Big thumbnail then
Mediafire has many options to choose size
Mediafire has many options to choose size
Laptop:
Mini PC ::
HTPC Time
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05-24-2013, 05:21 PM
Big thumbnail then
Mediafire has many options to choose size Laptop: Mini PC :: 05-24-2013, 07:29 PM
Nice pictures. It's always nice to see new hardware and it looks like you're pretty excited about it too.
Quote:And I'm not sure if the forums has a built in way to do it that expands the images in the post when you click on them instead of going to an http link.Probably with a plugin/mod, but it'll be worse than opening it in a new tab. Opening in a new tab isn't much hassle either, simply click on the scrollwheel on your mouse (in Firefox atleast, and if you haven't customized your mousebuttons) to open a link/image in a new tab. 05-25-2013, 03:08 AM
Motherboard unboxed:
http://i.imgur.com/xZCiiXk.jpg Motherboard vs. hand (jesus this thing is small): http://i.imgur.com/hM2MNIQ.jpg Motherboard top (the blacks got really washed out because of the lighting, I'm definitely opening to blinds to use natural light for my next set of shots): http://i.imgur.com/T2JkMSc.jpg Motherboard I/O (the black ones are usb 2.0 and blue are usb 3.0, the port being covered up by the box in the middle is an hdmi port): http://i.imgur.com/el48ptI.jpg My cat who is pissed off that I put all my parts on my bed where she normally sleeps, she's flicking her tail: http://i.imgur.com/1jt2O4P.jpg
"Normally if given a choice between doing something and nothing, I’d choose to do nothing. But I would do something if it helps someone else do nothing. I’d work all night if it meant nothing got done."
-Ron Swanson "I shall be a good politician, even if it kills me. Or if it kills anyone else for that matter. " -Mark Antony 05-25-2013, 04:22 AM
Motherboard with cpu + ram (blacks are still getting washed out with natural light, I guess I'll have to do some tinkering with the camera later on when I have time):
http://i.imgur.com/sIi6ogm.jpg The stock thermal paste is usually crap so I'm going to grab some of my own. Think I have enough? http://i.imgur.com/0Nu5QJC.jpg A shot of the cpu IHS. The etching is extremely well done. Too bad the exposure is too low in these conditions: http://i.imgur.com/hVZ4DFj.jpg And HSF is now installed. This took longer than expected because the retention plate contains several sets of mounting holes for different sockets which the instruction manual makes no mention of. To figure out which holes to use I had to go find a ruler and measure the distance between the holes on the motherboard. It still doesn't fit quite perfectly but it's definitely good enough. http://i.imgur.com/vi2qwBP.jpg
"Normally if given a choice between doing something and nothing, I’d choose to do nothing. But I would do something if it helps someone else do nothing. I’d work all night if it meant nothing got done."
-Ron Swanson "I shall be a good politician, even if it kills me. Or if it kills anyone else for that matter. " -Mark Antony 05-25-2013, 08:52 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-25-2013, 08:54 AM by NaturalViolence.)
I got lazy and put them all in an album.
Does this link work for everyone? http://imgur.com/a/8Hg5d#0
"Normally if given a choice between doing something and nothing, I’d choose to do nothing. But I would do something if it helps someone else do nothing. I’d work all night if it meant nothing got done."
-Ron Swanson "I shall be a good politician, even if it kills me. Or if it kills anyone else for that matter. " -Mark Antony 05-25-2013, 10:58 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-25-2013, 11:12 PM by Starscream.)
First off I'd like to mention that I personally would never go fanless. I don't know what kind of a sound threshold most people have, but the sound of a few small fans spinning isn't going to kill me. Not to mention, it's worth having the fans to, you know, keep the system cool. Secondly, if you do want to go the passive route, why would you add a CPU fan to your processor? Other than that (and seeing your hand way too much), everything seems like it's going to come together nicely.
