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CD Player + water = HTPC!

T

Teancum

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 12, 2003
Messages
275
For years, my mother had plants in the entertainment center above the stereo. She had the problem, however, of overwatering her plants just about every time. It eventually caught up with her. Twice. With two busted CD players.

I saw an opportunity. I mean, what HTPC case could possibly fit better in a home theater setup than a case intended to be part of a home theater setup? So I'm planning on building a computer (well, more like taking the guts of my current setup and sticking them) in the shell of this CD player. I'll be using a Biostar M7VIZ, Athlon XP 1800, some RAM (don't know how much yet) and a weak video card that has an S-video out connector. Add a large hard drive and DVD, and it'll be great for HT.

So I went ahead and learned a few things about how to use 3DStudio Max and took a look at how it turns out. Here are a couple renders of what it will look like with the top removed. The dark maroon is the DVD, the hard drive is hidden underneath (I was too lazy to put it in), and the thing behind the DVD drive is a small flex-ATX PSU. Everything's a tight fit--even with a small graphics card, it has to be on a riser card, and the CPU Heatsink (Zalman 3100) barely clears the cover.

render01.jpg

render02.jpg



There's only one question: Airflow. I'd like to have as few fans as possible, and make as few holes on the top and sides as possible.

What I'm thinking is this: make a vent right next to the CPU HS for intake. Cool air goes across the HS and out through an 80mm fan next to the DVD drive. Will this give me enough air flow? If not, what else could I do?
 
i would recommend a big 120mm stealth fan on top, you can leave the currect holes that i assume are in the case there, or you can put a grill over it, i would recommend the blow hole because the 2 80mms are going to leave lots of dead space in the corners near the cards/harddrive i assume, the blowhole also get's rid of the heat that will build up in this small space.
 
Originally posted by Bananadog
i would recommend a big 120mm stealth fan on top, you can leave the currect holes that i assume are in the case there, or you can put a grill over it, i would recommend the blow hole because the 2 80mms are going to leave lots of dead space in the corners near the cards/harddrive i assume, the blowhole also get's rid of the heat that will build up in this small space.
Click to expand...
then the water would fall into it :p

i suggest building the case a little larger, and making places for the fans on the side to pull air from the back of the case

fans.JPG

(exit fans the same)

this would also move some of the sound the fans make to the back
 
If you are worried about heat, i would go with a older slower CPU, like a 1ghz Duron
 
@Bananadog -
There's not enough room for a 120mm fan, although that may not be real clear from the pictures. Two 80mm fans could sit side by side, however. I won't be able to fit a fan right next to the Zalman (not enough room), so I was hoping to have one 80mm on top (blowing out) create enough suction to pull enough air through an intake next to the Zalman to cool it.

Right now, there are no holes in the case. Well, except for the ones I've dremeled to fit the connectors on the MB backplate.

I forgot to mention that the bottom of the case is being replaced by a piece of acrylic/plexi/lexan/whatever. Another idea I had was to drill a bunch of holes through the plexi right underneath the hard drive to provide better airflow across that.

@Pico -
Yours is a good idea, but I was hoping to leave the case totally stock and have an end result that looks like the original as much as possible.

@Grizzly -
I'm using the AthlonXP because I have it on hand, and I want to make sure I have plenty of horsepower to play DivX movies.

Other ideas I have for this mod:
- All the screw connectors (the ones monitors, serial ports, printers, etc connect to) on the MB I/O plate screw through the back of the case to the motherboard. So the MB is firmly attached to the back plate and less stress is placed on the motherboard itself when plugging/unplugging stuff. I've already done this.
- the buttons are all in place on the face and on the circuit board behind the front panel, so I'm planning on using those to control stuff. Does anybody have recommendations on how to do this? I have a keyboard with a good chip inside but with a broken case, and I was thinking about hooking buttons up (through a bit of circuitry) to the keyboard IC.
- VFD where the old one was - this probably won't happen ($$$), but maybe eventually
- wireless keyboard/mouse like this one.
 
If speed isnt a major concern I would underclock the CPU, that would make a difference if your worried that much about heat.
 
Actually - can you make the older AMD XP's into mobiles? That would lower the voltage thus lowering the temp while keeping the same speed
 
I also had the idea of installing a switch (connected to jumpers) to drop the FSB from 133 to 100. Although I'm not sure how useful that would be...
 
A slim 60mm fan won't fit next to the HS?

Are you sure there is not enough room for a 1/2 height video card? My VCRpc was only tall enough for me to fit 60mm fans in the side and a 1/2height vid card fit fine. I just cut the holes the same as the card plate and used the VGA plug nuts to hold it in place.

There are plenty of 1/2 height 9200se versions at $40-50 with VGA, S-video, and RCA out. Check out Saphire's line at newegg. They have a large selection of em.
 
A slim 60mm fan *would* fit, but I decided against it for two reasons:
1) it would be mashed up against the heatsink, and with this heatsink a bunch of the airflow would immediately be squashed
2) 60mm fans are a lot noisier for the CFM

I got this el-cheapo savage IX card just because it was cheap($12 shipped), small, had s-video out, and no active cooling. Not even a bare heatsink. I won't need very much graphics power. In retrospect, it probably would have been better to research other options...
 
ooooh i get it now, well, i think that if you get a northbridge cooler that blows out, it can cool your video card pretty well, that riser card makes the vid card right over the bridge. And if you add a fan one intake one exhaust on each side of the psu, you can keep both it cool and the rest of the system, depending how you do it, not sure exact size look of the psu, but it might fit, good luck
 
Geez, I love you man! I'd never heard of a riser card before now and i've considered trying to make something like it becasue alot of comp mods I've wanted to do need it. You've lifted a mighty burden my friend. :)

Just had to express my gratitude ^.^
 
Originally posted by 133
why don't you just move the plants?
Click to expand...
No shit. Going to these lengths for the luxury of pouring water over a piece of electronic equipment is more than a little stupid.
 
<inner-city accent> Don' choo tawk 'bout my mutha that way!</inner-city accent>

She learned her lesson. She doesn't put plants over the stereo system any more.

Anyhoo.....back to cooling. Do you think that one 80mm fan blowing out the top would draw enough cool air in through the side across the CPU HS to keep it sufficiently cool?

The way I'll have this rig set up, the actual GPU will be facing up, so a NB fan wouldn't do a whole lot of good. I'm not too worried about the GPU, though. If the manufacturer is confident to not even put a heatsink on it, I'm not going to worry about it overheating.

And if it does.....then I'll go get a nicer, real-half-height card from newegg or somewhere.
 
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