PROJECT: HTPC-4 Part 2

After sitting alone in the dark hot/cold attic, it emerges:HTPC-4.So I get a call on Tuesday or Wednesday from my wife. The power had gone out and when it came back on, the media center would not. Up till this point, I've been using the VCR case for my media center, with a narrow elongated PSU. It's worked out great. But either as a direct result of the power outage or impeccable timing, the PSU died. Since I didn't have a PSU of the physical description on hand, I though of my options... that pretty much boiled down to one: HTPC-4.

When I last left it, I had just finished gluing all the sides together:

I was just going to move all components from the VCR to HTPC-4, sans the irregularly sized PSU. But before that, I sanded, drilled the hole for the power button, made sure everything still mechanically functioned and fit. I needed to shave the edges of a 120mm case i wished to use due to the routing on the top was a little small, but despite that everything, uh, for lack of a better word, worked. Not precise, but with the tools and environment I have, I'm happy with it. So once I had everything fit and working, I took it all out, and began the painting process.

To paint this proper, I should have sanded more, painted slower, and applied more coats. Instead I sanded till I thought it was adequate, I painted a lot of coats, but they were too thick and still not enough... and since they were too thick, sanding was a joke. I then applied some clear coat, but both cans I had were 2/3 empty and one was having propellant issues. But I just wanted to get this done and hooked up to the TV. After it was all dry, I could definately see a lot of blemished and out right bad cuts in the MDF. But I was still OK with it. I installed everything and screwed the top down. Everything still fit and it powered on. Success.

I mounted the powerbutton on the side again, for child... well not proofing, more like resisting. I don't have any attractive buttons to use so I guess the big, attention calling, RED one will have to work for now.




I was able to get 1 120mm fan in there. I though I had some grill to cover it and the other holes, but I couldn't find them... have to keep looking I guess.



Here's a shot of the 2.5" SATA Hard Drive (commonly used in laptops) and the MicroATX PSU. You can also see a small ribbon cable connected to the FRONT PANEL header on the motherboard...


...I like to use hacked up floppy cables for this... due to the fact that I have a lot of floppy ribbon cables and no normal two pin connectors.


Sitting vertically next to the XBOX, once I get a couple of 25' HDMI's and a 25' USB extension, I'll be locating these two to the side to the couch and getting rid of the "media center" they are currently located in.

All in all, I'm glad I finally finished this one. I did perform a rush job, but it could have turned out much worse.

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...the Cube, some thoughts.

Like I've said before, this is more of an online-journal for me more than anything. So when I have experiences like I had this weekend, it only behooves me to write them down, for maybe i can be a helpful voice for someone in need, or myself again, should I forget what I did.

That said, I SPENT ALL WEEKEND WORKING ON THE STUPID CUBE.

And now that all is done and working here's my findings...

First, if you want to avoid problem after problems with a computer when you change motherboards, here's a piece of advice... A change in motherboards, should result in a FULL reinstall of the operating system. Sure it may work, even for days, weeks, or months, but in the end, it will come back and bite you. Like it did me.

Another issue that crops up with those who build their own machines is heat. Actually, this may happen more often to those who try to build there own boxes. As you can tell from the pictures below, I only have one fan acting as an intake fan in the front of the box. The only other fans are sitting on the CPU (the processor AMD, INTEL) and in the PSU (Power Supply). I'm using the onboard video and audio on this motherboard (more on that later) and after seeing a lot of discoloration and weird things happen on-screen and after touching the North and Southbridge chips on the motherboad, I decided that those puppies need cooling down.

For once, my pack-rat ways prove awesome. I had 4 or five fans that were perfect size for the chips' heatsinks. One I semi-professionaly screwed onto the heat-sink. The other I zip-tied on, decidedly un-professional, but functional. I also velcro'd the IDE ribbon cable coming off of the CD-Rom drive to the ceiling of the box, which proved to be a nusance earlier. Now the Drive sits snug in it's lair and doesn't pop out once I push the motherboard tray back into the cube.

So far everything is working awesome. I installed some games to gauge the onboard video. It's based off of the AMD 690G Chipset. I gotta say, it has impressed me immensly. I installed older games of course, but it plays Prince or Persia: The Sands of Sime pretty awesomely (and this game is made of pure awesome as well), as well as the first Splinter Cell. These are 4~5 year old games, but still required a dedicated card int their day to get any playablitity out of them. To see onboard graphics handle them, like a spoiled-red-headed-step-child is handled by swift discipline, is pretty exciting to see. I was able to watch a semi-HD movie (courtesy of Andrew) without any skips or hops. I am really curious to see what else this will handle. It also handles x264 encodes very well. I am in the process of re-encoding all my Simpsons (done) DVD's (though I only have the first 6 seasons) and all 10 seasons of Friends and they look and handle as good as I can expect.

Tonight, I think I'm going to finish setting up my game pads and cleaning up all the cables around the house and then hopefully I won't have to deal with this anymore... but I gotta say, gaming on a 32" lcd beats the 19" lcd hands down, and all from the comfort of my sofa.

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OK, here's another box I made...

I made this box, I dunno maybe a years or so ago. It's mostly 1/2" MDF, 12" wide by 12" deep by... i think 8" high. It's pretty ghetto. Well, not that ghetto. I mean, ghetto would constitute a lot less paint and a lot more duct-tape but you get the idea... basically this is me being lazy. I think the pictures make it look more awesome than it really is, but regardless I have a soft spot for it and hope to either clean it up later (re-sand, paint and add some pimp buttons) or make another one. This one really is very tight. And that's not tight as in awesome. Tight as in my wedding ring on my fat finger. I was going to say that "right now" these parts are in it... but due to some unforseen circumstances, this box is totally empty. The parts in the pictures though will probably go back in with a more powerful power supply (the one in the pictures is a 170W weakling) even though this board and the periphrials should be taken care of with.







It's got:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H
RAM: Corsair 1 G DDR2 533 (2 x 512M Sticks)
Hard Drive: 120G Seagate 5400.5
CD/DVD Rom: Some Dell Notebook Drive CD Burner, DVD Reader
TV Tuner: MSI MS-8621-010 ATI550pro
Processor: AMD Athlon64 LE 1600 2.2Ghz 45W

For now, I'm using the onboard video... which I gotta say is pretty powerful. It plays Lego Star wars at 1200x800 resolution with the eye candy on. Pretty stoked on that... have yet to see how well if fare with HD video. But, alas, I had some major issues with it once I brought it home... so that's my weekend project. Once I get the kinks out, and some money, I'd like to get a low profile CPU cooler, low profile ATI 3450 to handle the video, and a 400w power supply (which, in theory, i have... just not the right physical size)... and possibly another fan in there as it get's pretty toasty.

Well, there you go. I still have one more box that I haven't posted (actually 2, one's another homemade) and that's my main workhorse/gaming machine, if you could call it that. Maybe I'll do that later.

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