Show Your HTPC Setup - Page 2

Wow all good stuff.. so embarassing to show mine

Rock solid and the best hobby I've gotten into.







P

Polypro: ... how'd you do the vertical HDD mounting?

I've got both fans blowing out (hence the ducting), with passive-only intake from the back and through the grille above the CPU cooler, a Scythe Andy Samurai Master. I tried the Mini Tower, like Polypro, but Andy beat it by a good 5C presumably because of the vertical vs horizontal fans in combination with the airflow direction.

When overclocking (very occasionally), I place an ingoing fan on top of the top grille. It's controlled by Speedfan to only start up if either core of an e4400 hits 55C, which only ever happens at more than 75% load on a 60% overclock (2GHz -> 3.21GHz).

Just got HTPC hooked up yesterday. Firing up Ratatouile on the LG combo drive and hearing 5.1 LCPM on the surround system was downright orgasmic. My HTPC is also for gaming on the big screen as I do not have an Xbox or Playstation.




Here are the specs:
Case OrigenAE X11
Motherboards Asus P5W DH
CPU E6600 at 3.4Ghz
3G Corsair Dominator PC800 RAM
Scythe Andy Samurai cooler
EVGA 8800 GTS stock cooler
Optical Drive LG HD-DVD/Blue-ray combo drive
OS Vista Ultimate
Sound Card Azuzentech X-Meridian
Boot drive WD 320G
Storage WD 500G x 2 in Raid 0
PSU Seasonic S12 650W

I made a couple of modifications since heat is a big concern inside the media cabinet. I drilled a hole in the top for the Scythe air cooler fan as well as adding another 120mm fan on the right side to pull air in. In addition I mounted a 92mm Nexus fan blowing towards the back over the sound card and pulling air from the fan blowing up from below the hard drives. The computer is just barely audible when the room is totally silent from the couch, and inaudible as soon as the TV fan kicks in (which is WAY too loud.)

AV setup






TV 61" JVC D-ILA rear projector HD61FH97
Receiver Denon 4802
DVD-A/SACD universal player Marantz VC6001
TIVO series 3 DVR
Speakers Anthony Gallo Reference 3 L/R plus Refernce SA amplifier, AV Reference Center , A'Diva Ti x 3 for surrounds (6.1 configuration)

Hmm bezoar, are they getting enough ventilation in your cupboard?

I put a hard drive bolt with a washer through the vents that are in the case floor. There's only one per drive, but it works fine.

P

Ventilation seems adequate so far. Even when under full load stress testing with Orthos my CPU temps are maxing at 55 C. GPU temps are 65-70. I ran most of the cables under the MB and optical drive so air flow is unimpeded. Its hard to tell in the picture but I removed the backing on the media cabinet so the rear is completely open (its about 8 inches from the back wall.) I'll probably replace it with stereo grill covering at some point. My only concern is summertime since we don't have air conditioning (like everyone else in Seattle) and it occasionally will get in the 90's in the house.

Only issue I'm having is the driver not responding crash with the 8500GT card. Workaround right now is that it auto reboots itself and launches VMC so often times we don't even realize it crashed.

Very clean ny888. I've always liked the enclosed cabinets too but that's personal preference. Wish I had the tinted glass, that's a nice touch. (300 rocks, my favorite HD movie in my limited collection at the moment.)

How do you guys read the screen? I'm about 8 feet away, but even with a 61 inch screen the font is a little small at 1920x1080.

Same here - I increase the font size when I really have to read what's on the screen.

I tried that but for some reason after I did it all the dialog boxes showed up truncated.

Some nice setups here. I can't wait to get my HTPC built.

Higher resolution = smaller letters. I have a 40" (720p) and sit about 8-10 feet away. I can read it, but some text is harder than others.

Yamaha your vision is better than mine. I sit the same distance and can barely read the list of threads on this website. Guess that means I'll have to get a bigger screen. 120" should do the trick I think.

Hey ny888, great pics!! Dumbass question: What software are you running there? Is that Windows MCE or Vista or one of these freeware apps?

It's Vista Media Center with MyMovies plug-in.

Okay, here's mine:

• Focal JMlab front & center speakers
• NHT SuperZero surrounds
• Velodyne SPL-800i subwoofer
• SkyHD STB
• Topfield TV5000PVRt/HDMI STB
• Xbox 360
• Yamaha RX-V1800 receiver
• HTPC (Ahanix MCE303 case, Core 2 Quad 6600, HD DVD)
• Invideo HomeCinema Gray 83" screen
• Xenarc 7" VGA touch screen
• Panasonic PT-AX100 projector

/politby

Some great setup's guys, I'll get mine posted asap

you seem to be missing the DVD drive cover, it'd look much better with it on.

I have the mce301 in silver . It's the best looking case around, IMO. I swapped out dimmer blue LEDs for the power button, though.

I like the looks of the Ahanix mce301, 302, & 303's too. The problem I have with them is that they only accept low-profile expansion cards. Well, that, and that crazy idea of using a parallel cable to connect the VFD.
But what are you guys using for video cards and TV tuners in those slim cases?

I was debating with myself what to do. In order to fit the DVD drive cover flush, I would have to move the drive so far back into the case that the chassis button wouldn't reach the drive's eject button if I didn't add a spacer or something, so I never got around to mounting the cover.

After a while I decided that I think it actually looks better without the cover, besides the cover has no HD DVD logo.

But now that you mention it, I'm starting to think about it again...

/politby

The 303 has a USB connected VFD, IRtrans compatible. I think this is much better than the iMON variety because it works with the MCE remote out of the box and also with LCDsmartie, which allows you to completely customize what the display shows.

As far as the expansion cards go, there are now a number of low profile graphics cards good enough for 1080p HD content that makes this a non-issue. And at least here in Europe, there are several options for TV cards which are also low profile so I didn't find this much of a problem. I'm not using my HTPC for TV though since there's no HD content to speak of available on terrestrial, and MCE doesn't support the DVB-S2 standard for satellite HD.

My video card is a Leadtek WinFast 8500GT low profile.

/politby

mine:

try removing the original cover. it usually slides off the dvd with a bit of force. after that, you don't have to pus the dvd into the chassis so far and the chassis button will likely hit the eject button.

wow, looks sweeeet!

Here are the specs on mine:
Silverstone LC14m case w/ vfd and Imon
Corsair 520w PSU
Intel E6600 C2D 2.4ghz
Asus P5B Deluxe MB (I use onboard SPDIF)
Gskill 2GB DDR800 RAM
(2) 320GB WD HD in RAID1
LG GGC-H20L BluRay/HD DVD Drive
LiteOn DVD-RW 16x
Gigabyte 8600GTS passive cooled
Linksys Wireless G pci card
Logitech Harmony 880
Philips 42" PF7320A Plasma
Pioneer 1015tx A/V receiver

Software:
Windows XP SP2
PowerDVD Ultra
Meedio
Media Player Classic
ffdshow
AC3 Filter

This is just a temporary location until my basement is finished. It will be connected to a projector in the basement.








Time to fire it up.


A crappy pic I took of Spiderman3 BluRay and Dawn of the Dead DVD




All in all this has been a fun project and it works awesome with my harmony remote. I am working on building a NAS for all my media, so I can stream it to any display or TV in the house. =)

DC2R714

Does the harmony communicate with the IR receiver built into the Silverstone case? Did you silverstone case come with the iMoN remote control? Can you proram the harmony to control the PC? i.e. launch power dvd, control PowerDVD etc?

Thanks