United Kingdom
Hi,
I decided to build myself a media PC for use in the lving room after stumblimg accross the mediaportal site. I had an old PC lying around and I just thought I would put it in a new case and that would be it. Actually what happened was I used the motherboard, CPU and HDD and replaced everything else.
Old PC
I then went out and bought the bits I thought I would need. This was fine until the case I ordered did not turn up - an iCute iBox from CCL computers. After 1 month of waiting I got a refund.The problem with this was that I had ordered everything else around this case. The bits I now cant use are the Scythe mini ninja fan and all the extra silent case cooling fans I bought
Parts
Here is a list of the final spec that I ended up with:
Antec NSK 1380 Case with 350W PSU
Gigabyte Motherboard GA-8I915PM
P4 CPU 3.06GHz
Scythe Shuriken CPU cooler
2GB Ram
ASUS EAH 3450 Graphics Card
2 x Hauppauge Nova S-Plus Satellite PCI cards
1 x Samsung 160GB HDD
1 x Samsung Sinpoint 640GB HDD
1 x 250GB HDD
1 x DVD Drive
I am very happy with the case I bought. It is a very tight squeeze but looks great and is very quiet. At the moment I have 3 HDD in there, I think this will have to change and I will need to build some sort of NAS solution to hold my HDD.
Case
The Build
So I pulled the motherboard and cpu out my old desktop and set about fixing them into the new Antec case. To do this I had to remove the PSU from the case to enable me to squeeze in the new Scythe Shuriken cooler. As you can see there was no chance of fitting in the bigger cooler:
Mainboard / CPU Cooler
Motherboard Installed
As you can see it is a tight fit already (and I am already worried about cooling!!!!)
Graphics Card
Next in with the graphics card. I bought this card due to the fact it has a HDMI port on the back enabling both sound and video to the TV with the 1 cable. It was also cheap - around £30. I dont think it is recommended for HD but my CPU is not up to it anyway so I was not too bothered.
Things start to get really tight as I add the 2 Hauppauge cards. Although the cards all fit in there fine, cooling could be an issue.
The case is supplied with this low speed cyclone fan, it is actually very quiet and seems to work.
No room for expansion here!!
Next, the drives!!
The Antec is supplied with a quick remove drive caddy which has room for 1 x 5.25 Drive and 3 x 3.5 drives. I fitted it to the max. The case is excellent in terms of the mounting hardware that comes with it. The screws for the HDD come with rubber mounting washers to dampen noise. I think 3 HDD in this close proximity is asking for trouble and I may change it. Installing the caddy is also rather difficult as when you try and swing it in to position the HDD hanging down vertically tend to catch on other components.
Once the sides and top were on the case, this is how it looks. I purposely did not hook up the HDD activity light or the power on light as this will be sitting in the lving room.
Next I installed XP Home and MediaPortal.
I have also installed the Moving Pictures plugin and the Monochrome Skin.
I have ripped abround 200 DVD's to the HDD and sorted out my Music and pictures. I am very happy with the results.
I just have the TV aspect of the build to sort out now. I have managed to install the cards and scan the transponder for UK Sky and Freesat. However, there are an awful lot of channels and I think I need to go through them manually and delete the ones I do not want.
I decided to build myself a media PC for use in the lving room after stumblimg accross the mediaportal site. I had an old PC lying around and I just thought I would put it in a new case and that would be it. Actually what happened was I used the motherboard, CPU and HDD and replaced everything else.
Old PC
I then went out and bought the bits I thought I would need. This was fine until the case I ordered did not turn up - an iCute iBox from CCL computers. After 1 month of waiting I got a refund.The problem with this was that I had ordered everything else around this case. The bits I now cant use are the Scythe mini ninja fan and all the extra silent case cooling fans I bought
Parts
Here is a list of the final spec that I ended up with:
Antec NSK 1380 Case with 350W PSU
Gigabyte Motherboard GA-8I915PM
P4 CPU 3.06GHz
Scythe Shuriken CPU cooler
2GB Ram
ASUS EAH 3450 Graphics Card
2 x Hauppauge Nova S-Plus Satellite PCI cards
1 x Samsung 160GB HDD
1 x Samsung Sinpoint 640GB HDD
1 x 250GB HDD
1 x DVD Drive
I am very happy with the case I bought. It is a very tight squeeze but looks great and is very quiet. At the moment I have 3 HDD in there, I think this will have to change and I will need to build some sort of NAS solution to hold my HDD.
Case
The Build
So I pulled the motherboard and cpu out my old desktop and set about fixing them into the new Antec case. To do this I had to remove the PSU from the case to enable me to squeeze in the new Scythe Shuriken cooler. As you can see there was no chance of fitting in the bigger cooler:
Mainboard / CPU Cooler
Motherboard Installed
As you can see it is a tight fit already (and I am already worried about cooling!!!!)
Graphics Card
Next in with the graphics card. I bought this card due to the fact it has a HDMI port on the back enabling both sound and video to the TV with the 1 cable. It was also cheap - around £30. I dont think it is recommended for HD but my CPU is not up to it anyway so I was not too bothered.
Things start to get really tight as I add the 2 Hauppauge cards. Although the cards all fit in there fine, cooling could be an issue.
The case is supplied with this low speed cyclone fan, it is actually very quiet and seems to work.
No room for expansion here!!
Next, the drives!!
The Antec is supplied with a quick remove drive caddy which has room for 1 x 5.25 Drive and 3 x 3.5 drives. I fitted it to the max. The case is excellent in terms of the mounting hardware that comes with it. The screws for the HDD come with rubber mounting washers to dampen noise. I think 3 HDD in this close proximity is asking for trouble and I may change it. Installing the caddy is also rather difficult as when you try and swing it in to position the HDD hanging down vertically tend to catch on other components.
Once the sides and top were on the case, this is how it looks. I purposely did not hook up the HDD activity light or the power on light as this will be sitting in the lving room.
Next I installed XP Home and MediaPortal.
I have also installed the Moving Pictures plugin and the Monochrome Skin.
I have ripped abround 200 DVD's to the HDD and sorted out my Music and pictures. I am very happy with the results.
I just have the TV aspect of the build to sort out now. I have managed to install the cards and scan the transponder for UK Sky and Freesat. However, there are an awful lot of channels and I think I need to go through them manually and delete the ones I do not want.