HTPC - clanderson's Fat Guy in a Little Case, AMD/Nvidia Edition

squeakygreens · February 25, 2019

INTRODUCTION
I needed to replace my old Sager HTPC laptop and set out to build the HTPC I've always wanted. As I progressed, I realized how difficult it was to find certain bits of information and wanted to create this thread as a reference for anybody intending to create something similar for their HTPC. This is what I chose, along with how and why I chose it. It is in no way the "best" way, but it certainly worked beautifully for my purposes.

Want more information on your HTPC build? Check out Onkyoman's thread on building a 4k HTPC for madVR over at AVSForums. A big thanks to him (and others in the thread) for answering some of my questions along the way.

Lastly, here's a PCPartPicker list I created for this build.

Want to skip the jibber jabber? Do better with pictures than with all these schooly "words" and stuff? I know your type, and I'm here for you. Scroll to the bottom for the bright and shiny stuff.

OBJECTIVES

Big horsepower for video encoding and playing HD/Ultra HD content via madVR
Silence and thermal efficiency for the sake of watching tense movies as they're intended, avoiding setting my entertainment center on fire in the process
Avoid the trendy RGB look as much as possible
As much as I sympathize with the youthful cries of "Parents just don't get it!" and "Gam3rs rul3!!!!" which are being wholly and ironically answered by other people's parents at large corporations like Nvidia, Asus, MSI and so on, I try to distance myself from trendy flashiness whenever possible. Just like last year's drop-crotch sweats, this throwback RGB trend is going to look pretty ostentatious in a year or two (as well as immediately, when I turn off the lights to watch a dark thriller while my computer accosts my eyes with pulsating jeers of "LOOK AT ME I'M COOL LOOK AT ME I'M COOL LOOK AT ME I'M COOL LOOK AT ME I'M COOL")

COMPONENTS
Case: Silverstone GD09

The GD09 is just large enough to fit a full ATX board plus a 5.25 drive while being slightly less deep than its bigger brother the GD07, which would protrude out of my entertainment center shelf. The GD09 also has excellent cooling and a design that doesn't try to be anything it's not: a computer.

PSU: Seasonic FOCUS Plus 550 Gold SSR-550FX

This power supply provides enough juice for the components and peripherals, remaining in the sweet spot of efficiency and consumption

Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X470-F

This motherboard is the newest in the line of AM4 boards with plenty of bandwidth in all regards, a decent amount of PCIE slots, two M.2 slots for ultra fast NVME flash storage (very beneficial over SATA III SSDs for my specific use case), USB 3.1 Gen 1 and USB 3.1 Gen 2 headers (for when flash drives and expansion bay bandwidth catch up... hopefully soon), plenty of overclocking ability (I'm not one of those super cool 1337 gamers anymore, but more BIOS/UEFI options are often better) and great onboard audio (which won't actually be needed when I bitstream any decent content to my AVR). There's no onboard wifi, but residential microwave networking is for commoners.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 [non-X version]

After narrowing down the relative "best" AMD option and the relative "best" Intel option in the 65w TDP range, I was finally warring between AMD's Ryzen 7 2700 (non-X) and Intel's i7 8700 (non-K). I finally landed on the AMD flavor for two reasons: sheer core count and price. I couldn't make sense out of spending ~$100 more on a CPU with less cores for slightly higher single-threaded performance. With the AM4 socket being recently released, I'm hoping this will provide for better future proofing (at a lower relative cost) over its ~4 year old LGA1151 counterpart.

CPU Cooler: Scythe Katana 5

I really went through a thorough investigation of CPU coolers; it was exhaustive in every meaning of the word. Unlike the larger Noctua options (think NH-U9B/NH-U9S) and low profile alternatives (think Noctua NH-L9i), the new Scythe Katana 5 can handle CPUs with TDPs above 65w with a full sized heatsink couple with an ultra quiet fan while - get this - still allowing enough room for the GD09's included 5.25/drive bay! It comes with both Intel and AMD brackets which require no backplate, and while the mounting system is not optimal, it does the job. Check out the pictures for the drive bay clearance - wow. I still can't believe I got away with a full sized cooler. What a dream cooler for this case. Well, with one small exception.

Nothing a little ingenuity can't overcome

.

