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ocgw
Member
Joined: 26 Feb 2009
Location: United States
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redwudz
Mod Neophyte
Joined: 07 Sep 2002
Location: AZ, USA
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HTPC motherboard upgrade. My original MB was a bit old. It worked with my Phenom II 920, but just barely. I couldn't run the 1066 RAM much above 800Mhz. And other options were limited. I will be able to reuse the older MB in another PC with an older Phenom CPU.
Before picture. The two red cables going right are for a eSATA PCI socket. The new MB has a built in eSATA socket, so I eliminated them. There is also a PATA cable going to a DVD ROM. I switched that to a Sony SATA burner. The top optical drive is a BD ROM. I had added a 80mm fan behind the HDDs, but it didn't cool them at all. You can also see the wad of case fan wiring to the right of the HDD cage, along with a Y splitter. I put all that under the MB. The NB fan worked, but had that big Molex connector for power. To the far lower right, I plugged that grill and my temps dropped two degrees. The case exhaust fans were pulling in outside air instead of moving the hot case air out. Wrong place for a intake grill.  The wiring is a bit messy, but it has gone through frequent modifications. Time to start over. 
Not enough air can flow through that rear grill, so no use trying to use it for the only intake for the PS. I had hoped to remote the PS air intake to smooth the airflow through the case.
The stock AMD cooler is actually fairly good. I had attached a small fan to the NB with the old MB, but not a lot of effect. I suspect the thermal compound under the NB may be part of the problem there. I'll renew it when I reuse the MB.
You can see the jumble of the case fan wiring at the center of the photo. That will all go under the MB.
The MB ready to pull out.
The MB and the optical drive cage removed.
The CPU and the bottom of the cooler. I had used a bit too much Arctic Silver. The CPU pulled out of the socket and I had to pry it off the cooler. But no damage. I may change from Arctic Silver to another compound. Having the CPU stick to the cooler can cause damage to the CPU unless you are really careful.
The cooler and the CPU cleaned up with 99% isopropyl alcohol. It's a four heat-pipe cooler with a solid copper base. It also has a four pin PWM fan. Nice for a OEM. The CPU is sitting on a anti-static pad.
The CPU coated with a very thin layer of Arctic Silver as it was the only compound I had available at the time.
The CPU cooler and the 4GB of OCZ 1066 DDR2 RAM in place. I might change them to the other slots as they do block the cooler exhaust a little. You can see the odd design of the NB heatsink. I think they designed it so you couldn't add an aftermarket cooler. What's odd is there's a NB fan header right next to it.  I could switch it with the NB cooler on the old MB as they have the same mounting holes and it can mount a fan. I don't know why they put that blue plate on it. It just blocks the airflow. It's glued on and I had it off, but I put it back on in case of RMA. The SB heatsink is smaller than the one on the old MB, but it uses a different chipset and seems to run fairly cool.
The MB is running at this point. I will clean up the wiring later. I have a mini-kaze fan sitting on the video card HS, but it won't move enough air to help. You can see the exhaust fan wiring coming up over the MB by the first PCI slot. It's plugged into the fan header for the non-existent NB fan. The slot between the tuner and the video card is covered by the video card, but I put my SP/DIF PCI slot coaxial audio adapter there. The X1 slot is still open for add-on cards.
BIOS. The case fans are plugged into the NB header. I added a fan to the video card later and it uses the system fan header. The temps are fairly good here. I did up the DDR2 voltage to 2.1VDC as this is the RAM spec. This was also before OCing to 3.3GHZ. I will set the CPU fan to PWM mode and turn on the overtemp warning and the fan warnings except the CPU fan warning. PWM is able to stop and start the CPU fan and that will trigger the alarm if you have it set. (EDIT: They must have fixed that problem as I didn't get any buzzers with the warning on.)
The 80mm magnetic bearing fan. It's totally silent, but moves a fair amount of air. It blows half on the video card HS and half on the NB HS. It drops the temperature of both a fair amount. I hot glued it to the tuner card and the video card.  It's easy enough to pop off without damage, but won't fall off. Actually better than a metal bracket in some ways.
The PC ready to go. Getting rid of the case fan wiring, the HDD fan and wiring, the PATA cable and the two rear eSATA cables, cleaned it up fairly well. You can see my infrared thermometer to to the left of the PS. Very handy for checking PC temps.
Next: Seeing how far I can push the performance. It's primarily a HTPC and functions well that way. Adding the ATI 3450 allows me to still use the onboard HDMI video and have a lot better performance. It uses the 3450 with the Crossfire software and uses the 3450 GPU for hardware video acceleration. This upped my Vista graphics score by about 0.4 points, a fair gain. I can also OC both graphics GPUs, so that's another thing to try. As is, it should play BD video with no problems.
