My Zacate system ready to be built

[grebe925]

The motherboard: Asus E35M1-I Deluxe mini-itx MB - $174.99 + $7.56 S&H

The memory: G.SKILL ECO Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 - $45.99 + $2.99 S&H

Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - $79.99 + Free Shipping

Case: Aopen S120A mini-itx with upgrade kit - Bought a couple of years ago, so don't remember the cost.

Power Supply: pico-PSU-120WI-25V 12-25V input - $55 + S&H

The adapter is a tiny 19V 50W 100-240V->19V one that's not shown - 35 Euros (picked it up in Germany).

My current HTPC is a MSI Live Diva MB based system (AVS Forum Thread here) with integrated amplifier as well as a discrete ATI 5450 video card and it drives a Epson Home Cinema 1080 projector and KEF 2005 5.1 Home Theater Speakers. However I was not very happy with the sound. When the Zacate platform came up, I was intrigued with the idea of combining my video server (an old 780G based mini-itx system) and HTPC and using an old Onkyo THX-919 receiver which has a great amp section. To this end, this is going to be a low-power video server and HTPC. The Hard Drive goes into the Aopen upgrade kit. The case has two 60x60x10mm fans which I connected in series to slow them down to cut down on the noise. I probably will put another low profile fan on top of the heatsink, depending on the temps. I hopefully will get around to the build later this week and I'll let you know how it goes when I do.

A few pictures (the pico-psu (small yellow thing in second pic) is actually a picoPSU-120 which is going to be replaced by the one mentioned above after being pulled from my video server):

Zacate build | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Aopen S-120a case with upgrade kit | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[baijuxavior]

Congratulations. Can you split the price item wise?

 

[reignofchaos]

Where did you manage to find that board? I looked high and dry for that board but it wasn't available anywhere. Finally settled for the MSI.

Please do be aware that the zacate gpu doesn't have as good a frame rate stability as a discrete 6570 or similar card. The frame rate is never ever a straight line . If you can ignore that bit, then everything else works beautifully. The output quality is stupendous compared to media streamers and the like.

 

[grebe925]

Where did you manage to find that board? I looked high and dry for that board but it wasn't available anywhere. Finally settled for the MSI.

Please do be aware that the zacate gpu doesn't have as good a frame rate stability as a discrete 6570 or similar card. The frame rate is never ever a straight line . If you can ignore that bit, then everything else works beautifully. The output quality is stupendous compared to media streamers and the like.

All items except case were sourced from the company links provided and hand-carried by relatives from the U.S. (updated prices in OP). Probably could have sourced some items cheaper, but was too lazy (besides Newegg prices are not too bad in the first place). And I guess I could have bought one of the cheaper boards like AsRock, but I fell in love with the Asus heatsink! The case was a left-over from an earlier build where I tried to use it with a 780G based mini-itx board. But that used to crash/reboot due to over-heating, so I moved it to a bigger case and this Aopen S120A has been gathering dust since (I should be able to avoid this problem due to the lower wattage of the Zacate platform).

The only duty for this build is feeding content to my projector and hosting my movie collection (no games or other PC uses). As long as my HD content plays smoothly, I'll be happy.

 

[spirovious]

Congratulations,do post some final pictures.

 

[madhurvyas]

Good to see one more E350 htpc.
Cheers!!

 

[grebe925]

OK, I finally got my system built and working. The Aopen case is a very tight fit (not much bigger than the Asus mini-itx board itself) and it took some time to ensure that the cables were routed properly for the board to fit in nicely without too much cable-clutter. And, given that the enclosure is quite small, I opted to add a 80mm low-speed fan that I had lying around to keep the CPU temps down. It spins at 800 rpm, increases by about 200 rpm when the temps rise (regulated by a thermistor that you slip into a slot of the heatsink radiator vanes) and is barely discernible. The 60mm case fans were wired in parallel and after experimenting with various resistor values, a 68 ohm resistor connected in series brought down their speed to around 1800 rpm. This resulted in a barely discernible, perfectly acceptable, swoosh in place of the jet-engine whine when they spun at 3500 rpm without the resistor. The hard-drive was directly bolted onto the top metal cover after ditching the tray to improve air-flow.

