Project H.I.P.S.

[McKantis_Mayhem]

Gentlemen, I present project Hiding In Plain Sight: otherwise known as Project H.I.P.S.

THE GOAL
Turn my mother's 8 year old discount AMD solution into a relatively competent general purpose rig, to be used in tandem with my entertainment center.

Also, it needs to withstand a 10 month old child who enjoys testing the limits of everything she touches. Seriously. She broke a mirror not 6 days ago.

It also needs to look good so as to not irritate the wife.

THE CHALLENGE

HP pavilion a6110n PC





-Processor: Dual-core Athlon 64 X2 (b) 4400+ 2.3 GHz (65w)
-Motherboard: Asus M2N68-LA (Socket AM2)
-Memory: Installed 2 × 1GB, Supports 4 × 2GB (Dual Channel?)
-Storage: 320GB HDD SATA rev.2
-Optical Drive: 16X DVD(+/-)R/RW 12X RAM (+/-)R DL LightScribe SATA drive
-Audio: Integrated
-Graphics: Integrated (VGA)
-Networking: LAN exclusive
-Operating System: Windows Vista (Swapped for Windows 7 before bringing it home originally)
-Case: HP exclusive


In it's youth, this computer did a fairly decent job of handling some fairly strenuous audio manipulation. It could still probably handle that same load, but where's the fun in that?

ISSUES TO ADDRESS

-Wimpy, Slow Storage: SSD BABY!
-Can't connect to living room Sound System: Must add Optical port
-Wires and children don't mix: Networking solutions
-No product code for Windows install since the HDD is now in an external for data extraction: MUST HAVE FRESH BOOT!
-Say it with me: UUUUUGLLY!!!!!

 

[McKantis_Mayhem]

Now the important part

UPGRADES

CASE
-In Win 904: Sleek, subtle, and relatively child proof. (Ordered and in transit. Always a pain trying to get large objects shipped to AK.)



PSU
-Corsair CX600M: Semi-modular, and pretty slick (though extentions and/or re-sleeving may be in order)




RAID CARD
-SYBA SY-PEX40032


STORAGE
-120GB Kingston HyperX SSD



-2 × 500GB WD Velociraptor 10,000rpm HDDs in RAID 0 (Mostly for Game Data, not saves or Documents stuff)



-4TB WD Green or Red HDD (haven't picked which one yet. I'll be using a stray WD 320GB HDD that I keep around as an external for bulk storage till then. Got any suggestions?)

NETWORKING
-Rosewill Wireless N Dual Band PCI-E Adaptor



AUDIO
-Asus Xonar DG (Needed an Optical port for my sound system)


COOLING
-Zalman CNPS12X air cooler: Total overkill, but guaranteed to be cooler and quieter than the stock option. Did I mention I already had it on hand?



OPERATING SYSTEM
-Windows 7 Home (Will upgrade to Windows 10 within the first year after release)

I want to upgrade the Mobo, CPU, and graphics later (the main reason for not adding RAM), but alas, the money has dried up.

 

[Wraith]

Oooh 10 month old child and Inwin 904 I'd probably consider a sturdier and less breaky glassy case also I have to admit you don't see many WD Raptors these days, solid choice of drive if a touch pricey. With everything you've suggested it's a tidy Office/HTPC system.

 

[Dawelio]

Oooh 10 month old child and Inwin 904 I'd probably consider a sturdier and less breaky glassy case

^ +1 on this... I'd consider a bit sturdier case if the goal is child proof

 

[McKantis_Mayhem]

The issue is I need to balance aesthetics and strength. I figure the glass sides will hold up well enough so long as she doesn't roam free. Originally wanted a HAF XB, but that got vetoed.

As for the raptors, I managed to get a 2-4-1 deal a couple black Fridays ago.

 

[Feronix]

I agree, glass panels and children don't mix. Even if she'd fall into a plexi panel there would be less damage to both the system, and more importantly the child. It'd also be cheaper to replace.

Other than that; Nice amount of PCI cards, looks like the case will be filled nicely

 

[Dawelio]

Other than that; Nice amount of PCI cards, looks like the case will be filled nicely

Where do you see this or get this info? ...

 

[Warchild]

Where do you see this or get this info? ...

Guess he is referring to the raid card, network card, audio card and the not mentioned yet, GPU card

 

[McKantis_Mayhem]

There's 4 slots on the board, so there will be 1 left open for a GPU if I do get one on this Mobo.

It's still going to be a big empty box, but the cards and cooler should help fill out the top half.

The case should be arriving this weekend, so I'll update then.

 

[McKantis_Mayhem]

Alright, so the case came in a couple weeks ago, but I'm finally able to update. Getting ready to move tends to throw off schedules.

And heads up: this gets a little long winded, so scroll to the end if you just want the spark notes version. I may post a formal review of the 904 at some point.

Da Box

So I came home Friday night after having just explained to my wife why trying to live around boxes for almost a month would be a bad idea, and this behemoth is sitting in my door way.



Seriously. The InWin 904's box is the exact width of an external door frame. The box alone dwarfs my old case, and the 904 itself isn't much smaller. Probably a good 4 or 5 inches of closed cell around the long axis, and 3 inches deep on the side panels.

