Still early days, but here's my HTPC so far...

[paulrb]

SilverstoneTech Lascala LC01:


Trouble getting motherboard standoffs screwed in: note metal shavings that came off when I was forced to use a power tool to get them installed!


Mitsumi blank floppy disk with integrated card reader installed. This caused no end of problems when I installed XP. Firstly, I could not get XP to recognise it when I wanted to install the SATA .inf/driver files, so I had to temporarily transplant another floppy drive from another PC.

Secondly, the NF7-S bios must have recognised the card readers as drives. After I had partitioned the hard drive, I wanted to continue with the installation, but XP complained that it wanted to write some temporary files to an "unknown drive" which had not been partitioned. It was talking about one of the card reader slots! I unplugged the USB cable to the Mitsumi and started over - no problems after that.

The Mitsumi does not appear to be faulty. Now XP is installed, its fine for reading/writing to both floppies and CF cards. A strange episode...


The NF7-S installed with the XP-M 2500, 512MB memory and an AMD heatsink/fan that came originally with an XP2000.


Samsung 160GB SATA hard drive installed:


Mitsumi Floppy/Card reader and Panasonic 16X slot-loading DVD-ROM installed:


CPU fan and case fan, before the duct was installed:


The duct components installed. The fit was perfect - only a 4cm gap remained. It was not worth using the 50cm long flexible tube that came with the kit to cover the last 4 cm!


The gap covered by a strip of cardboard wrapped around and secured with sticky tape!


Another view of the duct. The Zalman passive northbridge heatsink can also be seen:


The complete system so far...


More later, but so far the CPU temp has not risen above 42C with this setup. The CPU is running at 1.33V.[/img]

[Ralf Hutter]

Secondly, the NF7-S bios must have recognised the card readers as drives. After I had partitioned the hard drive, I wanted to continue with the installation, but XP complained that it wanted to write some temporary files to an "unknown drive" which had not been partitioned. It was talking about one of the card reader slots! I unplugged the USB cable to the Mitsumi and started over - no problems after that.

This is an XP thang. It'll see the CF/SD ports as system drives, assigning them a drive letter and everything. As long as you leave the USB cable unplugged while installing the OS, you'll be fine.

[meglamaniac]

That looks very nice, I especially like that duct.

Regarding the "XP thang" I've had worse than that.
Ever tried installing XP while you have other drives connected that already have partitions on them? The result is that your existing partitions are assigned C, D, E etc and your windows drive ends up as, say, F.
While you can reassign drive letters after installation, you can't reassign the system drive letter, so you're stuck with F.

This is incredibly aggravating as whenever I reinstall I have to go into the bios and disable my other drives. Luckily I don't have more than one partition per drive, I don't know what would happen if you tried to install on a drive with two partitions...

[Linus]

That duct is sweet...wish I could do that to my LC02...

Keep us posted on your silencing efforts!

[paulrb]

Next change will be the PSU. That old Sparkle is just one I had gathering dust in a box. Its the noisiest thing in there now, no surprise.

My first choice would be Seasonic Tornado 350W, but apparently we can only get the v2 in UK, which has some problems. Next choice would be Nexus 400W.

After that, I'm looking for a double-layer DVD +/-RW drive that's quiet. I have a single-layer Lite-on in another PC, and I'm impressed how quiet that is, and I think there is now a black double-layer version, so perhaps thats the one to go for.

Any opinions?

[paulrb]

Also, I'm wondering if a better quality, low profile, copper heatsink would do a significantly better job than that stock AMD heatsink. Any thoughts?

[freka586]

paulrb:
From what I read the Nexus 4090 isn't *that* quiet.

Is there really nothing that can be done about the SS Rev2?
Ditching the fan control?
Hoping that it "never" ramps up if the case is cool enough?

In Sweden the SS-400FB is also available.
There does not seem to be that many reviews/opinions about that partical model though.

The ideal solution would be if retailers in EU could get their hands on the good Rev.3 products.
I actually don't understand why there are no Rev.3 PSUs in all EU.
Seems fishy, any EU-US trade conspiracies maybe?

[meglamaniac]

Btw, I'm interested to know where you got your parts for the duct from.
Do these look similar? What exactly is the bit that is attached to the fan?

[Tephras]

I actually don't understand why there are no Rev.3 PSUs in all EU. Seems fishy, any EU-US trade conspiracies maybe?

freka586, this is from the thread "Seasonic Rev.A3 Super series A-OK!":

For swedes: A friend of mine got in touch with www.jmedata.se before buying a 300W OEM and a 400W retail and got them to CONFIRM that they were indeed A3 BEFORE shipping.

