The Build of the new HTPC

This post describes Friday's build of my new Home Theater PC. Any of the images can be clicked to see a larger version in a new window.

Friday pretty much went off as planned. After leaving work I headed over to the accountant, picked up and paid for mine and my oldest son's tax returns, and headed home. As Scott and Danielle had after school activities, I decided since the parts for my new Home Theater PC had arrived Wednesday, it was high time to get started! While still feeling a bit washed out, I was finally up to the task.

And so it begins.....

As usual, I used the dining room table. First I unpacked and opened the case for the new unit, and then the Power Supply. It's been awhile, I must admit, since I build a system from scratch. Thanks to eBay and some motivated sellers the previous HTPC I sold, and the current one soon to be, I was able to acquire them at prices that simply could not be beat. Both of them were not top of the line, but were powerful, full featured, and worked well.

Since i had tax money coming, and money from my Dad's (brief pause here while I miss my dad yet again) estate, I decided this time it would be close to top of the line. So, the new system features some really good components though on the Video card and CPU I did not go top of the line. The $299 i7 quad core CPU is he entry level i7 CPU with the top of the line being over $1,000. Same the the video card, I could have paid almost double for that.

The VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 with HDMI output

They are however state of the art and will certainly far outperform what I have now. I will do a 3dMark of the current and new system and post them at a later date.

Mary had a little RAM...this creature has 6 GB of Triple Channel RAM!

So, with case open and parts to install, I began what was to become an epic journey in frustrations! I a using an HTPC case the is not quite a small form factor, but it is not a full sized case. I wanted to void the look a HTPC that resembled someone taking a desktop tower case, turning it on it's side, and calling it an HTPC.

This means that space inside the case is VERY tight! Millimeters to spare in some instances, NO SPACE AT ALL to spare in others.

Tails is stunned by the tight confines of the HTPC Case

So, first, with Tails assisting (she had to get into everything!) I mounted the power supply followed by the other board. Next the hard disk. Then came the first gotcha! While the motherboard fit perfectly in the case, the SATA hard disk connectors were mounted right on the edge and were right angled which means you needed enough room to plug in the cables. There was no way this would ever happen! So, I plugged in on cable for the drive, one for DVD, and then mounted the board which barely fit. Those cables cannot be unplugged without removing the motherboard.

Tails sniffs out a potential space problem for the CPU cooler!

At this point Danielle called. it was just after 4:30 and she had told me she'd need to be picked up at 5:30. I called her brother who was up at the school and asked him to pick her up and head home. 5 minutes later i decided to double-check with Danielle and she said Scott thought I told him I was coming up. As we had been planning in any event to go to dinner at Ming 10 after i picked Danielle up, I got ready to go. I put the cover on the HTPC and boxed up small items as Tails had been getting into everything, and i headed out.

I called Scott and told him I was on my way and we met at Ming 10. We had a nice dinner, Scott and i having a couple of helpings of their cooked to order lo-mein with grilled chicken. He headed off to hang with friends, and Danielle and I stopped at her Mom's so she could get stuff for the weekend as a big snowstorm was forecast. I chatted up the X and gave my son Chris, who had come home for the weekend, a hug which he returned!

Danielle and I stopped at Forest Hills Foods and got enough food for the weekend just in case the weather was as bad as they said. We headed home. I continued working on the PC while Danielle played Left 4 Dead.

The PC install was coming along fine. I installed the three 2 gigabyte ram modules and then the video card which fit, with millimeters to spare.Next i ran all the power cabling. The motherboard requires three power connectors and two on the video card.

Tails double-checks the jumper settings on the Motherboard

It was now time to do power on test! I got a display from my office, connected power and the display, and pushed the power button!

POST! (Power on self test). The system came up! I turned of the power as i had nor yet mounted the CPU cooler. I wanted to insure everything was working first, and then decided I might as well mount the DVD drive before doing the cooler.

At this point it was time for a break, so Danielle and I watched Ugly Betty from Thursday and then we played some left 3 Dead. Scott arrived home around 9 PM and then around 9:30 we watched the season finale of Monk which was very good. Danielle headed off to bed, and Scott headed downstairs to play F.E.A.R. 2, and of course I headed back to the PC.

I had done a lot of research and ended up talking to the folks at VisionTek about the video card to make sure of the length, and the folks at Antec, as to the dimensions of the case and power supply. Regarding the power supply I wanted, because this is the heart of a high end system, I was told "Yea, it will fit....just barely, though you may have a bit of trouble getting it in their with the DVD drive. It can be done!"

Yes, it can be, but he should have added "With a crowbar!" WHAT A ROYAL PAIN. There was no way, with the length of the DVD drive I had, and the power supply which mounts directly in back of the DVD drive, to fit. The is complicated with the angled mount for the DVD drive which has to drop in on an angel, and then swing about 45 degrees to mount flush with the drive access door on the front of the HTPC case. It was so tight, and after repeated failures, I was even contemplating on seeing if I could get a supply with the same current rating that was a bit smaller.

