[Mini-ITX] A6-3500 (3x2.1Ghz/2.4Ghz) + HD6530D

Well, a couple updates. First, pictures of the assembled beasty. Note how much space is available above the APU.




Also, how ridiculously long the PSU wires are. WTF? For a case this small, it's just ridiculous. The cables just make an already bad air-flow situation worse:




The 120mm fan on the side helped marginally, but not enough. Even though it pushed a fair amount of air through the case, the CPU heatsink fan just couldn't get enough air to do it's job. I suspect the real problem was that the PSU's intake fan - directly above the CPU heatsink intake fan - was contributing to starving the CPU fan. Of course, I could have flipped the PSU over, but then it's intake would be pressed against the top of the case, and I've seen PSU failure cause really horrendous damage to PC components.

So, I pulled the PSU out of the case entirely, something that was distressingly easy given the cable length, and stuffed it behind my TV.

With the PSU out of the box entirely, and just (nicely wrapped!) wires leading in, I was able to not only restore speeds to stock but actually overclock the A6-3500 to 2.4ghz (on all 3 cores, all the time), the GPU clock to 550mhz and the ram to 1600mhz - with temps under load never topping 38c.


So, given that, can someone recommend a decent picoPSU that'll run this beast? My concern with most is that I have 3 SATA drives (1.5 and 2tb HDD's and an optical drive) that need power too. A 120w PSU would work, but none I've found have SATA power connectors at all

http://www.short-circuit.com/combo/picop...-acdc.html

(2012-04-29 21:35)Wintersdark Wrote:  Working on this build, but I'm having severe heat issue. Even underclocking and dropping the CPU voltage (1800mhz,1.325v) the CPU heats up then thermal throttling kicks in. I'm using the stock cooler with the suggested 120mm fan in the second hdd bay blowing in the side.

I'm going to experiment with pulling out the power supple and running it outside the case entirely for a while to see if he problem is caused by how the power supply basically blocks off half the CPU cooler's fan.

Or how the power supply's absurdly long cables block off the tiny bit of space that remains above it.

It seems to me that it's just a very poor case design for this application, unless other MB's position the CPU differently?

Does anyone have this particular build up and running? Specifically with this case and CPU? Did you have similar issues?

I have the same CPU, but not the same case (got a Wesena ITX7) and a picoPSU. Temps are low with a single 80mm case fan and the stock CPU fan. Both fans runs around 900 to 1000RPM. Temps are about 45 for 1080p media playback. It rises to 50-52C when I navigat heavily in XBMC gui.

edit - Bought my picoPSU at perfecthometheater : http://www.shop.perfecthometheater.com/W...es_c35.htm

Yup, the CPU is definitely awesome and perfect for this role, but the case is very problematic.

I've run my little beasty pushing 1080p all day and night, and it never pushed past 40c with the power supply out of the box, even with it being substantially overclocked. The CPU fan is at 4/Automatic in the BIOS, but never needs to speed up from there - which is good, as the stock cooler sounds like a jet engine when it spins right up, a terrible sound I heard very frequently with the PSU in the box.

I'm absolutely moving over to a picoPSU for this build, as while it works great with the PSU out of the box, it looks rather silly.

So, I'd recommend to others: While this case does look pretty decent, it's not that good a choice unless you intend to rip out the PSU and run with a picoPSU instead.

That Wesena case is *sexy*, btw.

hehehe yep. The wife wanted a nice case

Good to see that you solved your problem by removing the PSU. I can tell that I don't hear at all my HTPC, which is was I was aiming for! :-)

I have already built one of these builds and I am completely in love with it. Thank you so much eskro! Now I am looking to build a second for another room but would like to go with a smaller case. I like the look of the FC8 case alot, will this build be okay in that? I do not need a optical drive at all so wondering if I can even go smaller. Looked around and looked at alot of cases and builds but just looking for suggestions on this exact build.

Thanks in advance!

Small mini-ITX case? this is what I've ordered for my second build:

http://www.amazon.com/Antec-ISK110-VESA-...B0064LWISQ

I'm planning to build this setup:
[CPU+iGPU] AMD A6-3500 3x2.1Ghz/2.4Ghz HD6530D FM1 65W ($90 + $0)
[MOBO] ASRock A75M-ITX FM1 CIR USB3.0 SATAIII UEFI mITX
[CASE] Silverstone Grandia GD04B

Just two important questions:
1: I'm running Amblone/Boblightd together with 1080p movies, my current PC sometimes struggles to play this (so i have to disable my ambilight). Will this be any problem with this setup?
2: I still have a Corsair HX520 left. Should i use this PSU, or should i buy another ATX PSU or a PicoPSU? (With eye on saving on my powerbill).

(2012-05-10 20:39)arvoitus Wrote:  I'm planning to build this setup:
[CPU+iGPU] AMD A6-3500 3x2.1Ghz/2.4Ghz HD6530D FM1 65W ($90 + $0)
[MOBO] ASRock A75M-ITX FM1 CIR USB3.0 SATAIII UEFI mITX
[CASE] Silverstone Grandia GD04B

Just two important questions:
1: I'm running Amblone/Boblightd together with 1080p movies, my current PC sometimes struggles to play this (so i have to disable my ambilight). Will this be any problem with this setup?
2: I still have a Corsair HX520 left. Should i use this PSU, or should i buy another ATX PSU or a PicoPSU? (With eye on saving on my powerbill).

It seems that you are interesting in doing multi-task with it. You might want to consider a more powerful "AMD A8-3850 Llano 2.9GHz Socket FM1 100W Quad-Core Desktop APU (CPU + GPU) with DirectX 11 Graphic AMD Radeon HD 6550D" instead.....

If you want a silent HTPC, you can install this "picoPSU-160-XT + 192W Adapter Power Kit" PSU and this "Scythe SCBSK-2100 120mm Sleeve BIG Shuriken 2 Rev. B" CPU cooler

Honestly, I've found the A6-3500 to be more than capable of acting as a full PC. However, to get the most out of it, you've pretty much got to overclock it.

It's trivially easy in the UEFI setup, though - the A6-3500 has a ton of overclocking headroom without running noticably hotter/louder. Mine, which still has the stock heatsink, is set to run all three cores at 2.6ghz all the time (turbo disabled, it's pointless when the base clock is higher), and still never increases the fan speed from the current 4 (0-9 scale in bios). Also brought the GPU clock up to 550mhz. Both of these were not upper limits - I haven't tried more, but I found Netflix streaming in HD to be a little bit choppy until I raised the GPU clock to 500. Once I replace the CPU cooler with something that can push more air without sounding like a jet engine, I'll see what it can do.

But regardless, the A6 3500 is a surprisingly robust, capable chip. I wouldn't hesitate to use one for a full desktop PC used for light (read: non-gaming) tasks. That said, if noise/heat/power is not a concern, then the 4 core/100w chip is such a small price increase you may as well. This is the best chip in the 65w range, however.

As to PSU's, the PSU wattage isn't going to affect your power usage at the wall. That's determined by two things: The power your PC draws, and the efficiency of the power supply. Shitty no-name PSU's are typically around 70-80% efficient, better ATX PSU's are generally 80-90, and the picoPSU bluray mentioned is well over 90%.

I'd go with the pico, personally. They aren't much more expensive than normal power supplies, they keep all the PSU heat out of your HTPC case (having a laptop style power brick) and leave space open to increase airflow, and offer increased savings with less energy use via efficiency.