HTPC in an Ikea cabinet

Domovoi · Post by **Domovoi** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:06 pm

I've been doing some research on SPCR for a project of mine, but I'm not quite sure if the entire thing will turn into an oven when I put it all together, so I'm wondering if you guys could give your opinion on the parts I'm planning to buy.

The basic idea is that I'm going to build a media center PC into a cabinet that I'm building out of two FlÃ¤rke Ikea cabinets. I'm planning to hide as much as possible, basically only the DVD drive, a cardreader and a USB port will be visible from the front and sides. Also, it'll have some extra power outlets and network ports for the TV, audio hardware, and some consoles.

There's an Asus P5B motherboard with a Core 2 Duo E6750 processor, which is going to be cooled by a Scythe Ninja. The board is rotated, so the CPU will be near the bottom, with the memory above it. The Ninja will have an 120mm fan (Nexus?) which sucks in cold air from the bottom (the cabinet will be on legs) and pushes it through the Ninja. Above that, near the top, is another 120mm fan (another Nexus) which blows air out the back. There's a passively cooled video card (MSI NX8500GT) next to the CPU, with a Seasonic S12II-330HB PSU above it, which'll suck air up from the video card and also expel it out the back. Two harddrives are on the left (a 160GB Samsung Spinpoint s166 and a 500GB Samsung Spinpoint T166), which I'm hoping to suspend with elastic.

So basically, these parts will be cooled by two 120mm fans (running at 7v), one of which sucks air in from the bottom and the other pushing it out the back near the top. The PSU will only have one fan, but hopefully it'll be enough if I also give it an exhaust at the back.

What do you think? Will I be able to get this thing silent enough if I use enough foam and felt to mount stuff? Also, what about the heat buildup? Any ideas?

(I'd post pictures, but I can't yet due to forum restrictions)

seraphyn · Post by **seraphyn** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 1:06 pm

You can post pictures in your second post, same thing with links. Protection against spambots, if you will.

As for your questions. Having 1 intake at the coldest point and an exhaust at the warmest in theory sounds solid. The ninja is a solid choice for cooling your rig and undervolted fans should be silent.
Things to consider is the feet of your system, solid feet will resonate onto the cabinet and thus make the rig more noisy. Also the intake: will it be able to get enough air in from the cabinet?

Pictures speak a thousand words, so if you could post them it would help out a lot.

Domovoi · Post by **Domovoi** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 2:25 pm

Hi, thanks for the comments. As you said, pictures speak a thousand words, so here they are:

(Clickable)

This is the back. The 120mm fan outlet is on the left, next to it is a 120mm outlet for the PSU, but without fan (the PSU only has a 120mm fan in the bottom, but some sort of grill at the back to let air escape there).

Here's the bottom, another hole for a 120mm fan attached to the Ninja.

And here's the guts, as seen from the back. You can see the 120mm outlet fan at the top, next to the PSU. The Ninja is bottom center, with the 120mm fan blowing up from the bottom intake.

Essentially, the case is two FlÃ¤rke cabinets stuck together, the one containing the hardware completely closed, except for the three fan outlets. The pictures make it look larger than it is, the individual cabinets are about 24 3/4" wide, 17 3/8" deep, and 15 3/4" high.

Thanks for the advice on the legs, by the way. I didn't consider that yet... Would rubber feet do? 5 to 10mm?

derekva · Post by **derekva** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 3:02 pm

If you are treating this as a single unit, then I'd replace the top and bottom with single panels that cover both Flarke (sorry, don't know how to do umlauts) carcasses. Other than that, it looks interesting.

-D

seraphyn · Post by **seraphyn** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 3:38 pm

Any type of 10mm rubber/silicon feet would do, as long as they're strong enough to hold the cabinet. 10mm, because you need the room for the cabinet to be able to gather air. It'll stand on the ground, so i'll suggest a filter of some sort on the bottom intake, a non restictive kind. Don't want your silent rig sucking up your dust.

Airflow wise it looks pretty solid.

Domovoi · Post by **Domovoi** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 10:06 am

derekva wrote:If you are treating this as a single unit, then I'd replace the top and bottom with single panels that cover both Flarke (sorry, don't know how to do umlauts) carcasses. Other than that, it looks interesting.

-D

Yeah, I'm planning to fix the two together tightly, smoothing out the gaps with filler, and then giving the whole thing a paint job, so that they'll look like one unit.

seraphyn wrote:Any type of 10mm rubber/silicon feet would do, as long as they're strong enough to hold the cabinet. 10mm, because you need the room for the cabinet to be able to gather air. It'll stand on the ground, so i'll suggest a filter of some sort on the bottom intake, a non restictive kind. Don't want your silent rig sucking up your dust.

