Hello First, I would like to thank anybody that answered any questions I have asked. I've been constantly reading logs and vsiting this site as well as others. I live in Denver, Colorado and attended the Summer 2004 Everlan, and entered in the Mod Competition, however I was not a winner. This is my second project, but unlike the first, this one is 100% from scratch. I will be making a multilayer plexi case (think Mashie's 3, but horizontal), and the plan is that it wont be any taller than 5 inches. First, the computer specs. Abit Kv7 Motherboard (SATA Raid, SPDIF Out Audio) AMD XP 2100+ 512 mb DDR 266 Misc Ram 2x 160 gb SATA Seagate Drives ( in Raid 0 ) Slimline CD-Rom (Soon to be purchased) AIW Radeon 7000 GeForce 4 Ti4200 Onboard 5.1 Sound, using the SPDIF I acquired a good part of these components through a donation. Some others parts that will be used. 2x PCI and AGP Riser, 5 Sheets of Plexi, Tons of bolts, screws, and 2 92mm Zalman Fans. Now onto the log. Sorry about the poor quality in pictures. I don't have a digital camera, and so I am using my phone This is the layout for the HTPC. Motherboard on the bottom, with the connections facing the outside. Power supply, without the shell, is on the top left. Hard drive rack is on the top right. There is a 1 inch border (25mm) between the components and the edge of the plexi glass. Also, I used some tape to cover the plexi to reduce scratches and such, that is why it is all blue. I made standoffs using some tubing and bolts through the bottoms of the plexi. Then, I used some rubber and steel washers on the top secured with a nut. Hopefully, this will reduce vibration. Same plan for the power supply. This is the hard drive rack, which I made from an old cage, and bent the sides myself. Drilled holes in the rack, and used 8 washers, 4 on bottom and 4 on tops to help reduce vibration. The rack is secured tightly to the plexi. Again, another preview of the rack. My 2x 160 gb Seagate SATA Drives. Running Raid 0, they should be well suited for my recorded needs, and hold my music as well. I didnt want the drives to extend any farther than the motherboard, and so, It is a very tight fit for the SATA connector as well as the power connector in between the drives and the power supply. Hopefully, I will be able to clean up the cables on the power supply better. Again, another view from the side. By the way, I cannot use 90 Degree connectors (although smaller) because of the location of the SATA connectors on the motherboard, which are right next to eachtoher. One connector would block the other. This is the view of the back of a random slimline CD Drive with the IDE interface connector. It will not be mounted directly on top, I will give the drive some breathing room. But that is where it will be located. This is how close the connector is to my PCI and AGP cards. And a front view of the hard drives and the CD Rom Drive. Guess what this is ? Some support for my PCI and AGP Cards. The riser itself isnt strong enough to hold them up. A long bolt and a nut, and when i use some of that plastic tubing, support is added. This is the first view of the PCI Riser and AGP Riser, plus the cards that will go into it. The PCI AIW Radeon 7000, and the AGP GeForce 4 Ti4200 (suitable for some random TV Gaming). This will allow me to make the computer relatively short, only about 4-5 inches. To keep the AGP Card from resting on top of my AIW Radeon, I had to drill a hole in the GeForce in the corner, and used some bolts, nuts, rubber washers, and some tubing. Instant supports. Real quick, a picture of the clearance of the big fan and heatsink on that GeForce. Hopefully it doesnt get too hot, there wont be a whole lot of airflow or fans as I am trying to make this as quiet as possible. And there she is. Some tubing and the cards are no longer leaning and stressing that riser card. A side view.
Sorry for the double post, but it said that I had too many images Here is the rest: Now for the rest of the motherboard. First, the ATX power cable was way too long for where it needed to be connected too. I shortened the wires, each one, by about 6 inches. However, upon finished and plugging it into the motherboard, I still had extra wire and it was causing a problem at the power supply . I spent the next day re-soldering all of the wires, and removing about an inch. Also, did the same to the other motherboard power cable. The ATX cable has to be bent 90 as soon as it comes off of the connector, because the Zalman CPU heatsink is in the way. Both cables will be sleeved, as soon as I can figure out how to remove the pins. I tried using staples, and pins, but I have not had any luck yet. To reduce noise, I removed the northbridge heatsink that had a fan on it with a passive Zalman cooler. And an arial photo, with the intended route of both cables. Some temporary yellow zip ties are used to hold the wires together. A side view of the Zalman heatsink. I chose this heatsink because it is quiet, and worth every penny. Wish I had mounting holes on my current motherboard Now, how to cool the Power supply. 2x Zalman 92 mm fans, both have resistors on them if needed to run them in silent mode. Hopefully, the power supply shouldnt be too hot and the air shouldnt affect the rest of the components. If it does, some ductwork will be needed. A front view. Now, the problem is that the fans stick out about 25 mm. However, not really a problem because the drive has to stick out about that far because it will run into the PCI cards. Those 2 fans are so far, the only fans other than the CPU Fan, and they are really quiet. Hopefully, this computer will be seen and not heard. They also are perfect for their spot, as they are not in the way of the CD Rom drive, or extend further on the opposite side. Again, another picture. An arial photo, showing everything in its place. The missing CPU Heatsink in place. This is technically a side view, showing that the height of everything is about the same. The 92 mm Fans are the tallest component, however, they will fit because of the ... 20mm spacer pictured in the corner. I am not sure how many bolts I will use per side, but 5 layers of plexi are needed, about 5 mm each. With 4 layers of 20mm brass spacers, thats roughly 95 mm of space inbetween the bottom and top layer of plexi. And a close up of the spacer. By not closing up the computer, I am hoping that this will allow air in and out so that it can cool itself without the need of fans. I am not worried about people pokin the insides, and if it becomes a problem, Maybe I will put strips of mesh inbetween each layer. Excluding the top nuts and feet, the case should be roughly 105 mm tall, 4.15 inches tall. Thats all today. Plans for next update include a making a heatsink for the Southbridge chipset (it gets really hot), finished the power supply and soldering, and replacing the heat sink on the AIW ( its really small). Also, I plan on purchasing the plexi that I need as well as planning the bolts and holes needed. And Im really scared, I hope this power supply still works when Im done :O. Can anyone suggest some tips for desoldering the wires, I need to remove the ground wires from the Auxillary power connector, and becasue the wires are in a mess of solder, I can't melt it down enough to pull them out. Also, i fear i may have burned the power supply bored Until next time, bmack
you probobly didn't burn the PSU board, those things tent to take allot and have pretty good fault tollerance just about everywhere so i wouldn't sweat... however id be a nervous wreak about my GF4 if i trilled a hole in it there may have been no visible traces there but agg it gives me the willies. as for desoldering; id run a utility knife over the solder-in-question and cut off as much as you can and try desoldering it again
I have a new problem. The power supply had a wire running from the middle prong on the outside connector to the bottom of the power supply case, shown in the picture. What do I do? Do i need to mount that cable to something, or is it uneccessary? My dad suggested cutting the bottom plate of the power supply, and mounting the board to that plate, and then the plate to the plexi.
