I built the majority of this about a year ago but since then have made some upgrades and improvements...
Originally, I was using a Silverstone ML-02 case so my choices for even light gaming, whilst having a TV tuner, were limited. Eventually, the spec on that became:
- ASUS A88XM-PLUS Motherboard
- AMD A10-7800 APU w/ Scythe Kozuti cooler (biggest that would fit in the ML-02 case)
- 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1866mhz RAM
- FSP 250w Flex ATX PSU (80x40x150mm, replacing the stock 160w DC-DC PSU)
- Sandisk 128GB SSD (OS)
- WD Green 3.0TB HDD (Media)
- Blackgold BGT3620 DVB-T2 tuner
- Laptop DVD/RW drive
- Antec (iMON) VFD Module (replacing the stock iMON LCD module in the ML-02)
I decided instead to try and find a faulty Marantz CD player to match the Marantz SR5008 AVR I have. I picked one up off eBay for ~£70 that wouldn't power up and set to work on modding it to take PC internals.
The initial build was literally just swapping everything from the Silverstone case into the Marantz. The most time consuming part was cutting the back panel holes for I/O, PCI(e) cards and PSU. I used a dremel, numerous cut-off discs and wore a filtered mask at all times - those cut-off discs throw out some nasty crap and they don't last five minutes! The Marantz had no venting at all so I drilled a few rows of holes for intake on one side and some more on the opposite side for an exhaust fan - again, very time consuming as you have to go up in steps so in the end i've essentially drilled ~400 holes! I made a bracket to hold the HDD that sat over the PSU with about a 20mm air gap and then a very sketchy bracket to hold the laptop drive. The floor of the case was also no flat and although the brass standoffs I used space the board away from the raised section enough, there are two issues: 1) I can't use all the standoffs due to the raised areas 2) the mATX board i'm using doesn't have all the mount holes - it's shorter on one side (I bought that board specifically to use in the ML-02 case so I could squeeze the Flex PSU into it). So it required strips of plastic to be glued onto the raised areas and some foam tape to prevent shorts and flex. Also used a bit of duct tape at the joins to stop any curling of the edges - although I probably should have just run a soldering iron along to the joins to "weld" them and make it look a bit nicer!
A month or two later, I bought a low profile GTX 750ti and a larger 400w 1U (100x40x235mm) PSU. The PSU was a seasonic SS400-H1U and despite claiming to have thermally controlled fans, they were on full blast from power up (unlike the previous Flex 250w, which was quite quiet). As I found out later, if i'd have got an L1U, it would have been quiet. However, what I really should have done, from the start, was get an SFX PSU.
Fast forward a few more months and the PSU noise is really getting annoying. I'd been researching different 1U PSUs hoping to find something reasonably powerful, quiet, with a Gold+ rating that I could get cheap, used, off eBay (out of a server like the last two). The only viable options just didn't seem available anywhere or when they were, were more expensive than a decent consumer SFX. So I started thinking about how I could make an SFX supply fit. What I hadn't realised was that I could lay my HDD flat in front of an SFX supply - for some reason I'd got it into my head that I'd only be able to sit it on top - which is something I wanted to avoid as there'd be no air gap. I stripped it down and took more measurements. To my surprise, the space was there. Just enough for the SFX PSU and the HDD to sit inline with each other and enough of a gap for the cables.
So I ordered a Corsair SF450, modified the rear panel and the floor for the intake fan and quickly noticed things started getting toasty. The previous 1U PSUs had actually been acting as exhaust fans, blowing hot air from inside the case through the PSU and out the back. I started looking for a new CPU cooler but with height at a premium, only the Zalman CNPS8900 seemed like it would be up to the job. However, I had a spare 80mm so before I ordered the Zalman, I thought i'd see how running the Kozuti in a push/pull configuration would work out. Massive improvement. The new PSU arrangement meant I could now fit an extra exhaust fan easily so I decided to get a 92mm Noctua NF-A9x14 to sit on the Kozuti and modified the case to fit my other Noctua NF-R8. Temps are now better than ever.
The last thing I did was to sort out the sketchy laptop drive mount. I had found a Dell Optiplex cd tray on eBay that was the perfect platform to build on. It held the drive nice and securely so all that was required was a mount for it to sit on, which I made out of some ally sheet, and some very careful measuring to ensure the Marantz bezel ended up sitting centralised in the facia.
What's next? Well, the VFD is losing its brightness and you can only get them used these days. Also, I miss the functionality of being able to power on from shutdown with the remote, so my plan is to use a Midas 20x2 character OLED, controlled by an Arduino Mini. If I power it off the +5VSB on the ATX cable, this will also allow me to add an IR receiver to control power on/off from the remote like I could with the old iMon LCD module in the ML-02 case. I can even have it control the power LED properly - it should be on when the unit is in standby and off when powered up, like the AVR.
(p.s. - yes the cd bezel looks a bit wonky in this pic, that was the old mount!)
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