Streacom Passive HTPC Build

B

burgerkong

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 12, 2012
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117
A teaser for now, haven't gone through all of my pictures yet.

Case - Streacom FC5-OD
Mobo - Gigabyte G1 Sniper M3 (got a pretty good deal on it, needed the features over power savings)
Proc - i3 3225 (mainly because of the HD4000 graphics)
Ram - 8GB Samsung Low Voltage
Storage - Intel 330 Series 120GB SSD
PSU - Standard 150W PicoPSU

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Brendan
 
Nice looking case! How much did you get it for? What are your main uses for your HTPC? Let us know how it performs!
 
$247 plus shipping plus the PSU. Main uses? Streaming and watching videos mainly, web surfing etc and light gaming.

Here are more pics:

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PicoPSU and the AC/DC converter.

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Thiiiiiiiick front panel.

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Parts (aside from the Blu-Ray burner which is on a ship heading here from China).

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Mock fitting.

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Lapped all the thermal coupling blocks flat (I know, it's not a mirror finish, went up to 2000 grit).

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Installed! Arguably the hardest part of the build, used up my entire tube of IC Diamond. Had to scrounge up some Arctic Silver to complete the jobby, no clue why Streacom did not include any thermal paste...

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Power and SATA3 cables in place for future 3.5" hard drive expansion. Still waiting on the slim SATA adapter cable to plug the Blu-Ray burner in, allocated a molex connector on the bottom right.

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3.5" hard drive mocked in place.

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Now for the stress testing portions, sure an i3 doesn't put out that much heat, but the heatsinks still got plenty hot. Ran Prime95 + MSE full antivirus scan for a day just to be safe (partially because I wanted to cure the thermal paste) and found that the temps maxed out at around 70C, which is impressive for a completely fanless case.

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Not bad for a consumer SSD.

Some of my opinions after buttoning up the system:

PROS
+Looks amazing
+Passive cooling system works pretty well
+Can fit a surprisingly amount of hardware inside
+Solid construction

MINUSES
-Too many parts make up the case, introduces flex because there are a lot of screw joints, would be better if the sinks were one piece
-Top and bottom panels could be thicker
-Finish could be better, but I understand the 'EVO' edition fixes this
-Cost!
-Unused heatsinks on the left of the case, would be better of the heatpipes were split between the two banks of heatsinks

So far I'm quite satisfied with the system. The SSD definitely speed things up a lot. My boot times were in the 15 second range with the standard installation of Windows 7 before any optimization. It has obviously slowed down a tad bit due to the programs I installed. The HD4000 graphics are amazing and effortless, I do not understand why anyone would pay for a more expensive i5 for HTPC duties (or even i7's) - the i3 is PLENTY.

HOWEVER, the best part of it all? 100% WAF AND its absolutely SILENT.

Brendan
 
Building another HTPC and an office workstation on a budget (I've tried out the HD4000 in my Streacom build and it's fairly impressive). HTPC won't be used for games at all, purely playing back hi res and other video files plus some web browsing. Possibly playback from dvd/blu-ray but I'll have a dedicated blu-ray player (Oppo). Any encoding will be done on another computer, I use a network drive to store my files so barely any encoding will be done on the HTPC. From what I've read, the HD2500 doesn't have a lot of grunt in games, but playback should be fine.

I presume that it's ideal for basic workstation use (internet mainly and word processing/spreadsheets, no gaming)? I am upgrading the office computer from a Pentium 4.

Brendan
 
This must be what they call computer porn. :) Naked pictures of a hot case.

Joking aside, my guess is that the HD4000 should be fine for displaying 1080p content. Does the machine need to do any audio transcoding while playback?
 
Probably not. It's mostly for playing back mkv and stuff downloaded off of shady places. I have a dedicated blu-ray and dvd player for other stuff.
 
burgerkong said:
Probably not. It's mostly for playing back mkv and stuff downloaded off of shady places. I have a dedicated blu-ray and dvd player for other stuff.
Click to expand...
What I meant by transcoding was to adapt the Dolby/DTS tracks into another output format based on whatever audio device is connected to this HTPC. Do you have to convert to multiple audio channels? Or you're just connecting the digital stream to a hardware decoder?
 
cengique said:
What I meant by transcoding was to adapt the Dolby/DTS tracks into another output format based on whatever audio device is connected to this HTPC. Do you have to convert to multiple audio channels? Or you're just connecting the digital stream to a hardware decoder?
Click to expand...

Oooooh, nope. No need, I was just going to use HDMI to transport everything to my processor then that to amps.
 
Wow, nice build. Your fingers must be a lot more nimble than mine. I built my HTPC with the biggest Silverstone case they make and it was still difficult to work on.
 
Bad news.

To everyone with a power brick from Streacom/Wesena/Perfect Home Theatre, be careful with the external power brick BTW, mine died in a little under a month. I opened it up and found CRAP soldering, and connections that broke off due to cold solders and whatnot:

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A baby could solder better! I will need to reflow the connections as I have to pay to ship it back, which I thought was ridiculous as any reseller should stand behind their product especially if it was an issue a consumer could not foresee. Utter garbage.

Brendan
 
Last edited:
burgerkong said:
Bad news.

To everyone with a power brick from Streacom/Wesena/Perfect Home Theatre, be careful with the external power brick BTW, mine died in a little under a month. I opened it up and found CRAP soldering, and connections that broke off due to cold solders and whatnot:

A baby could solder better! I will need to reflow the connections as I have to pay to ship it back, which I thought was ridiculous as any reseller should stand behind their product especially if it was an issue a consumer could not foresee. Utter garbage.

Brendan
Click to expand...

Yup, I ended up RMA'ing a motherboard and 2 different memory combo's before I figure out the problem with my powersupply from them and returned it and replaced it with a better one. Using a ITX-6 case and a A75M-ITX case now. Wish I knew the PSU was bad as the Gigabyte ITX motherboard I RMA'd was a better choice, but too late now.
 
Did you get the 'real' PicoPSU from Mini-Box? The guy that runs PHT said I was the second person who had an issue with the power brick.
 
does the case include a riser for an expansion slot? Is it a full sized expansion slot?
 
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