Airflow wise it looks pretty solid.

I'm planning to get legs several centimeters long, so clearance from the ground should be okay. I guess I'll just stick some decent rubber feet under them, and see how it works.

I'll have to see where I can get some air filters for this thing, thanks! Somebody else suggested putting the bottom fan in the back, pushing the air through a bent duct, but I'm wondering if that'll work as well.

What do you think of the thing noise-wise? I'm sort of hesitant about the two fans, PSU and double hard drives amounting to audible noise.

kittle · Post by **kittle** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:09 pm

Domovoi wrote:
seraphyn wrote:Any type of 10mm rubber/silicon feet would do, as long as they're strong enough to hold the cabinet. 10mm, because you need the room for the cabinet to be able to gather air. It'll stand on the ground, so i'll suggest a filter of some sort on the bottom intake, a non restictive kind. Don't want your silent rig sucking up your dust.

Airflow wise it looks pretty solid.
I'm planning to get legs several centimeters long, so clearance from the ground should be okay. I guess I'll just stick some decent rubber feet under them, and see how it works.

My reccomendation is to stick with the several centimeter long legs -- unless your running on wood floors, but even then, with it being so close to the ground, the bottom intake is going to be restricted, and cause turblence and noise.

but the main reason is from my experiences with my brothers PCs. We had a problem with one pc getting too hot. despite adequate fans, and removing the grills from the case. problem turned out to be the intake on the bottom front of the case was getting plugged up by the carpet in the computer room. Once I raised the case about 3 inches off the floor, the heat problems vanished.

Domovoi · Post by **Domovoi** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:39 pm

kittle wrote:
Domovoi wrote:
seraphyn wrote:Any type of 10mm rubber/silicon feet would do, as long as they're strong enough to hold the cabinet. 10mm, because you need the room for the cabinet to be able to gather air. It'll stand on the ground, so i'll suggest a filter of some sort on the bottom intake, a non restictive kind. Don't want your silent rig sucking up your dust.

Airflow wise it looks pretty solid.
I'm planning to get legs several centimeters long, so clearance from the ground should be okay. I guess I'll just stick some decent rubber feet under them, and see how it works.
My reccomendation is to stick with the several centimeter long legs -- unless your running on wood floors, but even then, with it being so close to the ground, the bottom intake is going to be restricted, and cause turblence and noise.

but the main reason is from my experiences with my brothers PCs. We had a problem with one pc getting too hot. despite adequate fans, and removing the grills from the case. problem turned out to be the intake on the bottom front of the case was getting plugged up by the carpet in the computer room. Once I raised the case about 3 inches off the floor, the heat problems vanished.

Nono, I mean.. I want to put rubber feet on the several centimeter long legs. So you get a lot of clearance, and dampen vibration.

This is on a wood floor by the way, yeah.

murtoz · Post by **murtoz** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 4:51 pm

Hi, one other point. In your sketchup drawings, the Ninja is perpendicular to the airflow - make sure you actually mount it in line with the airflow otherwise it won't work very well.
I would also consider some internal ducting, and maybe to direct some air from the intake toward the drives.
If you take the fan off the ninja and mount it on the intake, you could duct it to the ninja and deflect a bit of the airflow to the drives & GPU maybe, or otherwise duct the outlet fan so it pulls some air from the area of the drives.
Regarding the noise, if you undervolt the fans and suspend the drives, you'll be fine. One last point, make sure you softmount the fans that are attached to the cabinet. Not quite sure what to recommend for this though, the normal soft fan mounts won't work as the cabinet will be too thick.

seraphyn · Post by **seraphyn** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 5:42 pm

Put screw with bolt on the inside, tie rope around said screw and suspend the fans. Tie wraps would also work.

|--|||------|

In order the |'s are: screwhead/bolt/cabinet, attach between the screwhead and the bolt. Should do the trick i think.

Domovoi · Post by **Domovoi** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 3:01 am

murtoz wrote:Hi, one other point. In your sketchup drawings, the Ninja is perpendicular to the airflow - make sure you actually mount it in line with the airflow otherwise it won't work very well.

True. The model in my sketchup drawing isn't actually a Ninja, it's just some random heatsink model that I resized to Ninja dimensions. I'll take care to install the actual thing properly.

