Original Review Link
I just build a frontend client for my MediaPortal backend.

Components:
HDPLEX H3.S /w IR Receiver and 80W Internal PSU
Intel Core i3 3225 / 3.3 GHz
Samsung 840 Series MZ-7TD120 – 120 GB
Crucial – 4 GB – DIMM 240-pin – DDR3 – 1600 MHz / PC3-12800
ASUS P8H77-I – micro-ATX – LGA1155 Socket – USB 3.0

The assembly was straightforward until I came to the PSU. There was a yellow lead that just hanged loose, with a little bit of exposed wire, witch made me suspicious. I can accept a wire that does not go anywhere, but then it should be capped in some way. After the assembly a led on the mb lit up, but the machine did not power up.

Suspecting the yellow wire, it tracked it and noticed that no yellow wire came from the PSU… And in the plug on the PSU there was an empty hole. Problem found! A friend who also had a HDLPLEX case told me that he had had the exact same problem with the wiring. So he pried the pin out of the plug and soldered the wire to the pin, -and did the same for the brown wire as well. After that the machine started up as expected.

After som time I found out that the internal IR receiver only worked with basic functionality of my mce remote and not the keyboard and mouse function of my mce keyboard. And I like the “shortcut” buttons on those devices, as they works beautifylly with MediaPortal

So I tried to see if I could fix my trusty old receiver inside the case.

Trusty old receiver:

Trusty old receiver split open:

So as a proof of concept I glued the receiver in the case an tested if it worked, and it did.

So I went to install it properly:

Starting by soldering off the usb connector, and in its place soldering a usb motherboard-to-backplate cable, where I had cut off the backplate end.

Then soldered off the ir receiver, and put on some extension wires.

The IR receiver part, the white bit, is a piece of double adhesive tape.

Placing the reciver in the case:

The finished assembly

It works flawlessly, and I’m a happy man

Original Review Link
(Updated after receiving the new set of heat pipes)

A big thanks to Larry and Hd-plex for an outstanding customer service!

I had an issue with the heat pipes being short for my motherboard, an Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe (see bottom of this post). Larry from Hd-plex sent me another set of heat pipes pretty quick (for free). Now they fit perfectly.

I am quite happy with the product. Not only is aesthetically pleasing, it is 100% silent (I purchased the faceplate with a slot for an ODD but I decided not to install one). I have an SSD, there are no moving parts in the whole rig. Now the only noise comes from the lcd monitor, a very faint almost inaudible hum.

I don´t think I will ever go back to non-passive cooled computers. Unless you need it for moderate to heavy gaming, this is more than enough.

The Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe motherboard not only is high quality and offers many options, but also its layout is such that it offers a “clean” look free of cable clutter when looking at it from the outside of the case through the ventilation holes at the top.

Thanks again Larry, nowadays it is hard to find a company with a good customer service, keep ut the good work.

Here are some pictures of the finished build:

I have been building my H3 SODD fanless case for the last few days, but when installing the CPU copper heatsink a problem has come up: the copper heat pipes are too short.

The computer build has the following components:

H3.SODD Fanless HTPC Chassis Silver Faceplate
80 W Open Frame Fanless Power Supply
IR with WMC remote
Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe Mini-ITX Motherboard
Ivy Bridge i5-3475s 2.9Ghz 65W TDP
Corsair Vengeance 16 Gb (2 x 8 Gb) Low Profile 1600 DDR3 RAM
OCZ Vertex 4 512 Gb SSD
Windows 7 64 bit

With all the components and parts sitting at their right place, the copper heat pipes seem too short and barely reach the half-way point of the CPU copper heatsink.

The motherboard is the Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe Mini-ITX. For reference I looked at the Compatible Motherboard List for H3.S and H3.SODD, listed by hd-plex.com in their webpage for the H3 product. After careful consideration of all the motherboards listed as compatible, I purchased the P8Z77-I because it offered the best combination of options and build quality.

I purchased the H3.SODD Chassis because it has overall good reviews, and I am pretty happy with the build quality and workmanship of the materials. All the parts of the chassis have a very good fit… except for the copper heat pipes.

As seen in the pictures the heat pipes only reach to half way of the CPU copper heatsink, where they should reach all the way to the end of it or even surpass it by a few millimeters. At least that is what is shown in the pictures of the product page, and all the other build pictures I have seen. As good as the design of the chassis is for heat dissipation, this will have a negative effect on the efficiency and speed of the heat dissipation, because the surface of the heat pipe in contact with the heatsink is in actuality half of what was intended to be or was designed for.

I have this problem and I don´t know how it can be solved. I would like for the heat pipes to reach all the way into the CPU copper heatsink, after all this Asus motherboard is listed as fully compatible with the H3 chassis.

My H5.TODD – A10-5700 on Asus F2A85

——————————————————————————–

Hi,
this is my HTPC based on H5.TODD and AMD.
Details:
Motherboard ASUS F2A85-M LE A85X S-FM2 M-ATX
Micro AMD A-SERIES X4 A10-5700 3.4GHZ SOCKET FM2 BOX
Memory CORSAIR 8GB DDR3 1866MHZ (2X4GB)
SDD SAMSUNG 840 SERIES 120GB SSD SATA/600 TLC
Keyboard LOGITECH WIRELESS TOUCH KEYBOARD K400
Blue Ray recorder SAMSUNG BLU-RAY SLIM DL 6X SATA
HDD WD Green 3T

SW : Lubuntu 12.10 with XBMC (version for Fusion processors)

http://youresuchageek.blogspot.fr/20…for-linux.html

Here there are some pictures

I think that the case is unbeatable!

