't change unless a newer version solves a particular issue for you. They are both great htpc cards, but your requirements should dictate which one to purchase.

I am running a raid 0 for recorded tv. They are two 500 gb 2.5" Western Digital hard drives. I have another 2.5" WD drive 350gb that is used for the OS and partitioned temporarily for music until I build my whs over the holiday weekend. Recorded tv is not that important to me. I don't care if I loose it. Raid 5 is fine if it's that important to you. I do not have the os raided as I have an image of the drive that would allow me to recover if the drive should fail. I plan on doing periodic images if I should change or add something to the box.

You cannot use a raid controller card with the d5000t's motherboard. In my case, I had bought a rocket raid 2220 card. I was able to flash the firmware to prevent it from booting the system off the raid card. The bios supplied on the asus motherboard does not allow you to skip the card and boot from the drive. The bios is basically brain dead. It only has the most rudimentary options available. You cannot set it for S3 either. This is not a workstation motherboard, so you might have the same issue with different raid cards.

The onboard raid will handle the bandwidth just fine. You won't be saturating the pc at all. Raid is fault tolerant, but is not backup. It does happen that you can loose more then one drive at the same time. All my music, dvds, pictures, etc will be on the server with critical folders duplicated starting with 5TB of storage, and I will have tape backup for long term archieval storage for data that is critical to me. The drives that will be in the whs are WD Green 1tb drives going inside an atechfabrication 8x mass storage case.

I have the LG drive. I bought it from Frys, and I got it for under $200 bucks. I'm using two 80mm nexus fans, Zerotherm BTF95 fanless heatsink, and Silverstone 450watt nightjar passive power supply. The case is dead silent! You have to have your ear almost pressed against the case to hear anything. 6' away and you can't really hear it at all. You have to have a fan hooked up to the cpu fan header because you can't disable the fan in the bios. You'll get a fan error that you can't bypass, the system will shut down. I hooked up one nexus fan to the cpu fan header with a zalman fanmate to the  fan adjusted just low enough as to not trip the post error.

I have three DCT's two are internal that were unfortunately DOA when I got them from CannonPC. I RMA'd the cards, and I'm waiting for new ones to arrive shortly. The external DCT runs like a champ. I haven't had Cox out here yet. I won't until I get the other tuners, and I'm sure that they work like they are supposed too.

I couldn't justify the extra cost of a touchscreen integrated into the case. It's more like a wow factor. The money that I saved was put toward the whs which I'll get more use out of it then a touchscreen. Depending on the case mfg it will run you 500-700 bucks for a case with a touchscreen. Have you decided on a particular case? You can't really clone screens if you are trying to view protected content such as cable card recorded tv or blu-ray. You might be able to extend the desktop, but I'm not sure as I have no experience with this. My moto is keep it simple stupid!

---

HP d5000t(Silverstone LC-16M case)
LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD
3 Cable Card Tuners
Q9300 Quad 2.5ghz
Zerotherm BTF95 cpu cooler
3 gig ram
Vista Ultimate 32 bit
Silverstone Nightjar 450w fanless psu
46" Samsung LN46A550 lcd
WHS w/8TB

I agree with  teddyboy16, simple and stupid is the key.  Save your money and don’t buy a case with a touch screen.  After the initial coolness factor of it, you will realize that it’s one of those gadgets that looks cool but doesn’t really have a useful purpose. I am using the Ahanix MCE 701 case for my main media center.  The 7" touchscreen never gets turned on anymore and due to driver issues isn't even hooked up half the time. 

I would be looking for a case that had great airflow to dissipate the heat and held as many hard drives as possible.