UPDATE: I'm still having heat problems, with the CPU running about 65C during long encodes. Part of this is the HTPCs position in my entertainment center as it only has about a 1/2" clearance on both sides. I plan to move it and the amp to a outside shelf where is can get a bit more airflow. And I'm replacing the stock CPU cooler with a Scythe Ninja Mini Rev. B with a 92mm PWM fan that hopefully can be configured to blow towards the exhaust fans. There's no room for high performance coolers due to the height of the case. I was able to OC the CPU up to a bit above 3.4GHz, but the temperatures were too high. I did get the RAM to run at 1066Mhz, so that was an improvement. The Crossfire setup works well and the GPU runs fairly cool with the additional fan added. Noise level is a bit too high, but that's mostly the CPU fan running a 6000RPM because of the CPU heat. No other issues, though. It plays BDs to my projector with no problem using Arcsoft Total Media Theater 3.
NEW UPDATE: I installed the Scythe Ninja and am seeing nice improvements in CPU temperatures.  Idle temps are about 40C and load temps are about 57C, but that OC's to 3.3Ghz. I was getting 64C load temps before with stock timing, so this is much better. Those temps aren't necessarily correct, I just use them for reference. The CPU is actually running quite a bit cooler than that.
I used a 92mm PWM Arctic Cooling fan and Arctic Silver Ceramique thermal compound instead of Arctic Sliver 5. I did have to pull the motherboard to install the cooler. I tried a 80mm fan on the front side of the cooler, but it sits on the hold down clip and that makes it too high. I also couldn't use my axillary 80mm fan for the NB/GPU. The cooler just barely fits. It has about 1mm clearance from the cross brace.
The Lian-Li case.
My entertainment center. The HTPC is in the lower center. The surround sound amplifier is on top of it. To the left and right lower sides are the Sony 400 disc DVD changers. Most of my video is on servers in another room and the PCs access them over a Gigabit LAN. I have about 7TB storage at present on three servers. The screen is a 12' diagonal. Not too visible are two 50W 10" Polk subwoofers. Also shown is a Philps 5990 DVD player and a Pioneer DVR 633HS.
My Sony projector. It's wall mounted on a TV monitor stand as most of the regular projector mounts hold the projector upside down and that makes it a bit harder to adjust.
SPECIFICATIONS:
HTPC:
Lian Li HTPC case
Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-UD2H motherboard
AMD Phenom II 920 CPU OC'd to 3.3Ghz
Onboard video Crossfired with a MSI 3450 ATI chipset video card. Output as HDMI and VGA.
4GB OCZ 1066Mhz Reaper RAM
(2) 500GB WD SATA HDD running in AHCI mode.
Sony BD ROM
Sony DVD burner
Thermaltake 500W modular PS with 14CM fan.
PROJECTOR:
Sony Bravia
AUDIO AMP:
Sony STR K750P
TV:
HD Homerun tuner for OTA HDTV, accessed over the LAN.
My HD SD/HD cable TV tuner
ADDITIONAL:
I use a HDMI switcher to select the output from the HTPC, DVD changers, DVD players. I have a second switcher for the coaxial audio from the devices. The main speakers are custom built with 15" woofers and horn tweeters and hard cone midrange. They are capable of 500W RMS, though I don't have that much power available with my amp.
Last edited by redwudz on Aug 01, 2009 07:09, edited 4 times in total
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Supreme2k
Greetings
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
Location: Right Here, Right Now
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neomaine
Member
Joined: 09 Jul 2001
Location: United States
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| Quote: |
Post pics of your rig, share your hardware/software setup, and presentation method
I have been working on this rig for about 1 year (325+ Blu ray/200+ DVD/5000+ songs) |
 You now that scen in Matrix where the security guard asks Neo to remove any metalic objects and Neo opens his coat?
The security guard makes a 'Holy Chit' face and says 'Holy Chit!'. <- That's me 
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Have a good one,
neomaine
NEW! VideoHelp.com F@H team 166011!
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=166011
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redwudz
Mod Neophyte
Joined: 07 Sep 2002
Location: AZ, USA
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| Supreme2k wrote: |
| How about room dimensions? |
From projector to screen, 22 feet and my chair is at about 10 feet. The room is 18 feet wide. Blu-ray and HD looks great, but SD looks fuzzy. I can't get the room dark enough for daytime viewing, but it's perfect at night. I also corrected my speaker size, they're 15".
