FYI: Media Center Upgrade in progress

[Mike]

Ok, I put the rounded cables in last night. I think I just need to get a decoder (I was looking at TheaterTek, as well as Sage but I have to check if Sage has a decoder built in).

Regardless I should be able to show you some pictures this weekend. I put it in my equipment rack last night and it fit nicely. I had put the stealth fans in but I need to see how loud that power supply is in practice (it was intended to be a spare originally, and the other 680 watt SLI approved one I had was overkill for this box), another power supply or modifying that one to use a quieter fan might be in order.

Let's see if I can get motivated and try out the other video card configuration. I have the better card (6800 class) in the other media center, and it is a long card. While I do not have drives in the center cage I am curious to see if that card will negate the ability to put drives in that slot. If that happens, 3 slots are negated, leaving 3 drive slots on the right, and 2 optical, 1 floppy on the left. Personally I planned on possibly using the second optical as a hard drive if I populated this further (it only has a single 250gb drive at the moment).

 

[jpkishere]

So here are my pictures of my HTPC sitting on the floor.. The CPU Fan I have is currently about as loud as a lawn mower, so I haven't put it together until get a new one..

But my goal was to get something that looked like stereo equipment as It will be sitting in my living room..

 

[Mike]

Ok here are some pictures. By the way, this includes the shots of the better video card (which unfortunately will knock out 2 slots of the middle drive bay from what I can tell).

 

[Mike]

With a long card it is tight. Some USB connectors go under the back of the card, and some of the power goes over it. Much cleaner with a small card.

 

[Mike]

I never did replace the stock cooling unfortunately, but it seems to run ok with it. I added two stealth fans in the back. Still need a few more tie wraps on the left.

 

[Mike]

A shot of the back. You can see the stealth fans to the left. I used two Hauppauge 150MCE tuners.

 

[Mike]

The white DVD drive is temporary. I happened to have white on the shelf and it was better than the other one (i figured most of the time the door is closed anyway).

 

[Mike]

A shot on the floor. It has the feet like electronics usually have which is nice. I didn't take a shot of that though.

 

[Mike]

Front panel shot (open). The white again happened to be what I had on the shelf. Will probably swap it out when I break it open to add more storage to it.

 

[Mike]

A shot of it in the rack. It is in the lower right.

 

[Mike]

and a closer shot of it.