Thought I’d share…Intel DH87RL board, PICO 150-XT PSU, 4770T CPU, 16 gigs, Streacom FC5 case. IOW a slightly updated version of the CAPS v.3 Zuma, but with two laptop drives instead of an SSD, and no SOTM USB card. I do use the SOTM drive noise filters but haven’t installed those yet. And I will probably add a SOTM power supply. A fun and easy build except for the heat pipes but once you get the hang of it they’re not too hard to install. Highly recommend the Streacom case, it looks just like a nice slimline power amp!
Attached files 
Cool. What software are you running?
Wow, that’s compact. I was frightened off by the heat pipe thing. ~:>
Wglenn, it is indeed a bit of a pain to do the heat pipes. It would be a little easier I think if you have a second person to help, but this was my first time and I managed it without glopping things up too much. (I have built a zillion pc’s and servers but this was my first heat pipe experience.) If you are reasonably non-klutzy I wouldn’t let it scare you off. Do be careful not to strip the screws going into the aluminum heatsink body. Also, as you can see some of the leads on the Pico PSU are barely long enough; you can get extensions, but with this case at least they are OK.
Paul, for now, I am running Windows 7 and J River, because I have not overcome my loathing of Win 8. 
But we’ll see what the future brings. Bottom line is it will run J River with some OS over Wavestream (USB for now until wavestream is ready for prime time.)
@networkguy Wish the photos were smaller
I imagine it is your browser. With Firefox, the images are re-sized and perfectly fully fill the screen.
Very nice unit. The heat pipes do not appear particularly tricky, but just require a bit of care. What am I missing?
Elk, the thing with the heat pipes is that you have to kind of rest them onto the lower part of the cpu heat sink before anything is firmly attached, thus relying on the stickiness of the heat sink compound to keep everything in place, and then spread heat sink compound onto the other ends and sort of keep everything from moving/sliding/falling off while you finagle the brackets into place and screw everything down. It does require a bit of dexterity, but it can be done.
Got it. Great description.
I was thinking it was more like thermal compound and how many both over think and over use the stuff.
Elk: Funny you should mention that - I totally agree. I always try to be very minimalist with it, but I see so many pics on the web of people just glopping the stuff all over. I did second-guess myself a little b/c I have done about ten zillion cpu-heat sinks but have zero experience with these heat pipe thingies… as soon as I get the OS installed I will fire up the Intel utilities to check the temp. But basically I just used about a 1mm bead on the flat surfaces of the heat pipes on the side which matters. I think that should be fine, but we’ll know soon enough if it’s not.
I bet it will be perfect; you clearly know your stuff.
@networkguy
Thought I’d share…Intel DH87RL board, PICO 150-XT PSU, 4770T CPU, 16 gigs, Streacom FC5 case. IOW a slightly updated version of the CAPS v.3 Zuma, but with two laptop drives instead of an SSD, and no SOTM USB card. I do use the SOTM drive noise filters but haven’t installed those yet. And I will probably add a SOTM power supply. A fun and easy build except for the heat pipes but once you get the hang of it they’re not too hard to install. Highly recommend the Streacom case, it looks just like a nice slimline power amp!
The SotM power supply is not designed to work with the ZUMA build. Take a look at the chart on this post for a power supply guide.
Login
Jesus R
Uh oh.
Jesus, sorry, that was a brain glitch on my part, I actually meant to refer to your Sonore Upgrade Power Supply. At 12.5 amps/12v that should be fine, right?
Yes…that would work.
Great. I just have to wait till my wallet recovers from building the server and a new house to put it in. BTW I have the SOTM drive noise filters (which I guess is why SOTM was on my mind :)) I just haven’t taken them out of the old server yet.
Has anyone tried an Intel NUC for a music server? Outboard power supply should help lower noise.
I built a mac mini with eternal PS and SSD, with max ram. Itunes/ Roon with Bridge II. Sounds decent.
JRiver sells a NUC-based server so I am sure they would work fine. I have not used one but did make an office server from a Compulab Fitlet, which is fanless. Sounds good in that system though I really haven’t compared it to anything else. Re noise, I guess the question is how much is generated by the PS and how much by the motherboard, and does it matter. I figured the fan noise would be a bigger issue, but YMMV of course.
I do see some micro pc’s out there fanless
Yeah there are plenty. Wasn’t hugely important to me really but I figured if I am going to build music servers I might as well go that way.