Show Your HTPC Setup - Page 33

Here's the one I built this week.

Silverstone ML03B case
Silverstone Strider 400W power supply
Enermax UC-8EB 80mm fans (two of them)
AS Rock H77M motherboard
Intel Core i3-3220T processor
Kingston HyperX Blue 4GB memory kit
Intel 330 60GB SSD (boot drive)
Western Digital Green 2TB Sata III HD (storage drive)
LG 12x BluRay drive

All the links are to Amazon. I ordered there because I live in Hawaii. NewEgg wanted like $90 to ship everything. With my Prime membership (which is less than $90) shipping was free for 3 - 7 days (you can't get free 2 day shipping to Hawaii with Prime). Including an HDHomeRunPrime (only using it for unencrypted QAM) and some miscellaneous cables, I think it came to around $750.


You can see the low profile cooler that comes with the i3 I got. It's noisy running at 100%, but using SpeedFan I keep it at around 40% and it runs quiet. SpeedFan will spin the fan up if the processor gets too hot.


Silverstone wasn't kidding about the tolerances for the power supply and optical drive. Both those parts are the maximum recommended by Silverstone for this case. To make it all fit you have to have right angle SATA power and data connections. The SATA power connections on the power supply are right angle, and the motherboard came with one right angle SATA data connector.

That space where all the extra power cables are bundled is actually the 2.5 inch drive bay. I honestly don't know how you could actually fit three drives in this case unless you can find a modular power supply shallow enough.


I used the "third" drive mount for the SSD. That black cable coiled above it is the USB3 header cable for the front USB3 ports. The cable is over 18 inches long, and I don't understand why. It's long enough to almost wrap around the case. Silverstone could have done a 9" cable and still been fine.


And here's the finished product.

I'm Gonna go with this case..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133044

Ummm.....spot the HTPC in this....
Edited by kapone - 1/19/13 at 5:20am

Why did you build the rack sideways? Better cooling?

Better question is why did he frame his house sideways.

(Hint: Rotate pic 90 degrees clockwise.)

Not my fault. AVS decided to reconfigure the framing on my house....

The picture is in portrait mode...but AVS won't allow me to change it.

I think I was experimenting with anti gravity features. The cooling is actually the same in both orientations....



better?

Very nice. So, does that have a full petabyte of storage?

That's a lot less than a Yottabyte. (yes it's named after him in starwars)

In fact, the combined space of all the computer hard drives in the entire world does not amount to even one yottabyte.

Samsung 46 inch LED.
NMediaPC case for ATX mobo
gigabyte motherboard circa 2007 so an 870
Radon 7xxx GPU
AMD x2 3.1 CPU
HT Omega Claro APU
16 GB ram
Windows 8 Pro with WMC
About 8 TB in a storage space divided into music, moves, tv, photos, files. New Win8 feature.
Hauppague 1600 TV tuner
Logitech Z-5500 speaker system -- grille covers to return in 3 days.
On the roof is a Winegard antenna.

Doing S/PDIF from Claro to Logitech in DTS interactive for decent sound.

When the colonel allows I will HDMI to a future AVR for trueHD sound.

Also need to get more wine for the wine fridge apparently.

Just finished doign a rebuild of my machine this weekend.

Old (from 2009):
Intel E5200
Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H
4 GB DDR2 - 800
180GB notebook HD, SATA
MSI GeForce 520GT 1GB DD3 (added 2011)

New:
Intel i3 2550 - $119.99
Biostar - H77MU3 - $69.99 - $50 combo rebate - $10.00 mail in rebate
8GB DDR3-1600 - $41.99 - $5 combo rebate
Samsung 840 120GB SATA III SSD - $119.99 - $20 instant rebate - $20 combo rebate

Bought from Microcenter as they seemed to have the best deals. I originally wanted an AMD chip (either A8 or A10), but Microcenter didn't carry and A8 and only had the 100W version of the A10. I figured an A6 would work, which they had, but the only motherboards they had were 2 ATX's that wouldn't fit, an ITX which would have been fine, but apparently has major problems with a small fire breaking out on the board and two 85 chipset boards that had more stuff than I needed for an HTPC and was reflected in the price.

So went Intel and have to say I am pleased. Total of just under $250 for a major upgrade is pretty great (especially since I think I spent about $450 on the original rig!) The old rig seemed to really be slowing down, despite a recent rebuild. I guess whatever junk MSFT loads into its updates and maybe the TMT5 updates were just too much for it. TMT5 took forever to open from MB. New machine screams. From cold start to Media Center in about 9 seconds. Media Browser flies (also took a bit to load everything on the old maching in MB) which greatly improves WAF. I used Assassins guide to set up all the software and so far so good! Unfortunately the wife has ADHD and put the kobosh on my plan to really customize the backgrounds (apparently that distracts her), so a bit plane IMO.

