Old HP case, new guts =)

Shobai · Post by **Shobai** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 2:40 am

heya chaps,

just waiting on a few new bits to complete my latest build, but i figured i'd post what i've got so far, considering it's all up and running.

bit of background: ever since i saw a small HP case back in the day, i've been dreaming of building a machine using that size case. the style of case in question is from back in the days of the venerable P3 - takes ÂµATX motherboards [with some noteworthy restrictions] and utilises SFX PSUs.

there are some great things about this sort of case, with it's removable motherboard tray and tiny size, but the main problem is that the 5 1/4" slot sits directly over the motherboard, which precludes most motherboards from being used due to the placement of the RAM slots. i've found a few boards over the years that suit this case, and having recently come into possession of one [again, but that case is a long story also] i decided to rebuild my computer in it. as it turns out, between upgrading the CPU and my graphics card not fitting, with the new motherboard and PSU it would seem to be a new build in it's own right. but that's not really the point =)

so anyway, here are some specs:

AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE
4GB Transcend DDR2 800
Asrock N68PV-GS
WD 640GB
Pioneer 216D
7900GS
SeaSonic SS-300SFD [rebadged by Ipex]

and now pics:
[full gallery]

the case itself

the original specs

modified GPU cooler [ATI 4890 cooler, shroud made from cereal box card. the fan is screwed through the card, which is 1 long strip with 2 sides attached. it's attached to the heatsink with double sided tape and eletrical tape, performs much better than the original and much more quietly.]

the cramped internals

update: 8/8

well, here are some pics of the new GPU. for more info, read further down the thread =)

the box =)

the card, replete with Twin Turbo PRO

the card in case, slightly modified so that the power cable didn't need to have nasty bends in them.

there are more pics in the gallery [hopefully that link works...] so have a look there if you'd like to =)

if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask =)

[edit: added a few shots of the internals, especially the GPU shroud in situ]

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:18 am

GPU cooling is geniously made ^^

It looks you don't have case fans and PSU is with 120mm fan also sole exhaust for the case?

pvone · Post by **pvone** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:27 am

Hey, great job! I've always liked the old grey-and-clear-black HP cases, this little one especially. I've been considering building inside one myself, cool to see you had the idea as well

Spirit02 · Post by **Spirit02** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:30 am

Love the jury-rigged look of the gfx cooling

I'm up your way at least once a week for uni... my next project will be a mini-itx ION-based htpc...

Could perhaps drop in some time and compare notes...

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 9:04 am

Oh cool, I'm not the only one using this case. Although you're using much newer parts than me. I'm using a Pentium M 1.6Ghz CPU and an HD 3450 GPU. Much easier to cool in the restricted airflow of this case. But I did some other hacks that you may be interested in. I'll post some pictures later.

BillyBuerger · Post by **BillyBuerger** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:30 pm

So here are some pictures of mine. First, I painted it. Good old silver black. Although as you can see in the first picture, I've already made plenty of scratches on it. I added some extra holes in the back under the PSU. Just to try and aid in some airflow. I took a page from the Antec NSK3480 and mounted the hard drive on the floor using some extra silicon grommets from my Mini-P180. I was than able to use the mounting on the front for the hard drive to put a 92mm fan. I'm using foam to decouple it. This fan gives some direct airflow over the GPU, hard drive and a little over the CPU. The CPU heatsink was taken from a large Socket 7 one which I cut down to fit on the motherboard. It's a little taller than the proprietary one that came with the motherboard and has wider spaced fins. The CPU stays plenty cool. Oh, and I made a mistake, this is a Celeron M 1.4GHz CPU. I believe it's undervolted. I don't use it much so I forget. I too am using a Seasonic SS-300SFD PSU but I modded it to fit a 92mm fan that is mounted using rubber fan mounts.

Shobai · Post by **Shobai** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:35 pm

thejamppa wrote:PSU is with 120mm fan also sole exhaust for the case?

you're right, the PSU is the only extraction fan in the case, but its only 80mm =)

Spirit02 wrote:I'm up your way at least once a week for uni...

oh yeah? what do you study? i'm in engineering =) can't stand the Atom though, but i'm also trying to do a DTX build [if i can find someone to sell me the motherboard i'd like - comes from a HP slimline]

pvone wrote:Hey, great job! I've always liked the old grey-and-clear-black HP cases, this little one especially. I've been considering building inside one myself, cool to see you had the idea as well Smile

man, you've no idea how hard it was to find this case! i had one previously that i built into a machine for a mate, but only came across this one by chance. i'd been scouring eBay for months, finally found this little guy over at a mate from uni's place - belonged to his father, so i quickly entered into negotiations to swap it for an ATX case, as he was chasing one of them =) success!

