PROJECT LOG One Day Mod... Mini itx PC in Dental Camera enclosure (HTPC / Light Gamer)

So a couple years back I was picking up bulk lots of electronics in exchange for removing them... sometimes paying a small amount. Kept me very entertained, and between the PC trade and selling stuff on ebay, was worth while.

One lot was of old dental equipment... All kinds of neat stuff there! Even a dell XPS with a Core 2 Duo in it! But a couple inter-oral camera units were in the mix.

All this stuff was pretty darn old, but I took one of the best looking units, tested it, and sure enough it worked great... took a picture of it displaying on a TV and bang, $200 on ebay!!

Just last week I stumbled upon a unit I didn't sell, or otherwise part with, cause the case was cool! That thick, sturdy construction that any modder can appreciate. So below is the progress from yesterday morning going into last night. Wish I had more pictures, and please forgive the 1st image is not mine, but show's the exact same model the way it looked before I started.

First up... Parts list...
AcuCam Unit - Gutted
GeForce GT 430 - Got this with a board & cpu from Miahalen
Hipro PSU - From an old HP mid tower, 14A on the 12V line, outta be fine
The motherboard, cpu, and RAM I got off ebay, the seller accepted my offer and all in all it was < $60 shipped

Materials include...
Angle grinder cut off wheel
Grinding wheel
Rosin core solder
Bondo for the front bezel
Rustoleum primer, flat black, and blue
Some small screws & nuts (couple bucks at the hardware store, just eyeballed size)
Nylon washers / spacers for the PSU and MB spacing
Orange plastic spacers from an erector set

Tools...
Grinder
Plyers, for wiggling / ripping out old spot welded chassis dividers
Soldering iron
Sand paper
Drywall sanding block
Drill

Anyway... onto the build!

Our stock unit, not my image but it's the same model


Wish I had a pic of the origional inside layout. There was a mount for a transformer on one side, a tray in the middel, and the rear fan seen later, with the thumb screws; well that puppy slid out on a sled, with a high power light bulb that shined through the camera cable. I started out by cutting these mounts in half, and gave them some serious wiggling. After the welds broke, I was left with this pile:



And a clean slate!



On mini itx mods, small is key, so a fit like this is very rewarding to see



Mounting up the board was a no-brainer. There's only four holes and one expansion slot... not to mention it has great onboard IO. Bolts /w nuts & spacers will do just fine. Mark with a pencil, start a small pilot hole, remove the board, & repeat... Just bolt it down as you go! otherwise, it might not line up in the end. A disclaimer also, don't cut, drill, or anything like that, while components are installed or near by. I don't heed this advice, but I make sure to thoroughly blow everything off before powering it up.

So, I wanted to give this box a little more functionality. Let's face it, for just a board & PSU, no expansion, a smaller case could have been used. I like to get the most potential out of mods, so I found a video card that would fit in there... just barely... Or so I thought. Oh well, not gonna let that get in the way!



This seems a little... "hack", in the bad way but, it actually ends up working out great for my needs, and looks pretty bad ***.

The spacers I used for the MB mounting were the perfect size to go along with the case feet. This meant I could use just three screws, and still have the 4th corner safely off the chassis floor. I chose to put two bolts on the back side, to provide support for the IO jacks.





And I used similar spacers for the PSU... two bolts, opposite corners were used. Then in the remaining two holes, less spacing, but a bolt head also comes into play, to keep the PSU board corners from contacting the chassis.





As you can see here, I had to chop the top fin off the power supply's heat spreader in order to have the lid clear it. I don't think it'll effect it's cooling performance to a noticeable degree, since the system it's powering is low draw.

A little primer & paint to cover up the cuts... and another test fit. Cozy, but that's exactly what I was going for.





And, a little wiring to be done. The modern SATA connection added! lol



And the 4 pin CPU power removed!



I'd also removed the 2nd HDD / drive connection line.

This thing though... I like the way this switch looks, but I don't want the possibility of someone cutting the AC power to this thing, so I probably won't use it for that. I think, since it's an HTPC, I'll make that a "safety" for the power button, and also have it turn off the power LED. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not a fan of seeing LEDs all around my TV at night...

Anyway, lookin good!





And some finished / 99% shots...





Still would like to add some front USBs... we'll see. Right now I'm happy with the clean looks & the hot rod appearance of that GPU sticking out. The heatsink fins actually grab the case edge perfectly. It can't pull out, or move too much. Should have better cooling too!

Very creative!

Thanks man! Practical / cheap is what I was going for, but an open mind is a powerful tool

Up and running, going to treat myself to some N64 emulation

(BTW, posting from the box in this log! )

That does it. I need a tiny pc

Hehe this is cool man!

Stability issues while the GPU is in...

Probable causes:
Insufficient power / bad PSU
Bad GPU
Bad configuration

I'll elaborate on that last one... This board has only got a 20 pin connector... Not the 24 pin, and no 4 pin CPU. So maybe this puppy just can't handle a GPU that doesn't have it's own power connection. This board seems more targeted towards industrial applications, hence the RS232 port, and headers for several more. Basically, I don't think she was meant to be a gamer... maybe I'm wrong though. (Hope I am) This is a modest GPU though, so I'm actually hoping it's the power supply... got more of those. But, plays Nintendo 64 games just fine via the onboard intel mobile graphics Not enuff though! Didn't cut that big hole for nothing. lol

If it has the 4 pin slot for the CPU, yeah I'd find a PSU with one of those....


