Silent Mini-ITX PC Part One: Hardware Build

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers this time it's the first of two episodes in which i'm going to build a silent pc based upon this asrock mini itx motherboard with an embedded j4105 processor so let's go and get started right here we have our asrock motherboard which has got a mini itx form factor and this means that the motherboard inside this box is only 17 centimeters or 6.7 inches square pc motherboards of this size were first developed by via in 2001 and today they're often referred to simply as itx however even smaller nano pico and mobile itx motherboards also exist so calling aboard just itx can be confusing it's also worth noting that while some mini itx motherboards have a socket into which a processor needs to be fitted others have a processor pre-installed and this board is one of those with an integrated processor which here is a quad-core intel celeron j4105 we probably guessed that from the name of the board and this has got a base frequency of 1.5 gigahertz bursting to 2.5 and we've also here on this board got integrated intel 600 uhd graphics supporting 4k output at up to 60 frames per second i purchased this board in september 2020 from amazonco uk for 97 pounds 79 and at the same time it was selling for about 99 on amazon.com do note though you often have to shop around to get a good price on a mini itx motherboard like this with an integrated processor anyway after all that let's get inside i think this sister thing to cut there there there is standing the knife will go through that straight like that and we can get inside i always love opening up motherboards the heart of computing oh here we are we've got a manual we've got the i o plate for the back we've got some cardboard wrapping there we've got some sata cables and we've got the board itself in a down there on the floor anti-static bag is it sealed no it's not sealed we can go straight in here we are here is our lovely newer mini itx motherboard it really is so exciting to be looking at a new motherboard on top of the board the first thing to catch our eye is the heatsink sitting on top of the integrated processor this is a passively cooled board so we just have a heatsink there's no fan here which is why we can build a lovely silent pc and alongside the processor and its heatsink we've got these two spots to take memory and these are sodium slots small outline dual in-line memory module slots not the dim slots you normally see on a pc motherboard these are the sort of slots you normally get in a laptop but you often get these sort of slots on a mini itx motherboard particularly those with an integrated processor and these will take ddr4 sodium modules beneath one of the sodium slots as you can see we've got a bevy of connectors we've got a header for a com port and we've got two headers for usb 2 ports we can add three usb 2 ports to these headers and we've also got a header for two usb 3 ports at least it's labeled usb 3 here but the manual for the motherboard tells us he's a usb 3.1 we've also got a pcie slot here this is pcie 2.0 times one that might be useful in some build although i won't be using it here and then we've also got four sata 3 ports which we certainly will be using to connect a drive to this system and having these four sata connectors on this small board means it's a great board to choose if you want to build a small nas or a small server although here i'll be using this board to build a more general purpose and media pc rotating around on the next edge we find a connector for a case fan we won't be using that but you can have a case fan connected to this board if you wish to and then we've got various connectors here for the front panel to connect in the front panel switches leds speaker things like that and then we've got a uart connector here and finally a 24 pin standard atx power connector spinning 90 again oh i love rotating around motherboards we find a cpu fan connector again we won't be using this we haven't got a fan on this board but if you want to add a cpu fan there's a connector for it and there's also here a real-time clock battery and there's an m.2 slot and the m.2 slot is e-keyed and so this is for fitting a wi-fi or bluetooth module as it says on the top of the slot and i might do that in the future but i don't currently have a wi-fi module to go into an m.2 slot so here in this build i'm going to be relying on a good old-fashioned usb wi-fi dongle finally on the fourth edge we have the excitement of the main i o panel which starts off with legacy ps2 mouse and keyboard ports and then next to that we've got a vga socket a dvi socket and an hdmi socket for connecting display we've got two usb 3 ports we've got a stack of two usb 2 ports plus gigabit ethernet and finally an array of analog and digital audio connectors and so there we are this is the itx motherboard we're using in this silent pc build if you want to look underneath we can have a look underneath if you wish there we are there's the underside of the board not a lot to note under there but i wanted to make sure i'd shown you underside of the board i didn't want you to think you'd missed out from not having a quick peek now we don't need to add too much to this board to build a working system but what we do need is memory and storage and so over here guess what i've got is it a unicorn no it is memory and storage specifically the storage is this drive it's an ssd it's a samsung evo ssd you can't go wrong buying a samsung evo ssd it's a 250 gigabyte model which cost her 44 pounds 59 and it sells for about 49.99 in the united states the memory is a crucial kit as you can see this is two four gigabyte ddr4 sodiums they're 2 400 megahertz because that's the fastest speed our board will take and they cost 35 pounds 71 for this kit or it's about 33.95 for these in the