Computer hi-fi system

KiTsuNe

I created something pretty similar to this.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.424145725734.196933.501580734&type=3

It's roughly the same size as the build you're doing. Its complete overkill for your application but I'm able to power and run an i7 2600k in my HTPC haha.

I also did a dreamcast one as well.


Looking at it now, I can swap the i7 out for an i3 35w cpu.
you can find a small dac to fit in the case as well.(If price doesnt matter http://www.amazon.com/Arcam-rPAC-USB-Headphone-DAC/dp/B007NXM3K2) Run the mobo's USB header into the DAC and the dac into this class T amp
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?partnumber=300-385
and run binding posts into that.
Tap everything into the 12v line of the psu on the computer with resistors if needed.
You now have an all in one unit. The only thing most will probably gripe about on this is that the PSU isnt linear or clean enough for them but I know it will work haha.

I would try running geexbox if you're looking at just media. Very nice interface.

EndersShadow

KiTsuNe wrote: »

I created something pretty similar to this.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.424145725734.196933.501580734&type=3

It's roughly the same size as the build you're doing. Its complete overkill for your application but I'm able to power and run an i7 2600k in my HTPC haha.

I also did a dreamcast one as well.


Looking at it now, I can swap the i7 out for an i3 35w cpu.
you can find a small dac to fit in the case as well.(If price doesnt matter http://www.amazon.com/Arcam-rPAC-USB-Headphone-DAC/dp/B007NXM3K2) Run the mobo's USB header into the DAC and the dac into this class T amp
http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?partnumber=300-385
and run binding posts into that.
Tap everything into the 12v line of the psu on the computer with resistors if needed.
You now have an all in one unit. The only thing most will probably gripe about on this is that the PSU isnt linear or clean enough for them but I know it will work haha.

I would try running geexbox if you're looking at just media. Very nice interface.

I have actually seen that PC elsewhere, its pretty cool!

My entire build is pretty much together at this point unless something breaks again. It too is total overkill given my application however this may also come to live as a HTPC in my main rig at a later date.

The computer will be connected via USB to the Audio GD NFB-5 USB DAC/headphone amp I got. I dont think I want to change from this as its a beast of a machine and I dont mind it being as big as the computer itself and almost 2x heavier :biggrin:. This headphone amp will drive just about ANY headphone I want and eventually this may become the basis for my 2 channel system since the DAC has fixed or variable outputs so I can use it as a pre (assuming I dont have any other sources). Later on I can turn it back to fixed and just make it a straight DAC if I want to.

gigbyt

Ive always wanted to try this out but never have the time to learn enough about how to do it properly.

EndersShadow

gigbyt wrote: »

Ive always wanted to try this out but never have the time to learn enough about how to do it properly.

Someone's in a hurry to reach 100 posts. Wonder what your trying to sell or buy

EndersShadow

Well its been on the back burner, but finally got in a package today that hopefully will turn into a full fledged computer tonight when I get home



Got a 4 pin extender so I can make the cables super tidy. The CPU Heatsink looks quite nice and low profile so that should be good and the Noctua fan should make this thing just about totally silent.

I plan to see if another Noctua fan can replace the Silverstone one as well as I like the noise profile of them better. But I am going to keep it stock to start with and see how loud it is.

EndersShadow

I have just about F$%$ing had it. The computer starts to boot but then wont POST. The CPU fan starts to twist and goes about 1/2 inch and then stops. At this point I am thinking its the Pico PSU I purchased but I am not sure. Time for more troubleshooting at Frys :sad:. Thankfully they have a Pico PSU in stock there as well (NOT the same one) for about the same price so if that one works I know its the PSU.

TNHNDYMAN

sorry for you troubles Dan. This thing must be driving you insanse.

Quick tip- Do NOT pick up a hammer when mad at a machine, it always seems to get more expensive for me at least.

cnh

EndersShadow wrote: »

Been running Asus parts since I was 16 (13 years ago :biggrin:). My first computer had a graphic card with the then new tech of S-Video out :eek:.

So far not only have I run Asus but I bought a board from them a couple years back that had issues, sent it in to be checked out and that same board is still running strong 4 years later. I also purchased a refurb Asus board (same make as the one that went into the shop) from newegg and had 0 problems with it until I sold it.

My dad is also running an Asus board and GPU in his computer I built him . The only thing I go back and forth on is Intel v. AMD. I like Intels performance but the pairing of AMD chips with ATI (now AMD) GPU's is pretty sweet.

So far I have stayed away from Nvidia.

