HTP2C III - Perseverance pays off...

[S_T]

Okay, after struggling with this build for the past week in which I went through:

- 4 Motherboards (XFX 630i/7150, EVGA 7150, Abit F-I90HD, Asus P5E-VM HDMI (dud))
- 4 DIMM Sets (PDP 6400, PDP 8500, OCZ 6400, Corsair 6400)
- 3 Power Supplies (Enermax 400W, Seasonic 380W, Corsair 450W)
- 2 Video Cards (EVGA 8400GS, Asus 9600GT)
(and a partridge in a pear tree)...

I finally completed my HTPC2 (Home Theatre Performance PC) build. Hope you enjoy.

- First off, CPU is an Intel Q9450 hand lapped by myself to ensure optimal heat transfer (time consuming but worth it)

- HSF is a Scythe Ninja Rev. A from my old system, hand lapped also (heard about the bad mounting issues with Rev. B)

- Mobo I went with (finally) was Asus P5E-VM HDMI G35 based. Not the greatest especially compared to the newer AMD's 780g, but has everything i wanted (HDMI, SPIDF, RAID, etc.)

- Here's the Corsair 450w....well under surgery. Why did I take it apart?

So I can integrate a YL fan and be able to control it via Speedfan seemlessly!

- Here's the (again) empty nSpire case. Not the fanciest, but very functional support front and rear 120mm fans

Also note the extended mount PSU, since I wanted to line it up with the Ninja HSF:

- Finally, everything mounted inside. Note that I went passive on the Scythe Ninja, with the PSU and rear fan only exhausting it.

A shot of the 3 Western Digital 1TB GP drives:

Believe me this took A LOT of zip ties :

- Here she is wrapped up with pretty new Blu Ray DVD playing:

Not as innovative as my last system (http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=32410&highlight=)but much more modern (Blu Ray!), powerful ([email protected]), compact (uATX), and suprisingly cool (~62C full load) and quiet!

 

[Indignity]

Very nicely done! I have to do a build summit like this for my bro for x-mas

 

[Runedrune]

Oo nice job.

 

[XtuRmN8r]

Have you thought about color-coordinating your components? I think it'd be pretty cool if you could get either silver / black. Otherwise, nice one! want to touch! I have the same TV, but mine's wall mounted.

 

[Glyndur]

I really like what you did with the PSU. Any plans to make a duct of some sort to on the back? Awesome setup overall, I'm definately going to have to do one of these for my HTPC buildup that I'm doing now to replace my current HTPC.

 

[S_T]

XtuRmN8r - Yes color coordination was initally part of the plan. I started out with a XFX 7150 mobo at first and wanted a green theme to coincide with the nVidia setup:

But the lack of dual channel support as well as crappy IGP, made me contemplate a red / black theme with ATI 690G setup (on ABIT I-F90HD mobo), but that mobo puked out quickly:

Scar1.8T - Yes, I just redid my setup again moving to a P5K_VM board (hated the G35 IGP and how hot it got). I will put up pictures soon. This is probably a temporary solution until nVidia 8200 gets released.

 

[S_T]

Update a few things on the system:

Got tired of the crappy G35 and how hot it ran, so "downgraded" to a G33 to run a discrete solution:

Running a Asus 8600GT Silent now in the mobo. Much improved graphics and Blu Ray playback! (also added a little ducting to the PSU exhaust)

And here's the zip tied mess you don't see readily:

Also did a power consumption measurement with my Kill A Watt:

2.8GHz (1.08V) -> 86W Idle
2.8GHz (1.08V) -> 150W (full OCCT)
2.8GHz (1.08V) -> 175W (full OCCT + RTHDRIBL)
2.8GHz (1.08V) -> 329W (full OCCT + RTHDRIBL w/ 47" 1080p LCD on)

 

[S_T]

Well, after playing around with my BD setup more, I find out that I am short on storage (3TB isn't enough! ), so went back to "upgrade" again...

1) To address the storage shortage, I now have 4 WD 1 TB GP drives and 1 WD 75gb Raptor OS drive:

2) Figured my memory was a little on the lighter side, so added 2x2gb OCZ DDR2-6400 sticks:

3) Gotta have the 120mm YL fans!

4) Back to the P5E-VM HDMI again, mainly because it has 6 sata connectors (and I'm using all of them) and on board raid:

5) The buildup:

- Testing out everything before putting it in:

- Suspended 74GB Raptor OS drive (incredibly quiet!)

- Shot of it all in

 

[w1retap]

Very nice. Same graphics card and CPU HSF I'm running. It sure makes things quiet. =D

 

[dlaxman31]

nice lookin stuff. THe pictures of your old HTPC doesnt come up.. also what type of speakers are those. Looking quite impressive. THey have to shake the house.

 

[S_T]

Thanks, here's some pics of my old setup:

and specs:

Silverstone Temjin TJ-04 w/ Panaflo 120mm x2 fans
Silverstone 500W 80+ Power Supply
Asus A8N32-SLI nVidia nForce 4 x16 motherboard
AMD Opteron 165 3.0GHz 1.46V 48C max loaded
Scythe Ninja w/ YL 120mm fan
Scythe Kama Bay w/ YL 120mm fan
Hitach 500GB x3 SATA300, NCQ, 16MB Cache, Raid 5
Asus EN7900GT @ 650MHz/1600MHz w/AC Silencer (hacked)
Asus 802.1g Wireless / TV Tuner / DVDRW-DL
42" Sceptre 1920x1080p LCD-TV

 

[jebo_4jc]

Nice setup.
Although, with all those drives, I'm thinking your next project might be a file server.
(Windows Home Server has done very well for my needs)

 

[S_T]

Nice setup.
Although, with all those drives, I'm thinking your next project might be a file server.
(Windows Home Server has done very well for my needs)

I'm already contemplating it since I've now run out of space. Not sure how streaming Blu Ray will do over 100mb wireless though. =/

 

[jebo_4jc]

I'm already contemplating it since I've now run out of space. Not sure how streaming Blu Ray will do over 100mb wireless though. =/

ouch
not sure about that either. any closets or anything near by that you could jam a file server into?

 

[gizo]

I have a file server setup in the house that is 1Gbit wired with a 54G WiFi network. I can tell you that my WiFi network can barely stream my encoded dvd collection.

 

[S_T]

I have a file server setup in the house that is 1Gbit wired with a 54G WiFi network. I can tell you that my WiFi network can barely stream my encoded dvd collection.

If you wired it up to the 1Gb, does it work fine? BD Movies stream up to about 50-80Mbs...