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ocgw
Member
Joined: 26 Feb 2009
Location: United States
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@ redwudz, nice setup bro'! and thx for posting
That MyHD OTA ATSC TV Tuner card of yours, that is the best HD TV tuner card isn't it?
also what are you input devices?, I know you have to have some nice input gear
ocgw
peace
_________________
Phenom II 940 BE @ 3.8Ghz 24/7 100% load
8GB DDR2 1066 5-7-7-20
8x BD-RW
11.1TB Storage
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redwudz
Mod Neophyte
Joined: 07 Sep 2002
Location: AZ, USA
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| ocgw wrote: |
That MyHD OTA ATSC TV Tuner card of yours, that is the best HD TV tuner card isn't it?
also what are you input devices?, I know you have to have some nice input gear |
I haven't kept up on TV tuner cards, I only use that one for SD TV. I have a HDHomerun tuner hooked to my LAN for OTA HDTV. The MyHD was a PITA to set up and and I would have to run a second coax cable for OTA HDTV from my antenna to my entertainment center, so I got the HDHomerun instead and it's next to the coax feed from my antenna in another room. You can use it from any computer on the LAN. If it picked up SD from my cable, I would eliminate the MyHD. I don't watch TV anyway.
The 'other room' with my servers, router and switches, and some other stuff:
I use a BTC wireless keyboard: http://www.amazon.com/BTC-9019URF-Wireless-Multimedia-Dual-Mode/dp/B000B7RBKE The handles make it easy to grab and it's tough. I've dropped it quite a few times and it's still going strong on it's second year.
And a Verbatim Wireless Nano mouse: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826636011 I've used these with my laptop and they are really solid. Uses a tiny transceiver that you can leave plugged in on the front of the case and you can hardly see it.
I also have a Sony RM-AV2500 universal remote control, though I don't use it much.
I use the KB and mouse through a IOGear USB KVM that can switch from my HTPC to my Intel PC. They both output HDMI and VGA, which goes the projector and to a 22" Hanns-G LCD monitor. I use that more often than the projector as the Intel is my encoding PC. (The one in my computer details}
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rallynavvie
OS agnostic
Joined: 10 Sep 2002
Location: Minnesotan in Texas
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Below is the setup I have here. The one up north is a little less showy since almost every component is hidden. The pic is a little old since I can see a few big pieces have changed, though the cable mess is worse if you can believe it. The silver Antec case was my last DH800 which has since been replaced with the 5396 in the black Lian Li tower. I miss that 37" 1080p LCD; the 47" that replaced it is just too big to use as a second display when I'm sitting at the desk working. I also have a newer wireless N hub. The HDHomeRun seems to be absent from the pic as well, but it is now being used to leech digital cable from the wall while one of the Hauppauge cards uses that ugly OTA antenna. The receiver gets optical from the HTPC to use the better speakers while the PC ones do the rest of the work (games, iTunes, system sounds, etc.). The un-racked UPS on the left can power the PC, monitor, and network for nearly an hour even though its batteries are approaching 5 years old. I have a Logitech MX5000 Bluetooth combo I use for the HTPC and the PS3, though since I do most of my couch-surfing on a MBP the BT keyboard/mouse mostly only get used on the PS3. I use the simple WMC remote and have been for years; never had a need for anything fancier.
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FB-DIMM are the real cause of global warming
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ocgw
Member
Joined: 26 Feb 2009
Location: United States
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| rallynavvie wrote: |
| Below is the setup I have here. The one up north is a little less showy since almost every component is hidden. The pic is a little old since I can see a few big pieces have changed, though the cable mess is worse if you can believe it. The silver Antec case was my last DH800 which has since been replaced with the 5396 in the black Lian Li tower. I miss that 37" 1080p LCD; the 47" that replaced it is just too big to use as a second display when I'm sitting at the desk working. I also have a newer wireless N hub. The HDHomeRun seems to be absent from the pic as well, but it is now being used to leech digital cable from the wall while one of the Hauppauge cards uses that ugly OTA antenna. The receiver gets optical from the HTPC to use the better speakers while the PC ones do the rest of the work (games, iTunes, system sounds, etc.). The un-racked UPS on the left can power the PC, monitor, and network for nearly an hour even though its batteries are approaching 5 years old. I have a Logitech MX5000 Bluetooth combo I use for the HTPC and the PS3, though since I do most of my couch-surfing on a MBP the BT keyboard/mouse mostly only get used on the PS3. I use the simple WMC remote and have been for years; never had a need for anything fancier. |
Nice setup bro', yeah those Hauppauge antennas are an "eye sore" aren't they? lol
almost forgot: @ neomaine, thx
ocgw
peace
_________________
Phenom II 940 BE @ 3.8Ghz 24/7 100% load
8GB DDR2 1066 5-7-7-20
8x BD-RW
11.1TB Storage
Last edited by ocgw on Jul 31, 2009 11:51, edited 1 time in total
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ocgw
Member
Joined: 26 Feb 2009
Location: United States
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dbl post
_________________
Phenom II 940 BE @ 3.8Ghz 24/7 100% load
8GB DDR2 1066 5-7-7-20
8x BD-RW
11.1TB Storage
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M Bruner
Member
Joined: 10 Oct 2008
Location: United States
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Nice setups, everybody. I don't know if I can go to sleep with all that equipment in my house, not asfter seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey ("I'm sorry, but I can't do that, Dave") 
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