Upside Down Thinking

The motherboard in the now wrong location

After a few hours of meticulous grinding away with a dremel (around 4), I was ready to see how the motherboard would fit. Immediately I spotted a problem. As you can see, the power connector on the motherboard is located right where the NES power buttons are. The NES button module just wasn't going to fit. Not only that, the Pico PSU power connector that plugs into the motherboard sticks up a ways. It was going to interfere with the door of where the NES game cartridge is loaded. I had plans for that door. There was no way I was going to be able to fit the board the way it was; the room just wasn't there.

The NES power buttons module

This all meant a redesign, I'd have to do some upside down thinking to figure this one out. Hmmm..... Upside down. That's a great idea! I flipped the motherboard upside down and took a look.

Plenty of space for NES buttons

As you can see from this picture, there is plenty of room to fit the NES power button module. This also left enough room for the Pico PSU power adapter to now fit under the motherboard on the now opposite side. But of course this posed another problem. The RAM was sitting on the floor of the case, not ideal. Not only was it on the floor, but was sitting on the "T". This caused the whole motherboard to sit too high which resulted in the motherboard connectors also sitting partly above the top of the lower half of the NES case. I needed to make more room, this meant cutting out the "T" from the bottom of the case.

The "T" is no more

I didn't need to cut the whole "T" out. Just enough to make room for the RAM. After this "minor" adjustment (around another 2 hours), everything fit well again.

An upside down board from upside down thinking

Now that I had clearance for the board and the NES power buttons, the next step for the bottom half of the NES is to open up the back for the motherboard connectors.

X Marks The Spot

"Dry-fitting" the motherboard

I wanted the connections of the motherboard to be at the back of the NES case. This made sense logically and also by design. The side walls of the NES are slanted out, which would make lining up the motherboard connections to the case almost impossible. The back side of the NES also has some pre-existing holes for some of the connectors (power, channel switch, etc.) so this meant the only location for the motherboard would have to be the right hand side.

Marking all the posts to be removed

I lined the motherboard up to where I wanted to place it and quickly marked all the posts that would need to be removed. A fair bit of dremel work lay ahead. I was hoping I would have enough vertical space for the motherboard and its components to not have to cut the "T" out of the bottom. So far it looks like it'll fit fine.

Heat Is The Enemy

I knew I needed some proper ventilation and airflow to dissipate the heat generated from the PC. The cooler the temperature in the case, the better the system stability would be.

There is already a ventilation strip in the top half of the NES case. I figured I could mount a small case fan there to act as an exhaust port. The vent isn't really wide open. It's more of a layered design to allow air to move horizontally through it. This wasn't going to work with a forced air fan.

After taking the dremel to it I was able to open up a section just big enough to mount a 40mm fan.

After the system is up and running I'll monitor the temps to see if I need to possibly add an intake fan as well.

The Hunt for the NES

The NES was by far the hardest piece of hardware to come by... sort of. I already had an NES in the garage, but I wasn't about to butcher a fully operational retro gaming system. So I opted to find one somewhere that was no longer working.

After some searching online on various sites like Craigslist I found a posting on Kijiji by someone who lived in the local area who sold NES systems, and guaranteed they would work "or your money back". So I asked if he had any that didn't work. He said he did and that I could pick one up for $15. The only problem was that he was out of town and wouldn't be back for a week. A week went by, and so did various attempts at contacting this guy. His responses were vague and far between. After another week of the run-around I eventually gave up with this poor excuse for a businessman. During this time, all the parts for the PC came in, but I was still waiting for the most important part, the case.

And so, the hunt began again. I went back to Craigslist and did another search. After reviewing a good 150 or so adds of various NES systems for sale (working ones of course) I eventually came to an add for an NES that wasn't working. I immediately sent an inquiry to see if it was still available. Five minutes later I received a response that it was. So after some back and forth emailing, we decided to meet up that evening and make the exchange. He said he found it in his grandfather's garage and brought it home to try it out. Fortunately for me, it hadn't worked!

