Remy xbox360 Steam Machine

[crashdown287]

Intro

I have wanted to build a steam machine for some time now and today I finally got the ball rolling. My plan like many other people before me is to fit this into the shell of an old console, in this case the original xbox360. Why the xbox360? I just like the way it looks and there is half-decent room to work in.

 

Back in the spring I got an xbox360 for 30$ on kijiji that was listed as broken however upon testing it out it worked fine and I have been enjoying it ever since. So a couple of weeks ago I bought another 360 and this time it actually was dead. The previous owner did dust it out (breaking some of the case latches)  also adding some strange aluminum foil-ish shrouds around the heat sinks in an attempt to get better airflow. Anyways I did try to resurrect it by reapplying thermal paste and reseating the heat sinks to no avail.

 

So I stripped it down and have started to plan things out. I would like to have this resemble an unaltered 360 as much as possible, meaning that I would like to keep an optical drive and as much of the front facing connectivity as possible. Also I am hoping to use the original hard drive enclosure, obviously replacing it with a bigger hdd than the 20gb one that it comes with.

 

Parts

CPU - AMD athlon 5350

Motherboard - ASRock AM1H-ITX

RAM - 2 x 2GB corsair dominators

PSU - 19V laptop powerbrick

HDD - 500GB WD Blue

ODD - TBD

Case - XBox360

 

Reasons for the parts

I know that the memory choice seems way overkill and out to lunch but the only reason I'm doing that is because its been lying around from my brothers pc upgrade a year ago.

I wanted the ASRock mobo because it has the DC powerjack allowing me to avoid having to figure out PSU installation in the chassis. I also though that an old Acer laptop I had lying around would have an appropriate power brick but I was mistaken and will have to figure something out.

I am planing to use this for steam in home streaming so I wont be needing a lot of high power hardware. If space allows I might try and squeeze in a low profile graphics card

 

The Build

I will apologize in advance for the poor quality, the best camera I have is my S4

 

The standard parts shot

 

The stripped 360

 

The first test boot using a HAF 922 as a test bench. The installation instructions for the heatsink really sucked and I was scared that I was going to break the plastic pins but its all good now

 

The next test using my laptops power brick. This time with only the fan on the cpu heatsink spinning the computer was amazingly quiet. I'm looking forward to see how quite it is when its all done. I now realize how ridiculous the deliminators look on such a low powered/budget system

 

In the chassis I have started to map out how I want to do things. I cut out a piece of paper with the dimensions of the mobo so I could start arranging things. The odd in the picture is just the standard xbox one and I will be replacing it with something better

 

I have run into 2 problems. First the overlap on the odd and the mobo has shown me that the dominators will definitely have clearance issues. I will have to get some low profile stuff eventually and even them it may still interfere with a full size odd. Im thinking I may have to go for a slimline odd, but I will measure it all out.

 

Next steps

-Finish downloading and installing steam OS

-Get some push buttons from the active surplus for the power and dvd drive

-Get some mobo standoffs and install them in the chassis

-Cutout holes for the rear I/O and CPU cutout (just in case I ever upgrade and/or want to swap cpu coolers)

-Think about the possibility for a discrete low power graphics card and potentially how to mount it

[NeatSquidYT]

Nice, I want to do a build in a PS4 once they become really cheap as 'spares or repairs'

[Norman_the_Owl]

Nice, I want to do a build in a PS4 once they become really cheap as 'spares or repairs'

The only good thing you can say about this gen of consoles is that they really are quite nice looking...

 

When this hardware refresh comes i'd want to try and snag one too, i always enjoy a challenge

[crashdown287]

So new update

Software installation was mainly painless. I had to use the full installer because the default one just failed on me. Right now I'm getting the cracking audio problem that many people seem to have but I will fix that in a later

 

I have done a bunch of the cutting and drilling for all the mounting hardware.

The odd shape of the bottom of the frame meant that mounting a regular motherboard standoff was near impossible. However I have friend with a bunch of old hardware and he sugestted that I use some of the plastic "peg stands" that you can see in the pictures. So now the mobo will only be screwed in on the rear 2 holes, with the other 2 corners resting on these pegs.

 

I have also gotten a usb header and driled holes to mount it. For fun I also attached an esata port

 

This is what it looks like with the parts installed. I was a little bit worried about how secure the mounting with only 2 screws would be, but it seems secure enough and there isn't really any movement. I have left space on the right side to mount fans in the future

 

The hard drive installation was relatively simple. Took out the old 20GB one and put in the 500GB one. Only thing was that the old one was a little thicker so i needed to use some plastic washers for spacers so it wasn't loose.