---

Jay Brown
2 Vista X86 Ultimate (Family Room, TheaterRoom)
2 Linksys DMA 2100 (Bedroom, workout room)

I wish that the 4650 had a HDMI/VGA/DVI setup like both the 9500GT and 4550 do as I really like the idea of the heatpipes to carry the heat around to the back side of the card.  It allows you to keep from losing access to another slot and puts the heat on the side where the case fan(s) can exhaust it.  The downside I see is that it reduces available space for the CPU cooler and depending on your MoBo, could interfere with your Northbridge and/or RAM.  I know that the cooler on the 4650 is from Zalman, do we have hany idea who makes the one found on the 9500GT or this one from an older 3850 or even others still??  If I could find the cooler from the 9500GT (the Zalman is kinda big and longer than many of the cards it is put on, I've read several reviews where the user states that they had to cut/shorten some of the fins), I would consider putting it on this ASUS 4670 but then some have apparently been running it without the fan...

I intend to use the on-board RAID as I don't think anything I'm doing will overwhelm it.  While I know there is no performance gain to RAID1, having the OS drives mirrored is just one more layer of "backup", and when using only 250->500GB drives for just the OS, it's not a particularly expensive choice (particularly since with CableCARD, losing the OS means losing access to all of your recordings).  Since VMC doesn't know how to span multiple HD volumes for recording purposes, and I don't want to teach my family to balance the storage space used on separate volumes, I'd like to do a single RAID volume for the recordings/content and while RAID 0 is nice for performance, the thought of losing ALL of my recordings if one of the three drives should fail is not ideal...

Absolutely amazing that HP would be so irresponsible as to ship a PC in 2008 that cannot be set to use S3 (for the power-savings alone)...

Do you have the LG Blu-ROM or Blu-Burn?  It seems that both LG drives are values for by most for their silence and affordability...  Newegg has the Blu-ROM on sale for $109 right now...
LG GGC-H20LK                   ~$150.00
Blu-Burners:
LG GGW-H20L                     ~$225.00

I know that the cloning of the screens won't work at all times as the (analog) touchscreen would not be HDCP compliant, but I'm assuming that if you set the HDMI output as primary which is then cloned to the analog VGA (and connected to the touchscreen) then the touchscreen will be useable for VMC navigation and viewing non-protected content (such that you don't have to turn on your main display to access non-video content like music), but when protected content is selected to play, the touchscreen would go "dark".  This is basically what CannonPC presumably is doing with their EX Series (that sports an ATI  HD 3870), no??

Heckendorf:

I wish that the 4650 had a HDMI/VGA/DVI setup like both the 9500GT and 4550 do as I really like the idea of the heatpipes to carry the heat around to the back side of the card.  It allows you to keep from losing access to another slot and puts the heat on the side where the case fan(s) can exhaust it.  The downside I see is that it reduces available space for the CPU cooler and depending on your MoBo, could interfere with your Northbridge and/or RAM.  I know that the cooler on the 4650 is from Zalman, do we have hany idea who makes the one found on the 9500GT or this one from an older 3850 or even others still??  If I could find the cooler from the 9500GT (the Zalman is kinda big and longer than many of the cards it is put on, I've read several reviews where the user states that they had to cut/shorten some of the fins), I would consider putting it on this ASUS 4670 but then some have apparently been running it without the fan...

No reason to wish for that when you can use either the 9500GT or 4550 Either of those cards have more then enough power to get the job done, and they have a low power consumption. Either one is perfect for HTPC. The 9500GT heatsink fins don't stick out as much as you think. Plenty of room is available for a good sized passive cpu heatsink. You stated that you're getting the d5000t, so you won't have an issue with interference with the Northbridge or ram at all. Why bother kludging a passive heatsink when you have two good passive graphics card solutions ready to go. You're only adding uneeded expense, and it may not clear the card or match mounting holes if you can even purchase this heatsink. I'm sorry but this doesn't make sense to me.

Heckendorf:

I intend to use the on-board RAID as I don't think anything I'm doing will overwhelm it.  While I know there is no performance gain to RAID1, having the OS drives mirrored is just one more layer of "backup", and when using only 250->500GB drives for just the OS, it's not a particularly expensive choice (particularly since with CableCARD, losing the OS means losing access to all of your recordings).  Since VMC doesn't know how to span multiple HD volumes for recording purposes, and I don't want to teach my family to balance the storage space used on separate volumes, I'd like to do a single RAID volume for the recordings/content and while RAID 0 is nice for performance, the thought of losing ALL of my recordings if one of the three drives should fail is not ideal...

