29 May 2006
The Acura ITX Computer Chassis
)Published on May 29th, 2006 @ 02:51:35 pm, using 469 words, 4670 views
After much research and building comparison lists of pros and cons, I've finally made my selection. The chassis that will house the Acura ITX carputer is the Akiwa GHB-B05 from Guanghsing Industrial. I purchased the case with a 200W 1U PSU (mine was shipped with a 200W Sparkle Power PSU), which was handy for benchtesting the system rather than running it from my spare automotive battery, which required recharging every other day or so.
The chassis is very compact (measuring 11x11x3), and has room for 3 laptop hard drives and a slimline CD-ROM drive. It has front-mounted USB ports (which won't be used in this application, so the wiring for those ports was removed and stored), a large top vent, and an exhaust fan in the front-side of the case. The case has two rear PCI expansion slots (though only one is usable for PCI cards, the other for a USB or serial backplate connector), and ships with a PCI riser card...
The chassis is very well constructed, the entire case being constructed of aluminum. The open view from the top shows the mounting bracket for the slimline CD-ROM drive. Beneath it and to the left is the mounting bracket for 2 laptop hard drives and the exhaust fan. Under the CD bracket is the housing which hides the 1U PSU.
Removing the housing which contains the 1U PSU, and drilling four holes into the floor of the case, we now have a perfect mounting for the OPUS120 PSU. I used some spare motherboard stand-off mounts, and used small nuts and lockwashers on the underside of the case to hold them in place. This image shows the OPUS120 mounted securely in the GHB-B05. The green/white PWR-SW cable which comes with the OPUS 120 was too short to reach from the OPUS to the motherboard's PWR pin, so I used a (very) old 2-pin/2-pin CD-ROM audio cable which I had in my computer junk bin. It had the exact 2-pin spacing on either end, and was approx 12" long, which gave me a little room to spare to hide the wire.
The case with the PSU bracket reinstalled, along with the EPIA MII-12000, and the 40Gb laptop hard drive installed.
The next image shows the chassis with the mini CD-ROM installed and preliminary wiring in place, including the upper expansion slot in the chassis being used for USB ports 3 and 4 connected from the pin headers on the motherboard.
The rear of the case with the top reinstalled, shows the backplane of the EPIA MII-12000 with its compact flash and PCMCIA slots, audio ports, additional USB, etc.
or, What my speakers are currently pumping...
Monster Magnet - Dopes to Infinity
This post is the creative work of Yours Truly and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
CarPC, Carputer, mobile computing, Acura, touchscreen, mini-itx, DC Power Supply, EPIA, Opus 120
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