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Little Heavy.

I had decided to wait for sandy bridge, then the recall happened and i kind of abandoned it for a while, thanks for reminding me about it, Ill get an asus ASUS P8H67-I DELUXE, and an i3 to put in there
Then i only need one set of heatpipes.
 
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DeFex said:
I had decided to wait for sandy bridge, then the recall happened and i kind of abandoned it for a while, thanks for reminding me about it, Ill get an asus ASUS P8H67-I DELUXE, and an i3 to put in there
Then i only need one set of heatpipes.
Click to expand...

hooray! i just bought an i3 2100 myself, and am waiting on paycheck friday to buy an itx mobo for it. its going in a media server/htpc. cant wait for more pics!
 
Well i ordered the board, an i3,2100, Ram and an SSD, and they were supposed to be delivered by UPS today they are currently "out for delivery" and its 8PM.

looks like no pics for you!
 
DeFex said:
Well i ordered the board, an i3,2100, Ram and an SSD, and they were supposed to be delivered by UPS today they are currently "out for delivery" and its 8PM.

looks like no pics for you!
Click to expand...

outrage! :p i just ordered the GB one last night.
 
to make matters worse i got the lamest UPS tracking excuse yet.

"04/01/2011 20:08:00 THE PACKAGE WAS MISSED AT THE UPS FACILITY, UPS WILL DELIVER ON THE NEXT BUSINESS DAY[X] CONCORD, ON, CA "

usually at least they pretend they tried to deliver it.
must be an april fools joke.
 
DeFex said:
to make matters worse i got the lamest UPS tracking excuse yet.

"04/01/2011 20:08:00 THE PACKAGE WAS MISSED AT THE UPS FACILITY, UPS WILL DELIVER ON THE NEXT BUSINESS DAY[X] CONCORD, ON, CA "

usually at least they pretend they tried to deliver it.
must be an april fools joke.
Click to expand...
Apparently, it got to the facility, but it never made it to the truck that was going towards your location, believe me, it's happened before.
 
JMccovery said:
Apparently, it got to the facility, but it never made it to the truck that was going towards your location, believe me, it's happened before.
Click to expand...

yeah but it said "out for delivery" since this morning so i couldn't go out all day because i did not want to miss it. and i paid extra for "expedited" GRRR. Newegg.ca bypasses customs and stuff even all the way from california to toronto in 2 days and on the third day UPS dropped the ball.
 
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lol i was reading one thread and the guys ups tracking code said they had a train derailment but the way they presented it, it was like no big deal lol anyways looks awesome i want some more pics.
 
Looks like i am going to mess about with the heatpipes. and maybe re-bend them I was just looking at the placement of the CPU sockets. the new one is farther from the side.
I might have to change things around a bit and move the block which attaches to the heatsink. hopefully it will still reach. and that old heatsink cross i had used might not work on the new board, it was for LGA 775
 
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Whoa, this is sweet. Subbed and definitely looking forward to the SB parts!
 
Nice, original work!

I thought I recognized that TAIG setup.
 
Looking great so far. In the first post you mentioned the amp to go with the case. Which amp are you building? I just got all the parts in for a Beta22.
 
reminds me of bequiet from ferox back in 2004 on bit-tech. Good luck bud, that looks pretty sweet
 
XtuRmN8r said:
reminds me of bequiet from ferox back in 2004 on bit-tech. Good luck bud, that looks pretty sweet
Click to expand...

Wow i just had a look at that, It goes to show how much PCs have been simplified in7 years. directly mounting the PSU power devices on the heatsink was hardcore.
 
Well the stuff finally arrived,
uW4Sy.jpg


Here i have the motherboard next to the case with the old board. as you can see the CPU socket is in a completely different place, I may want to put a card in there at some point so i cant just run the heatpipes over the slot on to the other side.

I think i need to make a copper block with a bit of an offset on it if i want to keep using the same heatpipes. (i have a lot of them, they were from the zalman hdd cooler which was pretty useless for anything except getting a lot of cheap heatpipes!)

I still have to think about this a bit more before I get to work on the new arrangement. i cant just run the pipes straight over because the SATA ports are there, maybe i can lift them up a bit, but i dont want it to be awkward to plug the cables in.

UdIRs.jpg


Someone was asking about the matching amplifier. It is going to be a bit complicated. I have most of the stuff for it, a huge toroidal transformer, PSU boards etc and the amplifier modules mostly built.

