HTPC Cooling Part III.

About a year ago I wrote about how I solved the problem of my HTPC overheating. Well, after recently upgrading RAM to 4GB it seemed like a good idea to come up with a better solution. So I did.

Mod #1: Cable ties! The existing fan was perfect so I used cable ties to attach it to the heat pipes.

Fast, easy, neat and works like a charm!

Mod #2: Case fan also needed silencing. On the first try I used a thermistor. Have yet to see, if this is a satisfying solution.

HTPC Cooling

I finally got my hands on one Scythe 100x100x12mm slim fan. It turns at roughly 1000rpm and practically cannot be heard. It only moves 15 CFM which means that the PC now gets hotter than before - approximately 60C . This is quite alright as far as I'm concerned so I'll leave it as is (for now).

AT5IONT-I fanless? Forget it!

Last night we watched a full HD movie and were in for an unpleasant surprise. Just when the movie was about to end, the computer turned itself right off. I suspected overheating so I checked the temperature readings in BIOS and they were extremely high (79C)! To solve the problem I temporarily mounted a slim 60mm AMD stock fan above the heatsink. Since it doesn't cover the whole heatsink, a real solution would be getting a slim 100mm fan which I'm going to have to order from the UK.



Conclusion: The board obviously cannot rely solely on passive cooling, at least not in a slim desktop case. You will have to provide for adequate ventilation or face potential problems with overheating.

Project HTPC

I recently bought a new TV since the old one didn't have a DVB-T receiver. Buying just the receiver was out of the question because that would leave me with an ancient TV and bad picture quality. HDMI was the only way to go so I decided to build a proper HTPC capable of HD video playback.

A year ago I found a really good deal on Travla C137 case. Now I was finally able to put it to good use. Deciding which motherboard to buy took some more research. In the end I decided to go for an ASUS AT5IONT-I since I already had two 1GB DDR3 SO-DIMM sticks lying around and the board had the best CPU/GPU combo. On top of that, I bought a Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB hard drive which fit nicely inside the case. Low power consuption and silent operation make this drive ideal for such projects. Of course a HTPC wouldn't be complete without a remote control! After some fiddling with the drivers I was able to make the old ATi Remote Wonder work and it does the job fine.

The last thing to do was to choose the OS. I was deciding between XBMC and Windows 7. A couple of my co-workers convinced me to try Win7 so I did. All I can say at the moment is "so far so good".

Photo: link

Follow-up: Mobile storage solution

As it turns out, the Icy Box isn't all that great as one would expect. The thing is, it works fine on my office computer and my laptop. However, it doesn't work with my desktop PC at home. Well, it worked the first time but then it had a seizure and all I got from it afterwards were spooky clicking noises. The disk doesn't get recognized, making it effectively useless (still works on previously mentioned PCs). I'm thinking there could be a problem with the motherboard which is an oldish Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe. On the other hand, the rest of the USB devices I use with this motherboard work flawlessly, which is kind of funny. These include a mouse, a printer, a smart card reader, a flash drive and a webcam. Weird, eh? So I figure there could be a compatibility issue with the Cypress (7C68300A) controller in the Icy Box. If anyone reading this blog knows the solution, please let me know via comments. Thanks.