Hello, everyone. This project log marks several different firsts for me. First, off, it is my first scratch build. I've built (and re-built) many PCs over the last few years, but always in off-the-shelf cases. I've followed modding forums off and on for many, many years (beginning with one in the days before commercial watercooling, and some nut was using jelly jars and hammered-down copper pipe as waterblocks.) Really, it was bit-tech that has inspired me the most, after one day stumbling across Cheapskate and jhanlon303's C7 Watercooling project. Since, then, I've kept bit-tech as a pinned tab in my browser. Another first for me is that this will be my first build on current-gen hardware. Being a bit tight-fisted myself, I'm always at least a generation behind (given the ridiculous amounts of power in PCs over the last few years, I don't feel I'm missing out on much, tbh.) Yet another way is that this marks the first time is that I'm not using an Asus motherboard. Currently in my living room I have three PCs built on Asus boards, along with another two sitting naked in a closet. After investigating my options for the E350 boards, I almost got the E350-M PRO. However, I really wanted a Mini-ITX board, and the Asus was quite a bit more. Then one day I was again surfing Newegg to see what was available, and I found this: I looked into it, and despite the fact that it takes SO-DIMM memory, performance didn't seem to suffer. I got it on the way by itself, as that was a way to ensure that I actually got around to starting the project. I have since ordered most of the rest of what I need for it - memory, HDD, etc. One thing that was critical to me in an E350 board was that it needed 5 SATA ports. Aside from the E350-M PRO, most have 4. Since this will become a NAS/HTPC, I wanted to be able to put 5 HDDs in it. Now, the funny thing about that is, about 10 minutes after I placed the order, I was kicking around in my head the case design. I realized that when it gets down to it, the Mini-ITX wasn't entirely necessary. To be able to stuff 5 HDDs in it means the case itself will end up being large enough to take a Micro-ATX board. D'oh! Aside from that, I was planning on using a DC-DC power supply, given the huge increase in efficiency for the comparatively tiny amount of power E350 boards draw. However, that's a bit up in the air at the moment, as the total cost of one with the AC adapter is in the neighborhood of $100. I'm not entirely certain I can justify dropping that much cash on power, especially since I've got 5-6 power supplies sitting idle around the house. However, we'll see how quickly I get my tax refund and what sort of mood I'm in then. The Sapphire board is quite sexy. I wasn't planning on putting a window in the case, but now that I've seen the board in the flesh, I'm reconsidering. Look, debug LED on the board: The SATA ports are a bit unusual, as well. Rear I/O is good for a small board: Eventually I may splash out on a TV that can take advantage of the HDMI port. Also, another first - I'll have to get a USB keyboard...still all PS/2 here. Something else unusual caught my eye: Y'all tell me - has this become common? All the other I/O shields I've seen are just bare metal, not double-layer with foam between. But, I'm not complaining. If it helps reduce rattle, I'm all for it. Now, I have seen some amazing things done in Sketchup. I, however, suck hard at it. Switching to a laser mouse with adjustable dpi helped some, but not enough. So, we're gonna kick it old-school: There is a bit more to it, but it's too dark now to get decent pictures. When I update, I expect to split reaction between 'my god, that's genius' and 'wow, you suck' And my hard drive mock-up: I couldn't find any tape, so I used a glue stick and some newspaper. Also, I keep just realizing that I need to make another one. The initial incarnation will have two HDDs, a 500GB Spinpoint boot disk, and a 1TB WD Green storage disk. The Spinpoint is coming, and the WD currently resides in my main desktop. By the way, not a disk I would buy again - it's terribly slow and laggy. It makes me nervous that it's about to die every time I access it and it lags the whole box for 5 seconds. Eventually, it will probably be replaced with another Spinpoint, and the other three disks will likely be Spinpoints, as well. I will be revealing the case material later, and that, too, will be a 'genius/suck' opinion splitter, I expect. However, once it's done, I hope most everyone will be swayed to the good side. This isn't going to be anything outlandish compared to a lot of projects, but it will be different than anything I've seen so far. I'll probably update tomorrow, and we'll see how it goes from there. Once I can settle in and really start playing with the mock-up parts, I'll get a better idea of what it will really look like, as compared to the picture in my head.
