With all the parts ready the process of putting it all together was fairly straight forward. I thought that working inside such a small case would have been a bit fiddly but I guess the layout of the motherboard ensured that the right things were easily accessible at the right time. (Later it would become annoying to have to disassemble half the machine just to get at the jumper to clear the CMOS but for the initial build I had no issues.) I had planned to take my time over this but impatience got the better of me and so I dived into the box and managed to put everything together in around 40 minutes while the kids had breakfast.

The Case

My first impression of this case was that it seemed a little larger than I expected. It takes up about as much room as a slightly thicker Wii console so it's not huge by any means. The top, bottom and both sides are mostly large air vents to allow for good airflow or an entirely passive cooling setup for low powered systems. The bulk of the case seems to be of high quality construction but the front (which surely is the most important) is plastic and not quite as nice. However, what was pretty neat is that after unclipping the front (not a great mechanism) two hidden USB ports are revealed. The idea being that bluetooth, R/F or permenant flash drives can be left plugged in here and hidden from view. Inside, the case has a HDD mounting bracket which can also be used to mount additional fans, an extra fan mount at the front and connectors for the only visible feature on the front of the case, the power switch. The case does not come with a PSU and so a power supply solution appropriate to the case, motherboard and number of drives etc. has to be bought separately. An additional HDD mounting bracket can also be purchased for a second drive or further fans.

The Motherboard

As such things go this motherboard is a real cutie. It's main bulk comes from the heatsink and fan which come pre-assembled and attached to the CPU. Likewise the mini-PCIe wireless card was also already installed out of the box and wired up to the Wi-FI aerial sockets on the back plate. The board has an impressive array of features. The backplate alone hosts the following.

• 6x USB 2.0
• P/S2 Keyboard
• HDMI
• VGA
• DVI
• S/PDIF Optical Audio
• S/PDIF Coaxial Audio
• eSATA
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 3x 3.5mm audio connectors

On board the connectivity options continue with a PCIe slot, mini-PCIe slot (used by Wi-Fi), USB headers for 4 more ports, Serial port header and 3 SATA connectors.

Included in the retail box in addition to the usual manuals and driver CD were three SATA data cables, Molex/SATA power splitter, 2 Wi-Fi aerials, a bag of screws and a blanking plate.

Installation

** Of course, never forget to work on a clean spacious surface and to take appropriate anti-static precautions. This is something I always do... honest! **

While the motherboard was most easily accessible I slipped in the two sticks of memory, noticing for the first time that I had purchased Ultra Low Profile (ULP) DIMM's which are around 2/3 of the height of regular DIMM's. I'm not sure that this is particularly needed for this board or case but does continue the theme of smallness.

With the memory in place I plugged in the picoPSU to the ATX power connector. After opening up the case and fitting the blanking plate it was an easy job to remove the HDD bracket and screw the motherboard onto the bottom of the case. The board fits with little room around the edges so this case really is as small as you could go with this style of board.

Once the motherboard was in place the case connectors for the power LED, power switch and Front USB sockets were attached to the matching header pins. The power input socket for the picoPSU also needed to be attached to the matching hole in the rear of the case. This had me stumped for a while as there were no instructions. Eventually I realised that the front of the connector could unscrew allowing the connector to be placed through the hole and then held in place once the front of the connector was screwed back. Luckily I had a pair of needle nose pliers handy as it wouldnt have been possible to unscrew the connector without them.

The 2.5" HDD screwed onto the bottom of the mounting bracket and could then be attached to the SATA power cable from the picoPSU and by SATA data cable to SATA1 on the motherboard. Once the bracket was back in place a lot of careful positioning of the various cables was needed to avoid them touching the RAM and Heatsink or from getting too bent up. You can see from the photos that ideally the HDD cables would be a lot shorter (or more flexible) and I think that if I ever fit a second drive that I will look to see what alternatives there are.

With all the cables tucked away the case could be closed and the Wi-Fi aerials attached. I have to say that this was probably the quickest and easiest of any PC build that I have carried out. 

Back / Front Views

A couple of shots of the completed system. The rear view shows the dual aerial Wi-Fi and the multitude of connection options the motherboard offers.

