mini HTPC build (Habey EMC-800B, i3-2100T, SSD, etc.) - KEEPING IT SIMPLE - Page 9

CPU temps are around 34C at idle, 42C after playing 1080p bluray rip for an hour, and about 68C after running Prime95 for 30 minutes.

Well everybody, I finally put the system together. It's a very tight fit with an optical drive and the stock HSF with the A4 3400. The previous thread with the flat cool pipes seems promising. I noticed that the specs said with the results advertised the double asterisk states: ** To obtain this figure the condensing end should be at least 20 - 25 % of the length of the Cool Pipe above the heat source end. Looks like it'll work great. It will be something I will use in the future, and that'll enable me to have the hard drive and optical drive within the case if I choose. For now I will use the optical drive and hard drive outside the case. I can route the sata cables through serial port cutouts and attach the cover of the case, or I can install the hard drive and slim optical drive into external cases and run them with esata. Not sure if I can find an HSF with a smaller height footprint for FM1.

I'm installing the OS now and getting the system prepared to perform some tests. I shall report later.

-William

Look for the Gelid Slim Silence. 28m high... that's pretty low! Works with FM1 (read that somewhere).

If I remember correctly, he stripped the enclosure of his SSD and put it under the motherboard.

Thanks Balinus. That looks promising, as well. I was going to replace the heatsink compound with some TC-0098 I had laying around from previous projects and when I went to pull the heatsink away from the CPU, I found that the rolling locker (bad design) had flipped back to the unlock position which was the reason I was getting wide range of temps during loads. Also the HTPC likes to shutoff during PCMARK 7 tests, even though it is still at about 34 or 36C during the test. Not sure what that is about. Received the slim sata to sata adapter today, so going to see how well the bluray drive I bought works with the system.

-William

What sizes did you order? I am going to see if they will send me a sample as well

For the cpu, I got the 2040A127, which according to their numbering system is 2mm thick, 40mm wide and 127 mm long. They also gave me a 1220A100, which I used on the SB chip. If you can, I would get something a little longer than 127mm, since you want to maximize the length of the condensing area, and for my motherboard and its cpu placement, I don't have quite as much condensing area as I would like. I think with a little longer coolpipe, and more condensing area, I could get the temps down even more.

The company did say that they won't sell small quantities to the public, only OEMs. And they will only sell lots of 200 to 500 pieces. As far as I can tell, there are no resellers here in the US, or anywhere else for that matter. These coolpipes are pretty amazing and unique, so I'm hoping that someone here will see this, bring in some stock, and sell me some for further builds. There's nothing like a small, completely silent and cool htpc. Good luck.

Did you try running the flat heatpipe without the heatsinks attached to the case? I think the heatsinks take away from the "character" of the case - in other words, it looks quite wild with the heatsinks on the sides and a little out of place in an A/V rack (just my opinion!).

How does that heatribbon attach to the CPU?

Requested a sample of 1x 1220A100 and 1x 2040A150A maybe if the price is right I will buy the smallest lot they offer and resell them.

I didn't try that. While the case is pretty thick aluminum, I don't know if it would have enough heat dissipation ability by itself. Besides, I think it is better to keep the case itself, with everything inside it, as cool as possible, and draw the heat outside. I don't know - the case with heatsinks looks OK to me in my A/V rack. There are other heatsink cases from Streacom and others, which are very expensive, that have the same kind of look. And there are other a/v component cases that have heatsinks. Maybe make them black instead of raw aluminum. I guess it's a personal decision.

It just lays on the cpu, with some Arctic Silver, and I hold it in place with an old cpu heatsink bracket to ensure good contact. That is key to good heat transfer.

I didn't get prices yet, but they sell lots of 250 to 1000 pieces depending on size. I'll ask the sales guy how much per piece. I would go in with you. Maybe a group buy. Or get one of the vendors here to do it. I would definitely like to buy more of these for my builds.