united states at the time of making this video so we open this up like that there we are there's our lovelier sodium modules i just like computer components and hopefully you do too so if we go back to our motherboard we can open up the retaining clips on the side of the first sodium slot and take our sodium module put it in there like that clips will come back into place that's nice and secure and then we can now go around to the second sodium slot open up the retaining clips and repeat the trick adding in the second memory module thank you very much says the computer there we are that's nice and secure and lo and behold our mini itx motherboard is now equipped with a gigabyte of ram greetings here i am back again and to progress this build further we're going to need a case and a power supply and when you're making a pc using a mini itx board you've got lots of options for cases because you could fit a board like this into a standard size very large pc case the mounting holes will line up as well the the back panel but i'm going to be using here a dedicated mini itx case quite a small case and specifically i'm going to be using just bring it in there get rid of that safely over there i'm going to be using this case here and if you are a long-term viewer of this channel and i've been a really long-term viewer of this channel you might recognize this case because this is the case i use in my first ever pc build here on explaining computers all the way back in august 2010 this was put together about 10 years ago and this case i think it's a lovely case it's still sold which probably says great things about the case doesn't it you can see it's all well that's that's what it is give it a good thump on my desk probably not a good idea but this case is called technically a more x3320 and it comes with a 60 watt external power supply there we are that's a 12 volt 5 amp power supply that obviously gives us 60 watts and it's sold currently for 58 pounds 80 by mini itx.com which is about about 75 something like that but the main advice i would give you if you're looking for a dedicated mini itx case is to shop around and to shop around a great deal because for example i noticed on moneyitx.com today and i have nothing to do with my idx.com i just liked looking on their website because it's got some cool stuff on it anyway i noticed they were selling a very similar case to this the morex 3300 for the 18 pounds including taxis with the same power supply so do look around to try and find the best mini itx case for your build anyway we need to uh get inside this because it's still got the old motherboard i put in 10 years ago so that's going to come out so i'll just empty out the case here we are getting things apart i've just realized i must have been in within 10 years because this is not the original ssd and there we are we've removed the old motherboard you can see it's slightly a tight fit to get everything into this case just need to remove the ssd and there we are we have a case all clear to fit our new motherboard and i hope it's going to enjoy appearing in another video because last time it appeared on video most of the world was still in 480p right we've now got to a point where we can start putting things together and to facilitate that i have removed this i o plate which was in there here from the old motherboard have to take that out before we can fit a new motherboard and i also forgot to talk about in my last section power because the power supply we've got remember this is an external power supply this power supply terminates in a barrel jack which gives us 12 volts which is great but a modern motherboard and a mini itx board is effectively just a modern computer motherboard requires power from one of these which is a 24 pin atx power connector which supplies 12 volts 5 volts and 3.3 volts and to allow that to happen as you can probably see if we just move that aside like that in the back of this case we have this power adapter board and this deals with the fact we've got 12 volts in and we need multiple voltages output on a standard atx power connector and you'll find this type of a power adapter board in all of the very small mini itx cases anyway let's get on with the build and we'll start by taking the i o shield for the new motherboard and fitting it in the back of the case where it'll hopefully fit in like this i hate fitting these they're never going well for me but hopefully i'm lucky go on get in your little swine get in that hole and stay there oh it doesn't want to there oh there we are you see as soon as you get mad with it it fits perfectly well all ready for the motherboard so we now take the motherboard here it is and this is going to go in here these are difficult enough to get through here at the best of times and even worse in these very very small very tight fitting cases but hopefully we can get that in under there there are two little grounding wires here which you have to be very careful of but i think that's gone in okay so i can now fit some screws and there we are and this final screw is one that secures down a grounding wire i'm only securing one of these grounding wires i'm sure that'll be perfectly sufficient and difficult enough to get in and there we are now things get really interesting because we have to get all this wiring fitted onto the board inside this case first of all we'll do the atx power connector which has to go in down here make sure you fit this the way around or getting this in is not easy but we will get there there we are the board now has power we'll worry about managing those cables in a second we now need to also bring through all the cabling here like this there we are these two various things on the motherboard one of these is front usb on the few disadvantages of using this older case is we don't have front usb 3 only got front usb 2 on this case