SPCR

Appreciate your help.

ntavlas wrote:and after:

Very impressive!!!

I like the understated design, quite elegant.

Thanks man!

Understated is my moto...

Should you want to enjoy hardware video acceleration with that specific motherboard, you can pick up a cheap Broadcom Crystal HD Decoder mini-PCIe card for around $25 USD. Model number is BCM70012. There is a similar part number, BCM970012, however that is the HP OEM model (I think.) A recent version of Adobe Flash supports this chipset for flash acceleration as well, just FYI.

Related articles:
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Consum ... s/BCM70012
http://www.broadcom.com/products/featur ... tal_hd.php
http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3701


btw, nice design!

That broadcom device is a nifty little thing, unfortunately my board only takes 3x5cm mini pcie cards. It`s a big bummer, since I also wanted to use one of those mini pcie ssd`s.

I believe the card is full-length mini-PCIe, so it should work. I'll be using one for an HTPC once I get the right metal working equipment in my shop.

bump : alternative version in walnut almost complete

ntavlas wrote:bump : alternative version in walnut almost complete

walnut is definitely one of my favorite woods. (maple just barely beats it out.)

Really like the white version, looks very ipodish.

ntavlas wrote:Taking a brake from lapping, I tried to improve the cooling of the motherboard. The northbridge/igp has the highest TDP at 5 watts so it gets a bigger heatsink. The stock one was moved to the southbridge (3 watts TDP). I also added some small heatsinks on the power transistors.

I had a similar need, with a board on which stock heat sinks where just to small, with a loud 5cm fan on the CPU. I found big Pentium 3 heat sinks which I used to cut bigger ones. I mounted them using the original springs, and parts of AAA battery holders (to lock the spring in place, inside the heatsink, you will notice it on the picture).

Now I can run it like your own board, with a much bigger and quieter fan:

ntavlas wrote:That broadcom device is a nifty little thing, unfortunately my board only takes 3x5cm mini pcie cards. It`s a big bummer, since I also wanted to use one of those mini pcie ssd`s.

I realise it's maybe a little bit late now, but you can get 50mm Mini-PCIe SATA SSDs now. The ones I've found are kinda expensive (available in 32gb, 64gb and 128gb)

http://www.memoryc.com/products/descrip ... index.html

I'm sorely tempted to get one for my laptop too, as it'd then let me use the internal 2.5" bay for a high capacity storage drive, but meh...I don't *need* it

like the white version, but the one with black stripes is really coooooooooool))
look forward to all your posts! Keep up the outstanding work!

An update adding an aluminium version and a alternative, larger instance attempting to build a viable gaming pc with the smallest footprint possible.

Somehow I missed the last posts. Eventually I settled for a thin Skythe fan @ 1000 rpm and returned to the stock heatsink. The fan is pretty much inaudible and I`m not particularly annoyed by the hard drive either but truth be told, among other members here, I`m not particularly sensitive to noise. So far, this machine has been used mostly as a test subject , it doesn`t need to be particularly refined. The availability of thinner sandy bridge boards opens up more possibilities though. As for mini pcie ssds, it`s good to have the option in a HTPC/server config though a 2,5 inch ssd is also an option, especially in a desktop configuration.

that was amazing.

Thanks