Hold up! Serial port???
Damn, that's the one port I want on my mobo, and it doesn't have one

He mentioned no 4 pin for cpu.

What generation pcie slot is it? I believe 2.0 still has 75w for the slot.. just as 3.0 does. Not sure about anything older.

EarthDog said:

He mentioned no 4 pin for cpu.

What generation pcie slot is it? I believe 2.0 still has 75w for the slot.. just as 3.0 does. Not sure about anything older.

Click to expand...

Misread.

I thought the mobo had a 4 pin for CPU, but the PSU didn't. LOL
Ignore me ppl. Bed time for
<----------

Probably PSU. That has the look of an el-cheapo. LTEC capacitors is not a good sign.

Pretty awesome mod though, I like it! (Other than the PSU, anyway)

Hehe, yea, the board has no 4 pin connector & I removed the 4 pin from the PSU since it's a cheepie, and I didn't want extra wires.

That means there is only one, single wire... for 12V going to the board. And the CPU & GPU must share it.

So I got a crazy idea.. and looked up the PCI express pinout. I soldered a couple wires to the card on each side, where the 12V connected (first 3 or so pins) and added a molex connector.

Good news is this didn't damage the card at all. It still works. But it also didn't fix the problem...

Tried using a thermaltake PSU also, with dual 12A 12V rails... the one in the unit now is a Hipro, out of an HP with an AMD X2, which had a 14A 12V line.

Going to try a "real" power supply... but it's tough! A 24 pin connector will NOT fit on this board So gotta find a good one with the removable +4 pin...

Also will double check the specs of the board, as to what the slot is rated for.

EDIT: Card specs...

Thermal and Power Specs
Maximum GPU Temperature (in C)
98 C
Maximum Graphics Card Power (W)
49 W
Minimum System Power Requirement (W)
300 W

Click to expand...

So 49 / 12 is just over 4 amps... And I really want to say that that's all the board requires with the CPU I've got. So 10 - 15 A should do the trick Will report back after tying a better supply.

Ok, so I was testing this system again on the thermaltake PSU (not the internal one) and was getting 12.25 volts at the most, and 12.16 at the least. Seems fine to me. I used my added GPU power leads that I soldered to the card and it's been stable. Without my little bridge, the power reads lower both on the card, and off the PSU line. Maybe due to strain on the one wire being shared by both the C2D & the video card? Not sure why I'm having better luck today, unless I didn't have it set up right last night. (Things get confusing when you've got four PSUs on a single desk lol)

Stress testing... So far it'll do 10 mins of CPU, GPU & memory stressing with no issue. Posting from the machine. If it'll do an hour, I'm calling it good... till it fails

Using the original PSU pictured above now. This one is 12.04 at idle / normal use. 11.90 while stressing. After all that, going to try again, without my supplemental power lines connected. If I deem those to be the key to this working, I'll post some pics of that.

EDIT: Alright, the mod provides 0.10 V greater voltage at the PCI express slot Well... to the card anyways. Was getting 1.8 - 1.86 with a lot of fluctuation without the mod, so for now I'm not even going to bother making it crash again, and just hope for the best with the mod in place. Pics to come.

2nd Edit... Ran 3D Mark 11 Std. and it passed! On the original PSU, with the mod. GPU got up to 90C though! Won't hurt it too bad, going to add a vent or quiet fan in the side, since right now the GPU is pretty much blocked off in it's own little end of the case.

Well, made it through 3D Mark 11 with the mod, and did hours of DX 8 gaming tonight... which made it fail within 10 minutes before. Ignore the use of black & green wire, was just using that for thickness... both are 12V wires. This is what I did to read 0.10V higher on my DMM, consistently.

Awesome. I applaud your fix

I would insulate the ends (or remove) the black ground cables on the Molex as well. If they touch something with a voltage in it, bad things will happen.

Leaving open ends till everything's 100%, good advice though. Made sure they were snugged between other cables & the case lid. Was thinking of finding the grounds and adding leads there, but I feel lucky enough adding those two without screwing up. The board (obviously) has several grounds, but had only a single 12V. May split those two up, into two separate leads to the PSU... Probably don't need to though.

I searched online for a pinout, ask and you shall receive http://media.bestofmicro.com/B/D/98905/original/pcie-slot-big.gif

I found that the two first pins on one side, and the 2nd and 3rd on the other were apparently 12V. Was able to tack to an empty resistor pad on one side, and sanded down the varnish to reveal a large wide trace on the opposite. Took a while to heat! Patience paid off though. (Didn't want to overheat it) Now, I don't know if there's any motherboard voltage regulators or anything else between the 20 pin, and where I'm now directly connecting power... so i cannot recommend this to anyone. But so far, it seems to be fine for me!

Another fix would have been to use a powered pcie riser cable like you would see for mining rigs. then you could have moved things around and not had to cut the hole for the gpu.
Perhaps one of the mini itx power supplies would have fit better, though they are not as inexpensive.

Yeah... thought about one of those. That's what actually gave me the OK that this mod wasn't a crazy idea. But, they're 9 bux, and take two weeks to come in from hong kong, so I decided to do this. Was also concerned about performance, but I doubt it'd matter on a card like this.

I do have a welder, and more bondo! So if I decide to clean it up I can always go that route.