Ongoing Diary of an HTPC Dabbler (3 Viewers)

[dcwp]

Alright! All of the various bits and pieces I've been waiting on finally arrived in the mail this week, so I spent the day putting my rig into its shiny new home.

Oddly enough I didn't bother to take any photos of the case before starting work, but it's the silver version of this if you're interested: SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd - Designing Inspiration

The HDD in this case is to be mounted sideways and directly to the floor, then to a little tab sticking out of the top of the case. In addition to being a pain to drive screws up through the bottom of the case, I wasn't excited about hard mounting the drive. So I found some super flexy insoles from a company called SofSole and placed a pair of them (folded over double) on the base of the case where the HDD is to rest. Instead of using the top bracket, I set up a suspension system by attaching two adhesive anchor points to the front wall of the case. Then I ran a round elastic cord through each of those points and through the unused mounting hole on the case fan at the back and tied the cords in the middle. Then after some twisting for tautness, I had a decoupled HDD system.

I was pretty unsure if this would work, but I think there is less drive noise coming from the computer now than with my old setup, which included a true suspension mount (see upthread). The 80mm Nexus fan in the back is also very quiet. A little hum if you're close to the fan and of course some wind noise when it's blowing 100%. I have found though that even turning it down to 90% with SpeedFan has a drastic effect on audibility. At that point and lower, it's very difficult to hear the fans at all.

Another interesting part of this build was the PCI tuner card (Hauppauge HVR-1600). Because the case takes expansion cards sideways, a riser card is required, BUT the expansion slots also have to be in just the right place on the MoBo for this to work. Luckily this was not a surprise so I ordered a flexible PCI riser ribbon when I ordered the case. I had nightmares about all the things that could go wrong with this riser, but it was one of the easiest parts of the install. Only $10 including shipping from Hong Kong and really made this build possible! I've seen other threads where people have given up on this case altogether because of the expansion card problems but thankfully I didn't have those problems. I'm not a big fan of how much space the riser takes up, especially close to the chipset heatsink, but I'll take what I can get.

I also was able to hide the RF receiver for my keyboard inside the case. I got a dual-USB header, took it off the expansion card, attached it to the MoBo, and hid the receiver itself near a vent where it seems to receive signals fine but with less range than before. Unfortunately I was not able to continue hiding my IR receiver in this case. I'd like to find a way to get it hidden, but I think the best thing will be to go to an RF remote and I don't feel like laying out the cash for that yet.

Another special cable I bought for this build was a rounded IDE cable. I thought this would help with airflow and every little bit counts in this tiny case. In fact since the cable has to feed over the PCI card and under the 5" drive tray, the flat thin ribbon would have been easier. Oh well.

I went a little wild finding special cables; for some reason I got excited about it on this build. On the back of the computer I used two 90 degree angle Coax connectors for the TV inputs and a 90 degree HDMI input so that I can put the case as far back on its shelf as possible. I've got a shallow shelf and every mm counts at this point. What I forgot to count on was that I still had to attach the power cord and it doesn't come with a 90 degree option. Even the IR receiver's USB port cost me a couple of mm. Again, Oh well. It fits (just barely) and hopefully I can upgrade to more attractive and deeper wall furniture soon.

General observations on this case:
* Wow, it's really sexy
*But I'm a little surprised that this is almost the smallest MATX case available.
*The TFX power supply is impressively quiet. I'm not sure it makes any audible noise with the lid closed. I had considered upgrading to a PicoPSU, but now I see very little reason to do that.
*Lots of extra cables in this sucker. Way too many power connectors for a case that limits you to one OD, one HDD, and almost nothing else. Only a problem because management is a bear in the tight space and it affects airflow, thus cooling, thus noise.
*Man I like how my new case looks
*The Nexus fans are extremely quiet. Not silent of course, but close to it under 90% voltage.
*I put the second one leaning on the back of the CPU and Chipset coolers, blowing between both of them. Before I did that, temps were climbing too high.
*With the two Nexus fans, temps are staying about the same as they were in my old case.
*Space is extremely limited, but I think I may be able to fit an aftermarked CPU cooler like the Nexus LOW-7000, this should help with noise and heat but must come later.
*Sure is good looking, but I wish it had an internal IR receiver.

 

[FantaXP7]

That sure is a creative way to mount that hard drive. You sure have done a lot of neat modding there. One thing I was considering doing when I was thinking about getting a smaller case was to make my own custom IR receiver. I had found a site that sold an internal receiver that connect to an internal usb port on the mother board, it was a small board that could be mounted on the front side of your case (internally ofcourse). All you would have to do is drill a hole.

This is ofcourse just an idea I had, and have never done it so I can't really say for sure that it worked, but in theory it should. I had a link to the site but it's on my laptop and my laptop charger died. Those friggen mac chargers look nice but they die often.

 

[dcwp]

Thanks for the comments Fanta! I've had a lot of fun with this build.