[freka586]

Tephras: That is some SWEET news! Finally a bottom-line answer that one can count on!

paulrb:
Congrats on the success with both undervolting and your duct mod.
Do you have any feel for how much space left there is for CPU cooling, with regards to PSU and passive NB cooler?

Do you think a Zalman 7000/A would fit, or even a SP-97 + fan?
In http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... ilverstone the user even fitted an XP-120 in the same case!
Any chance of using only an SP-97 for a undervolted XP-M?

Btw, sorry for sort of hijacking your thread

[paulrb]

megalamaniac, here is the link:

http://www.weisan.com.tw/Product_detail ... ID=1000312

I came across it by accident in a Maplin store where I went to buy the zalman northbridge heatsink.

[paulrb]

freka586,

You can see from the 7th picture above that there is a little more room available between the CPU and PSU. I think an 80mm heatsink would probably fit. The AMD heatsink on there now us probably only 60mm.

I doubt that XP 120 would fit! The setup in your link had the PSU where the second drive cage goes instead of its normal position, and that maybe the reason.

I don't think the northbridge heatsink will be a problem, because there is more room on that side.

I don't know if I made this clear before, but I took the fan off the AMD heatsink before I attached the duct. The cpu is being cooled just by the air sucked out by the case fan.

If you can find or make a suitable duct, I would think the SP-97 would be even better, if it will fit.

I was very lucky with the duct components. When I attached the adaptor and 90degree bend tube, the height was exactly correct to line up with the case fan.

[paulrb]

Some success today. I had an Antec 80mm temperature controlled that wasn't being used. So I opened the Sparkle PSU and replaced its fan with the Antec. I now have an PSU that is very much quiteter (2000-2500 rpm) and I can monitor the fan speed. I attached the new fan with a pair of tiny plug-blocks - easy!

Now the loudest component is the supposedley "quiet" case fan that came with the Lascala case. The sound is more of a "whoosh" from the duct than any hum from the fan. I replaced the cardboard part of the duct with a similar sized piece of foam-backed foil originally intended as insulation material, and this also helped a little. I can now for the first time hear the Samsung HDD. I'm very pleased, considering how little money these mods cost.

I also transplanted the 54G wireless network card and the Nebula DigiTV card into the new machine from my desktop machine. Both working well.

Things are shaping up!

[paulrb]

Tried playing Freelancer this weekend. Not sure if its 'cause of the nvidia 4000mx as opposed to ati 9600 I normally used, or what, but found playing a struggle.

Certainly, I need to find a good wireless keyboard & mouse. The keyboard I have now has a little mouse-style joystick. Just about bearable for operating windows, but useless for games. Also it is IR rather than radio, so angle and line of sight is critical, but at least it works from 3 - 5m away.

What's a good model that uses radio and works at 5m? (both k/b and mouse)

BUT the dolby digital sound is SUPERB! And it works flawlessly with DVD movies and games. Freelancer is very atmospheric with sound effects from all directions.

Next job is to build the Radeon direct VGA to SCART/RGB cable to get best possible picture quality. I know from past experience that DVD looks much better on my Sony TV through RGB rather than S-Video.

I have all the parts, and no excuses - time to fire up the old soldering iron!

[paulrb]

Well, I've soldered the cable, and I think I've got it right. So I'm now testing it and trying to configure the Radeon 9600 with Powerstrip. What a struggle! I had it working once, but I can't get it back again now.

The picture was very sharp (for a TV) and colours were good. But overscan and flicker were bad on windows desktop. I tried to adjust to improve the overscan a little, and lost the picture again. Now I can't get it back!

Here's a tip. I tried to connect the TV to the secondary display connector using a DVI to VGA dongle. Didn't want to work. So then I tried swapping my monitor to the secondary connector and TV on the primary. This is when the TV started working. Annoyingly, when connected to the secondary, I can't get anything higher than 640x480 with a larger virtual desktop on the monitor.

As for a replacement keyboard & mouse, I have spotted a Belkin bluetooth bundle at a Staples store for £80. Looks good, and works up to 10m away. But still seems alot of money for a keyboard & mouse. I could only find it for £10 less on Amazon.co.uk, so that's not worth the wait and the hassle of getting it delivered at home when no-one is in.

Any help with the TV settings, or opintions on bluetooth keyboards would be appreciated.

[paulrb]

YES! YES! YES!

VGA -> SCART RGB now working well!

TV switches to 16:9 automatically.
Resolution: 1024x576

Now its time to put the Radeon into the HTPC (testing in my desktop until I had this working).

