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Htpc upgrade

Show off your HTPC builds, NAS Servers, and any other hardware. Great place to ask for hardware help too.
Teddyboy
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Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Mon Mar 29, 2021 7:48 pm

Well I think this coming weekend will be my htpc hardware upgrade. I’ll be able to figure out where to put the inteset ir board once I take the case apart. Space will be tight, but I think I’ll be able to design a pocket for the board and have my friend machine the pocket with threaded mounting holes into the new front plate I ordered from hdplex. It will take some time to design the feature and have it machined so I’ll be using the standard mce ir receiver and the unaltered front plate that is now in use.

I’m actually looking forward to see how the hardware does with hdr>sdr conversion because I don’t have a 4k panel at the moment. Jriver is supposed to do a pretty good job at it.
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Pauven
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Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Pauven » Wed Mar 31, 2021 12:48 pm

Exciting! Can't wait to see how it turns out for you.
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Teddyboy
Posts: 268
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Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Wed Apr 07, 2021 10:26 am

Oh what a adventure this has been. I hit a snag. I need a new power supply, so I bought the one that Larry sells for 65 bucks and it sticks in the atx connector. I can't use the AC adapter that he sells because is doesn't fit my old case. He had to make it deeper to get it to fit. The alternative is to get a laptop power adapter which I ordered form Amazon this morning. It's a 120 watt adapter which I think it should be big enough to handle the motherboard. All of it should be here by the weekend. My HTPC is partially dismantled right now. I decided to just install the new board and wait. There is plenty of room in the case to mount the inteset ir board. I just have to design the mounting point and pocket and hand over the part and solidworks file to my friend for machining.

I was looking at the various intel IGPUs and upgrading to Rocket Lake doesn't really get me all that much. I honestly think I'll be able upscale my dvds using a 10th gen IGPU. At this point I'm just going to install everything get it up and running. Change Jriver to use Red Octorber HQ which uses madvr/lav and see what I get. MPC-Black I use for DVD's and DVD Episodes. I'll have to download madvr/lav and configure it. I should know by this weekend whether this will work or not. As I mentioned previously, I don't have a 4k panel yet, so Jriver will be doing a conversion form HDR to SDR which from what I understand is pretty good. That's really my main concern, and has been all along. I'll keep you posted!

Oh and I need to buy another hard drive. I'm down to 5TB now. I have three slots left. Time to order a 10TB drive.
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Jamie
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Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Jamie » Wed Apr 07, 2021 5:02 pm

I wish you good luck on this project

Jamie

Teddyboy
Posts: 268
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Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:15 pm

I should be able to get it up and running tomorrow. First thing is to reconnect the new PSU then boot it and let Windows reconfigure itself to the new hardware. The board has a built in wireless connection, so I’ll have to uninstall the net gear adapter that I was using after windows reconfiguration and get the onboard wireless running. I’ll probably have to reactivate it, but that’s usually pretty easy to do. Make sure it’s attached to the network and can see the shares. Reactivate CMC, switch Jriver to Red October HQ (which I’ve never done before until now) and make sure both Jriver and MPC-BE are running in a stable fashion.

Once I’m satisfied everything is running and stable I’ll look at installing madvr/lav for MPC-BE for upscaling mostly DVDs. Not sure how I’m going to handle Jriver at this point. I don’t have a 4k panel yet and probably won’t until the end of the year. All this is going to be driven by the new IGPU, so I’ll have to live within its limits when it comes to madvr. It’s no slouch, but I won’t be able to pull out all the stops, hopefully just enough to get a good picture. I’m sure this will be orders of magnitude better then what I had before once I understand what it can and can’t do. Work in progress. Hopefully sometime tomorrow, I’ll be up and running with a minimum of issues.
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Pauven
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Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Pauven » Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:18 pm

Exciting. You've got a fairly comprehensive plan. Hopefully you'll be more Hannibal and be able to say "I love it when a plan comes together". I rarely have such good fortune when working with PC builds...
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Teddyboy
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Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:28 pm

I’ve worked out a design for mounting the inteset ir board internally to the front face plate. This isn’t required for tomorrow’s upgrade as I’ll be using the Microsoft external receiver for the time being. Once it’s done I’ll be able to FINALLY get rid of that awful external receiver. The attached pic show what I’ve done so far. The features are basically there, but I haven’t nailed down its final placement yet. The features are done in context to the ir receiver board/bracket assembly. If I move that assembly, the features will follow it and not loose their definition. I measured the face plate with my measuring tools, so yes it’s very accurate. What you don’t see is the little 3/32” thick acrylic window that will cover the opening. It’s amber colored which is what I could get from McMaster Carr. I’ll probably sand the back side with very fine sand paper to lightly frost it to hide the board a little more. I’m not attached to this color, so if I find some plastic with a dark smoke tint, I’ll use that instead.
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Enjoy!
:)
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Pauven
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Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Pauven » Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:46 pm

Wow, very nice modelling! What software are you using?
Teddyboy wrote: Fri Apr 09, 2021 2:28 pm What you don’t see is the little 3/32” thick acrylic window that will cover the opening. It’s amber colored which is what I could get from McMaster Carr.
I guess that will work, though typically windows are made of IR plastic. That said, my HTPC has just a translucent white window (to blend in with the silver chassis), and the Inteset has worked fined through that. Just make sure that the amber acrylic is not IR filtering - that would block the IR signals.
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Teddyboy
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Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Fri Apr 09, 2021 3:05 pm

I use Solidworks Which is a mechanical design cad application.

All acrylic is infrared transmitting, but some acrylic material is able to block uv and allow ir to pass through which tends to be a more expensive material and outside of my budget. I can’t get that material in small quantities, so that’s out. I don’t think it will be a problem, but we’ll see how it performs when I get it. We didn’t use ir material in our projects in the past due to cost, and it really didn’t appear to make any difference in performance except increase the cost.
Mechanical Engineer, Solidworks junkie, Reef aquariums, sci-fi, weight training, orchids, Ferns, Kaiju, model kit building, balboa park, scripps aquarium

Teddyboy
Posts: 268
Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:30 pm
Location: San Diego, Ca

Re: Htpc upgrade

Post by Teddyboy » Sun Apr 11, 2021 3:41 pm

Welp! I spent part of the evening putting it together. Thermal grease just get all over the place! First snag: I made a assumption that the power supply came with the adapter plate. It actually comes with the case. So I went into my storage unit and found it. My storage it very well organized, so it didn’t take much effort to find it. I have a 1st generation case, so naturally the adapter plate doesn’t fit the plug. I drilled it out with a 1/2” drill bit and I was able to assemble it to the plate and mount it to the case.

Second snag: AC power adapters jack is the wrong size! The case side female plug is 7.4x5.5mm. The power adapters jack is 5.5x2.5mm! I wasn’t paying attention because it’s stated on the hdplex website what size it is. So that goes back to Amazon and the correct one will arrive tomorrow. The new one has a additional 10 watts of power 130w vs 120w. The really should be plenty of power for the board.

I was looking forward to getting it up and running today but that will have to wait until the new part arrives tomorrow.
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Mechanical Engineer, Solidworks junkie, Reef aquariums, sci-fi, weight training, orchids, Ferns, Kaiju, model kit building, balboa park, scripps aquarium

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