New Epson projector

The old one started complaining about the lamp, sooo the wise thing to do was to replace the projector... :)

It is an Epson EMP-TW2000, with 1920x1080 resolution and D7 panels. I also got a Lite-On DH-401S BD player, with the PowerDVD bundle, in order to play Blu-Ray discs. After a night of frustration and a little help from Ars Technica, I got PowerDVD to work, and watched amazing things!!! The projector outputs a lot of light compared to the old one, even in low lamp mode. Black levels are vastly improved, too. Gone are the green to the left, red to the right hues that all D5 projectors exhibited. White is white.

New Eizo

I got tired of the Samsung 245B and got an Eizo S2431W today. The difference is night and day! Perfect uniformity, excellent colors. It is a bit bright for my taste, so it's set at 10%.

Copper Ninja!

It surfaced a few weeks ago, as soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it. Fortunately, the retailer I usually shop from, had it on stock. The SI-120 was getting old, I got it used and it's been installed in 4 systems.



Installation of this huge thing meant motherboard removal (again...).



At first I tried using it with no fan, but it was a bit warm for my taste (60c load temps). I then tried opening the top and using a second exhaust fan (the very quiet one provided with the HS), but had no difference in temps, and the system got noisier, as there was a direct path for noise to escape.


I always try to get some airflow to the northbridge and FETs, putting the fan the way it was designed (blowing parallel to the board) on the Ninja was not optimal for me.









I wanted the fan to blow at a 45° angle, cooling both the HS and the board. Luckily, I managed to use one of the fan holders, which works like a spring, pushing the fan slightly towards the ODD cables. With this configuration, CPU temps are very low (32c idle, 50c load), the board gets airflow, and I'm happy. I even lowered the intake and exhaust fans' voltage a bit more, and overclocked a bit higher, to 2.66GHz.

Total renovation of HTPC

The new board.











My old SI-120, 4GB of RAM.









Installed, fanless Asus 8600GTS in front.








Nice and tidy side SATA connections.














Lower chamber. SATA cables are angled on this side.














Metal grill snipped, plastic front grill trimmed, Nexus fan in front.






Shiny!!!
















The backstory:

Charlie wanted a new PC for his son Ari to play games, so I sold him (for cheap!) my old Albatron 925X that was previously in the Zalman case, along with the 540 CPU and 1 GB of RAM. I also gave him my XFX 7950GT graphics card, so that I could get one with HDCP and HD acceleration. I got a fanless Asus 8600GTS, which doesn't yet work properly on XP...

I assembled the new-old PC, powered up, fans, lights, everything OK, but no video. After trying 2 graphics cards, 2 PSUs and RAM, I returned the board to the store I had bought it from. The 3 year warranty expired in 10 days! After a bit of testing, they confirmed the board was dead, and offered me the Asus P5E, a 212 euro board!

Now my only choice was to give the Asus P5B-E to Charlie, the old 533MHz RAM wouldn't work on the P5E, so I had to redo the P180 HTPC. BUT, as I was leaving the store, I saw a P182SE on sale for half the price! It was a show piece, but didn't have any visible flaws. I got it and spent a whole day, but I'm happy!


Final configuration (for some time:)):
Case: Antec P182SE
CPU: Intel E6400 @ 2.4 GHz
M/B: Asus P5E
RAM: 4x1GB OCZ Platinum DDR2 PC6400
GPU: Asus nVidia 8600GTS
HDD: WD250JS, WD300JD, WD400KS, 2xWD500AAKS, 2 external Maxtor 250
DVD-R: NEC 4550, DVD-ROM: NEC DV-5800E
PSU: Antec NeoHE 430W