The NES had seen better days. It was dirty, grimy and had bits of something gooey dripping down one side. It needed a good cleaning. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to the rescue. After a quick scrub down it looked brand new. Most NES systems become yellowed over the years of being exposed to sunlight. I think the grime and dirty garage helped keep the paint on this one protected and pristine.

Next step, gutting the NES's components inside and mock-fitting the motherboard to see what needs to be cut/trimmed/ground/sanded out.

The Hardware

After many, many hours of searching across the web, I finally decided on all the hardware necessary to build a high power Home Theater PC.

First thing to figure out was what kind of case to house all the hardware. I wanted something a little more unique then those out-of-the-box mini computer cases. Then it hit me, an NES. Not a Super NES, not an XBox but a 1985 retro style Nintendo Entertainment System. Perfect. The NES is a perfect little case for a HTPC. Its simple design and relative bulky size meant it would look good in the entertainment center and be able to house all the high performance hardware inside. I can also make use of its power switch, reset switch and power indicator light quite easily.

Now that I had the case figured out, I needed to find a motherboard to fit inside the NES. A standard ATX full size motherboard is 12 x 9.6 inches. The NES is 10 x 8 x 3.5 inches, this meant I would need to find a board much smaller then standard in order to fit it inside. I also needed to consider the extra space that would be required for housing the hard drive. I went with a laptop hard drive. They're small and typically faster then a full size desktop drive. With this in mind, I stumbled across the Mini-ITX form factor of motherboard. These boards are 7.6 x 7.6 inches and typically contain integrated graphics cards, further saving on space.

Below is a list of all the components:

• NES
• Gigabyte E350N-USB3 Motherboard
• G.SKILL Ripjaws 4GB DDR3-1600 Memory Kit
• Pico PSU 90W 12V DC-DC ATX Power Supply with 60W Power Brick
• Seagate Momentus 500GB 2.5IN SATA 7200RPM 16MB Notebook Hard Drive
• ATX Power/Reset/LED connector cables

The PC Components

Gigabyte E350N-USB3 Motherboard

Gigabyte E350N-USB3 Motherboard

Of note is the Gigabyte motherboard. A bonus of this board is that it comes with AMD Fusion™ Technology. This means that the CPU and graphics controller are built into the same physical chip! A nice bonus as I would save on cost (don't have to buy a separate CPU and graphics card) and also on space (don't need a bulky graphics card stuck in one of the PCI slots). The CPU is an AMD E-350 Dual-Core processor and the graphics controller is AMD Radeon HD 6310.

Gigabyte E350N-USB3 Motherboard Connectors

The motherboard also has these other great features for a home theater PC:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/ mouse port (old school keyboard/mouse connectors)
• 1 x D-Sub port
• 1 x DVI-D port
• 1 x HDMI port
• 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 1 x RJ-45 port
• 6 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/Microphone)

All I will be using is the HDMI for video, the optical for audio and a few USB ports for wireless keyboard and mouse.

Pico PSU Power Supply

Pico PSU Power Supply Adapter

There was no way I was going to fit a standard ATX power supply in the NES case. I needed another option. I found these nice little power connectors that work great for Mini-ITX boards. They plug right into the motherboard and offer a DC/DC adapter connector. You can consider this setup similar to how a laptop is plugged in for power. After a bit of research, it looked like the PC would only eat up around 40-50 Watts of power. I decided on the 60W power brick for supplying the juice. I can always upgrade this easily in the future. This particular power supply adapter has the 4-pin P4 for the CPU, 1 x SATA and 1 x Molex. Its a 20-pin adapter rather then a 24-pin. The extra 4 pins are for powering the PCI Express slot, which I won't be using. I will be running the hard drive off the SATA and possibly use the Molex for a fan.

I ordered the parts from NCIX and while waiting for some of them to be shipped to the store, I began the search for the NES.