Roger that, but you're also adding another layer of complexity to the system.

Heckendorf:

Absolutely amazing that HP would be so irresponsible as to ship a PC in 2008 that cannot be set to use S3 (for the power-savings alone)...

It's a design choice they made which is typical...If this had been a motherboard that you could buy then the bios would not be like that. Believe me I've poked around the bios, and  it's very very rudimentary. DCT's don't usually take to well being put to sleep. S3 is a tricky thing sometimes trying to get all your components to play nice and sleep. DCT's can have a hard time comming up and can take several minutes to come out of sleep if they are able.

Heckendorf:

Do you have the LG Blu-ROM or Blu-Burn?  It seems that both LG drives are values for by most for their silence and affordability...  Newegg has the Blu-ROM on sale for $109 right now...
LG GGC-H20LK                   ~$150.00
Blu-Burners:
LG GGW-H20L                     ~$225.00

I have the LG GGW-H20L which burns blu-rays, dvd's, cd's, and plays hd-dvds. The LG drive that I have is dead quiet.

Heckendorf:

I know that the cloning of the screens won't work at all times as the (analog) touchscreen would not be HDCP compliant, but I'm assuming that if you set the HDMI output as primary which is then cloned to the analog VGA (and connected to the touchscreen) then the touchscreen will be useable for VMC navigation and viewing non-protected content (such that you don't have to turn on your main display to access non-video content like music), but when protected content is selected to play, the touchscreen would go "dark".  This is basically what CannonPC presumably is doing with their EX Series (that sports an ATI  HD 3870), no??

I almost bought a touchscreen, but Zalman, Silverstone, Origen all seem to have issues with drivers, not being able to work in a dual display mode etc. Zalman and silverstone seem to have the most issues from what I've been reading. This appears to be an important feature to you, so hopefully with a little more research you can find the best path for your build. The cost to benefit ratio for me was not worth it even though they look neat, and I do like bling!

---

HP d5000t(Silverstone LC-16M case)
LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD
3 Cable Card Tuners
Q9300 Quad 2.5ghz
Zerotherm BTF95 cpu cooler
3 gig ram
Vista Ultimate 32 bit
Silverstone Nightjar 450w fanless psu
46" Samsung LN46A550 lcd
WHS w/8TB

teddyboy16:

No reason to wish for that when you can use either the 9500GT or 4550 Either of those cards have more then enough power to get the job done, and they have a low power consumption. Either one is perfect for HTPC. The 9500GT heatsink fins don't stick out as much as you think. Plenty of room is available for a good sized passive cpu heatsink. You stated that you're getting the d5000t, so you won't have an issue with interference with the Northbridge or ram at all. Why bother kludging a passive heatsink when you have two good passive graphics card solutions ready to go. You're only adding uneeded expense, and it may not clear the card or match mounting holes if you can even purchase this heatsink. I'm sorry but this doesn't make sense to me.

I completely agree that putting a passive heatsink on any of the existing 4670s would be kludgy and I'd prefer to be able to buy one that comes that way already; but the folks over at avsforum.com are pretty opinionated that the 4670 is the cat's meow for HTPC usage, particularly for upsampling purposes...

teddyboy16:

Heckendorf:

Absolutely amazing that HP would be so irresponsible as to ship a PC in 2008 that cannot be set to use S3 (for the power-savings alone)...

It's a design choice they made which is typical...If this had been a motherboard that you could buy then the bios would not be like that. Believe me I've poked around the bios, and  it's very very rudimentary. DCT's don't usually take to well being put to sleep. S3 is a tricky thing sometimes trying to get all your components to play nice and sleep. DCT's can have a hard time comming up and can take several minutes to come out of sleep if they are able.