I have mixed reactions about the board. While the massive heatsink helps keep temps low, it also compromises the board layout with everything pushed to the edge. And one of the compromises is losing a memory slot due to the Pico-psu jutting out onto it. Still, I guess the advantages (USB3.0, SATA 6.0 Gbps, bluetooth, mini pcie slot) outweigh this disadvantage. The board itself is picky about memory. I spent nearly two days trying to figure out why BSODs were occurring until the board warmed up. It turned out that one of the G-Skill memory sticks was the culprit; they went away after I replaced it with the other one.

As for performance, after tweaking MPC-HC and VLC media-player to use hardware acceleration, 1080P content is butter-smooth and it plays everything I throw at it (including the killa-sampla video test sample floating around on the web). CPU temps hover around 40-46 degrees when ambient temp is around 25 degrees. Power consumption is about 25W idle and 33W under load. I am pleasantly surprised because I expected a lot more effort to achieve this kind of performance and would heartily recommend the Zacate platform for HD video content playback use.

A couple of pics are included below, including those of my HT setup. The receiver is a THX-SV919 Onkyo that was one of the first THX amps that came out nearly two decades ago; I use the HTPC as a pre-amp and connect it directly to the amp section. Sound is awesome through KEF 2005 4.1 speakers, with a 3000 series center channel speaker. Projector is a three year old Epson Home Cinema 1080.

Sorry for the long-winded reply. Hope you enjoy. Cheers.

P1020062 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
P1020059 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
P1020065 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
P1020063 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Projection Wall (13 ft wide painted with Dulux Snowfields low-sheen
P1020058 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
P1020054 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

[srinisundar]

Good going and congratulation on your full blown HTPC as intended

It is good to see and an eyeopener for all the PJ can be kept be in coffee table or Shelf. Here there are lot of debates are there for that. Hope you have not changed it after the photo shoot

 

[gobble]

OK, I finally got my system built and working.

Great going!! Edit: Just saw a fan inside you htpc. Whats it doing there? I thought the whole idea of the deluxe board was to go fanless and quiet ... ?

Where did you manage to find that board? I looked high and dry for that board but it wasn't available anywhere. Finally settled for the MSI.

Been hoping to find that board myself. I spoke to a product manager at AMD India once last year, about unavailability of "E" series low power CPUs that are rated @45WTDP in the market. He confidently told me there was no demand for such products in India so they were not importing it!! Only "people like me" ask for such things and I was a minority. hyeah: I reminded him about potential demand from HTPC home builders and I imagine he was listening to me like a shrink listens to an unwanted patient for a case he least cares about.

Then this must be a decision by yet another PM somewhere that the deluxe version of the board need not be made available for Indians as they will only always go for that board that is one rupee lesser cost.

Q: If I pass a torch light through the ears of a PM what will I see?
Hint: No points for guessing hyeah:

--G0bble

 

[grebe925]

It is good to see and an eyeopener for all the PJ can be kept be in coffee table or Shelf. Here there are lot of debates are there for that. Hope you have not changed it after the photo shoot

I got the projector cabinet custom-made to look like a book-shelf to go with the rest of my room furniture. It's perfect because everything is out of the way (no wires snaking across the room to trip over, for example). After watching a movie, I let the PJ cool down for a couple of hours, put a dust-cover over it and close the doors. It's been in that place for nearly two years. Even after all that time, the PJ filter had barely gathered any dust on it when I cleaned it a couple of days ago.

Great going!! Edit: Just saw a fan inside you htpc. Whats it doing there? I thought the whole idea of the deluxe board was to go fanless and quiet ... ?

Been hoping to find that board myself. I spoke to a product manager at AMD India once last year, about unavailability of "E" series low power CPUs that are rated @45WTDP in the market. He confidently told me there was no demand for such products in India so they were not importing it!! Only "people like me" ask for such things and I was a minority. hyeah: I reminded him about potential demand from HTPC home builders and I imagine he was listening to me like a shrink listens to an unwanted patient for a case he least cares about.
--G0bble

The case is quite small and heat build-up was an issue when I used it for an earlier 780G based build. I didn't want to take any chances, so I put in that low-speed fan. It's a 80x10mm one and spins very slowly (800-1000 rpm) and so is only discernible if you put your ear close to it.

The board was hand-carried for me from the U.S., so I can't vouch for the AMD India guy's opinion. Sorry.