Some more developments.
The curly cord has arrived. Works well on the back of the drawer, but in the end probably a waste of time, since none of the other cables do the same. Oh well.
I decided in the end on a Kraken X40 closed loop cooler. I chose this one because the reviews are good, its a 140mm one which should be quieter, and it has proper fan control, which will also help the silence.
Unfortunately, my usual supplier wasn't interested in gettting these in.. it seems they are a bitch to deal with when it comes to warranty, and he got sick of customers giving him grief over the delays with his supplier in getting warranties honoured.
So I ordered one from U-Mart. 2 weeks later I am still waiting for it to be transferred to stock from their main shop only an hour away. Oh well.
I sent a drawing away to quite a few sheet metal places for a new cover to be made from sheet metal for the power supply. Most of them aren't interested in the job at all, and I am too lazy. The only actual quote I got was an 'estimate' of 3 hours at $70 + GST.. $231. Ummm no thanks..
I had a couple goes at making a nice cover but I wasn't happy with the results, so the little power supply has been reassembled as original, and is just a bench power supply in my workroom.
Instead, I bought this...
Nothing fancy, just a mini ITX board with onboard bluetooth and wifi. ( Gigabyte H77N-WiFi ).
It has a couple of SATA 3 (with onboard RADI for my SSD's), a couple of SATA 2 for the storage drives, 4 USB2+ 2 USB3 at the rear, and headers for a couple of front USB3 and a couple of front USB2 (which I doubt I will connect). Its only a H77, so not for overclockers.
I've stuck an i3-3225 into it for now, and that is probably all its going to get. I might keep the good stuff for another system, this is only a HTPC after all. It has HDMI and DVI-I outputs.. I am using the DVI-I, as I dont want to run the sound out through the HDMI.
I find I use a burner so rarely these days that I am not going to include one. I have a USB burner I can plug in should I ever feel the need.
Using such a tiny board now has opened a whole new set of options.
Its allowed me to use a full sized Thermaltake 600W PSU for a start.. more power, less noise.
I have moved the board to the very front of the drawer. This will give me excellent access to the 'back' of the board, as you can see. Of course with the case being a drawer, rear outputs are not practical.
The board is currently on 50mm plastic standoffs (wall plugs again!!). At this point, the stock intel cooler sits about 5mm above the top of the drawer, so I will cut 10mm off them so I can install the drawer until the water cooler finally turns up. Even then though, there will be ample room under the board for a couple of SSD's in RAID 0. I'll also be able to stack 3 full sized drives between the board and the power supply, where you see the single drive sitting now. Since I will only have two spare SATA ports, I will make a cradle for 2 drives in there with some cooling space instead.
The second reason for lifting the board so high is very simple.. once I fit the cooler, if the board is at its usual height there wont be much room for access to the back of the board, which is now mounted sideways as you can see. Lifting the board this high actually allows the board to clear the cooler height wise, which gives me easy access to the rear IO ports.
OK, so now I have a bunch of extra space. You can see the big empty space where the Kraken X40 will fit easily, with about 20mm clearance from the end of the (white) wifi dongle. Yes, still using the wifi dongle despite the onboard wifi.. the two aerials that belong to it are just a pain, the dongle wastes far less space. At least I can use the onboard bluetooth though!
The other fair bit of space that was created is now occupied by an old car amplifier! It doesnt look like much, but hook it up to a couple of boxed Kenwood 6x9's and it rocks along rather well.
This reverts somewhat to my original plan, which was an 'all in one box' concept. All I have to do is run a couple sets of speaker wires out the back (I'll probably run them to a set of jacks on the back of the drawer.) It draws its power from one rail of this dual rail PSU. Since I now have no plans at all to add a GPU, the PSU is more than up to the job.
It works very well, the PSU has quite low ripple and you would never know the amp shares power with the PC. Software can control the sound output all I need it to, and I have no interest in surround sound, stereo is just fine for me.
Its just taking its power from a pair of joined molex plugs, so pretty much all of the output from one rail. The rest of the PC runs from the other rail. Sounds great, and seems to suffer from no interference or electrical noise. I have actually used this amp in a similar way before for a couple of years, so I know that this will not create any issues with the PC or PSU, provided the PSU has low ripple.
Same photo again, just a different thing to look at on it
So far so good, next installment coming soon !!
Hopefully the next installment will include the cooler and a switch panel I am making for it. (You can see the temporary circular switch just sitting loosely just in front of the amp, for photos, but the switches will all be mounted vertically on the inside front of the drawer. All switches and the front panel connections for USB3 and audio will be within the drawer (I will have to open the drawer an inch or so to switch it on, or plug anything in.) I will probably make some kind of concealed access to the USB though, so the drawer doesnt have to stay open if something is plugged in.
I'm also going to install some white LEDS on a simple contact switch, so they turn on if the drawer is open or off if its closed.. just to make it easier to see stuff to plug into.