The Coaxial audio output was a real bonus as my surround sound amp only has two optical inputs both already in use by the cable and blu-ray boxes. Now I didn't have to mess around switching cables whenever I wanted to use the amp with the HTPC. For daily use though sending the sound to the TV over HDMI will probably be fine.

This is a really neat little box and sits nicely inside the TV cabinet along with the rest of my AV gear. I connected everything up and hit the power button. No unexpected post beeps - result! - oh, there's no speaker... post screen - yay! - now wait a minute.... how do you press the "DEL" key to access the BIOS on an old Apple iMac keyboard that doesn't have one?... to be continued...

So have decided to put together a HTPC I came very close to buying one ready built rather than building from scratch. There is a wide variety of choice these days for small nettops or dedicated HTPC devices. My main requirements were fairly clear and included :

• 1080p HD video output over HDMI
• S/PDIF optical audio output
• Ability to use XBMC or Boxee
• Local file storage and ability to do light web browsing/manage downloads
• Small, quiet and cool running

Here are a few of the devices I seriously considered and came close to buying over a few months of research :

• Acer Aspire Revo 3700
• Zotac ZBox HD-ID11
• Boxee Box
• Mac Mini

Any of the above would have met my needs but ultimately I had set my mind on doing things the hard way.

Having ruled out all of the ready made options it was time to select the most important part of any PC system the Motherboard and CPU. Most mini-ITX motherboards in this class appeared to offer similar features so this decision seemed to come down to the choice of an Intel Atom + Nvidia ION or an Intel i3 with it's own on-chip graphics. The i3 option seemed like a pretty good idea as it gave a lot more processing power (2x 2.93 GHz) than the top of the range Atom (2x 1.8 GHz) although this would be at the expense of a little more heat and therefore noise associated with the CPU cooling fan. However, I knew that I really didn't need the extra power and became concerned about 'skipping' issues being reported with the on-chip graphics of the i3 when playing back high quality HD video.

While weighing up the options of Atom vs i3 I started reading about a third option, the Intel CULV. At first glance the idea of going for a dual core 1.2 GHz processor did not seem to make any sense. True, the single core 900MHz EeePC was fine for browsing, email and even limited use for playing Eve Online, but this would be lower spec than anything I had looked at so far. However, all of the reviews talked about this new type of CPU not only using less power (therefore generating less heat and noise) but actually out performing the Atom at most things beyond media playback. There were also several reports of it being successfully overclocked to run at 1.8 GHz for a bigger boost to performance and still at quite low temperatures.

With only 2 weeks before Christmas it was time to order everything that I would need to make sure it all arrived by the time my leave from work started. To make things simpler I opted to get everything from one supplier, mini-itx.com, they've been around for quite a while and as the name would suggest specialise in the small. Their customer service seemed pretty good too judging by the reply to an email I sent to them double checking a few things about the compatibility of the items in my order.

So the next day I took delivery of my HTPC components

• 80W AC Universal Adapter 12V 6.6A & UK Plug
• picoPSU-80 12V DC-DC ATX power supply
• Seagate Momentus 160GB SATA 2.5in HDD 8MB Cache
• 2x 2GB DDR3 1333 ULP DIMM
• M350 Universal Mini-ITX Enclosure
• Zotac ION-ITX-P-E ION CULV Mini-ITX Motherboard with PCI-E x16

It was time to get busy...

 

 

It must be nearly 9 years since I last built a PC and escaped the expensive habit of continual upgrades and tinkering. Laptops, nettops and netbooks were to be the way forward - ideally only one or two of them in the house at any one time. For the most part it has been fine a certainly saved a lot of space. Gone are the days when it was ok to have a network of 5 servers in your bedroom but there is one project I never got around to, 'something' with a mini-ITX motherboard.

I've always had an interest in the possibilities that such a small form factor has to offer but there was never really a suitable use for what 5+ years ago would have been an impressively underpowered machine the expensive top of the range options peaking at around a 900 mHz CPU.

My last netbook, an EeePC 900, had a few months of active use including a stint as an in-car navigation GPS system during a driving trip around Florida. However, I soon found that it was usurped by the iPhone 3GS for convenience and usefulness. The netbook then became a static device permanently hooked up to my TV and Amp. It was fine for watching some low quality video and listening to music on Spotify but not ideal. What I needed was a dedicated Home Theatre PC (HTPC) and with the holidays upon us now seems like a good time to build one.