Thanks to the person I copied these settings from elsewhere on this board. They worked "off the peg":

1024x576=1024,32,96,112,576,5,5,39,19750,312

[paulrb]

Hi all,

I've recently got the VGA -> RGB SCART method to work on my Radeon 9600 by soldering my own cable and using Powerstrip.

The resulting pucture quality on my Sony 41" CRT rear-projection TV is MUCH better than using S-Video.

But the downside is that the picture can't be seen until Powerstrip runs, a few seconds after you log in to XP.

But you can't see the BIOS messages, the XP loading screen or the login screen, so this is a problem if the TV is the only display connected to the PC!

Ideally, I would like to set the required TV settings in the Radeon BIOS, and not need Powerstrip at all.

So I've been searching the net for a solution and came across "RaBiT", which is a new-ish tool that lets you edit various settings in the Radeon's BIOS memory.

One of these lets you to set the initial TV output settings. I tried RaBiT on a copy of my card's BIOS. The settings it allowed were "None", "PAL" or "NTSC". But then I clicked the "allow unsupported TV standards" box. Several new options appeared including "SCART RGB".

I'm a bit nervous of flashing the updated bios into the card, so now I'm trying to find out what this feature might do, hoping it will grant my wishes.

But I can't find any more detail about the setting, and what its supposed to do.

Can anyone help?

[Chris`I]

Sounds like you are getting on well with this. How easy is one of these VGA > SCART leads to make? I was under the understanding that coverters from VGA > TV were expensive, but if I can make my own that is a bonus!

As for the GFX, I have flashed my GFX card before. Few basic pointers before you start. Make sure you have a backup PCI or board with built in GFX that works with a card in the AGP slot. This mean if it goes wrong you can boot back into windows and reflash it back. Secondly, remember to back up the current bios so you have something to flash back to! It doesnt damage the card flashing it, and you can always go back assuming you take your time and follow instructions carefully. As you say though, you need to make sure the card supports the features that the new bios will offer. Just cos its in the bios doesnt mean the hardware will support it!

[Qwertyiopisme]

VGA -> TV is indeed expensive, but RGB scart is essentially VGA with a combined Horizontal and Vertical refresh. (Signal voltages are the same).

[paulrb]

Chris,

The cable is not complicated to make, but it is fiddly.

You will need some "electronics size" tools - small wire cutters & strippers, small pointed pliers and small/low power soldering iron. Trying to do the job with regular "electrician size" tools will be very difficult, especially when soldering the VGA plug. You also need good eyesight and at least 3 hands! I would recommend a large chunk of modelling clay to hold things steady while you solder.

The technique only works with Radeon cards (and maybe some Matrox). It does not work with nVidia cards, as they don't produce the "composite sync" signal that TVs need. Obviously, you also need a TV with an RGB capable SCART socket (rare in US, I believe).

Also note that, in theory, doing this could damage your TV and/or VGA card, so you do it at your own risk. Here's the link:

http://ryoandr.free.fr/english.html

Also there is a company in UK called Keene electronics who will make up the cable for you for about £35, I think. They've made lots before, so will know what you want if you refer to that link.

[freka586]

Let's see if we can wake this nice 'ol thread back up..

I am about to build an HTPC using pretty much the same components.
But since I have a brand new Zalman 7000 CPU fan just sitting there I am thinking about squeezing that in.

I was therefore wondering if you, paulrb, or anyone else with a similar setup could do some quick measuring for me?
I am most interested in the space between CPU and PSU, as that seems to be the limiting factor.
I have gotten indications that the ZM-7000 might not fit, but would like to be sure before spending cash on something else.

Your CPU duct does look fine indeed and could be an interesting alternative!
What are your temps during normal usafe and full load?
What is the height of your heatsink?
Could the same duct kit be used with heatsinks of other height, or was this a lucky shot with the one perfect fit?

Thanks in advance!

[paulrb]

Hi Freka586,

I haven't had time to do much more work on the PC lately, but I'll try to find time at the weekend to take some measurements for you.

Picture no. 7 above gives the best idea of the amount of space available - not much. The heatsink shown there is a standard AMD stock one. With the fan removed it was exactly the right height to match up the 90 degree bend pipe with the exhaust fan - I was just lucky.

[freka586]

paulrb,

Actually you don't have to bother with the measurements.
I decided to order the case regardless of spacing, dimensions etc.
If it turns out that my existing Zalman cooler does not fit I guess I'll just have to get a new one.

Since I would get the LC01 regardless of whether my cooler fits I thought I'd buy it sooner rather than later

[paulrb]

Just to let you know I'm still working on this thing!

