Looking for inspiration.....

[Deleted member 173019]

Hi Guys, to cut a LONG story short, I have a HTPC which I built six months ago with the help of the forums and Theydon's site (and advice, thanks)...

I built my system inside a Silverstone LC02 which has been perfect, but now I am wanting to add a few extra HDD's and this case doesn't allow for that and the PSU is tame (100watt I think)

Because of my 1 year old daughter, everything has to be locked away, so my case sits inside a small cupboard (LIKE THIS, but mine has a drawer underneath)

Now I have been looking for cases and then though....."Why bother, it'll only be locked away", so now I am thinking of taking the componants OUT of the PC Case and simply using the cupboard as a case in iteself. I could fit a flush piece of wood across the front opening so when the door is opened you are presented with a wooden "wall" with only the front of my HD/Blu optical drive showing and inside all the gubbins.....

I use a IR receiver which sits on top of the unit so that's not a problem, and I would have all the space I need for extra drives and cooling and would allow a much beefier PSU.

The only problem being that noise could be an issue as the unit itself sits on a wooden floor, I can already get some vibration going though the bottom of the unit when the fan is going hell for leather, so some damping would be needed between the individual parts.....

Has anyone tried this or have any advice, guidance, or simply want to slap me round the side of the head like my wife does at the moment.......LOL

Cheers Guys,

Rich

 

[anth.payne]

Save yourself the trouble a get yourself a NAS. Build one yourself on the cheap...

 

[aphillippe]

I used to use a similar setup before I bought my antec fusion. The PC is sat in a ventilated unit behind a closed door. I used a motherboard tray from an old pc case, screwing the motherboard down as usual. The motherboard tray extended about 6 inches over the side of the motherboard which gave me enough space to mount the PSU and a hard disk cage from the same case. The only problems were:

1) As you say, noise. There was no acoustic insulation from a case, so fan and (particularly) hard disk noise was too high.

2) Flexibility/ease of use. There was no space to mount an optical drive (not a problem as I don't use one), there were no feet on the bottom, so the unit got scratched (I could have mounted some feet on the motherboard tray, but didn't get round to it) and there was nothing to secure the pci cards to

3) Component protection. Obviously the components, particularly the cpu cooler and graphics card, were susceptible to knocks when I was working with the cables etc in the unit.

Having said that, all the issues above are solveable given a bit of time and a few well chosen scraps of wood/metal/plastic. And HTPC cases can be very expensive. I would say give it a go and see how you get on.

 

[DoktorAvalanche]

I too have an Ikea TV bench, when I put mine together I just did not fit the rear panel.
Your idea for a wooden panel sounds great, but with small children after the power button the next line of attack is the rom tray...
Can I suggest that you just lock the cabinet with this -just Google around for thebest prices.

I dont think no case is a great idea, the case does act as a duct to channel air over the bits that need it. Also if the children managed to get into the cabinet, the fans would not be too good on small fingers.

I specifically chose my case for this purpose: Antec NSK2480 -not pretty, but I dont have to look at it!
Its basically a fusion case without the VFD display, volume knob & nice alloy front.
It is warm in the cabinet, but not too hot.
The majority of the exhausted hot air is at the rear right hand side so it pretty much goes staight out the cabinet.

 

[europbaron]

Why do you want to do this?

Is space in the cabinet a problem?

If not I can't see any advantage in doing this as it will not provide any extra functionality & won't be more aesthetically pleasing being hidden away. It seems a lot of work if there is no benefit.

Why not use another cheap case, or if you have one you no longer use, the HD cage from it to house the extra drives? Other alternatives are a USB drive or NAS (as already mentioned)/media server.

Finally, you could achieve the same effect by removing the front panel from most cases (I don't know if this includes the LC02), effectively replacing it with the wooden "wall".

If you are determined about going down the modified cabinet route, think carefully about how you will extract the hot air from it, ensuring the flow passes across the components.

 

[anth.payne]

Put something like this next to your case:

Icy Box IB-3221STU-B 2x3.5" SATA HDD Black Alu Trayless EasySwap Enclosure to USB 2.0 Host & OTB - Scan.co.uk

Or this:

Icy Dock MB-454SPF 4x3.5" Sata II Hot Swap Aluminium Backplane into 3x5.25" Bays - Scan.co.uk

 

[Deleted member 173019]

Put something like this next to your case:

Icy Box IB-3221STU-B 2x3.5" SATA HDD Black Alu Trayless EasySwap Enclosure to USB 2.0 Host & OTB - Scan.co.uk

Or this:

Icy Dock MB-454SPF 4x3.5" Sata II Hot Swap Aluminium Backplane into 3x5.25" Bays - Scan.co.uk

These are looking good, didn't even think about a MAS too be honest, I currently have a few USB external drives that I use for back ups, but would like something attached to my network all the time. Do these NAS boxes allow for drive spin down and also in Vista are they simply drag N drop?.

Guess I would need to look about for something cheap and with an ethernet connection (if it allows drag N drop that is)......

Cheers Guys,

Rich

 

[conan]

I have one of these,

Maxtor Shared Storage II 2TB Dual Drive| Maxtor.com

It sits behind the TV plugged into the router via ethernet. Once the drives are mapped, its a straight forward drag and drop, just like another drive on the PC.

 

[anth.payne]

Sorry, hope i havn't mislead you. Those links are just drive cage's. Essentially you have two options. Build a seperate low spec PC, running either Windows, FreeNAS or unRAID, and fill it with as much HDD as you want.

Or buy one of those HDD cages in the links I sent, and just connect via SATA to your current HTPC. You may need to consider one of these to connect them up...

ST134E - Lycom ST-134e RAID eSATA-150 External 4Ports PCI Host - Scan.co.uk

SATA cables are only 60p from SCAN.

Your media centre will just see them as HDD's and then you can format them (as E:, F:, G: etc...)

All of the NAS OS options mentioned above will also allow you drag/drop functionality.

If you wanted to consider building a NAS - i think it would cost less than £200 excluding HDD's.

 

[b3taboy]

Have you thought about rack mounting? rack mounting kit - Google Product Search