Man, if you're that young I could be your father! lol You're also in that generation of dudes who tinker with the "insides" of a computer, where as I came of age with 5+" floppies and super fast 8 Mghz processors and 20 MG hard drives and an MS-DOS systems and partitions that would "cripple" any tweaker who did not have an M.S. in Engineering--and "crashed" "regularly"! lol

cnh

EndersShadow

cnh wrote: »

Man, if you're that young I could be your father! lol You're also in that generation of dudes who tinker with the "insides" of a computer, where as I came of age with 5+" floppies and super fast 8 Mghz processors and 20 MG hard drives and an MS-DOS systems and partitions that would "cripple" any tweaker who did not have an M.S. in Engineering--and "crashed" "regularly"! lol

cnh

Hehehe, well I am only 29 :eek:. I am familiar with those type computers of which to refer to. My first computer in the house was a Windows 98 machine and I still regularly play a MS-DOS game called One Must Fall as well as enjoyed Magic Carpet as well.

I do indeed tinker with the insides of my computer . Not as much now as a copule years back.

I do intend on sleeving the cables in this system once I finally get it all up and running.

I contacted the vendor of the Powersupply and they also believe it to be bad and said return it for a refund. I am looking at going to Frys tonight to purchase this Pico PSU which should do the same thing and hopefully works right out of the box.

http://www.frys.com/product/5974914?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Here are some pics and a video of how it all looks.








Here is a video of it in action:

EndersShadow

So I seriously cant win.

It boots, I was working through some standard cable management just to get everything up and running. Working great. I went to install the HDD cage and BOOM, it all goes up in smoke. The HDD cage which is configured to handle a 3.5" HDD hits the new CPU heatsink (which is one of the smallest ones on the market to boot). I need about 2-3mm min of clearance. So I need to figure something out to modify the existing part which either requires one of two options:

A: Fabricating a entirely new hdd cage which handles a slot loading optical drive, and a 2.5" HDD up top and another 2.5" HDD on the bottom
B: Removing the option of having a 3.5" HDD entirely by straight up cutting the brackets off.

At this point I am simply going to not install the HDD cage, put the top back on and run it without so I can see what temps look like as well as overall power draw.

Drenis

Sounds like you need a dremel.

All in all, that sucks.

EndersShadow

Drenis wrote: »

Sounds like you need a dremel.

All in all, that sucks.

Ha Ha Drenis :razz:.

My sis has a dremel so I could hack the needed clearence out no problem. Here's the rub, I prefer to not destroy a good HDD cage and personally would rather find a way to fab a new one that gives me the ability to add 2 HDD's, even if they are 2.5" HDD's rather than entirely remove the bottom section of the cage to make it fit.

There might even be enough space to actually put 2 2.5" HDD's side by side since its the height thats the issue, not the overall width.

The section causing the issues are the two brackets that hang down from the middle of the case in this pic:

Attachment not found.

codyc1ark

I do not have time to read your whole thread, but from the last few posts all I have to say is...

Good.

All I have time to do is listen to some 703's. :cheesygrin:

EndersShadow

codyc1ark wrote: »

I do not have time to read your whole thread, but from the last few posts all I have to say is...

Good.

All I have time to do is listen to some 703's. :cheesygrin:

LOL... you somewhat suck. Hope your home and enjoying yourself after your last couple weeks out of town.

Drenis

Stop being a sissy and mod it!:razz:

codyc1ark

EndersShadow wrote: »

LOL... you somewhat suck. Hope your home and enjoying yourself after your last couple weeks out of town.

No, I totally suck!

EndersShadow

Drenis wrote: »

Stop being a sissy and mod it!:razz:

See below Drenis :razz:

This morning just for giggles I installed the quieter Noctua fan on the Silverstone NT-07 heatsink. I used Artic Silver 5 rather than the Silverstone CPU paste. The temps IMHO sucked according to the BIOS. It was much quieter but with no stress at all the CPU was sitting at around 57C. The motherboard was much cooler at around 30-47C. The noise overall was somewhat quiet but I know I can do better. I do plan on putting noise dampening material on the entire top portion of the case (not covering the vent holes though). That should help some. I also will put some down along the bottom of the case, but need to wait until I get everything mounted to do that as I may mod things to put them in places they weren't meant to go.

So the Silverstone heatsink will be going back to newegg as I need something better. Unfortunately the go to heatsink to get good temps is the Scythe "Big Shuriken 2" which is 58mm tall so that more than likely is out of the running.

Noctua just literally came to market (2 days ago) with a production model low heatsink that will work. The Noctua NH-L9. I refered to that heatsink earlier when it was unveiled as an option. It is exactly the same form factor and height as the Silverstone heatsink, however it uses heatpipes rather than the direct contact method used by the Silverstone model so IMHO it should give me better temps. Plus it comes with a Noctua fan that will be very quiet even at high RPM's. It is right about how much the Silvertone heatsink cost + the cost of a 80mm Noctua fan replacement. Its also got a 6 year warranty which is pretty nice!

