** This thread discusses the Content article:
MythTV Wooden Box **
With the build of my new MythTV computer that's finally using 1080P video I've been plagued by noise in the video signal. The solution seemed pretty obvious though unappealing. You see, I've always had my MythTV PC in the closet and used long VGA and audio runs to bring the signals to the TV & receiver. As a result I never spent much time worrying about how much noise the machine made. Eliminating the long VGA run should eliminate the video signal noise but introduce "real" noise into the room.
I chopped up and old PC case with my Dremel and gutted an old subwoofer. Here's the result. It's a fairly quiet case with only the noise of the video card fan escaping the box.
I went through a pile of Dremel cutting blades removing so much of the old case but I'm pleased with how it turned out. It doesn't have too much strength to it without the hardware attached, but adding the motherboard, Evga 7600GT video card and Hauppage PVR 500, the whole thing feels fairly solid.
The hard drive is held in place nicely by the bungee cord. Actually it's held better than I expected. As it's not touching anything solid, it makes very little noise and is barely audfible from right outside the box.
I wired in all the usual suspects that any normal case has, reusing the subwoofer's volume knob as the power button and drilled an extra hole so that I can see power and HDD access from the front panel. A PC speaker was glued in place below the grille and a reset switch was wired into the back of the case.
I used a dead motherboard, power supply and a couple junk soundcards to test everything for proper fit. I didn't want to risk damaging my new hardware!
Yup, it fits! There's a few extra holes in the backplane as this case was chopped up by it's previous owner but I don't mind. If I need to, I'll close up some of them with that aluminum tape normally reserved for ductwork. So far it's fine with me.
This is the actual hardware destined to be in the box. It's the same size as my test fit hardware so there were no surprises. My only complaint was all the extra wires hanging out of the Corsair 450W power supply. Cripes, they're everywhere!
I pulled an ethernet cable to the shelf where the box would be and drilled a hole to run power to the PC, video and audio up to the receiver.
The final product in action. So far, so good. You can hear the video card fan but that's about it. I'm tempted to disconnect the video card's fan and see how it goes but may wait until I have a large slow moving fan to supplement the airflow. We'll see.
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