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PostPosted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 7:12 pm 
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Posts: 777
Location: spencerport, ny (USA)
Human wrote:
It does depend a lot on your choice of video card, of course, and it depends on whether or not anything would compel the heatsink to rotate out of the position you placed it in. I'm not saying not to do it - just pointing out possible risks.


Thanks for that. The next time I crack the case, I'll examine the possibility of movement/migration.

On the topic of cooling, did you find the front fan to be excessively noisy? I have the same case - SS LC10. I swapped mine out with one that can work with a speed controller, and slowed it down. The noise seems to be not caused by the fan itself, but by having too much crap in the way on the other side of the grill. The buttons, lights, and board are all there, blocking the center of the grill. I'm wondering if you folks noticed this too.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jan 15, 2006 8:40 pm 
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Location: Mechanicsburg, PA
thornsoft wrote:
Thanks for that. The next time I crack the case, I'll examine the possibility of movement/migration.

No problem!

thornsoft wrote:
On the topic of cooling, did you find the front fan to be excessively noisy? I have the same case - SS LC10. I swapped mine out with one that can work with a speed controller, and slowed it down. The noise seems to be not caused by the fan itself, but by having too much crap in the way on the other side of the grill. The buttons, lights, and board are all there, blocking the center of the grill. I'm wondering if you folks noticed this too.

We did, which is why we don't even use that fan :) The only running fans in Dragon are on the CPU heatsink and the PSU. The front fan isn't used, and the two rear fans are removed.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 10:49 am 
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Location: spencerport, ny (USA)
Human wrote:
We did, which is why we don't even use that fan :) The only running fans in Dragon are on the CPU heatsink and the PSU. The front fan isn't used, and the two rear fans are removed.


Excellent! I played with removing the front fan, and the CPU temp didn't go above 104F, so I think I'll go back in and remove it.

One mod that I made that you may want to consider (if you haven't) is to block off the rear grills where the twin exhaust fans were removed. Without those fans, the tendency will be to draw air IN through those, and right out the PSU exhaust. But by blocking those grills, the air takes a much longer path, from the front, over the northbridge, through the CPU, and then out the PSU.
I just snipped up some aluminum flashing and screwed it in .


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:19 pm 
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Location: Mechanicsburg, PA
thornsoft wrote:
But by blocking those grills, the air takes a much longer path, from the front, over the northbridge, through the CPU, and then out the PSU.

I do like that idea, but all the heat testing we did up to now was with the grills unblocked, so we do know it works well enough in its current state. If you can get measurably better results with the grill blocked vs. unblocked, please let me know :) It'd definitely be worth knowing if we expand the Dragon hardware to include extra drives or other sources of heat.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 12:52 pm 
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Location: spencerport, ny (USA)
Human wrote:
I do like that idea, but all the heat testing we did up to now was with the grills unblocked, so we do know it works well enough in its current state. If you can get measurably better results with the grill blocked vs. unblocked, please let me know :)

Will do. What were your temperature targets for CPU and Northbridge?
i.e. is 104F already "pushing it", or are you already running significantly hotter? And are you using the variable-speed controller that comes with the Zallman CPU heatsink? (Or I may have a different heat sink, come to think of it)


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 1:00 pm 
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Location: Mechanicsburg, PA
thornsoft wrote:
Will do. What were your temperature targets for CPU and Northbridge?
i.e. is 104F already "pushing it", or are you already running significantly hotter?

The primary test was for stability, since modern chips can withstand a lot of heat before physically breaking, so we didn't really have a temperature target. We tried to get an official maximum safe operational temperature rating from nVidia for the northbridge chipset, but all they'd tell us was that it was designed to operate in a 90-degree Celsius environment. That's 194 degrees Fahrenheit, so 104F is supposedly way below its maximum.

If I recall (I'd need to go look up our data to be sure) the Northbridge was around 60-70 C after significant uptime and load.

thornsoft wrote:
And are you using the variable-speed controller that comes with the Zallman CPU heatsink? (Or I may have a different heat sink, come to think of it)

Yes. We set it to the slowest speed.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 3:26 pm 
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Location: Mechanicsburg, PA
Just wanted to refresh this post to show that Dragon v1.0 and v1.1 are Tier 1 on KnoppMyth R5D1.

