First Intel Macs to be Media Centers?

You know, I for one would love to have a discrete power horse. If you are worried about the noise, heat pipes have been around for quite some time now. I fact, I bought two shuttle barebones at USD$400 a piece because of the heat pipe (ICE Technology) and external 300w PSU. Seagate makes some really quiet fluid bearing SATA drives. So noise is not much of an issue these days. In fact, I can run my 60mm fan at 1600rpm at 3.5GHz watching a CSI marathon. The only thing left to underspeed is the chipset fan and change out the GPU fan to a passive sink.

You know, I for one would love to have a discrete power horse.

Well, then I suspect you're not the target customer for a Mac Mini, but rather a PowerMac Viiv...

 

If you are worried about the noise, heat pipes have been around for quite some time now. I fact, I bought two shuttle barebones at USD$400 a piece because of the heat pipe (ICE Technology) and external 300w PSU.

Well, sure. But heat pipes do not cool, they only transport heat, of course. In order to cool things down (simple physics), you need a rather large surface that can dissipate the heat. Such a barebone, as nice as it is, is still considerably larger than a Mac Mini. I, for my part, prefer a computer with a CPU that does not even generate so much heat as, say, a Pentium 4 or Athlon. Not to mention that the heat that goes out is a waste of the power you put in. The less power a processor consumes, the less it heats up. Cooling it down with a heat pipe doesn't change anything about power consumption. For a PC that runs 24/7 or at least many hours a day while doing virtually nothing and just waiting for user response, I do not want a PC that consumes around 150W under full load and only a bit less when idle, I want one that draws signifantly less, as little as possibly while still mainting most of the functionality the average (not "power") user would expect from a modern PC.

 

EDIT:

 

And don't forget you're talking about a custom-built system here. In the price class of up to 1000 USD, I haven't seen a completely preconfigured media center PC on the shelves yet that is also quiet and power efficient (not even talking about ultra-quiet ones that use the aforementioned heat pipe technology for cooling).

 

Seagate makes some really quiet fluid bearing SATA drives.

I know, I have one spinning right under my desk. However, 2.5" notebook drives are still more quiet, but I agree that this comes close to nitpicking. When I was writing this, I was mainly thinking about the noise that is generated by CPU fans. In fact I would appreciate it if the upcoming Mac Mini had a 3.5" drive with nice capacities, provided that these drives do not get so hot as in the iMac G5.

 

http://www.barefeats.com/heatsink.html

 

The only thing left to underspeed is the chipset fan and change out the GPU fan to a passive sink.

Actually it is a pity that nowadays many asian mainboard producers equip chipsets with active coolers even in cases where it isn't necessary, just to tempt "power user"-wannabe modders into thinking they have assembled a high end system (like saying, hey, what's a proper high-end system without a battery of fans?).

For a PC that runs 24/7 or at least many hours a day while doing virtually nothing and just waiting for user response, I do not want a PC that consumes around 150W under full load and only a bit less when idle, I want one that draws signifantly less, as little as possibly while still mainting most of the functionality the average (not "power") user would expect from a modern PC.

There are ways around that problem as well. If for some reason Apple doen't use a mobile chip, you can always underclosk the CPU. Most mother board manufacturers these days create utilities that can overclock and underclock the cpu, change the CPU and AGP voltage. I would hope that some proper planning would lean towards some kind of "manual speed step" in the preference pane. You will not be able to change the multiplier on Intel processors without heavy modding to the the pins, but you can change the front buss speed setting to something more desirable. That would actually be more desirable for "my target market".

 

In fact I would appreciate it if the upcoming Mac Mini had a 3.5" drive with nice capacities, provided that these drives do not get so hot as in the iMac G5.

I don't think Apple would have a hard time doing so, especially with all the cash they dump on asthetics. We have gone as far as using a smoke machine to test the air circulation Elan Vital tower cases. And you thought you were nit picking.

 

Actually it is a pity that nowadays many asian mainboard producers equip chipsets with active coolers even in cases where it isn't necessary, just to tempt "power user"-wannabe modders into thinking they have assembled a high end system (like saying, hey, what's a proper high-end system without a battery of fans?).

They make motherboards in places other than Asia? I have to agree with you on that. Seams like these "overclockers" think that to have the best computer, it has to sound like you're at the airport. In regards to the chipset type fans, people can always run them at 7v rather than 12v (7v mod). That should take care of the high pitch sound.

sounds really cool, I liked a lot the design of the mini since I saw it, with a good dvd burner (or a dvd burner that also burns the name of the disc on the white face) would be moooore cool. Add TIVo and music multimedia with a good homeheater with Ipod and you get a megamultimedia thingy.....

 

THe media center better than the front row, wll I have tried almost every media center managers (from software to OS's) and believe me that front row is the easiest thing I have seen.

 

Im using osx86 on my Compaq Evo N800v and the only thing htat is holding me to make a full jump to OSX is wireless...but this si nor the place nor the time to speak about that

 

Apple rules in many things..... so if you want windos and apple..... start your search over internet to make a hybrid computer

A bit more info (on content distribution and stuff anyway):

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0511contentdist.html

Edited December 2, 2005 by cyrana

Yeah, I saw that article today - I don't know what to think about it.

 

All my purchased movies on Apple's hard drive somewhere? I dunno...

Yeah, I am unsure too. We'll know before too long I suppose. I hope it's not on .mac which you have extra for and isn't super reliable.

 

Oh, and if anyone sees a CNN article from today, wtf, its really out of date. lol.

Edited December 2, 2005 by cyrana

Wow,

 

at least it would really make sense... thinking of the new possibilities regarding dualboot

this would be the perfect switch-machine. I mean, it is cute, small, cheap, runs both,

and fits into your living room like bang&olufsen

 

So much more people would be the targetgroup, as if they would 'only' sell another

computer.

 

Plus, notice the little ipod touch that comes with it. Hell, this would be perfect

marketing.

A bit more info (on content distribution and stuff anyway):

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0511contentdist.html

An entertaining read, cyrana, especially when considering that these kinds of ideas stood right at the beginning of all speculation about Apple's x86 shift...

 

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,67749,00.html

 

Quite fascinating to see in how many respects Kahney seems to have been right. Well, we'll see...

 

;-)

I posted this in the 'laughs' section but perhaps it belongs here? ~~

 

recent patent applications all applied for within the last week or 2:

 

USPatent Application: 0050273790 --interesting, for a 'networked media station' that works with ipods and itunes.

USPatent Application 0050278377

patent application 0050278422 virtual file storage

Patent Application 0050270734 "Display housing for computing device"

Edited December 21, 2005 by johnniecarcinogen