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Upgrading my HTPC — It’s Alive!


A couple months ago I posted a blog entry about my plans to upgrade my Home Theater PC (HTPC) using the new Zotac IONITX
Intel Atom based motherboard. As a point of reference, I’m upgrading my HTPC from an underpowered, but pretty sweet at the time VIA EPIA-M 600M. My reason for using the 6000 at the time was I wanted a fanless setup to the HTPC would be as silent as possible.

The case I’ve been using is a Morex 3677B case, which is fairly small but still allows enough room for a 2.5″ Hard Drive and a Slim Laptop CD/DVD drive.

A couple gotchas I ran into while upgrading from the VIA board to the new Intel Atom based board:

  1. The Zotac IONITX board has only SATA connectors, no PATA connectors to be found! This was a road block as both my previous hard drive and slim CD/DVD drive were both PATA so I was forced to upgrade them as well. Luckily I was able to score a 320GB Seagate drive for only $79! :)
  2. Zotac provides a small 50mm fan to use on the heatsink because the Dual Core N330 CPU as well as the nVidia northbridge require active cooling. Luckily the Morex case has a 50mm exhaust fan that sits close to the heatsink. I was able to flip it around and use it to blow onto the CPU.
  3. Speaking of the heatsink, it’s about 1.5″ high and ALMOST comes too close to not fitting into the case. So it’s something to keep in mind when you’re working on your setup! :)

Installed Zotac IONITXInstalled Zotac IONITX

I’ve got everything hooked up and it was very easy to get the driver package installed. Because the Zotac IONITX came out so recently, the CD it came with had the latest drivers and the motherboard had the latest BIOS installed.

The ONE issue I’m having and still searching for a solution for is that using HDMI as the audio output, I’m getting audio distortion. I’ve tried different source materials and even tweaking the audio settings, but it’s still happening. Other than that, I’ve been super pleased with it’s performance! I mean, seriously, a computer the size of a shoe box showing four CPU’s (2 physical + hyper threading) and an nVidia graphics adapter! :)

Hope this helps someone out there in the market for upgrading their own HTPC as well!

Cheers! :)

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This entry was posted on August 24, 2009, 5:22 PM and is filed under Hardware, Internet, Miscellaneous, Multimedia, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  1. #1 by TMB on November 4, 2009 - 8:17 AM

    Nice upgrade! – Looks like it is time for me to Upgrade my NES-HTPC and put an end to the wire clutter.

    How are the graphics with out the nVidia adapter? I doubt it would fit in my NES case.

    Thanks,
    TMB

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    • #2 by eric on November 6, 2009 - 9:12 AM

      The graphics on the nVidia adapter seem more than enough for HTPC uses :)

      I’ve been able to fire up Project64 at 1024×768 with full graphics quality (including 16x AA) at 30fps with the HDMI output set to 720p!

      I haven’t tried any ‘newer’ emulators (such as DC or Wii) as these seem currently CPU bound since they’re doing a lot of real-time recompiling for the emulation of the host CPU. Not as to say that the dual core Intel Atom couldn’t handle the emulation load… I just have’t got around to it ;)

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