I will have the amplifier power supply in a separate box, and the amplifier itself will be in a matching box
so there will actually be 3 boxes, but one of them will not have heatsinks, I am thinking of making a similar box but with wood side pieces the same dimensions as the heatsinks on the computer and amplifier

The amplifier has 7 channels, it will perform double duty. Biamped Stereo for music and 5.1 surround for movies
It has 2 USB controllable DSP crossover boards (miniDSP.com)
this means i can do room and speaker measurements and get the best balance and response this is a much better sounding approach than using a passive crossover in the speakers, and has the added benefit of being changeable.

With a passive crossover you could easily spend $100 on parts and if your calculations were off, or the speakers are not exactly the same as their TS parameters the money is wasted. this way you just plug it in to the computer, change the settings and listen some more with out spending anything or taking your speakers apart. (and the DSP crossovers also have 6 bands of parametric EQ to remove peaks and dips, and delay to match the drivers in the time domain)
the disadvantage is you need a separate amplifier for each driver. these days you can build an very good amplifier cheaper than buying a good speaker, so it just makes sense to me to do it that way.
each amplifier is sweetly directly driving a speaker without extra capacitors and inductors screwing up the sound.

once the crossovers are set up they dont need USB plugged in.

amplifier guts-------------------------------------------------------------

in stereo mode the stereo input from computer, or other switchable input will go to the main crossover, with switch to enable the subs from the stereo signal.

in HT mode, the mains will still have their crossover but the sub crossover will get its input from the HT source "sub" and the rears and center will just be amplified from the source

Front/fullrange amplifiers are chipamp.com LM3875 "gainclones" (50W each) > markaudio alpair 12
The front woofers are powered with audiosector.com LM4780 (120W each) > Peerless P830946

rears are chipamp.com LM1875 (20w each) > markaudio CHR70 speakers

center channel is another chipamp.com LM3875 >2x markaudio CHR 70

the amplifier has only the crossover for the subs outputs, they have their own plate amps.
 
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Did some work on it today.

I realized the "bending spring" curves were not sharp enough, because the pipes go right over the SATA ports, and i need clearance for straight cables.
so i made a little pipe bender. (just a few minutes on the lathe and drilling and tapping a couple of holes in some aluminum offcuts).

w7mKw.jpg


Its a bit of a bodge, but it did the trick.

Testing the fit.

OL0fG.jpg


New holes tapped for the heatsink block, modified heatsink block,
and had to bend the pipes a bit because the heatsink block was touching the SATA port.
and mounting plate.
(this one is temporary, just bandsawed a bit of an old server case lid, and used a hole saw in the middle) i will make a nice one when my CNC mill is back on line, maybe with a nice "[H]" on it)


WZG8J.jpg


Some test results (fresh heatsink compound, so the temps might get better)
i put a temporary cover on the top and left the back open, so the test would be similar to real use.
(the back will have vent holes above the ATX plate, i am also thinking of putting a bit of mesh under the motherboard for more ventilation of non heatsinked parts)

Ambient 21c

Idle | Kill o watt 20-22W | temp(coretemp) 35-38c
heatsink on the side feels cool
Wifi streaming 1080p "return of the king" after 1 hour | Kill o watt 25-27W | temp(coretemp) 42-45c
heatsink feels very slightly warm
on the 15th intel burn test | Kill o watt 57-60W | temp(coretemp) 68-77c
heatsink feels warm, faceplate feels slightly warm, heatsink on other side feels slightly warm.

It seems to me the second heatsink (which was originally going to be for the separate GMA graphics chip) is overkill for this CPU, i could probably put a quad core i5 in here and it would be fine.
(and the i5 has a better GMA3000 instead of GMA2000 so i might be able to play simple games like trackmania nations on the projector :) )

I found out why my i3 2100 is running at 3220 MHZ instead of 3100 as well, Asus defaults the base clock to 103 instead of 100.

This thing is very stable, when i first installed windows, i just had an old zalman "flower" heatsink sitting on top of the cpu without any clamping, it has not crashed once for any
reason.

Also this is the first computer I have which gets to the desktop before the windows 7 animation finishes. and all my pcs have SSD boot drives.(this one is crucial performance3 on SATA3 though)

I have ordered a sandblaster box, which is actually going to be for getting the old paint off my stairs, but i can use it for this, bead blasted will look similar to the original rendering (apple sort of aluminum finish)

That final finish will wait till the amplifier part is done, because it will all go out for anodizing at the same time. I was thinking of doing an anodizing setup myself, but It is not practical for me, I will try and have a whole bunch of things to do at once (some parts for my mill etc)

When lifting it, as i had to do bringing it up and down stairs a few times today I don't like the sharp edges on the bottom of the heatsink, so i may route a small radius if it works ok on a test one.

anyways thats it for today, I hope you enjoyed my blathering :)
 
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Soon everyone will be mounting huge heatsinks on the sides of their cases :D
 
Damn this is good! :) good job!
Are the heatpipes hot to touch? Just a good test to go around touching everything and see how hot they are. Considered more heatpipes? Temperatures look good but i'm sure you could get better :)
 
Rossi~ said:
Damn this is good! :) good job!
Are the heatpipes hot to touch? Just a good test to go around touching everything and see how hot they are. Considered more heatpipes? Temperatures look good but i'm sure you could get better :)
Click to expand...

