Project .:M^4:. MultiMedia HTPC (update 8/6/4)

Looks great!
Is it possible to fit a fan tin the top ? because I think that would help very much on the pempereture.. Then you could have those two fans in front to blow cold air in to your machine, and the fan in the top to suck hot air out of it. maybe I would thing of another place to put the hdd because it is straight under the monitor card. now, a 160gb hdd gets quite hot, and will probably heat up the air around it. Since the monitor card is placed right above itm it will use that hot air to try to cool itself down... It will probably work just fine if your monitor card is old (like a radeon 9500 or so).

I will definaltely drop in on this project once in a while! Can't wait for another update Mod On my friend!

 

Looks good to me. What are you going to run on this thing? I have had thoughts of running LINIX on a media center PC and using that Freevo stuff. I have no experience with either of these things and so I thought I would learn an awful lot. Of course if you were planning on doing something similar, any details you posted would be most helpful. Good luck with the mod.

 

i am liking it, almost did the same design, glad somebody did it. do you have the components you used for it? i mean the CAD

 

I have decided to scrap the fans in the front due to noise. a fan above the mobo might not be a bad idea. the lid will have some nice holes cut out for the psu and maybe the processor. i want to test it and see how hot everything gets over by the hdd and see where teh best vent or fan placement would be. i may put a single 60mm fan on that left side with ven holes in the rear if needed. everything else stays pretty cool when i cover the box.

also i am hoping that the aluminum will disipate some of the heat because the hard drive will be making a metal to metal contact. but more on mounting that later. i am off to work soon and will show some smaller updates of the cables and ir reciever. and maybe later tonight some pic's of the video card when it comes in the mail tonight. that is if i dont end up playing halo all night at my friends house...

btw thanks for the feedback everyone. I hope to start on the box tomarrow so any feedback is appreciated

 

Here is some of the custom cables made for this project.

the first is a vga extension cable. You can buy one of ths for about 25$ but i can also get the parts for next to nothing because i work at radioshack. about $3 total for the ends and some heat shrink. i took some cat5 cable and in about 30 min I had a working cable.







this is the Ir circuit i built for this motherboard. i made it as small as i could on strip board 3x9 holes another piece below holds a pin header connector to make the connection to the 3 pins to run the circuit. the 3 wires that run up to the Ir dector are in blue cable sleeving as will most everything else be soon.

the red circles show the pin headers. the lcd is pluged into one (gray ribbon cable) the Ir circuit is in another and one is still free. the yellow one is a usb header.





this is the usb ports i made. they were on a larger board with audio ports. since i did not need the audio ports i cut that part of th board off and removed the pin headers then soldered a shorter cable onto the board and will sleeve it soon.




so thats what I have done so far.. just waiting to get out of work so i can play with my new video card

 

Wow. I feel like i have been drinking too much, my eyes cant stay focused on the fuzzy pix.. but good work

 

I got my ATi aiw 128 w/ 32 mb in the mail and installed it fine. but when i tried to watch tv on it it had an error and would not run. so i reinstalled the card and now the program pops up but it says it cant find any channels. i tried different software to just view tv but that also did not work and gave me an error.

as of now i am trying to figure out what is wrong with the card or software and what i can do to make everything work.

i called a local company and talked to them about building my box out of aluminum. they passed the design on to their engineer and said he would call me back on monday. i think i will have to cut the tabs seperatly and j&b weld them to the base in order for the box to get made the way i want it to. once i hear from him i should have a good idea of what i can and cant do and hopefully have a basic box to start modding by this week.

 

Did you check your cables? sometimes it dont make a good connection..
the other thing is, some places you *HAVE* to have their "box" to
change chan's and de-scramble the signal.. bleh.

 

i am using sweet monster cables for the coax connection. just bc i happend to have some lying around. it plugged it into the tv and it works fine but not when the cable is pluged into the aiw. so i am thinking about calling up ati tech support.. but they charge an ass load just for tech support... which is quite lame.

 

Are you sure you have the right settings for the TV format. It will probably be NTSC since you are in the US. Just a suggestion cuz that was the problem i had only i have a Pinnacle PCTV

 

I have been working at Raiod Shack a lot have have not had much time to work on my pc at all I have however found a slim dvd drive on e bay for only 27$ and an adapter to convert to ide for 10$ I got an XboX for my birthday ( which is today ) and i have allready begun modding it, so far the x on top is blue painted, a 80mm fan has been installed, and the jewel is clear and lighted by 6 difused blue led's and will be tinted and glued in place when i get home from work. also my mod chip and blue 3mm led's are on the way as is my 160 gig hdd my friend is loading games on to atm. its kinda off topic but i will prob post a pic of it in a week or so when all the mods are done on it. Modding my x box kinda came b4 modding th computer recently bc of lack of all th parts and mostly th case

i was going to have sheet metal place bend me a case out of aluminum but it took over 2 weeks of me talking to them and sending them sketchup pictures for them to agree to something they could build. and then they wanted 90$ for it and it wasnt even close to what i had sent them in the first place. so now i am going to talk to a friend of mine who might be able to help me out. other wise i will but some 1/8" Al sheets and cut them out and connect them with screws and j&b weld. either way i am going to try and get somewhere on this damn box before i leave for Va beach to visit my roomate for a week still looking for any good suguestions... i am thinking of using a blower fan to blow directly on the hdd bc they have a more direct force than a 60 mm fan and we have some on clearance for like 6$ - 30% discount so it could be th best option. i am hoping to open on up and play with it today.

 

well it appears that his friend was able to help him out, for it was me. I am comming on board for the project it appears. My main job is the case, mostly with the front. Doing the layout for that then will have it custom made. We are going to hide the Ir behind one of the vents and are working on moving and moddifying the power button to remain symetrical. Also, working on making it sleeker for I have a few tricks up my sleeve I might pull out for this one.

 

Hey, possibly digging up an old thread but i wanna see the progress lol, its a nice idea

 

Looks nice. Should be awesome. Im loving the blue vents on the sides

With regard to the fans. Dont have 1 intake and 1 exaust. Have either 1 or 2 exuast only. The air will be sucked through the case. It works really well. My PC has 90cfm flowing through it just because of the 3 exhaust fans. Get a quiet 80mm fan and you should be sweet. Run it at 5v and you'll never hear it.

Keep up the good work.

 

Does that IR thing you have work with any mobo that has an IR header? If so, wanna send me a schmatic? I could really use one believe it or not lol

 

Hey everyone I have had time recently to work on this project. Right now I am waiting for some j&b weld to dry here is a picture of the current work for now untill i take more detialed pictures once the apoxy drys and i can take things apart...

 

the pictures of my first one are on my web site Here this is a picture i drew of just the schmatic thought