R&R

At any rate, the case came out, and it was exactly as hefty as I had hoped it would be. I immediately went about gutting the old HP, and stuffed everything inside the InWin.



And I only had to relocate one Mobo stand-off I had just installed to the wrong spot, and try to figure out how to remove the IO shield from the old case QUIETLY, before trying to reverse the process to install it in the 904.

At the front mounting point, just above the 5.25" bay, I installed a 120mm fan for intake

Strange Storage

I'm going to point out that the 3 hot swap trays are a nice idea, however unless you're installing 2.5" drives via the screw points on the bottom, they are a nightmare. The trays themselves are crazy stiff, and the removable screw-hole-plug-things that they use instead of a one piece solution are nothing more than a pain in the ass.

If it were one or the other when using 3.5" drives, it would have been a minor annoyance. However, when you try to bend the trays to stretch over the drive, you're worried about snapping them. But once you DO get it over (after your finger tips are screaming at you), the removable plugs that are designed to slip in the screw holes pop out. Even after practicing twice, the third drive was just as difficult as the first.

If the trays were more flexible, or I could just screw the drives in place, all would be well. The latter, however, isn't even an option with these trays.

Power Power Everywhere

Cable management is somewhat tricky in this case (especially for a first time builder), but manageable with the included adhesive bracket things.

I did have another issue trying to install the DVD drive, however it was an easy oversight with 4 separate storage drives. I have a total of 6 SATA power plugs on the CX600M, and in a normal shell this would be fine as I have 2 empty slots still.

However, since the lone 5.25" bay is located BELOW the PSU, this means I have 6 SATA power plugs running to the top and my 4 storage drives, with 2 plugs then trying to run back down to the bottom of the case again.

There obviously isn't nearly enough length for that. This wouldn't have been an issue if I had thought ahead and purchased a couple SATA splitters (or if the ONLY solution in town wasn't a series of molex to SATA to molex to SATA adapters), however I have fixed the issue by purchasing a 12" SATA power extender, which should be in the mail tomorrow.

Done Version 1

As you already saw, everything fit in nicely, but I hadn't addressed the cooler yet, and it was really bugging me, what with that nice big side glass panel. So, I immediately ignored the clock and began removing the old cooler.

Cooling Conundrum

Obviously, the first thing I did was remove the stock cooler seen here:



(Aww, ain't it cute?) So I could clean off the CPU:



(Cleanest it's been in a while) and get a good look at it. Never seen one outside of it's socket before. No I'm not that new, I've just never had the opportunity to build from scratch before.

Anyway, after fighting and finagling for a good half hour or so, I FINALLY managed to get the Zalman cooler situated and seated with a good dose of Arctic Silver. It was a tight squeeze at the top, and made me instantly glad I hadn't opted to install it out of the case.



It doesn't look half bad in there, if I do say so myself.

Cooling Catastrophe

So after FINALLY getting everything plugged in and ready (I had to relocate the plug for my front 120 a couple times before I found a spot that worked), I sat the case back up to try and give it a test boot.

However, I learned a horrible fact that hadn't occurred to me beforehand.



It's too tall.

The Zalman was an add-on to this build that I hadn't planned on originally. I purchased it at the same time as the 2 Raptor drives for a Sandy Bridge-E build I was planning a couple years ago, with which I was going to use a Cooler Master HAF X, which is quite a bit larger.

So, after having wasted easily 30 minutes of my life, I had to completely undo everything I had just managed to accomplish, resulting in nothing more than a thorough deep cleaning of the stock cooler, and a new dose of thermal compound for the CPU.

The board and CPU are so old that it doesn't register temperature at all, so I'm just assuming I installed it right since it hasn't crashed yet while installing the software portion.


Wrap-up

As promissed, here's the TL;DR version, though you've gotta go look for the pix yourself.

1. Got a BIG box full of Shiny new case. Did I mention the box was massive?
2. Gutted the old HP, routed cables, and installed a case fan.
3. HATRED! The Hotswap trays need to die in a fire, or I need to find a better mounting solution for future purposes.
4. Let there be LIGHT! or power at least. Wait... not enough reach for the optical bay at the bottom. Bought an adapter.
5. Done part 1
6. Must swap stock cooler. GO IN DAMNIT!
7. Didn't measure the clearance... It's too tall for the case...
8. Plan B which should have been Plan A: Deep clean stock cooler and apply new thermal compound. Arctic Silver FTW!


I'll do one more update with a picture of the full HT setup as soon as I get moved here in a couple weeks, along with a final review wrap-up of the case after installing the Optical drive.

Until then, click the li... wait... wrong station. ^^

 

[barnsley]

...Interesting use of hardware in a very expensive case . I've not had any issues with the hotswap drives in my case as they just came out so I'm a bit confused about that.

 

[McKantis_Mayhem]

Gotta work with what you have lol. The HP worked just fine after it got it's initial SSD installation, it was just fugly. So, I spent a stupid amount on shipping and got some eye candy.

That actually wasn't the extent of my issues with the hotswap modules either, but I'll go over those in the final wrap-up.

They may have changed something about the trays between the 901 and 904. Either that, or I have no Earthly idea how to use them properly.