Antec NSK1480 HTPC

[BillyBuerger]

So I finally got my Antec NSK1480 case for my HTPC. I bought it for it's size, looks, and the fact that it at least comes with a half decent PSU. But as it is a slim case, it does make it difficult to keep quiet compared to larger cases. Here are the mods I've made so far to help out with it and the parts I'm currently using...

• DFI 915GM-MGF
  Pentium M 725 1.6GHz
  Sapphire HD3450
  1GB PC2700
  Samsung 40GB 2.5"
  Lite-on Bluray/DVD

The biggest problem out of the box was the fans. The PSU fan is a slim 80mm high speed fan that clicks a lot. The two side/rear fans are hard-mounted and squeeze in between the side and a ridge. Any clicking or noise from these get amplified through the case. I originally swapped the Antec tri-cool fans for a pair of AC PWM fans. Although this MB doesn't support PWM fans. For some reason these things clicked terribly and with the hard-mounting sounded terrible. The tri-cools on low don't seem to click at all and are slow enough that I've put them back. I removed the front/side fan. That's where all my spare wires are anyways.

The PSU fan was removed and the grill was cut out. I then took an old medium speed ball-bearing Panaflo fan that I had and surrounded it with weather stripping on all sides. The hole in the PSU was larger then the fan and the weather stripping fills in the gap holding it in place. There was some weather stripping on the case around where the old fan was. That got in the way and had to be removed. This fan is much less clicky and runs slower. So everything is looking good here.

For the side/rear fans, the metal ridge was cut off. There's probably room for two fans stacked between the side and the motherboard. Not exactly sure why they put this ridge here in the first place. With that gone (and the rough edge covered by duct tape), I had plenty of room to soft mount the fans. My preferred method of fan mounting was used... Weather stripping around the edges, hair bands to provide the tension and bobby pins to hold the hair bands. Again much better than it was.

Now this is still not silent by any means. The tri-cools even on low are a bit fast and the panflo fan isn't the best either. But it's way better than it was and is inside of cabinet across the room from where we sit and quiet enough that it can't be heard over even quiet scenes when watching stuff. I could go with slower fans. But the video card gets pretty hot as it is. Any slower and I would worry about those temps. I hope to eventually use my Gigabyte 780G motherboard with an AMD 4050e CPU. But that MB is giving me problems and will be sent for some work soon.

[seemingly.random]

This is great. I've been looking at this case the past couple of months. Curious that it's not available at many etailers. With the 780g chipset, it seemed entirely possible - just didn't know what else would have to be modified. I assumed that the psu fan would need attention.

I wonder about undervolted 80mm nexus rear/side fans. Would a 92mm fan fit without the ridge? I also wonder if vertical orientation would help with cooling.

I imagine an external psu would make things much easier. It would provide the possibility of more side to side (or bottom to top) ventilation.

Nice job - keep updating...

[Lensman]

Thank you very, very much for this report. I've been waiting months for the 1480 to actually be available from an etailer so I can rebuild my htpc into a smaller form factor. It's currently in a 2480.

Given all the mods you've had to do to make your case "acceptable", I think I'm going to save myself the trouble and just keep my old 2480 and just do a little internal rebuild.

[BillyBuerger]

At first I was going to say no to a 92mm fan. But the case itself is just a little taller than a 92mm fan. And without the ridge there, you could probably just fit a 92mm fan. It might be hard to soft mount it though as there wouldn't be much space between the top and bottom of the case.

I'm overall pleased with this case and think it's probably one of the better slim cases you could find. But yeah, it's too bad they didn't make it a little more quiet out of the box. Maybe that's one reason why they haven't been shipping many out. They weren't pleased enough with the overall results and peoples reaction. But that's just a thought.

I'll post some more pictures of it all together here soon.

[BillyBuerger]

More pictures...

[Jackal5]

I'm actually interested in this case. I would like to rebuild my older HTPC components into it. Maybe toss in a Blue Ray drive. There is nothing wrong with my current HTPC but it uses a slim laptop drive and can't play blue ray disc. And the storage drive is external.

Images if you would like to see that last project. HTPC Projet - GMC Case