 

This is what it looks like with the hard drive attached

 

The top cover has some random standoff pegs that I needed to sand off so that it would close with the cables that I used

 

And the box in its current state

 

Once it was closed up I noticed that the screws for the esata mount interfered with the front bezels opening so I had to take it out.

 

Next steps

-Install the low profile RAM im going to swap with my little brother (he looking forward to grab the dominators)

-look at trying to get a slim optical drive - then at this point do the measurements for a descrete graphics card (doesn't look likely right now)

-figure out the pwr/rst buttons and front leds, maybe try and use the originals with some creative soldering

[crashdown287]

A little overdue with this update but school has been keeping me busy. So most of the building is done and I think I have the last of the parts I need. The new parts I have gotten are:
1x 4GB crucial ballistics ultra low profile RAM
2x Fractal 60mm fans
A slimline sata to standard sata adapter for the optical drive

 

I needed to get the new memory because standard high ram will still interfere with the mounting of the optical drive. I think I have a height comparison picture on my home computer and will try and post it soon.
 
The mostly assembled box sitting in my GAEMS Vanguard. The ULP memory is awesome for clearance, you can see that its the same height as the retention clips on the mobo so its not going to get any better. I had to use the right angle sata cables on the mobo side, once again because of ODD clearance issues

 

And another shot. You can see that the fans are not mounted yet

 

This is what it looks like from the top. The red cable is the slim sata to sata adapter

 

And with the cd sitting approximately where it will be mounted

 
And another picture of the
I have tried installing steamOS and tested out the in home steaming. The good news is that I was able to get a constant 60fps steaming Payday 2 from my main rig using  highest graphical settings on everything. The problem is that the audio has a lot of static. Doing some research I found that this is known problem and there is no solid fix yet. So I will have to install windows 8/8.1 and use that until SteamOS is out of beta or at least is more stable. A benefit of this is that I will be able to use this build as more of an HTPC build now and maybe I will try to install some old console emulators (I have never played Goldeneye).

 

I found out that the motherboards CHA1 header which is 4pin will run 3pin fans at max speed all the time, and there is not option to change it in the bios. So im going to have to use a splitter and run both of them off the PWR header next to the CPU header. Not a big deal but its another cable thats going to clutter the inside.

 

 Based on the performance and space available I'm not going to be getting a discrete video card so The next steps will be to cut breathing and mounting holes for the fractal fans, and then figure out a way to mount the optical drive. To use the original eject buttons I will have to solder and run some wires within the ODD but thats a project for when I have more time. The primary issue right now will be to try and get a power button mounted so I can stop ghetto rigging this with a screw driver/ running the header off to and external breadboard.

[crashdown287]

Just thought I'd add the pictures sitting on my main rig

 

The ULP ballistics are crazy small, the only thing I can fault them on is the default green pcb

 

The rear IO with the plastic shroud dremmeled out

[crashdown287]

Its been a long time since I have worked on this because of work, but I have finished it off and I have a couple of final pictures to share

 

So this is what the interior looks like, I left the red sata cable at the top for future ODD installation. I only have a power button right now, but I plan to at least get a power led hooked up in the future. The power button is just a cheapo toggle I found at Active surplus and soldered wires to.

 

2x60mm silverstone fans. They are nice and quiet and it feels like they move a bunch of air, no complaints.

 

The machine on the right, next to an original xbox360. The lack of ODD is evident.

 

It has no problems doing spotify/youtube/basic computing. Steam inhome streaming works fine too, a little bit of latency but nothing unexpected and that hasnt been covered several times.

 

[Wilbursworld]

I just used plexi and mounted the parts to it, the plexi will attach to the bottom of the vanguard using flat screws..can fit a whole pc, 1tb m.2 on mobo, 2tb ssd and also a 1tb laptop drive im adding under psu and under end of gpu, it'll have a Toshiba external shell over it and mounted down also..

[Godlygamer23]

1 hour ago, Wilbursworld said:

I just used plexi and mounted the parts to it, the plexi will attach to the bottom of the vanguard using flat screws..can fit a whole pc, 1tb m.2 on mobo, 2tb ssd and also a 1tb laptop drive im adding under psu and under end of gpu, it'll have a Toshiba external shell over it and mounted down also..

This should be a separate post.

[jre84]

thats  really neat, what an idea. I noticed your processes were at 44? how did you manage to get them so low? and Does it have a gfx card? prob not as I dont see how it would fit