I would also consider some internal ducting, and maybe to direct some air from the intake toward the drives.
If you take the fan off the ninja and mount it on the intake, you could duct it to the ninja and deflect a bit of the airflow to the drives & GPU maybe, or otherwise duct the outlet fan so it pulls some air from the area of the drives.

Hmm.. Good idea, I was a bit worried about the drives not being in the path of the airflow. I'll have to see what I can do about that, thanks.

Regarding the noise, if you undervolt the fans and suspend the drives, you'll be fine. One last point, make sure you softmount the fans that are attached to the cabinet. Not quite sure what to recommend for this though, the normal soft fan mounts won't work as the cabinet will be too thick.

seraphyn wrote:Put screw with bolt on the inside, tie rope around said screw and suspend the fans. Tie wraps would also work.

Yeah, I've been browsing SPCR a bit, and I figured I could go with mounting them on a piece of foam, then tieing them down with rope/tie wraps. I'll definitely soft-mount them, somehow.

murtoz · Post by **murtoz** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 5:07 pm

Domovoi wrote:Hmm.. Good idea, I was a bit worried about the drives not being in the path of the airflow. I'll have to see what I can do about that, thanks.

You may want to have a look at Bluefront's latest creation for inspiration on ducting setup - his airflow is very similar to your design. Either way, I'd suspend the drives vertically to aid airflow.

Domovoi · Post by **Domovoi** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 1:15 am

murtoz wrote:
Domovoi wrote:Hmm.. Good idea, I was a bit worried about the drives not being in the path of the airflow. I'll have to see what I can do about that, thanks.
You may want to have a look at Bluefront's latest creation for inspiration on ducting setup - his airflow is very similar to your design. Either way, I'd suspend the drives vertically to aid airflow.

Looks like a great idea, thanks! I'll definitely suspend the drives vertically, with a 2.5cm or so gap between them. Then mount the CPU fan on the bottom intake hole, build a duct around it to the ninja, then cut a hole in the left of the duct and place the drives up against it, so that the air can blow between the drives.

theycallmebruce · Post by **theycallmebruce** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:20 am

#1: Your drawings are awesome! How did you create them?

#2: Interestingly, I just bought a second hand black Ikea looking dealy second hand from a local charity shop for $20. It has a glass front and a shelf, and my PC parts fit in there nicely. I have the back completely open. Since my machine is completely passively cooled, there are no noise issues.

Domovoi · Post by **Domovoi** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 6:33 am

theycallmebruce wrote:#1: Your drawings are awesome! How did you create them?

I used Sketchup. It's not great, but it's free and works pretty well for stuff like this. The best part is that you can download models other people made right into your drawing. For mine, I only created the cabinets, then downloaded models for the motherboard, fans, et cetera that other people created, scaled them to the size of the components I'm planning to get, and put them in my drawing.

Just remember to do a couple of tutorials. Especially being able to work with the axes is very useful.

#2: Interestingly, I just bought a second hand black Ikea looking dealy second hand from a local charity shop for $20. It has a glass front and a shelf, and my PC parts fit in there nicely. I have the back completely open. Since my machine is completely passively cooled, there are no noise issues.

Hmm, sounds good. What kind of CPU cooler did you use? And what PSU? Also, any pictures?

theycallmebruce · Post by **theycallmebruce** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 8:26 am

Celeron 420 with Scythe Ninja Mini, picoPSU. No HDD - boots Ubuntu from USB flash.

When I have tidied it up I will post some pics.. it's a mess at the moment.

Domovoi · Post by **Domovoi** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:09 pm

I've found a uATX board that has basically the same specs at the P5B I had in mind, but it's obviously much smaller. I'm kind of hesitant wether the Ninja will fit, though. Has anyone tried a ninja on the Asus P5B-MX?

I've also been wondering if I can lose the top exhaust fan. In this drawing, I've removed the top fan and moved the Seasonic PSU over the Ninja. AFAIK, that PSU only has a fan on the bottom, but I figure it gets expelled out the back naturally. I've added some red lines, the bottom two represent a duct for the intake fan on the bottom to the Ninja (the fan is still attatched to the ninja, but I'm planning to mount it on the bottom), and the top two are sort of guides to make sure hot air from the video card and HDD's moves to the PSU fan, and doesn't get trapped at the top. I think it'd be better in terms of noise, but I wonder if it'll be enough for the airflow across all the parts. Maybe a separate exhaust fan is necessary after all.

Thoughts?

seraphyn · Post by **seraphyn** » Mon Jan 14, 2008 4:22 pm

Possible, but i think that in this scenario the PSU will heat up to an extent that it will ramp up the fan to dump this heat, making it noisier.