With the old machine, frankly I was starting to get really annoyed with the HTPC. Seriously considered giving it up, but my faith has been renewed!

OK I'll play:







HTPC:
Windows 7 x64 running XBMC v12 "Frodo"
Antec ISK 300-150 Case
Intel i3-530 CPU
Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 Motherboard
2x2GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Intel 80GB SSD
DVD Burner
RC6 IR Receiver with Harmony 650 Remote
Edited by Smitty2k1 - 2/4/13 at 7:09pm

Get those LPs vertical!

+1

Yup.

Just wanted to post my new Silverstone passive CPU cooler. Getting good temps even when ripping and watching 1080p DTS-HD Blu-ray movies. This is in the middle of switching out my back 60mm fans to Noctuas. Running 2 60mm fans exhaust and 1 92mm fan for intake. I switched over from a Scythe Ninja, for some reason I was getting a high pitch whine when the fan speed was on low; tried a couple different fans and still persisted so decided to try this passive cooler. I was concerned it wouldn't be good enough as I have my PC in a rack and like to close the glass door but so far its been awesome. No issues at all and the highest temp I've seen on HWmonitor is mid 60's so it should be fine even in the summer. I'm running an undervolted i3 2100.
Just fits in the OrigenAE S14v
Also wanted to say thanks to all the members for all the great tutorials and guides that helped me build this and my new Unraid server!
Old cooler.


New setup





Old Pioneer in the rack, haven't taken a pic of my Onkyo replacement.

Edited by Cujo74 - 2/10/13 at 9:22am

cntara or anybody know the furniture being used to place the TV and matching AV rack ?

The AV Rack is Lovan Sovereign Series.

http://www.lovanusa.com/index.php?cPath=21_25

VTI makes a similar rack for substantially less if you are on a budget.

VTI BL Series

Think I posted in this thread a long time ago but since it appears to have awakened again I thought I'd post some current pics.

 

BDI Avion entertainment center. Center speaker hides behind the cloth covered door at the top.

 

 

 

 

 

HTPC is in an Antek ISK-310 case.

 

• Intel i3-2125
• Intel DH77DF mobo
• 8GB RAM
• Intel 120GB SSD
• Digital Devices Cine-S2 twin sat tuner
• Win 8 Pro w/ Media Center

 

 

 

When we redecorated the room last year I spent some time hiding all speaker and network wiring inside the walls, with a plate at each speaker location.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately not much I can do about the snake's nest behind the equipment rack.

 

 

Other gear in the theater room:

 

• Marantz AV7005 pre-pro
• Emotiva UPA-7 7-ch amp
• PS3
• Wii
• LG 55LW550W TV
• Euroscreen One motorized screen
• Benq W6500 projector
• Elac FS127 fronts & rears
• Elac CC121 center
• Infinity Classia C255ES surrounds
• Canton ASW30 sub

 

In the datacenter (well, storage room :))

 

Fiber converter. Probably the most critical component in the house. 1 Gbit/s downlink, 100 Mbit/s up. I just love what this does 

 

 

 

• Cisco RV042G dual-WAN router
• Used HP rack picked up for ~$25 after a server refresh at a local company
• HP Procurve 8-port managed switch
• HP SE1102 server w/ dual quad core Xeons, running email, web servers and backup storage on Windows Server 2012 Standard. Off eBay :) Overkill? Definitely.
• Home/media server running Server 2012 Essentials. Case is a Supermicro SC933 (also off eBay) with 15 hotswap bays, all filled by various drives. Phenom X4-965 CPU, Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 mobo, 3ware 9500s 8-port SATA adapter. 8GB RAM.

 

 

 

 

Fiber converter?

That's what my ISP calls it. "Fiber-to-LAN switch" may be a better name. WAN fiber in, RJ45 LAN ports out. 

 

It's got 5 LAN ports so I get 5 IP addresses of which one is fixed and the rest dynamic. I only use 2, one for each WAN port on my router.

Except that there is no fiber going in to that unit. 2x RJ-45 Copper connections and a power cord. That looks like a simple router.

Edit: You said you are using 2x Ethernet to your dual wan router so the fiber must be coming through the wall behind the unit. My mistake.

Yes like google fiber. wish i had it in my area

avidracer, those guides on the floor convering your speaker wire, is that a purpose made componet? If so, who, where, & how much. Or did you (ingeniously, I might add) just go to a big-box-store & just get some of those wall guides that you just set on the floor. The way you have made that room have a high WAF AND the use of high quality audio design is to be commended.

That's right. The other side of that wall is actually under the ground; the fiber is in a conduit buried about 2 feet down and enters the house through the wall right behind the fiber converter.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

And yet the NSA is building a facility in Utah that can process yottabytes of information!


http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/