I. M. Fried! HTPC in vintage case

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
So a million years ago (2010) I was a pretty early adopter of the Silverstone SG06. Over the years as parts needed changing (like a PSU which strangely stopped working after swallowing a glass of iced tea, early mobo's which couldn't push the i7 like they promised etc) it became rather a patchwork of 'just enough to get by, for now' more like the Model T from the Beverly Hillbillies than anything super trick worth taking pictures and posting in a thread. Still my daily driver, still running strong, still love that case, but its MSI AM1i + AMD 5350 drivetrain is getting a little long in the tooth these days, so I wandered over to my local electronics surplus store hoping for something nifty to move it over into so it could become my garage computer.

And there I found this little piece of gold. Originally it served as the crossover unit for I.M Fried (IMF) Model H speakers, basically regarded as the first of the modern woofer/satellite speaker systems everyone uses today, circa the mid 70's or so-



Over the years the original internals had been replaced with more modern (likely 1980's era) units so I wasn't destroying a museum piece, the size is right there in the Goldilocks zone for a fanless/low power rig at 12" x 12" x 4" (ok, fine, I read the rules- 30cm x 30cm x 10cm) and oh all that airflow. Add to it the only switch on the front being labelled "Impulse Control" I just couldn't resist... likely due to my, ah , low impulse control ;)
 
  • Like
Reactions: jtd871 and maped

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
Last month my mom's Dell watchyamacallit died (seriously Dell, you can only get an entry level computer to last 8 years?) so after an afternoon at the bandsaw I had that case chopped down to a Mini-ITX sized mobo and rear plate for mock-up purposes, and with it's TFX power supply nestled in there gives just barely enough room for a double-width VGA card should I ever need to upgrade from the 8400 GS card I had laying around. Won't be pushing 4k video or anything like that, but it's enough for basic HDTV for the garage.



Still have to cut the openings in the back panel, but for the time being I at the 'wait for Blue Santa' phase (the postman needs to deliver some new parts).
 
  • Like
Reactions: owliwar and maped

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
It's just the stock OEM one from the 1 gb rev. 3 card. I'm tempted to remove that big tab with the MSI logo on it just becasue it looks rather gratuitous... like they put it there just to have a place to print a logo.



Got my eyes out for a low Profile GTX1050ti, but don't want to spend more than $125 or so and in this market VGA's are just stupid. Of course the GTX1050ti OC currently in the SG06 would be perfect, but it's the short length/full height version not the long skinny version. I think I've decided to rotate the PSU 90* to get just a pinch more room for VGA's which might need the extra space for their fans, if necessary though I'm also leaning towards the opinion that most of those fans/shrouds on GPU's are 50% there for marketing and 50% 'just in case' you pack it into a case with no breathing room, which I've got.

CPU cooling will be handled by a Reeven Steropes unit, I figure that out to be able handle the 5350 fanless with five tubes and 120mm x 20mm of fins.



The CPU only supports 2 hard drives, a but after a little trimming of the vertical portion of the 'wings' at the base they will be mounting in this 3.5" bay-to-2.5" HDD adapter which should also serve as a bit of a heat sink for what that's worth-

 

el01

King of Cable Management
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
Very creative! It would be super funny to see someone do something like this in a old Mac or even some packaging for other products...
 

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
I had my eye on a couple small 'desktop' reel-to-reel tape recorders they had, but they just weren't quite big enough. But so long as you're not Mr. Hardcore gamer, you could build this same set up with one of those new Ryzen chips and a GT1030 for about $500 (depending on how much storage you needed) plus whatever it costs you to pick up an old turntable or shortwave radio or whatever. This little project has me thinking about old tool boxes now as well. Looks like this set up with a single stack VGA (or integrated graphics CPU could squeeze down to 11" x 8" x 3" or so... could even hollow out an old dictionary or Bible or something and hide it on your bookshelf.
 

el01

King of Cable Management
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
It would be super funny if someone put a PC into a case accessories box... Not sure how that could fit modern hardware without a Raspberry Pi...
 

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
So I bit the bullet an pulled the GTX1050ti from the SG06 and put it on epay... musta been too cheap becasue it sold in less than time than it took to take it out and blow the dust off. A quick pass through the oogly googly and it seems the verdict is that the Gigabyte version of the low profile 1050 cards is the best, they recently introduced an intermediate 3gb version so I was going to get that one (likely specifically for the Netflix minimum streaming hardware requirement of a 1050 or better card with 3gb memory if you don't have a Kaby Lake or newer Intel GPU) but lo and behold it seems there is an error on Newegg today and they are selling the 4gb Ti for the price of the plain 1050-2gb card. I'll have to wait and see which card actually shows up, but the part number on my invoice is for the Ti (GV-N105TOC-4gl) despite the pic on page being for the 2gb box.



https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...ard_GV-N105TOC-4GL-_-1B4-0116-00041-_-Product

If the Ti is in fact the card that shows up, when all is said and done it cost me $40 to trade my 2-year-old card for a new low profile version :) I've been waiting to cut the back panel till I have everything in hand, which hopefully will be by the weekend.
 

