HFX mCubed Classic Silent Fanless Media Centre HTPC Silver

The HFX® classic is a heatsink based HTPC. It is a HTPC case with a HiFi Design and a truly silent passive cooling – totally fanless and silent. This is an extremely silent Media Centre PC with an outstanding and unique design. With its dimensions and the pure aluminium design the HFX classic HTPC fits perfectly into your home HiFi environment. With its massive heatsinks it will be cooled down passively to get an endless media center performance without any fan noise. With a remote control, an integrated VFD and media software it combines traditional home HiFi equipment like DVD player, video recorder, tuner all in one device.

The HTPC design is oriented to traditional home HiFi equipment. The cooling abilities are emphasised with huge aluminium heatsinks on each side and big venting holes on the top. This gives the mCubed HTPC the look of a high-end amplifier. The front cover of the HTPC shows only 2 buttons and hides a DVD burner, VFD and IR behind a mirrored acrylic glass. The massive design is supported by the use of high-quality material. Heatsinks, front and top cover of the HTPC are made of pure aluminium. The front cover and the top cover of the HTPC are brushed, the heatsinks are black anodised. The DVD burner of the HTPC is hidden behind the mirrored acrylic glass. The buttons on the HTPCare reduced to a bare minimum. One button serves the DVD burner and one button the power switch. A reset switch can be found on the back of the HTPC. To meet HiFi connectivity standards, 4 pairs of audio cinch plugs are provided on the back to exploit the whole HiFi potential out of the HFX classic HTPC.

The mCubed HFX®classic HTPC is equipped with huge aluminium heatsinks on each side of the chassis. Like with high performance power amplifiers the heat will be dissipated over the heatsinks via natural air convection. The vertical heatsinks have a special rippled surface to enforce the convection. The two main heat sources in a HTPC are the power supply and the processor. The passive cooled power supply will be directly mounted to the left heatsink. The heat of the processor will be transferred with heatpipes to the right heatsink. While ATX standard is based on active cooling with cold air coming from the front and warm air going out in the back, the HFX HTPC standard is based on natural air convection. This means that cool air is coming from the bottom and warm air is going up to the top. Therefore the mCubed HTPC provides a lot of air holes on the bottom and 3 huge venting holes on the top cover.

Please note: Configuration options for the mCubed HTPC are at the bottom of the page.


FEATURES

• Live TV – Watch, Pause and Record live TV.
• Music - Listen and store all your CDs and MP3s in one place.
• DVDs & Blue Ray – Play and record DVD/Blu-Ray
• Internet - Full internet access with all the goodies.
• Photos - Organize your pictures and create photo slide shows.
• Remote Control - Sit on the sofa and control with a remote.
• Radio - With an integrated FM radio tuner you listen to the radio.
• Backup and Share - Your work, photos, music, and home movies.
• Stylish & Customisable - Customise the look and style.


QUIET HTPC

We are the number one store when it comes to Silent HTPC’s. Nobody makes quiet Media Center PC’s like Custom Computa. We use the quietest components available in the market.

We make the ultimate HTPC’s - stylish and quiet. We know our HTPC’s are not for everyone. Our customers are discerning when it comes to their living room PC’s – they look for high quality Media Centers that are value for money. The prices of our HTPC’s reflect the silent components we use and the time and care gone into making them. To use an example the Silverstone ST30NF Fanless Power Supply we use cost £95 alone.

This is how we make the HFX mCubed HTPC/Media Centre PC ultra quiet and powerful:

Power Supply – The oft-forgotten power supply unit (PSU) is a major contributor to Media Center noise. Most have one or even two fans whirring constantly inside them. The more powerful the PSU, the more cooling it requires, and the more noise it generates. Applying sound-deadening material or removing the fans is a potential fire hazard, instead we buy PSUs that are specially designed to run quietly. We use the Silverstone ST30NF Fanless Power Supply (with Zero DBA at all times) on the mCubed HTPC’s/. This is one of the quietest PSU available on the market and is excellent for HTPC’s/Media Centre PC’s.

