Media Center PCs come in cubes and hi-fi-style boxes, usually smaller than a desktop, and with one thing in common: they have fans to keep them cool. In the compact cases used for these living-room PCs, ducting the heat away is a major concern, but not here. Hush – check its name – produces quiet PCs by re-engineering system cooling, so there are no fans at all in its M-Series.

The Hush E-Series machines, as reviewed in PC Plus 234, uses a standard Pentium 4 desktop processor, so needs a lot of passive cooling. The M-Series works differently, as it uses the Pentium M CPU, a processor designed for notebooks that draw much less power than desktop solution. For Hush’s particular application – a silent media centre – it makes a lot of sense. With the lower power consumption, the company can cut back on the custom, internal metalwork, used to transfer heat from processor and north bridge.

Pipe smoke
Hush makes use of heat pipe technology to run from custom-made coolers clamped to the two primary chips, to a black, extruded heatsink that runs the full depth of the case. The same pipe runs through both coolers and does a good job in shifting the heat. Even when the machine is running hard, as in our benchmarks, the chips are never more than warm to the touch.

The internal layout of the M-Series is unusual; the low-profile, VCR-style case makes that inevitable. The processor is mounted on a mini ITX system board, which also takes 512MB of 400MHz DDR memory and includes onboard graphics and sound. Graphics output comes from Intel Extreme Graphics 852GM circuitry in the north bridge and uses 64MB of main memory for video.

In front of the system board is a Sony notebook-style DVD rewriter, which was the weakest point in the review system. It’s mounted through the extruded, black-anodised front panel of the machine and has no support at the rear. This leaves the drive hanging below the vertical and makes latching the drive tray both awkward and intermittent. We hope it’s an individual fault with our review unit. To the left of the DVD rewriter is a fanless power supply, developed by Hush, and to the left of that is a 160GB Seagate PATA hard drive. Behind these two and overlaying the power supply is a single PCI card, providing TV input.

The machine comes as standard with twin analog TV tuners, on the same HannStar MV-4 card. While this is fine for now, the analog terrestrial TV transmitters are due to be turned off from 2008. If you want more future-proofing, it makes sense to look at DVB-T, its digital replacement, where you also get a wider range of channels – though not all are watchable. There’s an aerial input for FM radio as well as TV, though again, with DVB-T you get digital radio channels in the Freeview set. Sockets on the M-Series back panel include USB 2.0 and FireWire, though only two USB 2.0 and nothing at the front, which makes connecting a still or video camera fiddly.

Silent running
The system runs SYSmark 2004 without problem, and it comes with a copy of Works Suite 2005. You’ll need to add a keyboard and mouse to use the M-Series as a true PC, though, as neither is supplied. The benchmark result was reasonable, though as you might expect, it performs like a notebook more than a desktop. When it comes to 3DMark 2004, you’re less lucky, as the test software refuses to run, because of the Extreme Graphics’ lack of appropriate pixel shaders. Running 3DMark 2003 does little better, as the software can only run one of the test segments and the frame rate on that drops to around 4fps, when anything exciting happens.

Windows Media Center is a convenient interface to use; it sets up without problem and TV picture quality from our test aerial, drawn from a six-way splitter box off a roof antenna, was good. This sleek, black anodised box, with its massive heatsinks and single glowing blue power button looks the part, though it’s wise not to put anything – particularly cups of coffee – on top of the extensive ventilation grill in its case top.

This is a great Media Center PC, which will sit quietly in your lounge, delivering a range of programme content. It does time-shifted, personal DVD recording, TV, radio, DVD and audio CD playback as well as Internet browsing. It’s not a game machine, though, unless you’re content with strategy or Shockwave-style games – it doesn’t have the graphics kick. The price is high, but is worth paying, as long as Hush fixes the floppy DVD drive.