Luke122
08-29-2007, 04:26 PM
Good afternoon everyone,
I've been thinking alot lately about all the copper themed stuff that's going on around here, and how copper heatsinks are becoming more and more common.
I'm planning a new build right now, a media center box running LinuxMCE to sit in my living room. It needs to have a high WAF (wife approval factor, I'm sure most of you know what I mean by this), be nearly silent (or silent), and have enough "oomph" to blast my HD content to the tv.
I've already been collecting hardware for a bit to build this box, and as it stands, I have the following ready to go:
Asus P5LD2-VM motherboard
Intel D820 processor
Biostar 7200GS 128mb Passive PCI-x GPU
2gb Kingston 667mhz ddr2
LG 16x DVDR
XPower 350w PSU
40gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 hdd + External 300gb USB hdd
The XPower psu is hella cheap, and crazy loud. $35.. you get what you pay for. Anyways, I've got some Evercool "silent" fans to swap into it and to cool the rest of the case.. that should make it quiet.
I have some copper heat spreaders for the ram (very nice and shiny), and a great big Zalman copper cpu cooler w/fan controller. Yay, more quietness. :D
As far as the look, I'm still working out a plan for appearance on this unit, but the only thing I know for sure is that the wife has to like the look of it, and I want to use black and copper as the colors on the outside.
I've got LOADS of plexiglass to work with, including a nice piece of "bronze" tinted stuff.. might make a nice window or an accent piece or something. I'd like to make the outside as smooth as possible, with a very minimalistic/simple design, but one thing that do really like is the look of Roman and Greek pottery.. black with copper/bronze patterns inlaid on it, so I might try to emulate something like that for the outside.
I've got all these LED's screaming to be used, but I dont know how I would integrate them successfully into a project like this without overpowering the subtle styling, or having the lights be a distraction when watching movies.
Basically I'm looking for some ideas here on design/styling, and if anyone has any feedback at all, I'm interested in hearing it. I'll post hardware pics next. :D
I've been thinking alot lately about all the copper themed stuff that's going on around here, and how copper heatsinks are becoming more and more common.
I'm planning a new build right now, a media center box running LinuxMCE to sit in my living room. It needs to have a high WAF (wife approval factor, I'm sure most of you know what I mean by this), be nearly silent (or silent), and have enough "oomph" to blast my HD content to the tv.
I've already been collecting hardware for a bit to build this box, and as it stands, I have the following ready to go:
Asus P5LD2-VM motherboard
Intel D820 processor
Biostar 7200GS 128mb Passive PCI-x GPU
2gb Kingston 667mhz ddr2
LG 16x DVDR
XPower 350w PSU
40gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 hdd + External 300gb USB hdd
The XPower psu is hella cheap, and crazy loud. $35.. you get what you pay for. Anyways, I've got some Evercool "silent" fans to swap into it and to cool the rest of the case.. that should make it quiet.
I have some copper heat spreaders for the ram (very nice and shiny), and a great big Zalman copper cpu cooler w/fan controller. Yay, more quietness. :D
As far as the look, I'm still working out a plan for appearance on this unit, but the only thing I know for sure is that the wife has to like the look of it, and I want to use black and copper as the colors on the outside.
I've got LOADS of plexiglass to work with, including a nice piece of "bronze" tinted stuff.. might make a nice window or an accent piece or something. I'd like to make the outside as smooth as possible, with a very minimalistic/simple design, but one thing that do really like is the look of Roman and Greek pottery.. black with copper/bronze patterns inlaid on it, so I might try to emulate something like that for the outside.
I've got all these LED's screaming to be used, but I dont know how I would integrate them successfully into a project like this without overpowering the subtle styling, or having the lights be a distraction when watching movies.
Basically I'm looking for some ideas here on design/styling, and if anyone has any feedback at all, I'm interested in hearing it. I'll post hardware pics next. :D