The bundle of wires coming out of the power supply made this just impossible! The power supply can be mounted upside down which puts the nexus of the wire bundle on the other side, still in line with the DVD drive, but with enough room where I could lay each cable flat against the power supply case. Mounted the other way the cabled nexus was right next to the access port to the rest of the cases, so it made a large bulge that could not be flattened out. By using this method, and partially removing the front of the case to give me just a hair of wiggle room, I was finally, after putting on a pair of padded gloves to protect my hands from the amount of pressure I was using on the metal cage holding the drive, able to get the drive and power supply installed. This took about two extra hours because to turn the supply over I had to disconnect and pull back all the cabled I had previously run.

Whew! The guy was right! It could be done....just barely!

I now had the fun of rerunning all the power supply cables, but the system was functional. It was not about 12:30 so I quickly broke out the replacement Vista SPI kit I had gotten from Microsoft awhile back and was delighted to find it had 32 AND 64 bit versions! I now had 64 bit hardware so I put in the install DVD and booted off of it, and the system came up to the "Let's install Windows!" screen.

I turned off the HTPC and Monitor and headed off to bed at 1 AM.

Money Buring a Hole in My PocketPart Two

Saturday while the kids and I were out and about doing some errands and getting lunch I priced some TV's locally. From my research and what I found locally, along with the fact that the video card I want right now is about $50 over budget (due to the extra chip for HD Audio Processing), I have decided to postpone this decision until black Friday. While I have no intention of getting up at 2AM to go stand in some ungodly line somewhere to snag the deal I want, many companies offer suitable discounts online during the day.

I am hopeful this would allow me to meet budget on which option I choose, or perhaps even a new one as it's over a month until Black Friday and that money, while not causing my pants to catch on fire, certainly is making known to me its burning desire to be spent!

Money Buring a Hole in My Pocket

I've often heard the phrase regarding 'money burning a hole' in someone's pocket and I am sure you have too.

Come on now! Unless someone put some coins that they heated up to the point that the metal was glowing into their pockets, or put in a wad of flaming bills, it just is not going to happen!

HOWEVER I can understand the intent of the phrase, as I have $350 unexpected dollars available to me since there was a payroll error in my favor regarding an increase I got a few months back that never made it into my paycheck. By my logic, since I was not getting any less money that was just paid to me, and I paid all bills due these past months, this is 'free' money meaning I can just blow it on something! While the money is not burning a hole in my pocket though the thought of spending it is almost overpowering!

I have three choices and I'd like everyone's opinion:

Option 1: - My Home Theater PC (HTPC) really needs another video card upgrade. Granted when I did the previous one some months back I knew it was stop gap, but it was very inexpensive. I am limited by the power supply in the HPTC case which is a custom sized job whose form factor does not come in a capacity greater than 250 watts. Most seasoned PC owners will tell you that's not a real lot of power especially if you want to run a high end graphic card. I'll spare you my weeks of lunchtime research but for about $350 I can replace the HTPC case with one that will take a standard PC ATX 500 watt power supply. In addition I can get the video card I want.

Option 2: - Small HDTV for bedroom. Until recently I would never have considered this as I have no HD content for the bedroom TV and the 27" standard definition TV is fine. U-Verse recently upgraded my service with their Whole House DVR. Before this upgrade the only TV you could record or watch recorded content on was the one in the Living room which is of course connected to my 50" HD plasma. This is where all viewing of HD content occurs. Now any of the three TVs in the house can watch recorded content. Some nights I go get into bed, particularly if my back is aching, a good hour before I am ready for sleep and I watch live TV. Now I can do that plus access recorded content which is great and helps me keep ahead of all the shows I record. The caveat here is that I have HD programs recorded (about 30-40% of what I record is in HD) and I simply will not watch that on the standard definition TV in the bedroom. Nor would I drink 50 year old brandy our of a Dixie cup! Come on! There are just some things civilized people will not do! For about $350 I can get an HDTV of similar size to replace the bedroom TV. This also has the benefit of being able to put a second TV downstairs for the kids to use. Now, there will be no contention for the TV when one wants to play video games and the other wants to watch TV. I plan to ask them their opinion of this after work today.

Option 3: The cheapest and simplest alternative to implement; DO NOTHING! However I will still have the nagging feeling about spending the money....nagging always nagging me!!


So, what do you think I should do? Crap! Is my pocket getting warm....or am I just imagining it........

It never fails

I have my weekend all planned out, and I get a call from Mom (The X's Mom) about major PC issues at Casa Da Mom, so, Danielle and I will be headed down there Staurday. I have so much stuff stacked up to do Saturday!!!!