I present to you my first scratch build:
As the title implies, this build is going to be quiet- a key feature of any HTPC.
To start off, here is the hardware I will be using:
Ultra XVS 500 watt modular power supply:
There are two reasons I am using this power supply. One, it is very quiet. Two, and more importantly, I did not have to pay anything for it. I got a PC Power and Cooling Silencer 500 for free, and switched it into my main system, so I had this one left over.
Sparkle GeForce 8400gs 512mb, passively cooled:
Hitachi Travelstar 60gb:
I got this for free also.
Slot loading DVD drive:
I pulled this from a dead Ibook, and soldered an eject button onto it.
Commell LV-670, courtesy of d_stilgar, 1gb DDR266, Celeron 2.6
That's it for the core hardware. Now onto the building.
My first obstacle was the CPU cooler. I did not have a spare low profile socket 478 cooler, so I had to make my own. I pulled a generic aluminum cooler out of a computer to be recycled. Then I cut off the two outermost fins on each side, and drilled a hole in each corner. To mount it, I just put a bolt through each hole, and put the nuts on the bottom of the board.
Next part is the motherboard tray. I cut a piece of metal out of the enclosure from an old VCR, glued standoffs to it, and cut a hole for the backpanel. The video card screws into the top like it would in a case.
The original piece of metal:
standoffs:
Back panel cut:
Hardware mounted:
The fan comes to within a millimeter of the height of the video card:
I know what the internal layout is going to be, but as of now, I have no idea what it is going to look like on the outside. I spent two hours on onlinemetals.com, looking at aluminum mesh and other metal, got everything perfectly measured, only to find out that shipping would cost nearly 3 times as much as the actual material would.
So that's all for now. I hope to finish this within the week, as I go back to school on Monday, so there should be lots of updates relatively soon.
Thanks for looking!