There would be no point, that is the ground and since you are not mounting to a metal surface you can leave it off, This will tend to be hard on your mobo but it will survive... I think
Don't worry about the ground wire, just cut it off. As far as noise - I have one of those 92mm fans in my HTPC and I am using the resistor that came with it to make it quiet and it's almost silent. Most of the noise in my system is actually form the HD and not the fans.
Sorry guys, but you need the ground wire for the SMPSU to work properly (it actually leaks some current down the earth lead). Do as your dad said and cut out the metal plate and mount it underneath. The screws into the metal plate attach the PCB to earth (you'll see tinned tracks round each of the screw holes), so make sure you use metal screws/bolts and not nylon ones!
Hey! I live over in Boulder. Just some thoughts: I personally don't like AIW cards much for use in an HTPC, for me it's just a matter of video quality. I always advise those building an HTPC to skip them and get a hardware encoding card like a PVR 250 (MCE). I would say that for a case this small you'd benifit from having one since they run very cool (don't need a heatsink) and takes alot of load off of your CPU when encoding which would mean that you can game alittle while your recording TV. The only problem is that they record straight into MPEG2 and hence have large file sizes (at the highest setting they can take about 3gigs/h, I perfer to use a 2gig/h setting since the picture quality isn't that far off). Some cards I would suggest are Hauppage's PVR 150 (MCE version) or ATI's E Home Wonder (the one with FM and video inputs), both have the same level of PQ and cost around $75 apiece. AIW cards aren't bad but they don't compare to a dedicated MPEG 2 encoder but if you want to hookup a console system then they're great for that too. Other then that everything looks great, your other hardware choices are rather great. Most people when building their first HTPC usually go all out with a 3.2 Prescott and 1 Gig of memory (unless your really gaming, an HTPC barely uses more then 512 of memory) and a Prescott is way too hot for an HTPC. If you want I could help you out with that PSU, I'm thinking of selling my Forton 300w and I could do the mods for you if you want it. Also I have an okay digicam if you want to retake some of those pics with it, I wouldn't mind seeing this in person. Hows that riser card? I might have to get one (hopefully a three PCI version) for an HTPC case mod I'm starting soon. What software are you going to run on it?
Small update, nothing really interesting. But I have a question, possible solution for that power supply question I had earlier. This is the cable that connects to the AIW Radeon to the motherboard, and it didnt use a standarad connector, so finding this cable in my tubs of junk was a pain. Also, it was shortened and sleeved. An overview of the ATX cable and the other motherboard cable. Only about 6 inches of sleeving was used, as the ATX cable is so short. *** DO NOT BUY THOSE CHEAP ATX pin remover tools, I snapped both edges off of mine, trying to get it to fit inside of the pin . Just stretch and bend the cables, and work at it for a bit. The sleeved cable for the Zalman Heatsink and fan, was also shortened. This is a rough sketch of the intended design of the case. Those shiny objects are the heads of the screws and washers. To solve my PSU problem, with that ground cable, I was thinking about cutting out a sheet of steel, and using it as a bottom plate for the whole case. Imagine the black outline to be the sheet. This way, 1. The power supply would be ground to that sheet, as the metal bolts touch the edges and then the bottom plate. 2. The motherboard would be grounded, which someone suggested I made sure of. 3. The bottom plate would act as a guard for scratches on the bottom. 4. If i ever needed to ground myself, I could touch this plate, instead of having to touch the other plan, which would be a plate only under the powersupply, but not on the bottom of the plexi. I would then re-route that green wire to an empty space somewhere and have it bolted to that plate as well. I really hope that this is the best / good option, as I would like to have the plate down there anyways. I was kinda worried about maybe the hard drives getting hot, so I bought this thin 15 mm Zalman fan, and it will be positioned as shown. This is another big question. I need to figure out how to mount the fans to the plexi. They need to be mounted at a 90 degree angle / perpindicular to the plexi. I cant use glue, or something permanent, as they might have to be replaced or something. I dont want to use tape, or velcro, as its not really stable and sturdy. I cant take out the fans, and then drill holes in the bottoms and use bolts, because the fins would hit the heads. I am not sure what to do. Any suggestions would be nice. I dont mind drilling holes for bolts. Thanks for any help in advance, sorry for a lousy update. @ crimandevil Thanks for the suggestions. I might think of getting a new capture card, but lack of funds is kind of preventing that from happening. Also, by now I could have got a TiVo or the DVR from Comcast .