I'd love to see that link if your laptop ever comes back to life. I have thought a bit about adding an IR receiver to the front panel. Right now I'm not willing to drill into the front of the case since I bought it largely for its looks, but maybe I'll get over that soon. The top front panel opens and folds down to allow access to OD, USB, etc so I have thought about using an IMON or something similar by cutting a small rectangular hole in the little door and inserting the VFD/IR then plugging it right into the USB port inside the door. It would be tight, but I think it would fit if I got a shallow enough unit. I'm not really excited about having a display though so a tiny round receiver would be even better.

 

[SpudR]

Could you mount the receiver UNDER the case? There seems a little space between the feet...

(I used to be an AV engineer and this was a constant little trick to move the IR to a more accessible place...)

 

[dcwp]

Hey, that's a good idea! The receiver I'm using now (MCE) is a touch too big. The space under the case is only about 2 cm. But a different receiver may go under there easily. If not there, under a shelf or the TV might be fine too.

Right now I've got it sitting with a volume knob between my two speakers, which are on top of my subwoofer. You can see it in this photo from about February of this year: Picasa Web Albums - dcwpugh - HTPC

With that other stuff there, it is really not noticeable. In fact, it might even look better having a little set of matching black devices there than just the volume knob or even just the speakers on the sub. But I am hoping to get a more attractive shelf system soon (I really like the Omnimount Moda series, but can I afford it?) at which time I may try to hide the sub on the floor somewhere. I have no idea how any of that will actually work, but ideally everything on the shelf with the speakers now would get moved so that only the PC would be sitting under the TV. In that case a hidden receiver would be much more of a benefit than it would be now.

 

[paddy01]

The MCE IR receiver can be removed from the casing (I've seen this done to mount it internally) so it might be that removing the casing and just mounting the PCB under the case would fit..

I might be trying this myself as I have the Antec case with built in iMon LCD but I don't like the way iMon handles the remote functions (i.e translating to key presses) so I disabled the IR receiver of the iMon display and am using an MCE receiver in it's place but like you need to find a way to hide the receiver.

 

[Efros]

Great story, nice to see the evolution over time. My own system has gone from a Sempron 3100 through an Athlon 2800, an AMD64 X2 3800+, an E2160 dual core to it's current Q6600 quad core. The one consistent component has been my Firefly RF remote. I deviated from your build in that mine remains firmly in the basement with nothing visible in the living room apart from the Firefly remote. Consequently my machine is somewhat bulkier, noisier and hotter. Q6600 with 4GB of memory and 4TB of online storage with a 4TB mirror on a different machine. All housed in a thermaltake armor case, like this one Newegg.com - Thermaltake Armor Series VA8003BWS Black Full Tower Case w/ 25CM Fan - Computer Cases

 

[dcwp]

Paddy - taking apart the receiver is a good idea. I've seen people talk about it and considered it, but I haven't committed yet. I'm not particularly good with electronics so I don't want to damage it, plus I've considered getting a different remote and using this one elsewhere or selling it so I want to keep it together. I'll take a look later today though, if it looks like it can be taken apart with screws rather without damaging anything I may do some exploratory surgery. If you go ahead with that project be sure to post it here so we can all see how it works.

Efros - It's always a kick to remember your first 100Gb drive, 1Gb Ram, or whatever that seemed so powerful at the time but now would barely get you through bootup. Sounds like you've got a serious system now. With all that power are you doing a lot of video transcoding or gaming? Quad core seems like a lot more than you would need for MP alone, but if you've got it hidden in the basement then I guess heat and noise aren't big concerns. I've considered putting my rig in the attic, there is room right above the TV and the wall is open in the attic so running cables through it would be a breeze. In the end I decided that having the remote, optical drive, and power switch all in the same room as the TV was best for me. One day I may change my mind, the wife would like to have nothing but the TV visible on the wall.

 

[Efros]

I do quite a bit of video compression, and Xvid can take advantage of the quad core as can Easy Realmedia Producer, both of which I use extensively. I also like to have this sort of stuff running in the background so I need the extra oomph to run MP. I can remember my first 20MB hard disk!, External thing for an Amstrad PPC 640. My first computer was a Sinclair Spectrum 16k back in 1983.

 

[dcwp]

Wow, that must have been quite a machine. The first PC that I owned was a 386 when I went to college, but even at the time the guys in the campus bookstore laughed at me when I tried to buy software for it. I remember our first family PC when my father took a job working with them. It was a Leading Edge brand 8086 with a HD measured in Kb. It had a program that did word processing and could run Printshop, all of which I thought was amazing.

Not too long ago (some time in the 1990s) father was working in data storage for a federal agency and he told me that they hit a major milestone: they were managing a *terabyte* of data! Wow, that seemed like an unfathomable amount of information, even for the storage center of a federal agency! Now you can get that much storage for well under 100 bucks.