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Media centre pc for approx €500
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Straight away there was a problem when going to fit the card.
The upper satellite cable input connector is too close to the top of the half-height bracket, so that it is impossible to fit it into the PCIe slot at the same time as get it through the expansion slot opening at the rear of the case. Basically, this is a design oversight. It would seem that they probably only tested this card in its full-height format and it didn't occur to them to test for any problems when fitting to a half-height physical format.
You might think that the solution is to remove the motherboard, fit the card, and then re-fit the motherboard-with-card back into the chassis. Unfortunately, even this won't work as the satellite connector is so close to the top, it does not even have enough room to fit through the back at all.
Removing the bracket from the card and offering it up to the slot at the rear of the chassis demonstrates this:
The top satellite connector simply will not have enough room. The chassis covers about half of the aperture.
I would make a good guess that the original purchaser of this card encountered the same issue and that this is why it was returned and was available to me in an "as new" condition.
Well nothing ever really goes without a hitch from start to finish, so I was prepared for this, having encountered similar issues with limited space when fitting tv-tuner and other expansion cards populated with awkward ports.
The prospect of cutting off bits of the chassis might not be appealing to some people, but this is what needs to be done, and it's no big deal if you take your time and don't cut off any more than you need to. The metal is not very thick, and it is relatively soft. It can be done easily enough with a snips, and once you cut through one side, you can make a score in the other side and use metal-fatigue to break off the section you need to remove.
The PSU back in the chassis restores some physical integrity, and the folding flap on this particular chassis will make sure that the card doesn't move about when it's closed over it.
I also found I needed to snip a little bit off the card's bracket to stop it fouling on the side of the chassis.
In a similar way to many performance graphics cards, this card needs more power than can be drawn through the PCIe bus alone. It takes extra power from the type of connector usually only used in the past for 3.5" floppy disk drives. As these are now something which are very rarely used anymore, it's not surprising that a PSU designed for only a limited number of modern internal devices should no longer have one of these connectors.
Luckily, I'm someone who keeps lots of electronic junk about the place, so I snipped an FDD power connector off an old failed PSU. I snipped off one of the older Molex type power connectors on this PSU and joined the wires.
There are Molex to FDD converters available on ebay but I think this is neater and quicker if you don't want to have to wait for another small item to arrive in the post. Of course you might later find that you need two legacy Molex power connectors for something else, but it's highly unlikely in this situation.
Now here's the tv-tuner card fitted.
With the expansion card flap closed over, you'd never know any part of the chassis had been cut away.
As you can see, I have connected the other various cables such as main power connector, power button, power LED and disk LED wires, USB front ports cable to the second USB header (each header gives two USB ports) and sata cable to SSD (I'll show where the SSD goes later) and fitted the memory module. There's nothing unique to this build about any of that though, so I don't think there's any point in going into much detail there.
Next post will be completing the hardware assembly and finishing touches ...0 -
I'm quite a perfectionist and I'm rarely able to leave something alone that will "just do".
The white wifi aerial didn't look right and I wanted it to look like it belonged there, so I swapped it for a black aerial that I had spare from an old wireless router. Again, if you don't happen to have one lying around, this is something that costs less than a fiver on Amazon.
It's a small detail but I think it makes it look much better, and appearances can be important sometimes, especially for a living room device.
Despite my talk about appearances, I've managed to put a scratch in the top cover however.
Hopefully it'll "polish out with a bit of T-cut", but don't make the same mistake as I did and lay it flat on a wooden floor. :pac:
My next post will be completion of the hardware build, and a bit about the wireless keyboard.0 -
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Actually I should mention something about the CPU fan:
The default settings is that it is on full speed all the time, which I thought was unusually unhelpful. At this setting it is intrusively loud.
Changing it from full to automatic, and setting it to the lowest fan speed of 1 and a target temperature of 55 degrees C (131 F) hasn't had any problems with cooling.
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PyeContinental wrote: »Actually I should mention something about the CPU fan:
The default settings is that it is on full speed all the time, which I thought was unusually unhelpful. At this setting it is intrusively loud.
Changing it from full to automatic, and setting it to the lowest fan speed of 1 and a target temperature of 55 degrees C (131 F) hasn't had any problems with cooling.
I've mine set up the same way.. I used an after market heatisink with a lot of passive cooling fins and it never reaches above 47 degree let alone 55 so the fan never comes on and keeps it silent0
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