Original Review link from XBMC

Silent HTPC Build & Review

The components:

CPU: i3 3225
MB: Gigabyte H77N-WIFI (Mini-ITX)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 (2 Modules)
HD: Samsung 840 120GB SATA SSD
Blu-Ray: LITEON DS-6E2SH
Case: Silver HD PLEX H3.TODD with IR and 80W PSU
OS: Windows 7 64bit
Software: XBMC / Mobile Mouse / XBMCLauncher

Why these components?

I did a lot of research before I started this project, there are no doubt alternative components that will do the job, maybe better, but I can confirm that this combination of components compliment each other perfectly and provide, in my opinion, the perfect balance of cost and performance given the case I chose and the intended use of this computer.

The review

I’m going to overview most of the components as they are reviewed on countless other sites and blogs. So lets get started, I’ll try not the waffle.

I considered a few processors including the AMD’s but the i3 3225 was really the best option by far as the case I selected doesn’t support any PCI slots so a dedicated graphics card wasn’t an option. I wanted the best Intel integrated graphics I could get and right now that’s HD4000.

Some might say it’s overkill for a HDPC but I disagree as who knows what you might want to run in the future, looking at the youtube videos of Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinate on HD4000 graphics (low settings) I’m tempted to install STEAM, anyway I digress, the other reason for selecting the i3 3225 was the TDP which is bsolutely ideal for this case combined with the selected 80W PSU.

Now the motherboard was a toss up between the Z77N and the H77N for me, I looked at all and I mean ALL of the Mini-ITX MB’s that would suit this case and decided on the Gigabyte boards based on reviews and most importantly for me features and connectivity. The reason I plumped for the H77N was that I will never be over-clocking this box, it just doesn’t make sense.

I was so tempted to max out the RAM in this build, I use a high spec PC every day for software development and run really heavy Microsoft applications, my general view on RAM is that you simply can’t have too much.

But, I wanted to be restrained and a little sensible on this build especially as it’s pretty difficult to get RAM usage above 2GB in XBMC running on Windows anyway. (Don’t get the Vengeance RAM with the big spiky heat-sinks they don’t fit under the hood). So why didn’t I just get 4GB you ask? Well I just couldn’t stop myself, RAM’s cheap, even the good stuff and I just couldn’t face building a new PC with only 4GB in it, shoot me.

I’ve spent the last few months building a spreadsheet of components their costs and specs, reading reviews, checking sizes and performance and form factors and reliability and forum posts and blogs and I feel sick, I’ve spent too long on this… the Samsung 840 SSD specs sounded good so that’s the one I purchased.

To say I’m pleased is an understatement, this baby boots quicker than my Alienware development PC (which also has an SSD – all be it with a lot installed on it). From completely OFF this system boots through BIOS Splash into Windows (Auto-login) and into XBMC and is ready to use in 17 seconds, plus or minus 1/2 a second (I checked it a few times with a stop watch).

These days you don’t really need an optical drive what with USB stick installers, external devices and broadband but I wanted one for convenience all it’s been used for so far is installing the OS. When I looked for one on the net they were pretty cheap so even though I don’t have any Blu-Rays and despite the fact that it’s a ball ache to get Windows 7 to play them I purchased a drive capable of playing Blu-Rays and burning pretty much all other formats for just £35.

Now, up to this point I’ve been pretty careful about the component costs, not neurotically careful admittedly but alternatives could have saved me a small amount of money, £10 hear and there, but the case in this build is a different story. I could have bought a case for 1/10 of the cost of this one but the reason this PC makes me smile is the case, the reason this PC looks so good in my TV cabinet is the case, the reason my wife likes it too (Yes this beauty meets wife approval) is the case, the reason I did all the research to get the right components was the case. I love it and it was a pleasure to build this system because of …. …. you guessed it … … the case.

When the case arrives and you open the box you feel instantly that you have probably purchased a quality product. Then you get it out of the box and start looking at it, not just the case but all of the components that come with it, the heat-sinks that connect to the CPU to the left side of the case are a work of art, as is the optical drive cover which fits perfectly with less the 1mm on each side, see these and you know you’ve got a quality product.

When friends come round I want to take the lid off and show them inside. Too evangelical? Sorry but I need to get across that it’s worth the money for so many different reasons. As Ferris once said: “If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up”.

Everything goes together well and you even get some tools, thermal paste and a bespoke metal ball applicator that fits in the grooves perfectly.

The front is a thick, solid piece of aluminium with a software driven eject button (software available on the HDPlex website for your operating system) a USB port and a small hole for the IR (I’m not getting very good angles on my IR so Larry at HDPlex is sending me a new IR receiver to try). Support has been excellent Larry responds to emails quickly.

The build instructions are good but I recommend that you have the installation guide on the website open too as they are really useful and slightly more up to date.

I can’t tell you how pleased I am with this system on every level and I hope this review helps you in some way.

Review Link

I have finish my build HDPLEX H3.SODD fanless computer case and thought I would post some pictures. This thing works perfect.
I will be building another total silence love it plays anything I through at it.

Spec’s
M/B Asus P8h77-i
CPU- Intel I-3 4000
Ram- Kinston Khx1600c9d3k2/8gx 2x4gb
Solid state drive Scandisk 120 gb
B/D drive