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PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 3:30 am 
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Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 9:16 am
Posts: 13
Hi Guys,

I'm very new to MythTV (4 days) and have been furiously reading everything I can get my hands on about it.... I've made a list of compnents for my own version of Dragon (in Australia) with some success, however this is my main problem...
The motherboard seems to be a little difficult to source from local shops. No one seems to be selling this version of the board.
Given this issue, is there an alternative motherboard I should be considering. I've checked the Tier 1 forum entries and must say that there wasn't much in there for the AMD 3200+ chip... Perhaps some other people that have tried to make similar spec dragons might have some good experiences with some other boards...
Many thanks.


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PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 8:30 am 
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Location: Mechanicsburg, PA
mark12_30 wrote:
The motherboard seems to be a little difficult to source from local shops. No one seems to be selling this version of the board.

Did you go to www.msi.com.tw and click "Where to Buy" and select Australia? I got 4 hits that may work out for you (though I think Ingram Micro is not a retailer.)

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 3:57 pm 
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Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:18 pm
Posts: 1422
Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
You can try this:
http://www.instantit.com.au/browse/ProductDetail.asp?supplierid=1&suppliercode=MSI0211

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 Post subject: Found it!
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:08 am 
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Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 9:16 am
Posts: 13
Guess what guys! I found a good supplier for the mobo, so if anyone in Aust is looking for the mobo, here is the link...

http://www.vtechindustries.com.au/produ ... K8N-NEO4-P

Basically I'm getting the card for AUD $89.30... so its a good price as well... Check out their Zalman heatsinks/CPU coolers, quite good prices too... Also ordered the Technisat AirStar 2 card from

http://www.digitalnow.com.au

And the rest of the parts from a friend who owns a computer shop. Will post here if all goes well. ETA prob sometime next week I should have all the parts ready for assembly.

Thanks again for the replies.


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 Post subject: Also....
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:17 am 
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Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 9:16 am
Posts: 13
Just incase you are wondering, here is the list of parts I'm getting... tried to keep as much to the dragon specs with some minor changes...

HDD: Seagate 320Gig IDE 16Mb
Processor AMD 3200+
1G(2x512M) Corsair Value (VS1GBKIT400)
16x Pioneer 111D Silver
Sound Blaster Card from old computer
Zalman ZM460B-APS
MSI N6200TC256/TD
1 x TechniSat AirStar 2 DVB-T (will get more later)
K8N-NEO4-P MSI K8N-Neo4 Platinum Socket 939 Motherboard
CNPS7000B-AlCu CPU Cooler
ZM-NB47J Zalman ZM-NB47J Northbridge Heatsink
LC10-SL-SST


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 Post subject: Re: Also....
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:37 am 
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Posts: 777
Location: spencerport, ny (USA)
mark12_30 wrote:
Sound Blaster Card from old computer


This is going to cause headaches. You may get lucky, but the dragon asound.conf won't work without the expected sound card. If you search the forum, you'll find that sound isn't easy. You've got to deal with drivers, bitrates, card IDs, "slaves" etc. Unless you know your way around sound in Linux, do yourself a favor and use the same sound card that Dragon uses, and plug it into the same slot.
And use the same remote (streamzap, comes with a USB IR Receiver).
You can get by with any 6200 vid card. You can use different memory. You can use bigger hard drives (do the LVM trick AFTER you have it working). You can play games with fans and heatsinks, use a different DVD burner, etc. But the sound card matters, and the streamzap makes life MUCH easier.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 10:18 am 
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Joined: Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:55 am
Posts: 98
The hard part is finding that sound card anymore. If he thought finding the mobo was tough in AUS, he'll really have issues with the sound card.

But I agree, having the same parts makes the setup amazing. My two Dragons are officially recognized now that the HD5000 is the tuner and I love it. So simple to get running. (until I updated it to Myth 0.20, but that is another tale for another day)


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 Post subject: Re: Also....
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:17 pm 
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Joined: Sat Sep 09, 2006 2:40 am
Posts: 38
Location: Australia
thornsoft wrote:
Unless you know your way around sound in Linux, do yourself a favor and use the same sound card that Dragon uses, and plug it into the same slot.


Can you use the sound built into the motherboard? I cant afford a sound card atm, trying to make the cheapest rig as possible..


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