el01

King of Cable Management
Jun 4, 2018
770
588
Hahaha weird! What would be super funny is if you hot rodded the card and had like a Morpheus II on the thing! Either way, I wish I had the money to buy that sick deal right now! :(
 

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
Way ahead of ya. I have to run back out to the surplus store anyway to buy the (on)-OFF-(on) power switch and the stand offs and such (the fastener aisles at this particular store are killer for small specialty bits) and in their milk crates of random heat sinks they had this monster of one I almost bought... looked like it was off the back of a street lamp or spotlight or something. Was about 3" x 10" with about 8 1.5" tall fins as thick as your little finger. Damn thing must have been half a pound of aluminum, how much heat it radiates would be pretty moot as it would take an hour to heat that much metal ten degrees above ambient. I happen to have a milling machine so making a nice flat mating surface and recesses for the other random chips and things wouldn't be a problem.

Besides, it'd be kinda humorous to have a heat sink so big it needed legs.
 

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
Welp, so of course Newegg shipped the 2gb 1050, so that's in RMA limbo right now but ti looks like it's going through that'll get the correct card which they had on sale for $199 this week anyway. But the rest of my goodies arrived like the new mobo/memory/cpu for the SG06 freeing up the AM1 and it's memory for the case so at least a real board is in there for sizing. The new (black) 300w PSU arrive and I got the openings rough in for it, mounted it fan-side down so even though technically this isn't a 100% fanless build at least it's fan is invisible. It only spins up on boot anyway unless under more load than this system will likely put on it. Waiting for some terminal ends to arrive, but got the wires shorted and laid in (still have to work on better fitting sleeving on that main glob), the drive rack is roughed in, the power switch and a perfect heat sink from ePay. Turns out it's tapped and threaded in those three holes you see, so I think I'm going to hard mount it and let the case itself become part of it. Not the world's fastest build, but it's coming along.





Waiting to cut the final placement of the mobo until I get the graphics card, front I/O panel and LED's as well, but those are solved and ready to go. Oh, and a cheapo 120Gb SSD to use as a boot drive is on the way to compliment the 1Tb HDD. The (black) Arctic Alpine 12 cooler I've decided to switch to doesn't hit the market until July, so no hurries.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BaK and confusis

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
SFF Network
SFF Workshop
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,129
7,057
sff.network
I love, i repeat, love retro stuff.
If you use something like this, you'll keep the original look too!
Also, have you considered something like the HDPlex or KMPKT PSU options to run truly fanless?
 

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
As far as the graphics card cooling, yeah the HDplex tube/sink system is my backup plan if it gets too tricky. I do have a mill, so I can machine clearance for the board's lumpy bits as necessary. The TFX psu was half the price of their 400w unit so a fan spinning up on boot was the compromise there. And yeah, the front switch is exactly like the one that came out of it, just a momentary rather than a SPTT.

The cooler will be this one, but they haven't got the black ones on the market yet-



It's a nice big 95x95x69, which is much bigger than the one they actually sell for the 5350 cpu (and I'll have to drill and tap a couple holes in the bottom to make it fit the smaller 60mm bolt square) but it will also allow for future updates if an Intel cpu/mobo ever gets swapped in.
 

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
So shockingly, after three weeks Newegg backed out.
Week one: Here's your RMA we'll send you the correct one (listing gets corrected)
Week Two: Because we sent you the wrong item we have to check to see if our inventory is correct (Um, ok, sure...)
Week three: Our RMA team says you received what you ordered (compared to corrected listing), your item was correctly received.
No, here's my confirmation email showing model number and price.
Oh, you're right. Well, we're out of that one. Would you like to wait and see if we get one or just a refund? (Muh, huh)

Which is fine, because there's a couple rare bike frames I collect which also popped up this week, and GPU prices are finally coming down, so I'll spend it on them lol.
 

ChattyMatty

Chassis Packer
Original poster
Jun 8, 2018
13
7
Just a baby step, but it freaking too hot to do much in the garage. Wanted to finish up the front I/O this morning, but tried to 'kit bash' two together and ended up with two useless mangled ones :/

Did manage to get the power/HDD LEDs solved, but I'm not 100% sure they are the same color as one was clear and one is white frosted plastic so I'll have to wait to install those dead last, and of course they are different depths. So a quick couple minutes on the lathe and I had a couple custom spacers to flush them out with the front of the case, and sanded the front of the clear one so it sorta kinds look like the opaque one. My gut tell me one is green and one is white, dunno yet.




Looks less rough from a foot away, but the case has patina anyway so I'm not too upset. Some flat black touch-up paint will tone it down better than the sharpie I used.
 

confusis

John Morrison. Founder and Team Leader of SFF.N
SFF Network
SFF Workshop
SFFn Staff
Jun 19, 2015
4,129
7,057
sff.network
Those are shweet! The patina looks very fitting. A pristine case from decades ago just looks.. off