Well, you may recall I had a heat problem with my new HTPC based on Abit/XP-1900 CPU right? Well, trying to resolve that, I bought this cheezy fan heatsink assembly from Best Buy along with a couple of cyclone fans. Well, the worst happened, I actually chipped the CPU putting the heatsink and fan on the dang thing.
It did start up with it, next thing I know the whole system went dead, nothing. Needless to say I was PISSED!
If you know me at all, you know that I tend not to let things like this get to me, right? Wrong! lol. Solution?
Castillo HTPC cabinet
Enermax 431 watt EXTERNAL power supply (sits on back side of first shelf down from top on back side of AV cabinet.
CPU Case fan (replaces original 300 watt power supply opening)
1 Cyclone blower PCI slot fan to get hot air out.
Asus A7V333 Motherboard RAID board, raid currently disabled. For future expansion. On-board audio also disabled.
New AMD Athlon XP-1900
512 meg PC-2700 RAM
Radeon 7500 graphics
40 gig primary drive, 7200 RPM Maxtor
80 gig secondary drive, 7200 RPM Maxtor
Turtle Beach 5.1 card
Intel NIC
ZOOM 56K modem
Photo shoot of the guts:
Now for the skinny. motherboard/memory/CPU combo is fast, damn fast! PC-2700 memory appears to be the stuff in this Via 333 based computer. Initially, DVD playback had the same video freeze problem as the Abit system did. I said, man, this can't be! This is a helluva computer by all standards. Searching for a software solution, I said hmm, I got this free power DVD disc, so I will load it up. Even though Jon said I was locked into using ATI's software. I was desperate. First thing it asked me, do you want to speed up your DVD Rom? I said hell yes! EMI mod or some such I think it called it. Well, what do you know, after that mod was made, my DVD playback using the Radeo software straightened right up. Still have a few audio dropouts, but overall, playback is quite nice. Time to try another movie though. It did freeze up late last night on Shrek.
Lots to check out yet, including trying to download from Tivo, but soon I will try more stuff with it.
Long story short, I spent a bloody fortune, but not only do I now have an HTPC. I also have a powerful backup computer for any other use.
Lex
It did start up with it, next thing I know the whole system went dead, nothing. Needless to say I was PISSED!
If you know me at all, you know that I tend not to let things like this get to me, right? Wrong! lol. Solution?
Castillo HTPC cabinet
Enermax 431 watt EXTERNAL power supply (sits on back side of first shelf down from top on back side of AV cabinet.
CPU Case fan (replaces original 300 watt power supply opening)
1 Cyclone blower PCI slot fan to get hot air out.
Asus A7V333 Motherboard RAID board, raid currently disabled. For future expansion. On-board audio also disabled.
New AMD Athlon XP-1900
512 meg PC-2700 RAM
Radeon 7500 graphics
40 gig primary drive, 7200 RPM Maxtor
80 gig secondary drive, 7200 RPM Maxtor
Turtle Beach 5.1 card
Intel NIC
ZOOM 56K modem
Photo shoot of the guts:
Now for the skinny. motherboard/memory/CPU combo is fast, damn fast! PC-2700 memory appears to be the stuff in this Via 333 based computer. Initially, DVD playback had the same video freeze problem as the Abit system did. I said, man, this can't be! This is a helluva computer by all standards. Searching for a software solution, I said hmm, I got this free power DVD disc, so I will load it up. Even though Jon said I was locked into using ATI's software. I was desperate. First thing it asked me, do you want to speed up your DVD Rom? I said hell yes! EMI mod or some such I think it called it. Well, what do you know, after that mod was made, my DVD playback using the Radeo software straightened right up. Still have a few audio dropouts, but overall, playback is quite nice. Time to try another movie though. It did freeze up late last night on Shrek.
Lots to check out yet, including trying to download from Tivo, but soon I will try more stuff with it.
Long story short, I spent a bloody fortune, but not only do I now have an HTPC. I also have a powerful backup computer for any other use.
Lex
Comment