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Most PCs produce too much noise to ever be a comfortable addition to your sitting room. This is usually the result of the fans required to cool your case, graphics card and processor. You can lessen the effect with special noise-reducing cases or sound-deadening foam, but these can be expensive and don’t eliminate all noise.
Quiet PC’s Zeno NT-H67 is entirely passively cooled, so makes no noise at all. It’s also compact – at just 100x290x270mm, it’s not much larger than a magazine so should fit on your TV stand. The only moving parts are in the slim laptop Blu-ray drive and the 2.5in hard disk, but you can only hear the hard disk if you put your ear against the case, so you definitely won’t hear it from your sofa.
The whole case is a giant heat sink for the processor. Copper pipes lead from a small cooling block over the CPU to the case’s solid metal sides, which are covered in cooling fins. The 3.1GHz Core i3 processor won’t break any performance records, but it’s easily powerful enough for a home entertainment PC, with an overall score of 60 in our tests. Core i3 processors use Intel’s integrated HD Graphics 2000, rather than the more powerful HD Graphics 3000 found on some Core i5 and i7 CPUs, so 3D gaming isn’t really an option – our Dirt 3 test wouldn’t run at our laptop settings of 1,280 x 720 with High detail and 4x anti-aliasing, let alone at the 1080p settings we normally use for PCs.
It’s fine playing back 1080p high-definition content, though, and if it’s entertainment you’re looking for, you’ll be pleased to find a Blackgold DVB-T2 TV tuner occupying the microATX motherboard’s only PCI slot. This is a dual HD DVB tuner, so you can watch and record TV at the same time, including HD TV channels. The Blu-ray drive gives you access to high-definition discs and the 1TB hard disk means you’ve got a decent amount of space for media storage. Two HDMI ports and one VGA port can be used with up to two monitors, projectors or TVs simultaneously.
Although the Gigabyte GA-H67N-USB3-B3 motherboard has two spare SATA2 ports – both SATA3 ports are connected to the disc drive and hard disk – there’s no room in the case for any more storage. Both memory slots are occupied, too, but we anticipate no need to upgrade the PC’s current 8GB of RAM. There are two USB3 ports and one eSATA port at the back, along with four more USB2 ports. There’s also a set of 3.5mm stereo ports for 7.1 analogue surround sound and both coaxial and optical S/PDIF digital audio outputs, along with the usual Gigabit Ethernet port.
The system doesn’t come with a mouse or keyboard, but is bundled with an iMon media centre remote control. You can use the iMon to trigger programs, move the mouse cursor and control media players. It’s easy to use and extremely versatile, but doesn’t fully replace the usual peripherals.
Zeno NT-H67 is a brilliant bit of design, but it’s painfully expensive. It’s the only media centre PC we’ve ever seen which is completely silent, but you’re paying around £600 for the privilege. If you have such exacting requirements, though, the Zero NT-H67 could be the media centre for you.