The Samsung HDD is now inside a Silentek hard drive enclosure. The HDD was not the noisiest remaining component, but this upgrade was cheap at £25, so why not. Some problems though, because it is a SATA drive and the enclosure is designed for ribon-cable ATA. I had to cut an extra, narrow slit in the foam "plug" for the connectors, but managed to get the plastic end cover on without modifying that.

I have ordered a Pioneer DVD+RW drive with aluminium front face and some sort of noise damping built in - model number 109XLS. This will replace the slot-loading DVD-ROM drive.

Also on order: Silverstone 300W passive PSU. I *will* get down to a single fan! I was concerned about this idea at first, because if there were a negative pressure differential inside the case compared to outside, this might stop the fanless PSU getting rid of its heat (air might be sucked in through the PSU instead of getting blown outwards). But what I have done is reversed the case fan so it blows inwards, onto the CPU heatsink. This has made no real difference to the CPU temps! This should give the inside of the cae a positive pressure differential, so I'm hoping the fanless PSU will be fine.

No progress on the TV connection front. I'm still thinking about a plasma with PC input. Hitachi 42PD5200 looks good at the moment...

How's your build going, freka586?

[paulrb]

PS. That Belkin Bluetooth keyboard & mouse is now £60 in Dixon's, but still £80 in PC World. Strange, as both shops belong to the same company!

[freka586]

Well my system is somewhat assembled and the main obstacle left is really more SW oriented.

I went with the LC01 case, Zalman 7000 CPU cooler (required some trimming...) and a Seasonic 300W PSU.
For graphics I use a passive Geforce 5200 and a PVR-150 for TV.
The case looks nice but the thin&light alu feels a bit rattly, at least compared to my 3700BQE with AcoustiPack applied..

At the moment I have not needed to hook up the case fan, it seems that the PSU+CPU fans are able to keep things quiet on their own.
It's difficult to say whether the CPU fan or the HDD is more noisy, but from a sofa-position neither of them can be heard.
I think the PSU is the best component yet, incredibly quiet!
The CPU could probably be tuned for somewhat lower power consumtion, but I was eager to be done with that part for now.

I am currently using MCE2005 on the SW side, mainly while waiting for more mature support for PVR-150 on Myth.
Some minor decoder fiddling was required to get TV working properly.

Right now I am slowly getting ready to ditch my old VCR and use the HTPC on a more day-to-day basis.
But I still have a creepy feeling that this project will never fully reach the COMPLETED stage

[paulrb]

PSU and DVD-Writer installed.

Noise has hit a new low, as I'm down to a single 80mm fan running at around 2000rpm. But now I notice that the case lid is vibrating slightly! I'll need to get some stickly rubber pads to stop that.

With one less fan in the box, the temps have enevitably gone up a little. CPU is now around 50C and motherboard around 38C. Oh well, still cooler than my other PC, and much quieter.

The Pioneer DVD drive really looks the business in the LC01. The front facia is not actually brushed aluminium at all (I suspected it wouldn't be, because it was only a couple of quid more than the black or beige versions). Its painted plastic, but it does look very convincing. I'll try to post a pic at the weekend. Its also at least as quiet as any other drive I've owned, probably quieter. I have not written any disks get, but high speed ripping produces only a slight rushing sound.

[megazero]

how does the Mitsumi Floppy/Card reader connect to the motherboard, it says USB 2.0, but I thought USB ports were on outside of case, do newer motherboards come with internal USB 2.0 Ports?? what do they look like?

[paulrb]

megazero, yes modern motherboards often have both internal and external USB ports. The internal ones just look like two rows of 4 gold pins sticking up. They will be marked with "USB" written on the motherboard next to them. You have to be carefull to attach the connectors to these the right way around, or you can damage the motherboard or the USB device.

I have now re-mounted my one remaining fan using a rubber suspension kit. This has reduced noise a little more, but I think the HDD is also causing some of the vibration in the case.

In my previous message, I said the temperatures had gone up when I changed the PSU for the fanless one. But it turns out I had accidentally reset the BIOS settings and the CPU was back to its default vcore voltage of 1.575V. So I put it back down to the 1.35V that I know works OK, and the temperatures have fallen back again. At idle today CPU is about 38C and motherboard about 28C.

When I fitted the new PSU, I got an error message from hardware doctor that the -5V supply was outside limits. +3.5V, in fact! But everything seems to work OK anyway. Does this matter, or should I replace the PSU?



Here's a pic of the new Pioneer DVD writer in place:

[megazero]

yea, i looked up internal usb ports and I can even see them on motherboards now, new motherboards of today come with3 internal usb ports and there are even pci usb cards that have them.