Greeting again. I added two fans for intake and exhaust and have dropped the internal temps about 6C. With the cover on without any exhaust or intake fans it was hovering around 40 to 45C, and now it will stay around 35C when not doing much. So far I have the optical drive laying on top of the case with the sata power and data connectors routed through the rear of the case.

I will put the drive back in the case and see how much it spoils the air flow above the stock HSF and see how high the temps get. Not bad for stock equipment. Last night I played high def Lord of the Rings - Return of the King for a while and the temps got up to 50C without any intake/exhaust fans. So I think the fans will help tremendously for now until I get more funds to experiment with other cooling adventures.

Thank you all for the input about different cooling methods and where to get them. This information will help others when they stumble upon this thread.

-William

We'd be interested in discussing this.

I was unable to get the sales guy to tell me their prices. They want the part number and quantity, and then they will provide a quote.

This is really cool, I'd definitely be interested to see what a kit would cost for the parts in the photos.

I was discussing HTPC builds with a friend and he mentioned the PicoPSU-150-XT. Has anyone looked at or used these with their mini itx builds?

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/picopsu_150

Looks pretty nifty.

-William

I am using this one http://www.amazon.com/picoPSU-150-XT...879939&sr=8-1a works like a champ. I probably could have got away with as little as a 90W, but wanted a little more room in case I wanted to make some changes.

The Habey cases already come with a very small form factor PSU within them. A pico would only be necessary if you need greater than 60w or even a smaller form factor.

Well when I have the optical drive and hard drive hooked up to it, and I change anything in the bios of the A75M-ITX, it'll become quite unstable and shutdown randomly. Can't even run benchmarking tests cause of it. The PSU 12V line will drop to 10.9V all the time. So either the Habey external PSU isn't that great, or the mobo is messed up (been running fine for the last few hours while ripping dvds), or the internal power supply is faulty. If I disconnect the drives, I can change BIOS options like crazy and it'll be happy, but once I hook drives to it, then the 12V power line dips to 10.9V.

So I'm thinking the supply to the system isn't enough. That's why I was looking into other power supply options.

-William

How are these held on, did you prep the surfaces in any way?

Hello everybody,

My system has been stable so far since yesterday when I powered it on from sleep. The ASRock Extreme Tuning Utility shows the 12V line not dip below 11.4V when I had all the drives connected. I ripped dvds all day and played a bluray movie with the optical drive via powerdvd and windows media center, and the temps stayed at 40C. When I get the funds, I'm going to try a different cooling solution so I can put the optical drive inside the case. Thanks for all the input and suggestions. It's turning out to be a nice machine the more I work with it.

I've never ran across a motherboard where if you change an option in the bios, it all goes crazy and the system becomes flaky. Are there motherboards that have issues and do that? I actually had to disconnect the drives, then change options, then reconnect them... especially when changing the sata mode to AHCI from IDE. I would change onboard options to enable or disable devices and it'd shutdown right after changing those options. Also the board uses UEFI, so not sure if that'd be part of the issue, as well. Hopefully I didn't get a flaky A75M-ITX.

-William

It happens all the time Platypus. It is one of the problems of buying the latest and greatest and often they may simply put out another board revision rather than fix something with a BIOS update.

So I finally had time to rip a 3" hole in the top of my Habey. CPU temps dropped almost 20C!!!! Wow.

The automotive tape that I used is the real deal. The fan cover is on there and I can't even budge it.

All in all I am very happy. If habey would do this themselves then they would have a real winner of a case, imo.

Sweet! Did you center the hole directly over the HSF? Remind me again, what HSF are you running? Stock 2100T?

Well, I tried my best to center it. Probably off by about a quarter inch or so. I can feel the air getting sucked in when I put my hand over the grill. Pretty nice.

I am using the Silverstone low profile CPU fan in silent mode. But I think with this setup you could use the stock intel low profile cooler.

glad it worked out well for you.

I think that you could get rid of the CPU fan and just leave the heatsink, no?

Nice mod!