I have now finished the cabinet that I will use to conceal my new HTPC in the living room. We have not got enough space for a separate server room. I have given up on the idea to have a nice looking HTPC standing visible in the living room. Basically, only three things need to be visible:
1. The screen
2. The loudspeakers
3. The remote control
The HTPC, amplifiers, disks etc is not interesting to look at.
(Please note the large HTPC screen… LOL. The big screen went black the other day. We are currently waiting to find the perfect flat screen. For the computer itself, all side panels of the original cabinet are removed.)
So, our interior designer has made a nice suggestion for our living room. This suggestion includes a row of quadratic cabinets. I could not find any cabinets with the right measures in any of our furniture shops.
I wanted a cabinet of the following dimensions: 70x50x70 (WxDxH).
The solution is a heavily modified cabinet from IKEA.
1 IVAR cabinet, 80x50x83
1 BONDE door, 70×70
1 set of Capita legs
Some white paint
(Picture: Fantastic loudspeakers from Anthony Gallo. Custom built cabinet. Flowers. Firefly RF Remote. 2 TB of storage. A 15 year old 12 inch screen… What is wrong with this picture? 🙂
Cut off 8 cm and 12 cm from the IVAR cabinet. Make new holes for the mounting screws. Put together, paint, mount the legs, mount the door and enjoy!
I have several of these cabinets and two of them is dedicated to the HTPC, hard drives, amplifiers etc. The cabinet with the HTPC is modified further for extra ventilation.
Sent from: Eirik Solheim
eirikso 
[…] It’s time for a short collection of links: 1. First, build a cabinet 2. Then install a silent fan in the cabinet 3. Silence the parts of the computer that is noisy 4. Choose your frontend 5. Set up your advanced remote 6. Make your content available everywhere 7. Follow the important blogs… […]
[…] I have described the cabinet here and the mounting of the fan here. To put it short the fan is mounted in rubber bands to eliminate vibrations and noise. However, I should have said “was mounted”. The problem is that rubber bands need maintenance. Of course I could try to find better quality rubber bands, but I have choosen another soultion. It works fine so far, so I decided to post a little “How-to” for the people that might want to build something similar.To fix this mess I used a perforated strip and some parts from a kit for silencing fans and hard drives: Mounting the fan using these parts you get rid of nearly all vibrations and can have a fan that push a lot of air through your cabinet. I’ll let the pictures talk for themselves and keep the comment option open for the people that have questions. […]
[…] Of course there’s always the question of looks. The important wife acceptance factor (WAF). The computer that ExtremeTech have built does not fit in on top of your amplifier. It looks too much like a regular PC. To solve that, I can simply recommend my own solution: a well ventilated cabinet with a silent fan in a noise reducing mount. […]
hey,
save your money on the cabinet and get yourself a decent TV set
I have done something with that horrible TV-situation. A 37″ LCD is in place:
http://www.eirikso.com/2006/02/03/the-silence-of-the-fans/
[…] Build your cabinet […]
Hello there! Even if it is over 2 years since this post was posted, it’s still not been much news about the homemade HTPC. So I’m thinking of doing something similar. You can read more on my blog (http://www.elden.be/?p=115).
Please feel free to leave a comment. And if you think this is like stealing a pic from a kid, when it comes to reaching a lot of people, it is not! I totaly accept it if you remove this comment, but it is at least its relevant to the article!
So folks what do you think? I’m especially interested in comments from you that know much about heat, setting up a pc etc. Thanx!
No problem. Wouldn’t consider this spam. It’s relevant. But I can’t guarantee huge amounts of traffic…
By the way! Do you have any clue on what parts in the pc that can be store seperate from each other or wether it is just an illusion to do this? What parts is sensible to heate/does create the heat in the cabinet?
Disks, CD/DVD and the PSU can be mounted away from the main board. But not far away. You are limited by the cables on the PSU.
I am curios as to what is the size of the Capita legs? Ikea has then in 4″, 6″, and 8″ heights.
Thanks
The ones I used here are the 4″, but I guess you can use whatever suits your need, if you want the cabinet to be higher.
[…] room. Serving as a media hub, PVR and file storage for the family. It’s placed in a well ventilated cabinet together with a bunch of […]
Thanks for all the information man. Got mine built up here:
http://www.linuxtechie.net/2009/05/htpc-showoff.html
You the man!
Do you have specs and part numbers for your fan and mounting hardware? ( db rating and cubic ft. per minute)Also, details about how to mount in order to isolate the vibration. thanks
The fan was bought in a shop in Norway. Spec:
Effect 30 W/0,125 A. Airflow. 2,40 m3/min. Rotations 2800 o/min. Noise 43 dB(A). Size. 120x120x38 mm. Weight 0,55 kg.
http://www.clasohlson.no/Product/Product.aspx?id=167966685
I added a device to be able to adjust the speed. Full speed is way too fast. 🙂
And here is how it was mounted: https://eirikso.com/2006/02/03/the-silence-of-the-fans/