A6-PACK ☆ ISK 300-90 picoPSU HTPC A6-3500 Very Silent!

Question: Do the power bricks get hot, warm,....just wondering because I remember a laptop I had once,..and man that brick ran hot.

(2012-07-04 20:22)GortWillSaveUs Wrote:  Question: Do the power bricks get hot, warm,....just wondering because I remember a laptop I had once,..and man that brick ran hot.

Warm and hot... it depends what you are doing.... I never had one fail on me ever.... but my brother recently his fell on his laptop but it was a 6 year old brick from Compaq.

(2012-07-04 19:18)Beer40oz Wrote:  Hey waver... pico's are great stuff... the 90w is great, it does not touch the ram.

Is your's more silent now?

Oh yeah, the antec case fan is ok @ low but when the power supply fan kicks in it's quite noisy, not to mention that crappy ps seems to generate a lot of heat (I think it's efficiency is quite bad)

I think I'll order another one and try to get one install into an antec isk100 case for fun I like the isk100 case since it's smaller and the top is perforated so should be good for airflow, however the case is so cramped with the long cables and the dc board taking up space. With the pico I've more power and now have the space on the right to route the cables for a cleaner interior, heh. Now have to go back and read some of the threads on those low profile hs....... the shrukein don't fit in this case.

(2012-07-04 22:51)waver123 Wrote:  

(2012-07-04 19:18)Beer40oz Wrote:  Hey waver... pico's are great stuff... the 90w is great, it does not touch the ram.

Is your's more silent now?

Oh yeah, the antec case fan is ok @ low but when the power supply fan kicks in it's quite noisy, not to mention that crappy ps seems to generate a lot of heat (I think it's efficiency is quite bad)

I think I'll order another one and try to get one install into an antec isk100 case for fun I like the isk100 case since it's smaller and the top is perforated so should be good for airflow, however the case is so cramped with the long cables and the dc board taking up space. With the pico I've more power and now have the space on the right to route the cables for a cleaner interior, heh. Now have to go back and read some of the threads on those low profile hs....... the shrukein don't fit in this case.

Sure it does with some mods...

So, I still got the problem regarding 24p sync, that it seems like no one else has with this hardware.
Here is some info about my setup.
Hardware info:
A6-3500 APU, Asrock A75M-ITX MB, 4Gb Kingston HyperX PnP, Crucial M4 SSD, Antec ISK 110.
The HTPC is connected with HDMI to my AVR, Yamaha RX-V3067 and from there to my TV, Samsung UE55C6005. I have tryed both with and without a Geffen HDMI Detective between my HTPC and AVR to eliminate EDID problems.

Software info:
Windows 7 x64 SP1 with XBMC stable 11.0 and nightly 20120621.
Otherwise clean install with no antivirus and no specific security settings.

Video - Settings
Render method: DXVA
Allow hardware acceleration (DXVA2): on
Adjust display refresh rate to match video: on
Pause during refresh change: 1,5 seconds
Sync playback to display: off

System - Settings
Use a fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen: off
Vertical blank sync: Always enabled

System - Audio
Audio output: HDMI
Speaker configuration: 5.1
Boost volume level on downmix: on
Output stereo to all speakers: off
Dolby digital (AC3) capable receiver: on
DTS capable receiver: on
AAC capable receiver: off
Multichannel LPCM capable receiver: on
TrueHD capable receiver: on
DTS-HD capable receiver: on
Audio output device: wasapi:AMD HDMI Output (AMD High Definition Audio Device)
Passthrough output device: WASAPI: HDMI - AMD HDMI Output (AMD High Definition Audio Device)

AMD Catalyst driver 12.4 and 12.6.
Everything in Video Quality disabled except "Enforce Smooth Video Playback".

Else pretty much followed the settings from Beer40oz regarding bios settings etc.

Does anyone have any pointers to how I can solve this? I replaced my old HTPC because I wanted a tested failsafe setup, and then I run into this

If I get the 65 watt version - can I get a higher powered brick to go with it or do I have to replace the whole PSU? If I buy a pico psu - is there a suitable hole to feed the cable through? Sorry for the noobish question. Want to play the occasional game on the A6 3500. I am in the UK if that helps.

Also how does the CIR header work? I have a old USB receiver + windows mce remote but it would be nice to turn it off/on using this (I don't mind buying something else)

I take there is no suitable way to do this internally as there is no window on the front?

I like this case simply because it's one of the few that would allow you to use a blu-ray drive (the others have a drive directly above the CPU, not good for cooling!!). If anyone else has an alternative let me know. The length could be a reduced a bit looking at the space that PSU has!!

Beer-
Hoping you might have some insight.
I picked up the MCE Rosewill remote that you mentioned in your other thread.
I can't get it to work with the ASRock board.

I've tried it with the front usbs run to the CIR header and without them run that way. I can use the remote once i power everything on, but I can't get it to power on.
What am I missing?

In the BIOS, under Advanced\Super IO configuration, I enabled the Infrared Port - Should I do that?

I guess what I'm asking is:
1. Are you using the CIR slot on the board or are your front usb ports connected to the standard usb ports on the board?
2. What (if anything) should I enable in the BIOS?
a. I have that Infrared Port enabled. Did you have to do that?
3. Is there any other setting I could be missing to power on the HTPC from cold?

If there are suggestions to troubleshoot this, I would greatly appreciate it.

Due to the lack of availability of the ISK300-65 in germany i decided to get the ISK-300-150. Sadly i didnt notice that the -150 has a power supply with a fan. Everyone who is thinking about buying this case might want to know that the power supply is not so bad, but if you are aiming for a silent pc its simply too loud (you will notice it in silent passages of a movie).

So i decided to get a PicoPSU. The problem with PicoPSU is that you need an external brick, which was not an option for me either. Its just another thing flying around in your flat. Additionally the space in the case for the PSU would have gone to waste. I found a solution though: From my local electronic dealer i got an industrial power supply from Mean Well, which fits perfectly into the ISK-300 case. There is not even enough room between PSU and mainboard to put a screwdriver in between.
See the pics below:





Because the PSU has 156Watts power in the smallest package available i got the fitting 150Watt PicoPSU. This should even have enough room for maybe future upgrades.

Just started looking into building my own HTPC and probably will follow this topic's build fairly close. Still need to read more of the topic, but so far I appreciate all the information you have posted, as well as others.

Starting to look into hardware and I am a little stumped with the choice of MOBO.

What's the difference between these two MOBOs:

ASRock A75M-ITX FM1 AMD A75

ASRock A75M-HVS FM1 AMD A75

I can't figure out why the ITX is $20 more than the HVS - they seem to be practically the same, i.e USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s, HDMI, compatible RAM, etc. I was wondering if I could get by with the cheaper HVS.

EDIT:
So here is a comparison from ASRock's website:
Link
Looks like the only difference is the Audio (5.1 vs 7.1), eSATA, and expansion slots. Not really sure what that means.

(2012-08-10 04:30)snowboarder33 Wrote:  What's the difference between these two MOBOs:

ASRock A75M-ITX FM1 AMD A75

ASRock A75M-HVS FM1 AMD A75

I can't figure out why the ITX is $20 more than the HVS - they seem to be practically the same, i.e USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s, HDMI, compatible RAM, etc. I was wondering if I could get by with the cheaper HVS.

The big difference is they are two different form factors: the first is mini-ITX and the second is micro-ATX. Which one to get depends on which case you intend to use, mini-ITX or micro-ATX case.