Home Theatre PC and Ripping Station Guide
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Big things in small packages
I’m a fan of the small setups and that’s why I’ve opted to use J&W’s mini-ITX motherboard; a small system that packs the punch of an onboard AMD 780 chipset to give you the HD buzz through the onboard HDMI port.
Add to that a dual core AMD rated to 2.5GHz per a core and a measly 45Watt power rating and this makes for an ideal low noise, cool running system. Top that all off with 4GB of Kingston DDR2-800 in those dinky SO-DIMM sockets and HDD thrashing is brought to a minimum.
To make this bad boy look classy, we shoe horned it into a Silverstone SG05 mini-ITX case. A front mounted 120mm intake fan helps keep internal components cool.
Rear venting allows the included small form factor power supply to draw in cool air.
Big side vents mean that you can run top of the line graphics chipsets, with this case being able to take up to a 9” graphics card as well.
The back shows off the power supply exhaust and I/O backplane; a pretty standard fare for an ITX chassis.
On top we see a brace bar helping to support the PSU and provide some structural integrity. Additionally, the mountings for a slim-line DVD-ROM tray are easily accessible, so it might be time to break down and buy that Blu-ray reader.
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