Sorry for the delay. Got lots of work on at the moment. now for the putting it all together part….
First we need to put all the hardware together. Well…actually we first need to take it apart. The case that is. And that then looks something like this:
The case has lots of space and the mainboard can be easily accommodated. You really start to wonder if you can put two Atom boards in here….
The power supply (PSU) that came with the case has a whopping 450W which is about 4-5x what I’ll probably need. And although it is a high quality-low noise dual fan PSU it still contributes quite substantially to the noise level. I will definitely be looking for a fan-less supply in the sub 200W class. If someone has any ideas where to get these please let me know. At the bottom of the case you can also see two additional fans that can be connected up to a mainboard. They are nice and quiet and turn at about 1700RPM. For this PC though they are just not necessary.
So next step is to get the mainboard in…
Now that definitely looks like a waste of space! And if I can redo that PSU I can really fit two. 
The board fits nicely and is no problem getting in but as you can see above I have a hydra problem. LOTS and LOTS of cables to connect. Since I haven’t built a PC for years now (at least nothing later than a Pentium III) I was surprised how much more cabling there is. So here’s the shot with all cabling and drives in:
I know this isn’t the cleanest of cabling but this is kinda a first attempt.So maybe I’ll visit this again at some latter point.
One thing to mention though is the Intel mainboard fan. It’s there to cool the chip-set and not the CPU! This is THE most commented on feature of this board. Why pair a 4W processor with a 20W+ chip-set?! And the fan is annoying. It is loud and should be replaced. I’ll have a look if I can tunnel one of the back fans to it. They’d be perfect and do a quieter job of it.
Up top you can see the installed DVD drive and the HDD on the right. There’s still lots of space left for more goodies. And the final product….
Looks good and is just what I wanted. A lot bigger than the Mini but hey, this is something totally different. The next challenge is installation and getting all the fancy stuff to work. The old DVD player will also lose it’s place once I get 5.1 sound to work. On the lower left corner you can already see the blue power light. I tested the whole hardware installation with a Ubuntu Linux Live CD.
Noise levels are low but perceptible when the room is quiet. Running are the mainboard fan and the two fans from the PSU. When anything is playing the noise level gets easily drowned out. If I can re-jig the mainboard CPU and install a fan-less PSU the noise level should be less than that of the Mac Mini.
My HTPC hardware is now all working and ready for the next phase. See Part 3 in the next days.
Tags: Apple, Atom 330, Hackintosh, Intel, Mac OS X, SilverStone LC16-M