Asus Laptop: K53TA
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-Bit - SP1 CPU: AMD Llano A6-3400M, Quad-Core, 1.4GHz-2.6GHz (Overclocked) GPU: AMD Radeon HD6650M, 1GB GDDR3 (Catalyst 13.1) RAM: Samsung 4GB DDR3-1333 05-26-2013, 02:42 AM
(05-25-2013, 08:52 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: I got lazy and put them all in an album. Oh, thank you. You need a bigger chassis man!
......?????
05-26-2013, 02:42 PM
Starscream Wrote:First off I'd like to mention that I personally would never go fanless. I don't know what kind of a sound threshold most people have, but the sound of a few small fans spinning isn't going to kill me. Not to mention, it's worth having the fans to, you know, keep the system cool. My intention was never to go fanless. I'm pretty sure I never said otherwise. My intention was to minimize noise as much as possible with a reasonable threshold (something like 30-40 db). In other words a few fans spinning at low rpm like you said. I gave up on the idea of a fanless system months ago when I was planning this thing. It forces you to make the system extremely large and expensive or use extremely slow netbook quality hardware. Neither of which was particularly appealing to me. Starscream Wrote:Secondly, if you do want to go the passive route, why would you add a CPU fan to your processor? See above. Starscream Wrote:Other than that (and seeing your hand way too much), everything seems like it's going to come together nicely. Despite all of the research I did there were certainly unforeseen problems. As there tends to be when building something this small. I knew what I was getting into though. I had heard the horror stories about mini-itx cases on the web before. From what I gather sugo is the most flexible of them all (soon to be outdone by the slightly larger crowdfunded NCase M1) and if quite affordable, which is why I picked it. Issues I ran into HSF Height: I read a lot about this topic before hand. Because I knew that this was a major source of frustration for SFF (small form factor) builders. Unfortunately it didn't help much. Without actually having all of the parts in front of you (particularly the motherboard and case) it's impossible to judge what the maximum dimensions of the HSF can be. Most cases have a maximum height clearance listed (for HSFs) and most HSFs have a maximum height clearance listed (for ram). But as for depth/width. You're going to have to eyeball it. I was looking at a couple of SFF HSFs and was worried that the low clearance models would be too wide and would block the pci-e slot and/or ram. So I bought the slightly taller but narrower Scythe Samurai ZZ based on a review that mentioned the previous issue with mini-ITX systems. Which was clearly a mistake because it's too tall and doesn't fit with the fan on. Apparently that reviewer was using a sugo model with a slightly higher HSF height clearance. Had I read the chassis specs. on the manufacturer website more carefully I could have avoided that mistake. I can now confirm that the cooler master GeminII M4 that I was worried about blocking the pci-e port would have in fact fit. Barely. And it would have made the cabling even harder. 120mm is about the maximum width and depth you could use without blocking the pci-e slot or pushing up against the I/O shield. However as mentioned below that usb 3.0 internal cable is not going to fit underneath any decent SFF aftermarket cooler. A usb 2.0 internal cable should however. Had this case used usb 2.0 for the front panel instead of usb 3.0 I would have been able to fit my aftermarket heatsink just fine and use the 120mm case fan directly in front of it to cool it. But silverstone upgraded the sugo lineup to use usb 3.0 for the front panel connectors due to complaints from reviewers and users. Although realistically why is that feature important? The only two usb devices that I can think of that currently benefit from usb 3.0 are external HDD/SSD and webcams. Both of which can just as easily be plugged into the back. Maybe there are some high performance flash drives that benefit from it. Since this change was made just under a year ago this explains why I haven't read any complaints about it on any of the reviews (which are all from 2012 and earlier). I just wish the usb 3.0 connector was as small as the usb 2.0 connector. USB 3.0: The usb 3.0 front panel cable was a royal pain in the rear. I really didn't see that coming nor do I see how I could have since none of the reviews that I read mentioned it as a possible issue. I don't know if it's normal for the header to be that close to the socket, if it's normal for the internal usb 3.0 cable to be so thick and stiff, and if it's normal for the the connector to be so large. But the combination of those three things makes it completely impossible to install any HSF larger than the socket itself in width/height and