Spurred on by Bigsy's build for a machine that idled at <20watts, I too have opted for the Streacom FC8 case (though different internals).
My old file server has been getting on a bit now for quite some time. It's an old 1.6ghz Pentium-M with 512mb RAM on a small Embedded EBX style board in a home made case. It was fairly low power (consumed about 25watts at idle and maxed out at about 30) but it was no good for HTPC uses as the video output was knackered and it was far too slow to transcode video on the fly and stream it to my ipad.
Specs
Enter the FC8! I went for an i3 2120T CPU, Intel DH67CF (B3) mobo, 8GB ram and a pair of 1tb Samsung M8 2.5" drives for a silent, stable and low power setup. Managed to fit both my 2.5" drives in the single 3.5" bay thanks to a 3.5 to 2.5 converter I got with a Kingston SSD. Tempted to add a SSD to this build in the extra 2.5" slot. I will be adding a blu ray drive to the build when I can find one cheap enough.
Power
Power consumption currently appears to idle at around 21watts but maxes out at around 45 at load. It is literally silent in this case! Unfortunately I had to mod my PicoPSU from my old file server to fit, the metal plates that hold the heatpipes onto the heatsink conflicted with the power cables coming from the PicoPSU. Even now it is a very tight fit!
Temps
Temps....well this is where things get interesting. CPU appears to average around 35-40 degrees majority of the time, HDD's are anything upto about 50 but northbridge was quite literally cooking at 80+ degrees until SATA and RAID crapped out due to the tiny heatsink provided and lack of airflow. So to remedy the situation and to keep the case silent I've done a bit of modding with an old Shuttle ICE from an SN45G I had lying around to give the northbridge some heatpipe cooling that connects to the vacant slots of the FC8's heatsink. Luckily the Shuttle and FC8 both share 6mm diameter heatpipes so it was an easy mod. Had to split the Shuttle block in half, cut the base of the heatsink in half so it sandwiched the heatpipe ontop of the northbridge chip while still being able to use the steel clip to apply pressure and also bend a heatpipe to fit into the FC8. Since doing this mod the northbridge has been reporting low 40's!
My old file server has been getting on a bit now for quite some time. It's an old 1.6ghz Pentium-M with 512mb RAM on a small Embedded EBX style board in a home made case. It was fairly low power (consumed about 25watts at idle and maxed out at about 30) but it was no good for HTPC uses as the video output was knackered and it was far too slow to transcode video on the fly and stream it to my ipad.
Specs
Enter the FC8! I went for an i3 2120T CPU, Intel DH67CF (B3) mobo, 8GB ram and a pair of 1tb Samsung M8 2.5" drives for a silent, stable and low power setup. Managed to fit both my 2.5" drives in the single 3.5" bay thanks to a 3.5 to 2.5 converter I got with a Kingston SSD. Tempted to add a SSD to this build in the extra 2.5" slot. I will be adding a blu ray drive to the build when I can find one cheap enough.
Power
Power consumption currently appears to idle at around 21watts but maxes out at around 45 at load. It is literally silent in this case! Unfortunately I had to mod my PicoPSU from my old file server to fit, the metal plates that hold the heatpipes onto the heatsink conflicted with the power cables coming from the PicoPSU. Even now it is a very tight fit!
Temps
Temps....well this is where things get interesting. CPU appears to average around 35-40 degrees majority of the time, HDD's are anything upto about 50 but northbridge was quite literally cooking at 80+ degrees until SATA and RAID crapped out due to the tiny heatsink provided and lack of airflow. So to remedy the situation and to keep the case silent I've done a bit of modding with an old Shuttle ICE from an SN45G I had lying around to give the northbridge some heatpipe cooling that connects to the vacant slots of the FC8's heatsink. Luckily the Shuttle and FC8 both share 6mm diameter heatpipes so it was an easy mod. Had to split the Shuttle block in half, cut the base of the heatsink in half so it sandwiched the heatpipe ontop of the northbridge chip while still being able to use the steel clip to apply pressure and also bend a heatpipe to fit into the FC8. Since doing this mod the northbridge has been reporting low 40's!
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