Weekend Project: MythTV Case Upgrade

This weekend my (short) travels led me to the local NCIX computer store, where I picked up, among some other toys, a new case for the MythTV PVR system I have. Seems that the wife didn’t appreciate the old computer case with whining fans and cables strewn about sitting in the middle of the living room, so we agreed that a case upgrade wouldn’t suck.

I picked the Silvertone LC17 case, not out of any great length of research, but it was big but not too big, and available in store. The case itself isn’t very small, which turned out to be a good thing I think, and is basically a slimmed down normal case size oriented to sit on it’s side, just like any other piece of your stereo or AV system.

My PVR isn’t the slimmest beast in the world either, 2 hard drives, a CDROM, a video card, and a capture card, along with a standard size ATX motherboard means that when you jam it all in together there’s lots of wires and components to jam around. I eliminated the CDROM as it’s never used, and that helped a bit, but it was still a tight fit at the end (I’m not an expert cable-hider though 🙂

In the end other than the video card config bitching because the PCI address of the video card had changed, it all went together fine. The case ended up a bit bigger than my receiver, which meant I had to move the shelf in the TV stand around, and juggle the DVD player to fit it all in, not to mention having to cram a bunch of cables behind the case to get the case as far back on the shelf as possible (it’s still hanging half off it’s front feet).

In the end it’s not a lot quieter (probably due to the two case fans in there, plus a more-uber CPU fan than is maybe needed), but it is a heck of a lot more tidy and better looking in the TV stand than my old desktop case sitting on the floor!