Building the HTPC - Part I

First thing first we placed the power supply. Along with the case, SilverStone sent us their best SFX power supply, the ST45SF-G V2.0, a 450 Watt 80Plus Gold certified fully modular unit. In the case manual, the manufacturer wrote that we must place the power supply with the fan facing up. We dared to do the exact opposite see if the world collapses. On a serious note we think placing the power supply with the fan facing down is better in every way. First of all, since nor the power supply nor the case have a dust filter, placing the fan down will prevent the power supply to be overfilled with dust over time. Secondly, this way the power supply will be used as an exhaust vent and will optimize the airflow. In this case you will get better temperatures inside the case and the drives will be cooler. Indeed, with the power supply fan facing up the hot air pushed toward the left side (where the power supply is) can't get out of there easily. The only disadvantage of the fan facing down is that the power supply will run hotter than with the fan facing up taking fresh air directly. Between the power supply and the drive cage there is not much space so you better use a modular power supply with flexible cables to avoid any compatibility issues.
Then we placed two 80mm fans from NoiseBlocker on the right side of the case to push the hot air outside using the black screws provided with the fans.



Right after placing the motherboard we ran into a cable management issue. Indeed, the front I/O cables are way too long in our opinion. We haven't seen any Mini-ITX motherboards with the front connectors on any other side of the PCB and those cables can easily reach even an ATX sized motherboard if it was possible to fit one in there. Anyway we found a workaround that consists in routing the most of the cables below the motherboard. To do so we had to unscrew the two motherboard screws close to the front, move the on the right and left of the board and then slide them below the board further than the screw holders and screw back the board. It works just fine and there is no physical strain on the cables. It even looks neat now. As for the audio and USB3.0 cables, since they are fat and not very soft we decided to attach them to the front panel thanks to a wire tie and reach the motherboard connectors from there.



Drives haven't yet been installed, the next step is to connect the power supply cables and route them. At first we thought it wasn't going to be an easy task since the space between the power supply and the drive cage is tight (2.4cm) but in the end it was a walk in the park. With the drive cage still off , we connected the needed cables to the power supply, bent them down, pushed them toward the power supply and placed the drive cage to see it everything fits fine; it did. The ATX and CPU power cables are perfectly well sized, we reached the connectors easily and then pushed them both toward the front of the case. We didn't need to attach them, they were staying in place well. For safety purpose you can attach the CPU one to the front panel with a wire tie, the ATX cable doesn't need to be attached at all.
Maybe providing such a power supply with flat cables would have been better and more handy but here the  normal cables did well.

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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