Building the HTPC - Part II

Since there isn't much space in the case you need to be careful when it comes to route fan cabling, you don't want any cable to be in the way of any fan. What we did here is very simple. First we unrolled the Intel stock cooler fan cable, attached itself around with a wire tie and plugged it to the CPU fan header. Then we did the same for the two 80mm fans and routed the cables in a way that they wont move. The left fan cable "knot" got fixed in-between the power board and the CPU cooler. In case of the right fan we routed the cable on the top of the left fan, attached it to the front panel with a wire tie and fixed the "knot" in-between the DVI connector and the USB ports. We moved the case around a few times and the cables stayed put.




For our build we decided to install a 120mm fan on the multipurpose bracket. This fan also got plugged to the motherboard and in this case we attached the cable to the PCI expansion slot using the fan wire tie.



The drive installation part is very simple but gets complicated when you have two or more like in our case, especially when it comes to route cabling. Our workaround was to place the two drives face to face so the connectors are inverted and there is space in-between the drives. We routed the SATA power cable from the back of the cage, connected the last connector to the left drive and the first connector to the right drive and put the cable back inside the cage. Now we are ready to plug the SATA cables to the drives and put the cage back inside the case. SATA cables gets now connected to the SATA ports on the motherboard and most of the cable hid in-between the two drive in the case. That's it.
"What if we have more than two drives?" one might ask, don't worry SilverStone thought about it. In case of three or more drives the manufacturer is selling a special flexible cable with tiny gaps, CP06-E. Too bad it cannot be directly connected to the power supply.



Last but not least, SilverStone provide its enclosure with a 140mm magnetic dust filter. This one covers the 120mm intake mesh vent and prevents dust coming inside. Since this is not the only intake vent we would have liked to also have such a dust filter to cover the second intake mesh vent. The dust filter works well is easily removable and washable but, unfortunately, it breaks the nice design of the case.

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Page 1 - Presentation

Page 2 - Building the HTPC - Setup and Software

Page 3 - Building the HTPC - Part I

Page 4 - Building the HTPC - Part II

Page 5 - Noise and Thermal Testing

Page 6 - Conclusion