cliffmidnite
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2009
- Messages
- 27 (0.00/day)
Hello everyone, I just wanted to share a project I have recently completed. I have seen many NES mods across the net the last few years and have always wanted to do my own build. I didn't want to settle for an embedded cpu gpu combo because it just wasn't enough power for my gaming needs. I started this build off with a zotac 9300 itx mobo and an E8400. everything came together rather nicely, and the 9300 itx actually has a bit of gpu juice to play modern warfare 2 on low setting in 720p. It just wasn't enough though. I wanted to be able to play Crysis, Dirt 2, Burnout Paradise, and GTA 4. These all work well with the 360 controller. After I initially finished the build, I just used it to play nes games and stream HD from my media server. I already had usb to nes cables from retrozone that I bought several months ago for playing nes games on my main pc. I used these cables in my nes build. I didnt my research and decided that I would have to wait for an HD 5570 to come out. It was about a month and a half ago when I originally finished and the 5570 wasnt out yet. I uses a 150 watt pico psu and 150 watt brick. The 5570 would just barely fit within my power envelope. I have several pics that I documented my build with. I cut out the bottom of the case where it was raised about 4mm and reglued it back in flush with the bottom of the case, to give me the extra headroom I would need for a tall chipset and cpu heatsink. I knew heat was a factor in these things, so I opted to go for extreme performance and skipped out on a slim dvd drive to make more room for bigger heatsink/fans. I download most of my games from steam, and stream all my media, so I have no reason to even need the burner. I will post several pics below. I need to take some snippits of the temps and some benchmarks to post as well.I could write a tutorial too if anyone is interested. I havent seen any builds like this with a pci express graphics card installed. I'm really impressed with the HD 5570, it idles at 10 watts and max draw is 40 watts loaded and the power of an 9800 gt in a low profile package. It runs everything very well at 720p on my tv and streams HD audio perfectly. I need to figure out how to add more photos. I will try to upload them all somewhere and add URL links.