GPU: Asus ROG Strix RTX 2060 06G

I wanted a GPU which I wouldn't regret in a year and could handle 4K upscaling on a large screen without sounding like a spaceship or melting itself to the PCIE bus. I landed on Asus' ROG Strix RTX 2060 06G which comes factory overclocked and with three fans (generally more fans equates to less noise). My choices here were limited to what the Silverstone GD09 would allow, so I began debating between the GTX 1060, GTX 1070/1070ti, RTX 2060 and RTX 2070. For me, the GTX 1060/1070 wasn't powerful enough, GTX 1070ti was too expensive for the power it added and the RTX 2070 looked perfect but with every third joe blow's card dying in a month, it apparently had horrendous and terrifying build/quality issues that ultimately scared me off. So, I landed on the 2060, though I'm still questioning whether I should move to the RTX 2080. All I know is that this RTX 2060 had to be practically squeezed into this GD09; I definitely pushed it to the limit. The 6/8 pin power cables are bent at an angle that makes me pretty uncomfortable. Will the 2060 have enough horsepower? Will the cables fatigue and short out on the case, burning my house down? Time will tell.

RAM: G.Skill Flare X 3200 8GB x2

The mystical RAM; the concept and performance metrics of which seem to be consistently obfuscated and intentionally conflated by many manufacturers. Ugh. Well, I knew I wanted something around 3200MHz to align with my Ryzen 7 and enough memory to spin up some VMs and do my normal work at the same time. I spend my days as a network engineer maintaining and troubleshooting TCP/IP and network hardware/peripherals, so the prospect of having to chase the elusive and often low-rewarding performance ghost of overclocked RAM is one which I'm not very eager to invest in. These days, I'm more geared towards choosing hardware that works consistently and performs well in-spec while, when pushed to its limits, has a relatively low chance of giving up the precious, magical blue smoke we all know to give life to every electronic, and eagerly waits for the moment it is to be released, never to return again.

With this in mind, I opted for a 3200MHz 2x8GB kit of Flare X from G.Skill. This memory is "made for Ryzen", cause, you know, how else are they going to take more of your money if not gearing a very niche set of memory to the CPU you just purchased? No else, that's how. Now take my money please.

Case Intake: Noctua NF-S12A PWM x3 [w/ ULN adapter]

I wasn't sure how loud this build was going to be, so I chose the four-pin PWM variety of NF-S12A over the three-pin ULN version so I could more finely (and manually) tune the fan speeds with software. Turns out with these fans and CPU cooler, it's completely inaudible even in the low noise floor in my home. Each of these fans comes with one y-cable which allows you to join two fans together and control them from one motherboard header; I joined the two adjacent NF-S12A fans (closest to the CPU) and had two remaining y-cables.

Case Exhaust: Noctua NF-R8 Redux-1200 x2 [w/ ULN adapter]

These guys are simply the quietest fans I could find which also permitted a continuous and slight positive air pressure inside of the case (with the ULN adapters installed). They are only three pin, but I won't need these to be controlled via PWM for any reason. I coupled these two fans with a spare y-cable that came with the three Noctua NF-S12A PWM intake fans.

Storage: Samsung 850 Pro 1TB [carried over from my last build]

I snagged this guy on sale at some point from somewhere. I can't for the life of me find out where, but it's been great. With the increased write life of the "Pro" tier, I should be able to use this guy for a while. I'll soon be moving my OS to M.2 NVME and use this as file storage alongside my NAS.

Peripheral: Plugable USB 3.0 External 7 Port Hub with 36W Power Adapter

Two USB ports up front on the GD09 won't be enough for me. I got this guy to attach to the inside of the shelf which will house this computer to give me some headroom. I'd like to utilize the USB 3.1 header on the Asus X470-F, but so far I haven't found a good solution for that.

Peripheral: UGREEN USB 3.0 External Multi Card Reader

The same as above; the GD09 doesn't have a multi card reader, which I use from time to time. This guy seemed to be a mid-range performance reader at a decent price.

Peripheral: Some Random BluRay Drive

I'll probably never play BluRays, but I'll eventually need to insert a disc for imaging or whatnot, so I'll grab one of these in the near future. Although the GD09's drive bay is pictured in this build, the nondescript BluRay drive will not be.

Misc: Tripp Lite Left Angle Power Cord

This is just to save some space in back where the PSU meets the rear wall of my shelf.

Misc: Black Anodized Knurled 6-32 Thumbscrews

For some reason the GD09 doesn't come with any thumbscrews; not for the lid or any drive bays. I picked these up for cheap and they work great.

Misc: Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste

This stuff is pretty much the gold standard. If you find something with a better ratio of performance/ease of use/longevity, great job I guess. I was going to say let me know, but I realized mid sentence that I don't really care. This goop works great.

I was pretty surprised at the level of cable management I was able to achieve with the less than optimal hardware layout in this case. It'll definitely make servicing the machine in the future much easier than I expected. It wasn't my intention, but everything also ended up black; I guess it looks kind of nice when it's all together.

PICTURES
Overview:

https://imgur.com/a/yUeI5fA

Cable Management:

https://imgur.com/a/2j89Z8o

CPU Cooler:

https://imgur.com/a/PqQ6rck