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HD-Plex H1 Modded Bedroom HTPC

Posted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 8:34 pm
by bobb
Following my Living Room HTPC build, here's followup a smaller, super cute, still manly, fully passive, bedroom HTPC based on the HD-Plex H1 ITX case with some custom mods of course.

(click pics for larger)

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The six bar graphs are currently programmed to display...

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OK enough beauty shots, show me some HARDWARE! Enough appliances in there to make my orthodontist proud? Never enough heatpipes for a fully passive right.

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Of course passive means:

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Haswell G3220 Dual Core, 64G mSata, 4G Ram, ASUS H81 Thin ITX Mobo, 80w PSU. Media libraries are on NAS.

Re: HD-Plex H1 Modded Bedroom HTPC

Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2015 7:01 am
by CA_Steve
Awesome. Thanks for sharing.

Re: HD-Plex H1 Modded Bedroom HTPC

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 5:21 am
by Vicotnik
Very nice. Love the extra heatpipes. :)

Anatomy of Flat Heatpipe Thermal-coupling

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 3:30 pm
by bobb
Thanks guys. Now something extra for fans of heatpipe thermal coupling.

The good thing about flat heatpipe is, they can be mounted without any copper block as long as there are flat surfaces on both ends. They are relatively soft and with care, can be hand-bent without any special tools. These heatpipe can be obtained (US) Newark.com, or (UK) uk.farnell.com

(click for big pic)

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My chipset mount was relatively trouble free, I just had to make one “ladder” bend to be clear of nearby components. The funky shape of the hold-down bracket is due to the locations of the original heatsink screws, home-fabricated or course. The thumb screws is what I have on hand, any screw of the proper length would suffice. TIM applied between chipset and heatpipe.

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The mSata coupling took some doing. I bought the pieces not knowing if it was going to work. There are chips on both sides of the PCB, fortunately I was able to wrap-around the heat spreader and still able to screw the whole thing down. The copper heat spreader is an aftermarket item to fit a stick of Ram, so I cut it down to custom fit it. Thermal pads were placed between the spreader and the chips. A shim was added for correct fitting.

I may had left these two items un-heatpiped but their idle temps were warmer than I like so I went broke, lower by 10c.