Mini-ITX Mod From old 7" TV

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MATRIXSHARK

Gawd
Joined
Nov 2, 2007
Messages
830
I Had a pretty normal Mini-ITX Case as my HTPC and frankly it bugged me just how "big" it actually was.

I set out to "re"-make it as small as possible. One of the other constraints that I set: Use as close to nothing new as possible. That means I could only cobble this together out of "leftover parts" etc.

I had an old 70 Watt DC to DC Power supply leftover from an old project, a leftover 2.5" Laptop Drive, an old Dell Laptop Power Brick (19 Volt output unfortunately), some misc fans, and other goodies. I felt I was in pretty good shape to begin this project.

I looked at some old junk laying around as a new Donor.... Old DirecTV receivers, not bad. An Old Battery Backup UPS, some potential... AH! This old 7" Cube TV, Perfect!!

The Motherboard is the Zotac Dual Core Atom/ION with Wifi. 1.6 GHz stock clock and it OC's to 2.0 GHz flawlessly. For HDD and Power LED's I cut up some acrylic and mounted Some Blue LED's into it (Sorry, I don't have a good pic of the HDD red LED in action). Here's the pics:

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Success!! It now occupies less than 1/4 the space as the old beast. The only thing I had to purchase was a Power Regulator that would drop the 19V laptop power supply down to 12v. Total cash out of pocket for this mod = $4.
 
Last edited:
MattyC said:
Neat project. How are the temps?
Click to expand...

Thanks. OC'd to 2.0 GHz, Coretemp reports low 40's. The cpu fan is a stock i5 fan I had leftover. It moves more air and is quieter than the crappy Zotac one that was too noisy. With the intel fan the temps are what they were in the "big" case so no loss in cooling by cramming it all in that little case.
 
MATRIXSHARK said:
Thanks. OC'd to 2.0 GHz, Coretemp reports low 40's. The cpu fan is a stock i5 fan I had leftover. It moves more air and is quieter than the crappy Zotac one that was too noisy. With the intel fan the temps are what they were in the "big" case so no loss in cooling by cramming it all in that little case.
Click to expand...
Good to hear. I was just curious as I had issues with Shuttle compact cases in the past when I wanted to construct compact PCs. That said, this was many years ago (mid-2000's).
 
The Atom/Ion plus laptop HDD sips power. HOWEVER, that intel fan plus the small exhaust fan turned out to be annoyingly loud. The way I feel is that, if I can hear it, it's too loud.

I switched the cpu fan for a scythe that is silent and got rid of the small exhaust fan.... It was now totally silent. I mean with my ear right on the case the only thing I could hear was the 2.5 HDD. Big problem though: temps scyrocketed... It was chilling in the mid 40's before. But, now it was closing in on 90!

I wasn't willing to give up and just go back to the noisy fans. So, back to the dremel. I cut a huge hole in the bottom and put in some black metal mesh and in the top I molded in another ABS vent. This brought temps back down to tolerable (59-60ish) and it's still silent.
 
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