New PC for my bedroom

[kingdingeling]

Before anyone even thinks of recommending it, Linux MCE is a pile of junk

[hardnrg]

what are the speakers in your bedroom?

[Fueler]

what are the speakers in your bedroom?

 

Somehow I just knew that if anybody questioned what those were it was going to be you. They are Empire 9000 Royal Grenadier speakers....mid 1960's vintage. At the time they were quite an advanced design. The original tops are a white marble that I sent out to have refinished. I put 18" round cement pavers on them to keep them from walking all over the floor when I crank them up.

 

Found an old ad and below is a pic of one of the labels from the bottom of the speakers.

 

 

 

 

 

That $209.00 price was for one speaker....most people still did not have stereo's

 

What OS will you be using for the HTPC interface?

 

I have umpteen XP and XP pro disc's lying around, I'm too cheap to go invest in Media edition and I won't run Vista (at least not yet) so it's XP Pro.

 

 

 

Ok......I finally finished cutting the oak side panels. Using the same measure, measure, measure and cut proceedure I outlined earlier I ended up with two perfect side panels.

 

 

 

You can start to get an idea where I'm going with this from the pic above. The rear and side panels are pretty much set (except for some additional modding to the rear panel to fit a 120mm fan). For the front bezel I ordered a 17.25" x 8.25" 3/16th" thick aluminum panel. The panel arrived yesterday with a couple of unexpected surprises. First, to my delight, the panel came with one side already brushed with a removable protective coating. The second surprise wasn't the good kind, the panel came cut a 1/4" too narrow. The invoice says 8.25" (which is what I ordered) but the panel is only 8" wide.

 

 

Somewhat of a setback but I'm not going to let it worry me too much, OnLine Metals.com has been a joy to deal with in the past so I don't expect this to be much of a problem just a delay.

 

The guts for the PC showed up so since I was kind of at a stand still till the new panel gets here I decided to install the hardware and work out any kinks that might crop up in the design. I'm not usually that impressed by power supplies but I don't think I have ever picked up a 330watt PSU that felt as solid as the SeaSonic I ordered for this rig. I expected it to be decent since Seasonic makes psu's for several well reguarded companies including PC Power and Cooling but the build quality of this thing was just exceptional.

OK enough gushing....the rest of the parts were pretty much what I expected. The only change to what I had originally intended was that I used the 5000 black edition CPU. Not because I decided I wanted it but because junior was unwilling to allow me the time to swap his cpu out (giving up four or five hours of game time on the weekend was too much) his loss my gain.

 

 

I still have about 200 gigs of disc space left on the HTPC in my living room so I didn't buy any new drives for this rig. (I figure the longer I wait the more gigs per dollar I can get when I need more space). So for now I'm using a 36gig WD Raptor I had laying around. I had forgotten how loud these suckers are!! I could here it from across the room when I started to install the operating system. I had the drive just sitting in the bottom of the case on it's side and at some point it fell over...when I picked it up to stand it up again I discovered that it was at least 95% quieter (nearly inaudible except for a very low clicking noise) when it was not in contact with the case. I did a little experimenting and for a test I hung it from the support bracket by a screw and two rubber washers to dampen the connection. It worked....now I'm going to have to come up with something to hang up to six drives.

 

 

Everytime I buy a new motherboard it always comes with extra ports that plug into the slots for PCI cards....I almost never use them....until now.

 

 

With this rig I will have 1 vga, 1 DVI, 1 S-video, 1 component video, 1 HDMI, 1 digital audio, a full complement of analog audio, 3 1394, 10 usb and 1 lan port.

 

I OC'd the 5000 BE to a stable 3GHz just by upping the multi and no voltage change. It has been running the SMP client at 100% for the last five or six days 24/7 with no problems. Max cpu temp running at 100% is 35C and that is after playing with the smart fan settings to get the Zalman 9500 down to nearly inaudible at full load. (you have to almost put your head in the case to hear it, the psu doesn't make a sound, nada, zip) I did the math and it looks like I will get about an 8000 point per week boost from this rig.