Given that the internal DCTs get their (only, or just primary? I don't know) power from the PSU over Floppy (the externals have their own PSUs that won't power-off in S3 though the USB could go dead depending on BIOS settings), I've got to assume that they have some manner of a "keep-alive" power over USB when the machine is in S3.  Otherwise, the OEM builders would have the same problem (though they have better MoBo choices that would allow for USB power when in S3 where the d5000t might not); but I'm not aware of any PSUs that keep any ports alive when in S3.  I did just check and both the m9400t and d5100t list Energy Star Qualification as "N/A", but still doesn't excuse HP's exclusion of the ability to setup S3...

teddyboy16:

Heckendorf:

Do you have the LG Blu-ROM or Blu-Burn?  It seems that both LG drives are values for by most for their silence and affordability...  Newegg has the Blu-ROM on sale for $109 right now...
LG GGC-H20LK                   ~$150.00
Blu-Burners:
LG GGW-H20L                     ~$225.00

I have the LG GGW-H20L which burns blu-rays, dvd's, cd's, and plays hd-dvds. The LG drive that I have is dead quiet.

I've been leaning towards the LG drives, I'm just trying to find a deal on the GGW so that I can justify getting it instead of the GGC...  Just didn't know if anybody had experience with any of the others and their performance/silence...

Heckendorf:

I completely agree that putting a passive heatsink on any of the existing 4670s would be kludgy and I'd prefer to be able to buy one that comes that way already; but the folks over at avsforum.com are pretty opinionated that the 4670 is the cat's meow for HTPC usage, particularly for upsampling purposes...

I've been reading the threads concerning the 4670 on avsforum. The Ati 4000 are great cards which the 4670 is a part of but if you can't get the card to be quiet. It won't matter how wiz bang the card is if it sounds like a freight train in your living room. Like I mentioned before, Ati does have issues with driver maturity which the 4670 is not immune too. The cards basically use the same driver model just like nvidia does with there cards. It's a unified approach to simplifiy driver design and implementation. If you want to use Ati, buy a passive 4550 that has hdmi, dvi and 7.1 through the card. Personally I dont think you'll be dissapointed and you won't loose a slot because of the heatsink. You can always upgrade to a 4670 later if you find a passive one that doesn't block a slot. The 9500GT is a good htpc card as well.

Heckendorf:

Given that the internal DCTs get their (only, or just primary? I don't know) power from the PSU over Floppy (the externals have their own PSUs that won't power-off in S3 though the USB could go dead depending on BIOS settings), I've got to assume that they have some manner of a "keep-alive" power over USB when the machine is in S3.  Otherwise, the OEM builders would have the same problem (though they have better MoBo choices that would allow for USB power when in S3 where the d5000t might not); but I'm not aware of any PSUs that keep any ports alive when in S3.  I did just check and both the m9400t and d5100t list Energy Star Qualification as "N/A", but still doesn't excuse HP's exclusion of the ability to setup S3...

Correct, and the Asus board used in the HP is actually a pretty good modern motherboard. Asus is no slouch when it comes to motherboards. It's just the bios that sucks, and this is an HP issue with the bios that they have customized for them by phoenix technologies makers of Award bios in our d5000t systems. You just can't get around that. There is no S3 option in the bios.

Heckendorf:

I've been leaning towards the LG drives, I'm just trying to find a deal on the GGW so that I can justify getting it instead of the GGC...  Just didn't know if anybody had experience with any of the others and their performance/silence...

Wait for black Friday or I should say red Friday because it should be a bloodbath for retailers with the ecomomy sucking rotten eggs. I don't think you'll have a problem finding a deal on the GGW. have you tried pricewatch or pricegrabber.com? I like my GGW a lot.

---

HP d5000t(Silverstone LC-16M case)
LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD
3 Cable Card Tuners
Q9300 Quad 2.5ghz
Zerotherm BTF95 cpu cooler
3 gig ram
Vista Ultimate 32 bit
Silverstone Nightjar 450w fanless psu
46" Samsung LN46A550 lcd
WHS w/8TB