HTPC Build-Log: Part 3..... It's been a good week!

It's been a good week......, no check that; it's been a GREAT week..... in the HTPC world that is! In the last build-log, I had said that the ID Cooling coolers were delivered, but there were other issues that delayed the update of my HTPC fleet. Anyway; "we have overcome"!

I got momentum when the delayed conversion of our bedroom HTPC went off without a hitch. In fact, the speed and ease of which this theoretically "out of date" A75/A6-3600 motherboard/CPU combo went about it's tasks was a surprise. My pride would like to attribute this to me applying these older (read cheaper) components to jobs that it does particularly well. I may be right, or I might be just lucky; who knows, who cares? The fact is that this combination of pretty prosaic parts are an excellent match for it's intended job of a HTPC. If you haven't been keeping score, here it is:

• $48 - ASRock A75m-ITX, AMD A6-3600 MB/APU combo (eBay)
• $12 - ID Cooling DK-03, Heatsink/120mm fan (Amazon)
• $0 - Silverstone SG08Lite case (old machine)
• $0 - Seasonic 500w PSU (old machine)
• $0 - Intel 80Gb SSD, Hitachi 500Gb HDD, Slot-loading DVD-RW (old machine)
• $60 - Total 

 

No; you are not looking at the inside of the SG-08. This is in fact, the inside of a Silverstone SG-05. ??? So, after the sucess of the "Viking" HTPC, I moved right on to the replacement to "Bronco" machine that fulfills the HTPC role in the downstairs den. Since it was a low-powered "thin" PC it uses a "wide-voltage" external power supply. The issue I had on Sunday was that it used a different adapter than what I was using. In the ensuing 2 days, I realized that there were several random adapters from dead laptops that I've accumulated. In the pile, I found HP one that worked. After a quick OS load-up; this machine was ready as well! Again I was a little surprised by the speed of this machine! At least this board should be fast, since it's LGA-1150 of the "Broadwell" generation. Anything else left to do on this?

• $39.68 - Gigabyte GA-B75TN motherboard (eBay)
• $34.28 - Intel Pentium 2030T CPU (eBay)
• $19.99 - Silverstone NT-07 HSF (Amazon)
• $12.54 - 4Gb DDR3 SO-DIMM (eBay)
• $0 - Other 4Gb DDR3 SO-DIMM (spare parts box)
• $0 - Crucial M4 mSATA 256Gb SSD (spare parts box)
• $0 - Power adapter (closet of doom)
• $106.49 - Total

Well.... yes. The SG05 is a temporary home. My ultimate evil plan is to pick up a Silverstone PT13. The reason is obvious: it's so small and cool! What about the 3rd HTPC?

I get to do this all day Saturday, and I do mean all day. I'm an academic competition coach and sponsor at school. While my debaters fell just short of advancing to state level competition, my top Social Studies kid is an alternate to the Regional Competition this year. So I get to drive him and all the others from both high schools in our district, 2 and a half hours East and South into the heart of the Piney Wood to Stephen F. Austin University at Nacogadoches. In order to get there on time, we'll be leaving at 5am, putting me getting up at 4am since I have to get the bus. We'll finish around 4pm. I'll be getting home somewhere around 9pm! Therefore, despite the arrival of the 8-pin EPS adapter, there'll be no finishing the HTPC in the main A/V system till Sunday. Here are the numbers for the last machine.

• $30.25 - Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-HD2 motherboard (eBay)
• $66.35 - AMD A8-7600 APU (eBay)
• $40 - Corsail Vengeance Pro 8Gb DDR3/1866 RAM (eBay)
• $5.81 - Creative Labs Soundblaster Live Soundcard (eBay)
• $0 - Ahanix D-Vine5 case (old machine)
• $0 - Intel 120Gb SSD (parts box)
• $0 - Hitachi DeskStar 500Gb HDD, Sony Blu-Ray optical drive (old machine)
• $106.35 - Total    

All of these totals include not only the cost of parts, but also the shipping costs as well, so I figure the grand total of $272.84 is pretty OK. That's about $90 per on 3 pretty up-to-date machines that do their jobs well. They are going to allow me to "cut the cord". The end of Netflix, and the end of Cable TV service. Those 2 things by themselves come to something like $80-90 per month! That puts this upgrade to paying off in 3 months! Do I wish, I was already done after all the planning and waiting? Sure I am, but I'm OK with the progress so far. I can see the end of the road from here!

The Devil Is In The Details..... of PC Building

"WHAT THE....... !!!" .....as my brother-in-law would say. Yup; that my friends is a "Molex to 4-pin adapter".

 ...... and that is an "8-pin EPS extension".

This? A "24-pin PSU extension", of course. Is there a point to all this random wiring vocabulary lesson? Well, yes of course.... only if you want to get  your build off the ground! Oh it gets better! I promise!

This is an ID Cooling DK-03, heat-sink fan combo.... coming from China. Yup, my server/HTPC builds are in that excruciating stage of waiting for random parts to show up from random places, ranging from Katy, Texas to Shenzhen, China. This is the part that nobody talks about and the videos on Youtube never show. 

I'll have to admit it that some of it is my fault, in that I'm a bit of a stickler. Like the HSF issue. I actually do have perfectly adequate ones sitting around, but I'm not about adequate. I need a "low-profile" assembly, so solutions like the Cooler Master EVO 212 are out. Can't fit a "tower" style cooler in a HTPC, and the stock AMD models are notoriously noisy at least partially due to the small fans being used as is typical of virtually all low-profile systems. I could run out to Micro Center and pick up a Noctua or Silverstone HSF for about $35-40 a pop, but that's just too expensive for me. Did I mention that I'm stubborn too?!? Yes; I want my cake and eat it too! So I started to dig, and came up with the ID Cooling DK-03 which is not only low-profile, but uses a 120mm fan on top! That make for a slow rpm, which equal low noise..... MAGIC! The only fly in the ointment is that they are shipped out of China! So it'll be about 2 weeks before they get here. 

Some of the delay issues are kind of unforeseen. See where the power supply sits in this image of the Fractal Define XL R2 that I'm using? Yup, the PSU's cables won't reach the board's headers way up top. To exacerbate things, it's a full-on dual processor, eATX server board from Supermicro (which was the cause of the ginormous case to start with), which requires not only a 12 volt, 8-pin EPS cable, but a 4-pin one as well..... hence all the extensions. 

 

Then, there's all this. You'd think that I'd have enough memory laying around right? Well, here's the thing. These machine are a little different. The two AMD APU based board take faster RAM than is typical of this generation's machines. In general I use Intel based systems, so if you're talking PC3-1600 memory, I'm good. But 1866mhz.... not so much, so I had to order some. Again, my stubborness rears it's ugly head! I'm just not going to pay retail prices on anything! The SO-DIMM? Yeah, the B75 "Slim" Mini-ITX board...... yeah, it uses laptop RAM. I had one stick of 10,600 4Gb RAM (along with an mSATA SSD for it), but I want to run 8Gb as a minimum standard this generation, so I had the find another one. Hey; I got it for $12.54 though! 

So, here I am. Iiving in my own special purgatory of waiting for computer parts......