Saturday, December 03, 2005

Building the HTPC, part III

It's up and running, and I'm using it to make this post. Right now it's sitting on my dining room table with the mouse, keyboard, and monitor from my regular computer hooked up to it. The next step is to take it over to the rack by the tv and hook it up there. I may have to connect the monitor to it if the system doesn't automatically detect that it's connected via S-video to the television and automatically route the display accordingly. Either way I should be able to configure Windows and the Media Center software to use the tv for the primary display.

I did run into one snag while putting it all together. The power supply has two fans, one that sucks air into the power supply from within the case, and one that blows air out the back. Both fans have a grill over them, or at least they used to. The Zalman cpu cooler's heatsink was just wide enough that it was up against the internal fan grill and I couldn't mount it without seriously bending the fins. I figured I'd go ahead and put the old cooler back on, but then decided to see what happened if I removed that grill. Once it was removed, everything just barely fit. It shouldn't be a problem as long as I don't stick my fingers in the fan while it's running. Somehow, I don't foresee myself doing that.

Other than that, everything fit although it's pretty tight in a couple of places. I'll need to watch the system temperature to make sure that there's adequate airflow. The case has the capacity for an additional 80mm fan mounted on the bottom so I can put one there if I decide it needs additional air circulation.

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