As its name suggests, Hush is pioneering the quiet PC. Its mini-ITX and ITX systems have led the way, defined by their precision engineering and techno-industrial good looks. Its new ATX-based E3 MCE is the biggest of the bunch: 15Kg of anodized aluminium Media Center that’s double the price of an Evesham eBox or Elonex Artisan. For £2,193, this is a PC that needs to blow your socks off and take your legs with them.

E3 MCE is no style-whore system, although the spectacular hi-fi design and the outrageous cooling fins on the chassis might suggest otherwise. It’s got a rock-solid base specification, founded on a partnership between an Athlon 64 4000+ processor, 1GB of main memory and an ample 400GB hard drive. Media centre PCs are often guilty of skimping on the graphics card, but the E3 MCE makes no such compromise – its Radeon X800 card is a full-fat pixel-pusher that makes this machine a satisfying all-rounder.

Thanks to Hush’s clever design, all you can hear is the faint hum of the power supply and the soft tick-tick of the Seagate hard disk. There are no fans here; the components generating the most heat (the CPU, northbridge and graphics card) are passively cooled. Lift the metal lid and you can see how this cooling system works. Instead of blowing cold air across the motherboard, the E3 MCE relies on a series of heat sinks. These carry the heat away via copper heat pipes. The CPU’s heat sink, for example, routes heat to the left-hand side of the machine via a copper heat pipe that runs the length of the chassis. The northbridge and the GPU are linked to a matching heat pipe on the right edge.

Heat from the core components subsequently vaporises the fluid in the heat pipes and this vapour transports the heat along the pipe. The vapour then condenses, enabling the heat to be transferred to the distinctive vertical cooling fins on the outside of the casing. These ridged blades finally radiate the heat into the surrounding air. Such a heat pipe exchange system is an effective, low-thermal option that’s often used on AV amplifiers. But it’s not the only noise-reducing trick in the Hush arsenal.

Centre of attention
Power is provided by a 240W auto-sensing, fan-less power supply developed by Hush, while the Seagate Barracuda hard drive is enclosed in a padded aluminium case that helps dampen any vibrations. To maintain the low-profile design, both the TV tuner card (PCI) and the graphics card (AGP) have been mounted horizontally on a riser card. As a result, there are no free slots for a Wi-Fi card. The E3 MCE relies on a Shuttle 802.11g adaptor that plugs into a USB header on the motherboard.

Don’t let this detract from the simple fact that the E3 MCE represents what all media centre PCs should be: powerful, versatile and satisfyingly silenced. But where should you put it? While it’s got the elegant looks of a living room PC, it’s unbelievably hefty and slightly too large to fit on the average TV stand. Unless you’ve got a high-resolution flat-panel TV, preferably with a DVI connection, it’s a waste to treat it like a set-top box.

This beautifully engineered PC deserves to be your main machine. It could easily sit at the heart of the home, invisibly and reliably recording TV, storing your music and photos, and by plugging it into an Xbox 360 or Media Center Extenders, making digital content available to the entire house. Also available in bronze or black, the E3 MCE reaffirms your faith in the whole media centre ideal, so much so that it’s easy to forget about the asking price. Superbly kitted out and capable of resuming from/dropping into standby in about two seconds, only the lack of twin tuners taints E3’s performance. If Hush gets any better at building PCs, it’ll need to change its name to ‘Shhh’.