 

I am leaving town this coming saturday and I will be gone for at least two weeks so it's going to be a little bit before the next update...I have to wait for the front bezel anyway. B:)

[Fueler]

I have wracked my brain trying to figure out a way to repair the rear panel and install a 120mm fan but there is just too much damage. In it's previous life I had drilled holes through it for water lines and an external reservoir that has left it looking like Swiss cheese. The amount of repair it would require at this point would be more like a hack than a mod....so I have decided to tread into uncharted waters and try to fabricate a new panel from scratch. (something I have never tried before).

 

I'm going to keep the motherboard tray so the first thing I did was use a dremel to separate the rear panel from the tray.

 

 

Next I dug up a suitable sheet of steel for the panel.....it's a little rusty but nothing a DA sander can't handle.

 

 

I used the old rear panel as a templet and etched a pattern for the cuts I would need to make using a very sharp steel pick.

 

 

I used a piece of "L" channel aluminum to make the screw down plate for pci/pci-e cards. In order to make sure that everything lined up perfect (for the attachment screws) I clamped the channel to the panel and drilled both pieces at the same time. After that I tapped threads into the channel for the screws and cut it to the length I needed.

 

 

 

For this next part I left the "L" channel attached to the panel. I used two different setups....the first cuts I made on the side of the panel that will be facing out.

 

 

Then I flipped the panel over and making sure that I had the correct debth on the mill bit finished the cuts through the "L" channel. I also cut a small area away above the pci card mount to make installation of the cards easier.

 

 

Here's how it looks so far. I'm going to try and finish it up today.

 

 

 

More to come. B:)

[Andrewr05]

Looks awesome as usual dude, the wood looks fabulous and you bring it all together very nicely.

 

Those Empires 9000's are awesome too

 

 

 

 

I found a good link if you change your mind about those gauges:

Analog gauges

Edited February 17, 2008 by Andrewr05

[kingdingeling]

I really like the DIY back panel, looks pretty neat IMO B:) Keep it up! :thumbs-up:

[PeterStoba]

I was wondering when I'd see an update on this, the new back panel looks great too

[Fueler]

Thanks for the link to the analog guages Andrewr05....an interesting read but what I really am trying to do is make it look like an audio component.....not necessarily a retro audio component.

 

I finished up the rear panel (except for some cleanup and painting). I wouldn't say that it was easy to make but it turned out to be alot easier than I thought it would be. The cutouts for the IO panel and the power supply where pretty straight forward. For the fan hole I used a flycutting bit (improperly...it's not ment to cut holes) and in the process I'm pretty sure I hurt the gearbox in my mini mill. It's still working but I don't think it's going to hold up long.

 

 

 

 

Here's some pics of the panel (nearly complete)

 

 

 

 

More to come...I hope (if the mill holds up)

[hardnrg]

I really like how you tackled the PCI slots

 

What are the blue bits at the back on each side?

[Fueler]

I really like how you tackled the PCI slots

 

What are the blue bits at the back on each side?

 

Double sided attachment tape....to hold things in place while I finish fitting everything up....then it will get a more permanent attachment. B:)

[LivingGhost]

Well I considered that but I have hundreds of CD's already converted to mp3 that I use on everything from my car to my iphone and I just can't bring myself to spend the time coverting them all to something else. Another reason why I don't is because I spent over $800.00 on a CD/SACD/DVD audio-video player.....what good is it if I don't use it

That's why I said digitally. You know, coaxial SPDIF or TOSLINK.

 

I think it'd be worth it to spend the time and rip the CD's correctly, and have them all at the push of a button, using a nice Foobar interface and album art, then to have to get up and load in each CD by hand when you want to listen to them.

 

What CD player, if I may ask?

[Fueler]

What CD player, if I may ask?

 

A Pioneer Elite DV 45A, which is an audio-video player not just a stand alone cd player. I also have a California Audio Labs CD player that I use only in my bedroom B:)