The heatpipes are hot, except near the heatsink, i could use more, but i would have to rebuild the blocks. I will leave it for now.
 
DeFex said:
I havent done one of these for a while.
anyways here is "artists concept" of my minimal HTPC build.
all it will contain is the motherboard CPU, RAM, Wireless N and a SSD, even the power supply is an external brick.

htpc2.jpg


I have bought most of the metals and heatsink has arrived, just waiting for the panels..


BOM
Heatsinks 2@ 3.6" 10.05 x 2.8 from heatsinkUSA $40

Onlinemetals 6061 Aluminum
Metal (front plate) $22 1/2"
metal (base) $13 1/8"
Metal (back) $6 1/8"

Heatpipes scrounged from old cooler, or solid aluminum heat transfer.

various L extrusion. $3 (homedepot)

Lexan (top) approx $10

Motherboard $130 intel DG45FC
CPU E5200, or E7300 ~$80
pico psu + brick $80
RAM (scrounged)

Hard drive $100 for laptop HHD (500GB)
or
$250 for SSD (60GB)

bolts
PCB for front switch and LEDs (home made) PCB with pulsar pro + laminator

Pics of some of the parts tonight.
Click to expand...

I like it.

If this were for sale, I'd buy it.

Are you concerned at all that surrounding the wireless adapter with all that metal will limit range?
 
Congrats on the FrontPage post. I just know you from Disturbed Computing I didn't know you were famous too!

Hey post more about the electronics in the amp and what kind of costs you are into for that puppy. I am a crazy audio guy too.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037086144 said:
I like it.

If this were for sale, I'd buy it.

Are you concerned at all that surrounding the wireless adapter with all that metal will limit range?
Click to expand...

It seems fine now, but its almost next to the router, the board actually came with asus wired type antennas, so i will use those if there is a problem. (ugly white round things)
 
nwrtarget said:
Congrats on the FrontPage post. I just know you from Disturbed Computing I didn't know you were famous too!

Hey post more about the electronics in the amp and what kind of costs you are into for that puppy. I am a crazy audio guy too.
Click to expand...


Oh, nice! I didnt see that :)

Ill have a diagram for the amps and some pics of the modules soon.
 
why not make a new sink for those pipe that mount on top but meets the clearance like this (made this just for you buddy)

whynot_01.jpg


whynot_02.jpg


whynot_03.jpg
 
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Thanks for taking the time to do that sketchup, but I think it would cause the interior to heat up too much, without fans, I want as much heat as possible to be removed, i was actually thinking of insulating them!
 
you know the saying never leave a stone unturned? just turning a stone over for a member of the [H]orde
 
truthfully, those all look like xbox 1 case clones (the side ribs) and it wasn't till you showed this that i realized that defex's is somewhat xbox 1 looking. I'm still tinkering in my head how to help the heat dissipation on those heat pipes more effectively. If i think of something i'll make another SU model for you, in fact i've got an idea now....hmmmm...time to fire that shit back up (DAMN MY BRAIN)
 
I love what you're doing.

I see that you've stolen some heatpipes from a commercial heatsink. I've been looking for years for a place to buy some online straight up. Does anyone happen to have a good source or come across anywhere that will sell them?

Thanks.
 
Auxon said:
I love what you're doing.

I see that you've stolen some heatpipes from a commercial heatsink. I've been looking for years for a place to buy some online straight up. Does anyone happen to have a good source or come across anywhere that will sell them?

Thanks.
Click to expand...


I know they must be pretty cheap if zalman can put 12 of them on that hdd cooler and sell it for $30

I think the best way for me to improve efficiency would be longer heatpipes, because right now they are only about half way in to the cpu block.

So if you find some let me know! I found this place but they seem to have a 1000% mark up http://enertron-inc.com/heatpipe.asp?clearance=1

here Is some of the amplifier stuff I have gathered, I have the components for the ones which are not built, and the built ones are tested and working.
the thing in the middle is 2 miniDSP boards, which will also need a separate regulated power supply from the main one,

7YNUC.jpg


Here is the big transformer to power them all

A8gFV.jpg
 
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