I just spec'ed out a HTPC for my cousins new three TV home theater (42" + 2 32" PLASMAS) It was around $900 out the door. Of course with quads soooo cheap I went with amd 785G and a set of DDR3. The 1TB drives are even cheap today. When I bought 11 TB drives last fall, they were $109 each...

I like that case, I went with a silverstone fo space, plus the newegg alternatives for the FF wern't that great.

Like to see it up and running, benchmarks are awesome. I have to get back into benching, After reading all the reviews to spec out that build I can't wait to run a bench on my new quad +8gb of ram

Keep us posted man.

I don't know if I'll bench it, but here's the build scenario.

Sorry I didn't take pics of the parts right out of the boxes, but to be honest, you can get great shots from the manufacturers.

So, on advice from others doing HTPC builds in small cases, I assembled the mobo, CPU, HSF, and RAM prior to mounting it in the case. That was a good idea. Then I put it in, and it looks like this:



You can see how I'm using the blue IDE cable to manage the rest of the cabling that needs to go through the case from one side to the other. The HDD and Optical drive cages (just one of each) slide right on top of where that blue cable is, like this:



And here's the tricky part ... you've gotta have both the HDD and the Optical drive in their cages as far as they'll go. Barely enough room for the RAM (can't use dual-channel with this Optical drive taking up so much space), and clearing the fan with the HDD is very close:



and fan ...



And yes, the original fan was quite loud, so I'm VERY happy with those Vantec Stealth 80mm I bought.

Ran into a problem, though. The 160GB SATA drive I put in was about 5 years old, and karked it during the installation of Win7. (Win7 even warned me that the drive was bad but I pressed on anyway. Thanks, Win7! )

So now the problem ... I've got only an IDE drive left, and only one IDE channel. Don't know if any of you have tried installing side-by-side drives like this, but the standard space between the IDE connectors isn't long enough to support side-by-side mounting, and there is NO room to place the HDD underneath the DVD drive. What's a boy to do?

I had a brain storm, and did some research to ensure I wasn't going to kark anything, and then ended up installing th cable in reverse. IE, the end that would normally be the place for the Master drive (in CS mode) is now plugged into the mobo. This leaves plenty of room between the center IDE connector and what is now the end for the master. Effectively, I went from this:

||===========||====||
mobo SL MA

to this:

||====||===========||
mobo SL MA

Gives lots of room for side-by-side connection. I'm told the only drawback to this is the inability to use cable select in the BIOS, but that's really not a problem as I wasn't using it anyway. Works perfectly. The long-term solution is going to be to replace both HDD and Optical drive with SATA versions, of course. There's a slight performance lag that I expect is being caused by this setup (and I've read that I should expect it) but it's actually not terribly noticeable by my wife.

So, now I've got this:



As you can see, things are pretty tight. I did move that rat's nest of cabling away from the fan to ensure adequate cooling. In truth, I was expecting the chipset to run a lot hotter than it currently is, so I've got a spare Vantec. I might still mount it inside the top of the case, as I think I've got enough room. But if I'm not running into problems (even with the DVR resting on top of this case) I'm not going to push it if I don't have to. There's a spare molex power cable waiting to be plugged in, however.

See that nose at the top of this pic? It belongs to my boy, Guinness. He was helping.



When I ran the OS install and then played with Media Center on my monitor, I was a little disappointed at video quality. Then I realized I was trying to push a 720p image through the VGA connector, and assumed that might be a problem. So, I finalized the installation by moving it over to my media center, and using the HDMI out to my 42" plasma (only 720p). The picture is perfect. Full playback of DVDs without a hiccup. And, since I ran cat5 behind the wall to the back of the computer, I've got access to netflix streaming movies as well, which is awesome.

Future, non-cosmetic upgrades will be as follows:

• Replace HDD with a larger, SATA2 drive (current IDE drive is only 80GB, and is about 6 years old, so not sure how long it's going to last anyway. I've got a free copy of Win7 Ultimate coming my way when it gets released, so that will be the trigger for that upgrade.
• Replace Optical drive with SATA2 version, hoping to get one who's dimensions aren't quite as deep. I'd love to be able to use dual-channel memory, instead of sticking my matched pair in separate channels as they are now.
• Re-mount my NAS to host my digital DVDs and CDs. Currently, the enclosure I've got says it doesn't work with Win7, so I'm hoping there's a firmware upgrade, or I'll have to get another NAS. Alternately, if the new SATA HDD is large enough (probably go with 1TB), I'll just move my movies and music there, and be done with it.

That's it, folks. It's working, and complete, until I make those final upgrades, which will be a month or two down the road.

All in all, it's pretty cool, and my wife is impressed as well (something that doesn't happen very often when I start talking tech). She loves having access to Netflix, internet TV, and a DVD player all in one. I told her a future upgrade will include a TV card, so we'll be able to record right to the HDD, and then save / copy anything we like (instead of running out of room on those paltry DVR drives FIOS gives us.

Best to all,

-J

Need a shorter CD ROM and or a half height slot loader... My newer LiteON DVD DL drive is about 2 in's shorter than my other three optical drives...

Otherwise I like that case the pivot is nice.

I'm going with the zalman cooler, just for the best noise ratio, my 92MM zally from way back (got it for my New XP 2200+) still cools my dual core quite well, but the new 110MM nickel plated should do twice as good.

Nice build man!

wow thats a powerhouse in comparison to my media center =)

i dont have pics, but here is what i made for about 200$ ish


SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd - Designing Inspiration
i got the above media case used from a friend for 50$

i was given a p4 3.2ghz processor / mb

i added a gigabyte x300 fanless video card
i added 2gb of memory
raidmax Glacier cooler,
8gb flash drive



the processor is under clocked to 2.8ghz, cpu fan is set at less then 20% of its speed

i had a hard drive in the system but to much noise, so i replaced it with this:
Super Talent Technology - Pico USB Flash Drives


in a nutshell i stream all of my videos from hulu or from my server in my garage


lastly i took xp, and slimmed it down immensly, so it only takes 32mb of memory when its loaded, and the start time is around 24 seconds.

I have disabled the xp loading screen, and hid the start menu and all icons.

the only thing you see when it loads is bios post, black screen, then my thx or sdds walpaper.

All the appz i used are bound to diffrent keys on my remote control.


if i ever need to modify somthing, i have remote desktop setup on it, and i modify it that way (works better then hooking up a keyboard or mouse)