Processor and Fans – The biggest culprit of noise pollution is the fan that cools a HTPC's central processing unit (CPU). Most HTPCs ship with the standard small heatsink with a noisy fan designed by either Intel or AMD. These are designed to provide optimum cooling of the HTPC, but noise reduction isn't their forte. We take out the noise in the HTPC CPU by using a high end heatpipe cooler that does not need a fan. We make the HTPC silent by using the BorgFX CPU classic - Heatpipe Processor Cooler. It is one of the most efficient heatpipe coolers available for standard sized HTPC/Media Centre PC cases.

Hard Disks – There are no fans in hard drives or optical drives, but they do contain a load of moving parts that can make a racket. Whereas some drives are designed for high capacity, others, such as the WD WD1000FYPS 1000GB SATA-II GreenPower Hard Drive are designed for quietness. This is currently the quietest hard drive on the market for HTPC’s/Media Centre PC’s.

Sound Deadening Cases and coolers – We use the mCubed Vertical Silence Drive Bay v2 to shroud the HD noise. The Vertical Silence is a hard disc cooler, which is designed especially for passive cooling. It is the only one with vertical designed heatsinks, which allows optimal air convection without an active fan cooler. The Vertical Silence is made of rubber with aluminium heatsinks on both sides.

Traditional hard disk coolers have horizontical designed heatsinks, which is optimised for active fan cooling.The heatsinks of the vertical silence are vertically designed. Warm air can easily go up through the heatsink and take away the heat. Cool air can follow (natural convection of air). In addition the heatsinks have special designed lamellas which enforce the cooling abilities. The mCubed Vertical Silence Drive Bay v2 has direct contact to aluminium heatsinks.The heat of the hard disk is transported directly to the heatsinks on both side.

Graphics Card and Noise – The graphics card is a major contributor of HTPC noise, arguably more so than the CPU. This is because they usually ship with tiny fans that whir incessantly. We use MSI NX8500GT Graphics Card which is passively cooled and based around Nvdia’s 8500GT GPU. The standard cooling fan has been replaced with a fanless heatsink, so it's completely silent. Heat is dissipated over a set of heatpipes instead of by a fan. The card concentrates on a feature of Nvidia’s G8x architecture – Pure Video technology. It has support for decrypting HD video and HDTV output, and HDMI for your HTPC. We also use the BorgFX Bridge Heatpipe Bridge Cooler to keep the motherboard and Graphics Card cool and silent. The BorgFX Bridge Heatpipe Bridge Cooler transports the heat from the bridge with 2 or 4 heatpipes to the heatsink. The active cooling has to be removed from the motherboard and the BorgFX Bridge has to be mounted with a 2 hole mounting system. Due to the flexible heatpipe plug-in system all kind of bridges are supported (if they have a 2 hole mounting). The BorgFX Bridge can also be used for graphic cards with less heat performance (up to ATI X800)


SPECIFICATIONS

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4GHz – options available
• Hard Disk Storage: 1,000 GB Hard Disk – options available
• Memory: 2GB Ram DDR2 800MHz – options available
• Optical Drive: Blue Ray & DVD RW Dual Layer – options available
• Operating System: Vista Home Premium –options available
• Graphics Card: options available
• TV Tuner: Satellite, Freeview, Cable options available
• Video Out Options: HDMI, DVI and VGA
• DVD Backup Software: DVD-Cloner 5.0 (backup DVD collection)
• Remote Control: MCE Remote
• LAN: 10/100/1000
• Wireless: Yes, Internal (802.11b/g)
• Audio: 8 Channel Audio, S/PDIF Out Coaxial, HDMI Audio
• USB 2.0 and Firewire
• Keyboard/Mouse: options available
• PSU: Silverstone ST30NF Passive 300w PSU
• Dimensions: 145(H) x 430(W) x 450(D) mm
• Warranty: 1 Year RTB

We have configured the HTPC/Media Centre PC for optimum power and quietness. You may change the standard specifications to suit your needs. You don’t really need a powerful Graphic Card for a Media Centre PC – it’s different for Games PC.