Bedroom HTPC Rebuild

Almost finished. You can see where I stuck my hard drive, in the middle bay. With light client machines like this, storage isn't an issue, maxed-out CPU and video performance aren't required, and small power supplies work great. All of these factors combine to make heat a non-issue, and noise very easy to control. The case fans are sucking air out of the case. I left the slot covers off to encourage airflow into the case near the video card.

Again, I have gone the high-tech route to mount my little 80 GB notebook drive; Double sticky foam tape. And again, I can't hear the HD operate with my ear to the case.

This is the Lascala case with the motherboard, CPU and its cooler, video card, sound card and power supply installed. The two 80mm fans are OK if your MB has fan speed controls. If not, they will be too loud. I used these Arctic Cooling 80 mm fans with this MB to get the fan speed (and noise) down to acceptable levels (not silent, but difficult to hear from across a silent room). I used an Eartwatt 380 power supply, but a Seasonic S12II 430 would blow air straight out of the vent hole on the left above with its big 120mm fan. As it is, there are no heat or noise problems.

This is the receiver glued to the back side of the case face plate with silicone. I also built silicone up around the silver box housing the sensor for security.

This worked quite well. I was worried about two things, electrical noise somehow affecting the sensor and a restricted receiving angle due to the sensor being placed at the end of a 1/4" long 9/64" hole. I was pleasantly surprised. No noise problems at all, and while the hole restricts the receiver's angle of reception a little bit, it isn't serious. In the plastic outboard housing, the sensor worked through at least 100° horizontally. Now it responds through about a 90° angle, which still works well for me, and most users who will put the case facing them across the room. If you intend to place the case at the side of the room (facing 90° to you), this definitely won't work without a reflector or a repeater. Also note the location in the front view. I chose the groove machined into the face plate because it really is thinner there, reducing the tunnel length for the sensor, helping to maintain a large reception angle.

The only thing I did to the receiver was bend the LED leads until the center of the red LED was 1/4" from the center of the IR sensor (the big black dot on the silver square). This way the LED would slide into the 1/8" hole and the sensor would easily center itself in the 9/64" hole 1/4" away. I secured the receiver to the back of the faceplate with silicone sealant on the front face of the silver box housing the sensor.

Take the sensor out of its plastic case, grab any old USB port cable (the one with the blue plug, that fits the motherboard USB connectors), and install the little brown plug onto the cable with the blue plug. What made this really easy is that the color codes match, all I had to do was cut the second cable off of the blue plug and splice the four colored wires from the brown plug to their same-color mates in the blue plug's cable.

A close up of the installed remote receiver. It's really easy, drill a 1/8" hole for the response LED, and a 9/64" hole for the sensor, 1/4" apart.

Here, with its main door open.