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I had major heat issues with because of my small AV cabinet with a receiver, multiple smaller heat generating devices and a NAS. I took the cabinet back off and use up to two 120cm fans which creates enough air flow to dissipate the heat very effectively. The mini PC has OK(ish) airflow, GPU 70+ degrees, CPU 80+ degrees under load. I replaced the stock cooler so now both my CPU & GPU rarely exceed 65 degrees.I'll be swapping my 1080ti FE for my now relegated 2070 Super at the weekend so I plan on adding some pics of my pair of machines then.
Downstairs I have a Silverstone LC17 (Snap!) but in silver. That runs JRiver and reads all its content from the server upstairs. It feeds my AVR and 60" plasma. We use downstairs for regular TV, iplayer, etc.
Upstairs the "server" (really just a desktop in a big case with a lot of disks in it) acts as my main desktop machine and has a 49" super-ultrawide monitor which is awesome. I bought that when we went full lockdown and I wanted to upgrade from a pair of 21"s. With my wife working from home too we needed at least one more, so figured why not get something lovely.
The bedroom we use as an office is next to the bedroom we use as a cinema. I used to have a PC in both rooms but I had some issues in the cinema with both heat, and noise coming though the processor where I'd crammed a whole PC into a relatively small case - a phantek evolv shift x. It looked lovely but it was a nightmare to work with, got hot, and I'm sure the tight space was what was causing noise over the HDMI and USB connections.
So I rebuilt the office PC in a much larger case (Fractal design Define 7 XL), added the GPU, and ran long cables through into the next room so the PJ in the cinema acts as a second monitor on the main PC. I have a keyboard and mouse in the cinema using USB over ethernet which works really, really well. I have a harmony elite and I've used gyro remotes, although not the one listed above so I'll investigate that, but for me you just can't beat a keyboard and mouse.
I'm running JRiver with MadVR and I use MadVR for all the tone mapping, although I'm getting my PJ calibrated in a couple of weeks so I'll be able to properly compare the MadVR tone mapping and the JVC solution. Now my problem is heat again. 12 disks and a big GPU are keeping things a bit warmer than I'd like. I've already got a watercooler on the CPU and I don't want to take the heatsinks of the GPU. I'm thinking of replacing the disks with larger disks so that there are fewer of them, which will help with heat generation and airflow, but that'll happen over time.
Or I could split the machines again, stick the storage in the garage and have a smaller machine in the office with just the GPU and an SSD. That would allow me to upgrade the processor at the same time.
There's always something, isn't there
I started my mini cinema because I was sick a few years ago and I wanted to be able to watch media from any device anywhere in the house. I think by then I had started backing up my media and Kodi was the first thing I set up. Then I got my first receiver and speakers and the rest is history lol.
I had it in the back of my mind for a while that VR might be the way to go for 3D viewing so last year I finally set it up. I used my laptop to watch a 3D film using MPC-BE with Virtual Desktop wirelessly streaming it to my Quest. This year I got a mini PC which allows me to fully use MadVR as my renderer and scaler and greatly increase SVP quality for watching 3D films at 1440p running at 60Hz.
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