[Copyright]

So I kinda went a little overkill on the HTPC steup but in the end I have a machine I can game on in the living room when I have company over. Here are some pics of it mid way built and fully built. The case wasn't that hard to cable but it took some time. There are a few things I could have done cleaner but at the end of the day there is really no Window to show off anything so I was happy with the end results.. FYI the Geminii S524 cooler was mounted with no bottom plate (Asus P8H77-i has stuff in the way) and just the nuts with some insulated washers. I have seen a few ppl do this and felt ok with it. With the cooler fully tightened the board was not warping and I ended up getting 10C cooler load temps over the Vortex Plus and the CPU fan never got over 900 RPM. So the end result was a VERY quiet HTPC even under full load in Prime95.

Specs..

i3 2125
Coolermaster Geminii S524 w/Noctua 120mm NF-F12 PWM Fan
Samsung 1600mhz DDR3 8gb
Asus P8H77-I motherboard
MSI 7790 1gb w/Noctua NF-A9x14 92mm fan mod (much quieter than stock fan)
Silverstone SG08 w/Noctua NF-S12A 120mm PWM Fan
Panasonic Bluray Slim

[method115]

Awesome HTPC!

[Dougie Fresh]

That's some mini-ITX love right there. Very nice.

[Copyright]

Thx! It was a fun build. It should be a great HTPC when I finally get everything loaded.

[aesalazar]

Nice, nice, very nice! Overkill?! Ya, I would say so Those fancy fans probably set you back 100 bucks US alone :o

But seriously, that's a nice box, should serve you well.

Ernie

[Copyright]

LOL, yeah the fans were probably about 75$ total. I love Noctua fans. I have used all the good ones out there and I keep coming back to Noctua. It's been a fun build. I am looking forward to doing more ITX builds.

[Christer K]

Sweet!!

FYI the Geminii S524 cooler was mounted with no bottom plate (Asus P8H77-i has stuff in the way) and just the nuts with some insulated washers.

Pictures of that?

[Copyright]

Sweet!!

FYI the Geminii S524 cooler was mounted with no bottom plate (Asus P8H77-i has stuff in the way) and just the nuts with some insulated washers.

Pictures of that?

No pictures of my non/Backplate setup but if you look around enough on google images you will come across one that shows pretty much what I did. I am not sure if they used insulated washers but I felt it was a good idea since the backplate basically has that built into it. I tightened up the bolts until each one stopped when the threads ran out. P8H77-i just isn't setup in a way that it works well with aftermarket cooling. If you don't want to do what I did your best heatsink will be one that uses the push pins from the top like the stock intel cooler. The Cooler Master Vortex Plus is setup this way. My Geminii S524 is 10C cooler under load compared to the Vortex Plus I had... but this was also in an SG05 which does not have the best air flow.