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| Ond:
I finished this project today and was chuffed so I'm sharing it. Building stuff again like this is my circular way back to this hobby. I wanted to build a home theater media server that met some specific design requirements. It had to be really quiet during operation and be reasonably powerful with some consideration for the future. I designed this around just one BIG heat sink and one very quiet fan. The unit had to look pro and fit in with other shop bought gear I have. It had to be capable of 4K with good frame rates, play latest codecs, stream to non wired devices and have a quality DAC with at least 96Khz/24 Bit handling. Finally, I didn't have a ton of money to spend and wanted to use components I already had lying around. I don't have any amazing HT setup at the moment, just the family TV which is a modest 1080P LCD unit in our lounge-room. I'd like to have a decent HT in the future but probably no time soon. The build: Construction materials included MDF, marine ply, sheet metal, a small PC Motherboard. Other electronics included an Android phone no longer in use. Construct a box from wood: Glue it together and cut holes in box: Undercoat box: Install electronics and hardware onto the baseboard of the unit: Hack Android phone: Make heat-sink components for PS, Phone PS and CPU: Put everything in the painted box: This gets used regularly by the family. I made something actually useful! ;D |
| yotsuya:
Great use of the phone there! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
| Zebidee:
--- Quote from: Ond on March 10, 2021, 01:10:00 am ---Make heat-sink components for PS, Phone PS and CPU: --- End quote --- As usual, your builds are always cleverly thought out and good-looking as well :applaud: I'm curious about the role of those transistors attached to the heat syncs, what they are doing and how it all integrates into the design. Can you expand on this a little? |
| Ond:
--- Quote from: yotsuya on March 10, 2021, 01:29:28 am ---Great use of the phone there! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk --- End quote --- Thanks yots, yeah better than throwing it out, it makes a great touch screen for the menu system. --- Quote from: Zebidee on March 10, 2021, 02:27:27 am --- As usual, your builds are always cleverly thought out and good-looking as well :applaud: I'm curious about the role of those transistors attached to the heat syncs, what they are doing and how it all integrates into the design. Can you expand on this a little? --- End quote --- Thanks Zebidee, the transistor in the top pic is part of a separate regulated supply for the phone (no battery). It provides 4.2volts at 3amps. The other transistors were carefully removed along with the original heat-sinks from the PSU: The new heat-sink is a means of transferring heat to the big heat-sink. I did the same for the CPU with just one fan to cool the lot. I would have left the transistors on the PSU and just removed the heat-sink but it's too cramped to do that. De-soldering everything, disassembling, attaching to new heat-sink and re-soldering was easiest. I've run the box on the bench for hours of testing to see how it handles temperature build up. It could probably run without any fan but its inaudible and keeps everything a few degrees cooler. |
| Zebidee:
Thanks for the explanation Ond. Makes more sense now :cheers: |
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