If the Noctua can keep the temps reasonable in this case then I can simply cut some of the 3.5" hdd off leaving enough to mount a 2.5" Hdd later on by the suspension method.

If that doesnt work, the decision is going to likely be to just remove the entire 3.5mm bracket and go with just one 2.5" HDD. Doing that might just allow the Scythe
"Big Shuriken 2" to fit but man would it be a tight fit.

For now I will be putting the stock AMD heatsink back on just for giggles to look at temps and see how good or bad the Silverstone model did.

P.S. I realize the temp in the BIOS isnt the true T Max but without a HDD attached with an OS installed so I can use CPU-Z to see them, its the only guage I have.

EndersShadow

To give you an idea just how massive the Sycthe heatsink is, here is a pic of it on my exact motherboard for comparison.

P.S. this is taken from someone else



And another:

Clipdat

Needs a bigger fan.

EndersShadow

In talking with some guys that are building small PC's like this for a living, they are telling me the temps in the BIOS are accurate, but not standard idle/load temps.

It appears that when in the BIOS that the BIOS itself is running Busy and wait loops which max out the cores on the CPU. So the temps you see there are closer to max temps at load rather than idle temps. Once you've booted into Windows the loops obviously stop and the temps drop drastically to more realistic "idle" temps.

So as a result I am going to install Win 7 on the 3.5" HDD I have and just run that outside the case so I can get a better handle on the temps.

In other news, the Noctua heatsink is not compatible with this particular Mini-ITX board due to layout issues...... of course it would be the only ITX FM1 board out of the list to have that problem lol....

So if nothing else I am going to wait and see what the "true" temps are via CPU-Z in Win 7 and then decided if the heatsink stays, I try and replace it with something else.

Eitherway I will be doing tests with the Silverstone case fan on it as well as the Noctua for comparisons. The screws to mount the fan to the heatsink are kinda weird so getting the Noctua fan to stay put would be interesting and require some modding, but it may well be worth it.

EndersShadow

So I mocked up how big a standard 2.5" HDD will be and it looks like I should be able to notch the existing 3.5" bracket and still be able to fit one if not 2 2.5" drives suspended under it in the future. In the meantime I plan to purchase a refurbished 640 gig WD Blue 2.5" drive that honestly should be the only drive I ever need.

I got it booting with the 3.5" HDD sitting outside the case and the temps are MUCH more in line with what I was expecting. I still have some tweaking to do but the noise is a bit less (still want to test the Noctua as the CPU fan as its quieter than the CPU fan). I know the temps will jump when I put the modded HDD bracket back in place due to a bit more restrictive airflow but I am ok with that.

I also still need to cover as much of that HDD bracket as possible with noise dampening material, as well as the entire U of the top of the case and as much as possible under and around the motherboard within reason. Also given how the case fan mounts I cannot use the rubber silence mounts Noctua gives you, so instead I plan to purchase a rubber 80mm fan gasket that should help keep vibrations from making noise as well. That should help to further silence this puppy and make it a almost noiseless computer. Right now sitting about 1 foot from me you can hear it, but I am hopeful I can tame that small amount of noise.

Here are what temps were upon booting:


Here is the wattage when just running Windows 7 with no real stress (which is what it will be like mostly since its going to be just streaming FLAC to my computer via XBMC. I have a 150 watt powersupply so this is a good number . The wattage jumped to a whole 75 when the CPU fan spins up upon boot :biggrin:

EndersShadow

Got an awesome email from newegg today with a ridiculous sale: 2.5" 5400 rpm 8gig cache 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint for 70 bucks no shipping! So I ordered one and hope to have it here next week.

I will be modding the 3.5" HDD brackets on Sunday using my sis's dremel so I can get the bracket mounted back in the case in advance of getting my new HDD. I also am looking at buying some black spray paint so I can paint the backplate insert on the computer which is currently a shiny cheap silver and doesnt go well with the overall black color of the case and all components.

EndersShadow

In advance of our family gathering I kept trying to figure out how I would see what section I needed to cut off the HDD bracket to there was clearance for the fan. My wife had the brilliant idea to use some of the Halloween makeup on the sides of the fan to mark on the HDD bracket where I needed to cut. So I covered it with blue painters tape and away we went. Worked beautifully!

Today we got together as a family to hang out. My sister brought her Dremel... but forgot the metal cutting tool. Not to worry my dad had a hacksaw and a metal file so I had to go old school. The cut isnt perfect but I am not too particularly worried, it fits over the fan with no problem and with a bit of black spray paint (or re-powder coating it) you wont be able to tell anyway.