so all i can do is to fit the front usb 2 ports like that and i'll have to plug my usb 3 things in the back i'm sure i can live with that this is largely going to be a small media pc sitting next to a television it won't need access to lots and lots of the usb ports i don't think we next need to fit a sata cable because we're going to use that to obviously connect in our sata drive we looked at earlier evo so i'll just plug this into sata one down here there we are and we also need to connect the wiring where is it over here somewhere where is it gone i've lost it where's the wiring oh i haven't put it through yet this is the wiring for the front panel which is going to go in through here this gives us the front leds for the drive and to show the computer is on which is important on the silent pc and also the power switch and these go down onto connectors all the way down there and by the magic of filmmaking i can show you those there where i'm first going to connect i think the power led and then we'll connect the drive led labelled here hard drive or hd led and then finally we'll connect in the jumpers for the power switch so we can turn the computer on and there we are it's always good to have those wires connected up and next i think we'll turn our attention to this which is our ssd so we'll go across to this bracket and our ssd fits and i think it's going to be somewhere like that various combinations i think this is the one that will work best and there we are four screws holding in our ssd we wouldn't want it trying to escape so we just go back to the pc itself and you might notice here i've changed the sata connector we just have a vertical sata connector coming up from the board here this is now a right angle sata connector and the reason i've done that is because the bracket were about to fit good on the top of that and the vertical tatter connector would have given us a lot of problems so it's not very usual to put on these right angle ones on the board especially blocking off another port but this is a single drive build so in this particular instance that doesn't matter you have to be flexible sometimes in these small cases and talking of flexibility this is the front audio connector which isn't connected to anything because this case has got a legacy audio connector and there's a modern hd audio connector on this board so it's a different pin out i could sort that out with jumpers i can't simply using the front audio connector so that can just stay quietly there sitting here nice and nice and nice and restfully inside the case so let's uh bring in the ssd and first of all connect it up there we are it's now got power and data and now we have to fit it into this case this is not an easy thing to do takes a little bit of coaxing but there we are we got it in would be good if that connector wasn't right on top of our heatsink but there's absolutely nothing we can do about it given the layout of this case so i think i'll just put in some screws there we are a bit of messing around there because that one had to be a countersunk screw so with that i think we're basically there if you're terribly worried about cable management and there's not a lot you can do in this case and in fact if you are totally worried about cable management i think there's probably plenty of very good therapy sessions you can attend anyway let's uh put the top now on the case pull things back together the little thing with the switch is there that's important it goes on i think like this moment of truth and all that that seemed rather successful so we'll just drop in the screws and the base section goes on here something like this and there we are we seem to have put the computer back together so let's just put it down over here to take a proper look at it and yes everything looks rather good indeed now there comes a point in every pc build where you have to try what is technically known as seeing if it works and so here we've got the pc connected up to a screen and to a rodent and a keyboard so let's put some power to the monitor let's hit monta come on there we are the mantra is working and so we can now activate the only moving part on this computer which is the switch down there and there we are oh an led has come on that's a good sign is anything going to happen on the screen please please please yes oh look it's gone into its uh bios and of course there's nothing on this computer there's no operating system on the drive there's no applications or anything like that so this is all we can expect to see right now but this clearly indicates to us that everything is working we can see we've got our j4 105 processor running at its base frequency of 1.5 gigahertz we can see we've got our 8 gigabytes of memory running in dual channel mode so everything is healthy and so i think right now the time has come for me to go and have a cup of tea and we'll bring the first part of this build series to a close so there we are we've built or rebuilt this compact and silent mini itx pc although i really must remember to take the intel atom sticker off the front in next week's video i'm going to move on to software installing an operating system and applications and i'll leave you to ponder just what i'm going to install and i'll also be looking in next week's video after this unit's performance and power consumption but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed it you've seen it please pass that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very soon you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 336,371

Keywords: Mini-ITX PC build, silent mini-ITX PC, silent ITX PC, Christopher Barnatt, Barnatt, J4105, Celeron J4105, passively cooled PC, Samsung EVO, PC build, ASRock ITX, ASRock mini-ITX, ASRock PC build

Id: HRJvSux34Hk

Length: 20min 37sec (1237 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020