Streacom's FC10 and Nano150: Building a Fanless Ivy Bridge HTPC

HTPC enthusiasts often place a lot of emphasis on silent systems for obvious reasons. We have looked at systems with passive thermal solutions before, but never presented the build process for one. Back in May, we had covered Streacom's announcement of the fanless FC9 and FC10 chassis. With support for passive cooling of CPUs with a TDP of up to 95 W and a sleek industrial design, HTPC enthusiasts have been eagerly waiting for these units to hit the market. After some delays, Streacom finalized the design and started shipping the units to resellers in mid-November. We requested for samples of the FC10 chassis and the Nano150 PSU and Streacom's shipment reached us in the first week of December.

We are planning to use the FC10 and the Nano150 as building blocks for a passively cooled HTPC. Our intent is also to utilize it as a testbed for evaluating discrete HTPC GPUs. Read on for the first of a three-part HTPC series, where we will be presenting the build process and burn-in testing results for a completely passive and virtually silent Ivy Bridge-based HTPC.