The HTPC

• Silverstone LC20 HTPC case
• Intel Core2Duo E7300 2.66GHz processor
• XFX GeForce 9300 Motherboard
• 2x 1024MB PC6400 DDR2 800 MHz memory
• 2x Western Digital 500GB 3.5″ Hard Drives
• Lite-On DH401S Internal Blu-Ray playback drive
• Ultra 600W power supply
• Linksys WRT600N Wireless-N Dual-Band Gigabit Router
• Linksys WMP300N Wireless PCI Adapter
• MythDora 10.21
• Window Vista Home Premium

The NAS

• Addonics Mini-Storage Tower
• 4x Western Digital 500GB 3.5″ Hard Drives
• Connected to old Celeron-450 linux server.

Assembly

Assembly was a bit more tricky than I had thought possible, considering the amount of experience I have in assembling PC’s.

The main problem was mis-reading the port layout for the internal SATA ports.  I was plugging the hard drives into ports 5 & 6 instead of 1 & 2.  I couldn’t figure out why the hard drives weren’t showing up at all in the bios.  Turns out that to enable ports 5 & 6, you have to enable RAID mode in the SATA controller setup.  But I finally figured out that I had the cables in the wrong place, and once I got them connected correctly, everything worked as expected.

Working with the case was also a bit more problematic than I had anticipated.

The case is built very nicely, and as I was fist opening it up, I thought, wow this is a nice case.  Everything is very solid, and the frame is nicely rounded to prevent sharp edges.  The drive cages are removable for easy drive installation.  Especially cool is the hard drive cage which has a nice bit of padding on either side to help dampen vibrations from the hard drive.  Most people don’t realize that one of the biggest sources of noise in a PC is from the hard drives.  Also the case came with a small bag of rubber washers, in addition to the usual screws, which further help to reduce vibration in the case.

The problem with the case came after I had installed the motherboard.  The board fit just fine with the drive cages out.  Unfortunately, this motherboard has the connectors for the power and SATA ports on the very edge, where the drive cages will be.  This meant that I had to connect the SATA cables before installing the hard drive cage, and the power connector wires had to be bent rather severly to allow the 5.25″ cage to be re-installed.  The worst part was trying to re-install the screws to secure the drive cages.  The holes are under a lip in the front of the case, and they didn’t quite line up correctly between the cages and the case.  So it took a lot of wriggling and working to get the screws back in place.

OS Installation

Verdict

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