Billy: that's some nice work =) i'm also contemplating a fan swap, not that the original fan is noisy, but just to get some more extraction happening. that's the main reason i modded the gpu heatsink, to get the warm air out of the case! plus, the 4890 cooler fit perfectly with just a shim needed to bridge the gap between the core and the cooling plate. the next step for me is the 4890 to replace the 9800GTX that wouldn't fit in the case [=(] and an aftermarket cpu cooler to perform better than the stock heatsink [loud!] i'm running at the mo. i think i may guide the air to the CPU fan a bit more when i install that [looking at a Shuriken rev.B at the mo] so that the warmed air isn't recirculating as much.

i think i might add a slow spinning slot fan in the gap near the top of the case at the back - just need something to remove the heat. i've added a piece of card to the psu intake so that it'snot competing with the cpu fan, and that seems to have dropped temps a few degrees. i think i'll add another one to the lower side, so that the psu is drawing air from the top of the case, where the air should be warmest. will see how that goes.

at the moment, Rivatuner is controlling the GPU speeds and 25% fan speed is enough to keep the 7900GS under 45deg. C underclocked and it kicks up to 63% at default speeds for games. speedfan controls the CPU fan, and i've got it idling around 50deg. C with 30% fan. the CPU fan is much more annoying than the GPU fan, but they're both in line to be replaced as soon as i can. just waiting on my tax refund =)

frenchie · Post by **frenchie** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:32 pm

god job !!!

funny though, that's just how I started my silent PC frenzy, with my old HP pavilion (P4@2,4 Ghz, GeForce mx 420....)... still works today with all the original parts !!!! (case is a little hacked up, that's all :-p )

danimal · Post by **danimal** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:10 am

cool mod on that video card!! i didn't see a pic with it mounted in the case, tho?

loved that shot of the win98 serial number, lol

Shobai · Post by **Shobai** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 1:31 pm

danimal wrote:cool mod on that video card!! i didn't see a pic with it mounted in the case, tho?

ah, good call! didn't notice that, will fix =)

larfs, had to make sure i blanked out the key =P

[edit: got the quote working, added pics to original post]

Spirit02 · Post by **Spirit02** » Sun Aug 02, 2009 8:26 pm

Shobai wrote: oh yeah? what do you study? i'm in engineering =) can't stand the Atom though, but i'm also trying to do a DTX build [if i can find someone to sell me the motherboard i'd like - comes from a HP slimline]

Surveying

Long as I can get the 9400 onboard to accelerate movies with W7 MC... all good. Otherwise I'll be stuck with MPC-HC

Don't know a thing about DTX...

Shobai · Post by **Shobai** » Mon Aug 03, 2009 2:35 am

no way! from my own Faculty? good work =)

DTX is the spec that AMD released back in the day - makes more sense than ITX, to be honest, but it's not quite as small. the main difference for the end user is that you get 2 expansion slots and ATX size I/O area. the board i'm trying to get a hold of has a PCIe x16 slot, x1 slot and a mini PCIe slot =) so many options!

good luck with the onboard =)

Spirit02 · Post by **Spirit02** » Mon Aug 03, 2009 3:21 am

Shobai wrote:no way! from my own Faculty? good work =)

^^

Expansion options are always good. Good luck with getting a hold of the board...

Shobai · Post by **Shobai** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 4:59 am

just a quick update: my graphics card finally arrived today =)

the 4890 is in, purring along quite nicely and controlled by Rivatuner. i decided that going with the Amaze version was just as cheap as getting a stocko 4890 and then an aftermarket cooler [the stock thing is noisy..] as this version came with the Accelero Twin Turbo Pro [92mm fan version - is only sold on cards] preapplied.

this card is slightly different to the one i've played with previously - i swapped the original heatsink on a Gigabyte 4890 for a friend [for a Twin Turbo; it worked so well that's what i decided to go for, then i found a Pro version =)] and the VRMs are in a different place on mine..they are also lacking any form of cooling, so i'm going to have another look at them when i get a chance to pull everything down again.

in other news, i need to organise some way of removing the warm air =) i knew that this would be a problem in choosing this case, so i've got a few ideas on paper, it's just a matter of trying them. again, when i have some time...

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 5:02 am

I can't wait to see your ugraded rig again. The Vga card you got sounds pretty awesome ^^

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:19 am

Nice work and great creative recycling. I have an ancient mATX tower filled with good parts at my office. Other than the DVD drive it looks old including the "Designed for Microsoft Windows 98" sticker on the face. The missing reset button adds to the charm.

How goes the new vid card?