still be able to plug in the front panel usb cable. I can assure any readers that I have looked and there are no HSFs in existence that fit those extremely tight size restrictions and still provide a statistically significant reduction in noise or gain in thermal dissipation. I wanted to buy an HSF with that size originally but there just weren't any good ones. No USB 2.0 internal cable, therefore no CIR. Which makes my CIR remote useless. Since the motherboard has a CIR header I'm going to try buying an internal usb 2.0 cable, dremeling a small cutout in the side of the case, installing the female usb 2.0 connector in there, then plugging the CIR usb module on the side. This is completely my fault for not realizing that usb 2.0 and usb 3.0 have completely different internal cables with very different pinouts. Luckily I have another remote to tide me over until then. Once I get CIR setup with my logitech harmonics remote it's going to be glorious. All of the above problems would have been fixed if the case had used usb 2.0 for the front panel connectors instead of usb 3.0. Passive cooler for gpu didn't fit. As mentioned earlier I had suspected that this might happen due to the large heatpipes sticking out almost 2 inches above the GPU. Since there is no data about a chassis graphics card height clearance on any case I had to eyeball this one. And since the images on newegg only show the outside of the case and not the inside it looked like it would fit since the case is at least 2 inches taller than the pci-e slots. I had no idea that the optical drive bay would be in the way. It ended up only being around 3-4mm too tall. Quite frankly a micro-atx case is just as likely to have this problem. This is just a bad heatsink design with the heatpipes sticking so far out. But since asus is the only company making midrange nvidia graphics cards with large heatsinks it was either this or install an aftermarket vga cooler myself. Which I really didn't want to have to go through again. So in other words either way I would have ended up having to physically modify something, either the graphics card or the case. Unfortunately I now notice that the graphics card is too close to the edge of the case for the heatsink to get much (if any) airflow from the intake fan. And the card itself acts as a shield preventing the heatsink from getting much airflow. I'll have to test it rigorously and if it gets too toasty under stress I'll have to install the 92mm scythe fan that I salvaged from the scythe samurai ZZ HSF to push air over it. Luckily there is plenty of room in that corner of the case to add a fan if necessary, and scythe fans are notoriously quite. Side note: The reason why nobody makes low end passively cooled nvidia cards except asus and sometimes zotac is there is little market for it. People don't seem to care as much about graphics card noise as I do. When dealing with low end graphics cards even $15 can mean the difference between two models that are twice/half as fast. The coolers are also fairly expensive relative to the card. Therefore the significant extra cost of adding a good cooler ends up raising the cost enough to the point where the card now has to compete with much faster models which people are far more likely buy since most users only care about one thing when they are searching for a new graphics card, performance per dollar. This is why high end graphics cards are far more likely to be equipped with aftermarket coolers. The high price of the card with stock cooling makes the cost of an aftermarket cooler far less significant to the total price of the card. And the next model up it likely to cost at least $50-100 more and provide only moderate performance improvement at best. Therefore it becomes economically efficient for manufacturers to equip the card with a better cooler and factory OC it. This only raises the total cost of the card slightly and can often allow it to produce performance close to the next model up (which is much more expensive). But for people like me it also has the added benefit of allowing for quieter cooling if we lower the clock rates/voltages back down to stock. But if you don't want to spend lots of money on a large high end graphics card with a high power consumption you're usually screwed unless you're willing to install the aftermarket cooling yourself. And trust me this is a lot more difficult than installing a cpu cooler. Especially if your particular card isn't using a reference design which many today aren't due to manufacturers trying harder and harder to optimize their designs to be more effective than the reference designs used by competitors. I still think it's worth it for me since the graphics card usually ends up being the loudest component in the system by far when you're trying to build a low noise system. Low end graphics cards tend to use small/cheap heatsinks with