Just to let everybody know - I will restart this project some time in 2014. But for now it is put on hold as it started to annoy me... Last thing I did was that I ended up buying the Silverstone ST30SF SFX PSU to test if everything was still alive, just to realize that is worked like a charm but the dye had screwed up my CPU fan so its now quite noisy. Also my old SSD seems to have developed a slight high pitched noise and the HDD noise was also more than I had hoped. So now I have the perfect PSU, CPU, MB and RAM, but the rest is a little annoying. To be fair the PSU is not perfect, I wish it was sleeved better (so badly I even want to redo it whenever I get time). Will let you guys know when an update is due. (for now im just passing time with great xmas amazon offers on games) Happy holidays!
A shame that this didn't work out as you liked, but I'm sure you'll find another way. Why not use a picoPSU XT160 ? That's sure enough oomph, if you're not using a dedicated GPU and it's the smallest solution possible. Anyways, now that you have that SFX-PSU allready, why not build a small box out of aluminum? I can share several ideas for a small mITX-case with a SFX-PSU, allthough they won't be as small as a Mac Mini. EDIT: Oh, and just so you know of these cases, as they look like a Mac Mini allready... Powercool Q6 120W [http://www.streacom.com/products/f1cws-evo-chassis/"]Streacom ST-F1CS WS EVO w/o PSU[/URL] or the same as before but with room for a SlotIn CD/DVD/BluRay-drive Streacom ST-F1CS EVO w/o PSU And Streacom also sells picoPSUs for their cases, but I heard some rumors that they're not as good as the original. Anyways, look for a Streacom ST-NANO150, as they're quiet affordable. Also they seem to have the issues fixed according to some reviews I read.
Thanks for all the ideas But truth is I already considered them... I don't have the tools or the time to do a scratch build, sorry. Pico PSUs have the annoying external powerbrick, if I can avoid it I will (as I still suspect that to be the problem with the now discontinued PSU). I did consider Realan (pretty sure thats the original manufacturer of them) E-Q6 chassis for a while, but can't really trust the power supply from a kind of unknown Chinese company... Streacoms is extremely nice, but their cases are pretty expensive and I don't need the space for a drive. Less is more. I am currently looking for a fix to my CPU cooler issue and how to fix the sleeving of the PSU, so I will update the thread whenever I have a solution. In the meantime I am passing time on playing the stunning looking Tomb Raider on my gaming rig to clear my mind (it looks amazing on ultra settings!).
If you don't wan't an external powerbriick, then it's not as easy to build something small like the Mac Mini I guess. I have a Chieftec BT-02B lying around waiting to be filled with hardware, when the Haswell-Refresh or Kaveri hit's the shelves. I even started modding it a liittle bit -> http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=262051
I've been using a Realan PSU (250w version) with a modded Dell DA-2 brick and it's been solid for a year powering an i3-2105 HTPC. I have another one to be used in a planned 6 or 7-HDD unRaid server early next year. They also have a 180w(or 250w?) 19v model for use with a typical laptop brick. They offer a 3-year warranty on the PSUs.
At the moment this build is in a re-build stage, so the Node is now using a Pentium G2030 CPU and has changed name to Node 2.1b, running Windows 8.1. The 3225 CPU has been moved to a new setup called the Mac Mini3 and added a lot of new hardware. The Mac Mini3 is at the moment consistent of: Intel i3-3225 Gigabyte GA-B75N Plextor M3 64GB boot SSD 500GB TimeMachine LyCom FW400+800 PCIe card 1TB FW800 + 2TB FW800 Silverstone SFX 300Watt PSU Akasa low profile CPU copper cooler All inside a cardboard box from a pair of Bowers & Wilkins P7 headphones. EVERYTHING works, even sleep! The point is that the Mac Mini3 and the Node 2.0b will soon be rebuild into three different machines: A proper Mac HTPC, a unRAID server and a Windows 8.1 gaming PC. //Stay tuned