Shobai · Post by **Shobai** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 8:03 pm

thejamppa wrote:I can't wait to see your ugraded rig again

well, i'm hoping to put some photos up tomorrow - forgot to take them off the camera yesterday, and i'm out at uni all day today and then playing volleyball in Brisbane tonight. ASAP, though =)

thejamppa wrote:The Vga card you got sounds pretty awesome ^^

Trav1s wrote:How goes the new vid card?

yeh, it's pretty cool =) i know that Amaze is only new and hence unknown quantity in the GPU world, but i decided to try them out this once and so far it's going well. obviously, having only really used the card for a few hours last night doesn't give me the basis for to form a real opinion on it =P we'll see how it goes in the days to come. am really appreciating the quietness of the cooler, just waiting on my CPU heatsink now =)

now,as you can see by my sig below, this is all being run by a 300W PSU. i had it on a cheap kill-a-watt style wall wart wattmeter to keep an eye on it last night, and it was going quite well. i was a little worried when [before the drivers had been installed] the machine was pulling 200-220W in startup [!!] however once the drivers were loaded that went back down to 150-160 at stock speeds.

underclocking the GPU as low as i can with Rivatuner [will have to fiddle - AMD's CCC can get the core clock to 240MHz or so, Rivatuner only 450MHz or so..] and taking the CPU down to 1GHz @ 1V brings me back down into the vicinity of 100W. i'd like to look into undervolting the GPU when it's underclocked, to bring it down some more.

as stated in a post above, heat removal is another thing that i need to work on; at the moment, the stock cooler on the CPU has a hard time keeping the CPU under 65C when the GPU is at stock clocks and both CPU and GPU are loaded [ie, gaming]. i'm not worried by 'high temps'; as long as i can keep the CPU under 70, that's fine for me.

i'd like to know how to see the VRM temps on the 4890 - rivatuner hasn't picked anything up, so i might have to pull the cover off and eyeball them, see if there's a plugin available. i'd like to be able to keep an eye on their temps, as i'm not sure what the stock heatsinks are covering and also leaving uncovered...

anyway, long story long, i hope to chuck some pics up tomorrow and investigate things further when i get some more time [=P][/quote]

Shobai · Post by **Shobai** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 3:58 pm

well, there are some new pics in the first post, and more in the gallery.

turns out that the card doesn't use the vt1165 PWM chip that earlier cards did, so it's unlikely i'll be able to muck around with undervolting in software =(

anyway, volleyball was good [second set went to 34-32 [!!], for those that know volleyball] and today we're putting the trusses up on the shed, so i won't be able to look into things much today. maybe next week =)

Shobai · Post by **Shobai** » Sat Aug 08, 2009 6:11 am

ok, so after some more intense digging around, i've changed the way Rivatuner's handling my card a little.

while i was working on my mate's 4890, i saw that the Catalyst Control Centre would clock it down to 240MHz core speed when it was idle. i thought 'awesome!' and tried to set his rivatuner up for similar speeds, but to no avail - the sliders just wouldn't let me select clocks that low. however, i've worked out how to change that, and i've now got mine running at 240MHz core, 250MHz memory - those numbers just selected relatively randomly, i didn't have time to test lower clocks out. i did run furmark on those clocks, averaged 16 fps or so, which i thought wasn't too bad =) that's what the 7900GS i was using in between my old 9800GTX and the 4890 was getting =P no visible artifacts, and considering i'm only using those speeds for desktop/2D/idle type scenarios, it'll do for the mo.

again, i'd like to look at my options in undervolting also, but will have to wait for more spare time. i'll try and get the compy on a wattmeter again, i'd like to see what downclocking so drastically has done for consumption.

later,

[edit]
so, i threw it on the wattmeter this morning; with GPU @ 240/250 speeds and CPU @ 200MHz x 5 @ 1V, the wattmeter reads 94W at idle. haven't got time to check temps, will update later on.

Shobai · Post by **Shobai** » Tue Aug 11, 2009 7:40 am

all righty =)

so, load temps were annoying me a little. after playing a game for a few hours, the CPU'd be approaching 70C while the GPU'd be up around 86,87C.

so, as i had a noisy blower fan spare and a few hours between class and work, i knocked this little extractor fan together.

et voila:

another shot

a final view

alright, so the astute eye will have picked up the blower fan from a 4890's stock cooler [what a noisy beast...moves a large amount of air, but a such a price!] and a bunch of cardboard. the cardboard comes from an Antec PSU box i had lying around - i needed something fairly sturdy and easy to use.

the fan is connected through a number of adaptors to 5V [and is still noisy! this particular one i suspect is poorly balanced - at this voltage, the growl dies away and the whoosh of air along with a little whine is left. too much!] and moves quite a lot of air, even running this slowly.

the whole beastie is placed above the PSU in the case. there's a little punch out slot there that i've [obviously =P] punched out, so the contraption is wedged between the back of the DVD and the rear of the case.

it is effective: CPU temps dropped somewhere between 10-12C, GPU temps were even better at 16-20C lower than previously. it's not going to last, though...i just can't take the noise! i'm not sure i'd keep it like this even if i had a switch inline to turn it on when needed..

anyway, i'm heading to bed