Ongoing Building a new MP client (1 Viewer)

[VdR]

I put the bits and pieces together, but I'm still waiting for my power supply. As soon as I have that I can tell you my experience with the PicoPSU. I see that the Iwill is about the same price so why take any chances? The PicoPSU have a very good track record. Just be careful there a lot of knock-offs on e-bay.

I have a Zalmann cooling for the North bridge, but unfortunately the flexible mounting system isn't flexible enough, I can not fit it as it is. I will just see what the standard cooling does before I start modding it.

 

[VdR]

The power supply is there. The power supply is there. Finaly I can finish the build .

The power supply doesn't work. The power supply doesn't work. What the ... .

Well, well, what can you expect from a 12 euro part that is shipped from China for free. So I dared to void the warranty and open the bloody thing up. Turns out that a big heavy inductor had come half of the PBC. No mechanical fixation other than the wires. Two of the wires had been just in, not through, the holes in the PCB. Poor soldering, transportation shock, that will do it. So I soldered the thing back on the PCB and ... bingo .

So I put everything together, pushed the on button and ... nothing ... Aaah, I forgot, it is totally silent, there is not one moving part in it. Strange how you expect fans to start and drives to start spinning. Waauw this is nice .

It is almost disappointing how shortly lived the build experience was. Once all the parts where there it came together so fast. Good that setting up a client in MP takes so much time ... I'm waiting for the over 6000 thumbnails for the picture DB to be created while I type up this message.

I have done very little testing yet. But one thing I can say; I'm really, really, really pleased with this Intel board. When they say fast boot, they mean faaaaast boot. Everything you do not need can be excluded from the boot. The windows boot screen is there before the monitor realizes there is a video signal. W7 is up in less than 20 seconds .

To be continued.

 

[Jay_UK]

Thats great news

It is a little disconcerting when there is no noise at all - you wonder if its on!

Strange thing to do... spend decent amount of money on case, CPU, etc...and then risk a 12 euro Chinese PSU part :O

I would be interested in the 1080p/24p/1080i performance

J.

 

[VdR]

Strange thing to do... spend decent amount of money on case, CPU, etc...and then risk a 12 euro Chinese PSU part.

J.

Yes, a bit embarrassing really, but I didn't find a more expensive part that met my criteria. It's actually a supply for the LEDs in an LED TV (or a knock-of of that). I don't expect any problems with it now that it works. See the problem below, easy fix.

I would be interested in the 1080p/24p/1080i performance

J.

I'll let you know about 1080 24p, I don't use 1080i.

Still waiting for some material to customize the cabling, will post pictures when that's done.

 

[hulkhaugen]

Cool, good thing you managed to fix that PSU. What do i look for when picking a genuine PicoPSU? The IWILL PSU is much easier available for me, that's why i'm asking. And the power connector, is it a default type, or do i need to have a specific one made for the PicoPSU?

I'll have to make another project thread for myself, much more going on than just a MP Client

 

[VdR]

Well I can confirm that my PicoPSU works. But that should not be a surprise.

When I was looking for the PicoPSU I found some for about half the normal price on e-Bay. Looking at reactions and at the PicoPSU site it seems that there are poor quality copies on the market. Those are of course to be avoided. The Iwill source seems genuine. It's true that the PicoPSU are difficult to get, I paid 12 euro for shipping from Germany to Belgium, absolutely ridiculous!

The PicoPSU came with a power connector and an adapter connecting to that connector on one end and a chassis mount connector for an external power adapter on the other. I really did not want an external adapter, hence my adventure with the PSU. So I just cut the power connector of.

 

[VdR]

The client is up and running and installed in the living. So it is now constantly in use and I don't get the time to fine tune ...

First thing I noticed was jutter playing 1080p24 H264 from mkv container. My previous client had a NVIDIA graphics card and I used the LAVCUVID decoder, worked perfectly. For the Intel graphics in this client I had choosen LAV. After changing to the Microsoft codec the problem seems solved. I have had quite some problems with the Microsoft codec before so I want to do some more fine tuning on this.

Does the Microsoft codec give me h/w acceleration on the Intel graphics, what codecs do?

UPDATE

Found they way to activate Intel Quick sync acceleration in the LAV codec setup. That solved the jitter ... but caused bursts of terrible pixelation. So I'm back on the Microsoft codec.

UPDATE

Now using LAV DXVA2 without any problems. I'll stick with that.

 

[VdR]

Pictures of the finished build:



I spend half a day customizing the wiring, it looks cool. My wife just asked why I did that; "it worked before" ...

For the keen observer; I did properly insert that memory again before powering up.

 

[Jay_UK]

Looking good

Mine should be here this week

J.

 

[VdR]

@ Jay_UK

How is your build coming along?