BluBawx Mod by E.E.L. Ambiense

BluBawx Mod by E.E.L. Ambiense

Foreword by: Richard Swinburne

Finished earlier this year, E.E.L. Ambiense's mini-ITX mod, BluBawx, is a little beauty! We've had a couple of other small form factor mods pop up this year, like Chris Cook's Atomwood and Sleepstreamers Rampage, and not to forget Ingram by Jeffrey Stephenson, so it's clearly a popular modding segment for the Pro's.

In our opinion, BluBawx sits in the same league as last years highly rated Relfection HTPC by Magnus Persson. The similarities are obvious, although it's great to see how each modder took a mini-ITX AMD board and wrapped some dark acrylic around it, fabricating two entirely different styles from scratch.

For a man who already has this under his belt, we think his "first" scratch build could not have a better foundation! We hope you enjoy the phenomenal attention to detail in this cute case that houses plenty of power as much as we did!

Concept

Here I am again to start off another new build. It's not going to be huge though. Not this time. I love large full-towers, full of 800 lbs of liquids and heat-producing hardware as much as the next guy, but I've decided to go the exact opposite direction this time around. I've always wanted to build something small; like really small, but I just never got around to it. I was waiting for the hardware to get up to snuff for what I wanted to do with this vaporous idea of a build, that had been bouncing around in the noggin for a time and a half.


I think it's finally here. And a few of my peers here on bit-tech have repeatedly asked for me to do a scratch-build, so I'm relenting. I've thrown caution to the reckless wind.

This is a HTPC build and I've been hard at work on it already. Hell, I even scratch-designed a quasi-Blu-Ray font for the builds name because I'm just that anal. And yes, the "1" in the name signifies that I may continue to build future editions of it if this one works out well.

Anyway, I present to you my first 'scratch-build' project: BluBawx.


I'm designed and cut this thing out of different kinds of acrylic. Namely, transparent blue, solid black, and a cool mirror-blue acrylic for a mix I've been itching to try. I went with it on the cuff, seeing how it all went together as I continued to build, rather than expressly plan the arrangement all out beforehand.

This build comprised of a few familiar parts: namely, the motherboard. bit-tech reviewed this J&W Minix motherboard, and what they found really perked my ears up (and eyes, if that's possible). Finally, we have a board that can achieve desktop performance in a mini-ITX form factor, plus have accleration for full HD playback too! Couple that with a low power 45W AMD X2 CPU, some G.Skill SO-DIMM memory, a Western Digital notebook drive and Blu-ray combo optical drive and this thing is set for some Home Theatre goodness.

System Specs:

• Motherboard: J&W® Minix™ mini-ITX 780G AMD board
  
• CPU: AMD X2 5050e 45W AM2
  
• RAM: G.Skill DDR2-800 4GB SO-DIMM kit
  
• HDD: Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 2.5in SATA II
  
• Optical: LG GGC-H20LK Blu-Ray Disc / HD DVD / DVD combo SATA
  
• OS: Vista Home Premium 32-bit
  
• PSU: 120W DC-DC

Let's get started, shall we?