a small high rpm fan (and therefore noisy fans) in order to be able to price their cards lower than the competition and reduce the size so more customers will consider using it. 45 db is the average right now at full load and that's not acceptable for me. HDMI not working: This freaked me out. After I had everything setup I could not get HDMI output working. I tried two different cables (including one that I had confirmed works with other devices), tried plugging it into the receiver and directly into the TV, and tried using the IGP and the graphics card. At first I figured it was an HDCP issue. But that doesn't make sense since it's a modern nvidia card and none of my older laptops have had issues with this. So I had to use VGA for awhile. Eventually I figured out that apparently the HDMI ports on this system are slightly narrower than any of my other devices. Causing HDMI cables to feel tighter. So basically you have to push them in very hard to make sure that they are all the way in. HDMI output is working fine now. OpenELEC: This was the first OS I tried. It's a minimalist XBMC linxu distribution (167MB for the largest version). Unfortunately I had a lot of problems with it including the inability to get it to recognize my bluetooth or wifi adapters and the inability to get it to show temperatures in Celsius without changing my timezone. That's right, if you're in an American timezone all system temperatures are automatically listed in Fahrenheit, which is incredibly stupid. After searching around online I found that these problems were common and decided to install Linix Mint 14 x86-64 cinnamon DVD size with codecs edition. And so far everything is working flawlessly. Both the new wifi adapter from buffalo and my existing wifi adapter from TP-Link work fine from the other end of the house on it. The buffalo adapter despite showing twice the signal strength (30% instead of 15%) has connectivity issues while the TP-Link does not, weird. Although I am sure that won't be an issue once I move it back to the living room. Which I will do once all of the necessary software is set up. Also I am now reminded what a pain in the ass it is to install graphics drivers on linux compared to windows. I'm going to give linux a shot for this thing but if it doesn't work out I have a windows 7 x64 professional edition license that I can use as a backup solution. I'm going to be very busy this weekend with other things so I will likely not be able to finish setting it up until next weekend. I am currently running the stock cooler at 1000 rpm and the noise level it quite enough to satisfy me. The default speed of 2000 rpm is too loud though. I will have to stress test it to be sure that 1000 rpm is sufficient. I'm certainly hoping that it is. It is currently idling at 40 C. TL DR: If anyone is reading this and is planning a similar style build take my advice and use the cooler master Geminii M4 if your case has a usb 2.0 front panel connector. If your case uses usb 3.0 for the front panel either stick with stock cooling or if you're as anal about noise as I am bump the build up to micro-atx. And if you're planning on getting a passive graphics card don't get one with heatpipes that stick out of the top too far, like my Asus card. If you're planning on using CIR (which requires certain asrock/intel motherboards with CIR headers) make sure your chassis front panel uses usb 2.0. If it doesn't don't bother unless you're willing to do some case modding. If you can't get CIR working get an MCE remote instead. If you have a spare 3.5" or 5.25" (using a 3.5" adapter) external bay on your case you can use this to provide CIR without using the front panel usb ports at all: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6811999191 Of course that would require a micro-atx chassis or larger. The included remote sucks but since the goal here is to sync it with a universal remote that shouldn't be much of an issue. I do regret going for mini-itx instead of micro-atx. Mini-itx really should be reserved for ultra low end hardware (celeron mobile, E series APU, C series APU, or atom in a motherboard/cpu/vga/HSF combo). It's certainly doable with high end hardware but like you read everywhere online it's not very practical and really is a "do at your own risk" and "do a ton of research" type of project. Ultimately I'm satisfied but it could have goner smoother if I had used micro-atx. Like I mentioned with ultra low end hardware you're not going to run into any major issues.
"Normally if given a choice between doing something and nothing, I’d choose to do nothing. But I would do something if it helps someone else do nothing. I’d work all night if it meant nothing got done."
-Ron Swanson "I shall be a good politician, even if it kills me. Or if it kills anyone else for that matter. " -Mark Antony |
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