In addition I am talking to a guy on the Carver forum who is hopefully hooking me up with some free powder coating so I can get the silver back-plate on the computer flat black like the rest of the computer so you dont notice it that much. I may or may not inquire about re-powder coating the HDD cage at the same time so it looks professional

Pics below.

The makeup we used:



The part marked up and ready for cutting:



The section marked is gone!



What I need to get powder coated



My new HDD comes in on Tuesday it looks like.

Items still left on my to-do list in no particular order and not all will be done before its put into use:

1. Noise dampening material throughout the case
2. Purchase Rubber fan bracket for 80mm fan
3. Purchase internal USB header to USB cord
4. Purchase USB wireless card with antenna
5. Purchase slot-loading blu-ray drive
6. Purchase 80mm Noctua NF-8 PWM fan for CPU heatsink and find way to install on heatsink

EndersShadow

Got in my new 2.5" HDD today. Spent the evening doing the following:

1. Creating a system image on a external USB drive (which required a drive to my parents to get a 3rd HDD and moving 250 gigs off it to my main computer and then removing from the drive to be safe)
2. Creating a bootable USB Win 7 install disc (just good to have IMHO)
3. Turning back on Legacy USB support in BIOS so I can use the USB 3.0 ports with 2.0 devices (was an idiot when I turned that off :rolleyes:)
4. Using the USB boot drive to access the System Image Repair (had a bunch of issues, wont list them but were many lol)
5. Put the old system image on the new 2.5" drive

This is where I am now. Still left to do are the following:

6. Expand the partition on the new HDD to the full drive
7. Wipe 3.5" HDD and re-install in external HDD case
8. Transfer combined FLAC & MP3 library from main PC to external HDD (I dont have 2 Ethernet connections in my office or I would just transfer directly)
9. Transfer combined FLAC & MP3 library from external HDD to new 2.5" HDD
10. Wipe parents external USB drive
11. Transfer files from main computer back to parents external USB Drive
12. Sleep

For those interested here are some guides I found VERY useful

How To: Install Windows 7 from a USB Key!
How to transfer your OS to your new SSD drive
Error message fix for issue I ran into

EndersShadow

So quick update while I have time.

The new Noctua cooler came in. I talked with the manufacture and was told the backplate wouldnt fit but I could use some spacers and it should work ok if I didnt overtighten things. So I went to Ace hardware and purchase 8 o-rings that would work as spacers (in case I needed 2 per screw). I tried just 1 and there was too much play with the cooler, so I put 2 on and it works Great. Pic below of my ghetto solution at a cost of 2.97 :biggrin:




Then I installed everything and made sure it would boot, and SUCCESS! Next up is to see how the HDD bracket fits... and of course its barely touching. So I have to notch a bit more off but thats ok.



I also checked and I have enough space to mount another 2.5 HDD from the remaining space of the 3.5 drive and I can suspend it which is the best way to remove noise from the system. Some pics of how that would look at below:





On Sunday I plan to Dremel the remaining holes for the SATA power and data cords from the 3.5" HDD section and then its off to powder-coating for the bracket, IO shield and PCI bracket so they will all be black (the HDD so it looks like the cuts were stock).

TNHNDYMAN

Nice work man. Glad it's about finished and you can enjoy it.

EndersShadow

TNHNDYMAN wrote: »

Nice work man. Glad it's about finished and you can enjoy it.

Yup, getting it down to the pretty petty cosmetic issues that I want to do just because I am a geek :biggrin:.

Still left on the list to do:

1. Cut out the SATA data and power sections for the suspended HDD (for future expansion capabilities or just to see if I can eliminate all HDD noise on the current one)
2. Notch the HDD bracket so the fan fits
3. Ship it out to powdercoat along with the IO shield, and PCI bracket
4. Cover the case with noise dampening material
5. Sleeve the power cords
6. Get shorter SATA data cords and sleeve them too
7. Get 2 Internal USB motherboard to USB ports to internally connect the Wireless card and IR remote sensor

transmaster

Woops didn't look at the date of the posting I was answering

transmaster

Dup' posting a Windows 8 moment

EndersShadow

One of the ladies at work's laptop went bad so she replaced it and gave me the broke one.

I am hoping to scavenge the wireless card out of it for this build (but dont know if it will work given its a PCI slot wireless card), and if possible utilize the LCD screen for my system in its current bezel which I will probably paint (its a gunmetal gray with a nice big TOSHIBA across the middle and we cant have that..... Its a bit bigger than I want at 14" but its free so I wont complain .

I might even make a custom bezel for it and order a touchscreen overlay.... :eek:....