HTPC Case

[Jase]

I am looking for a HTPC case that i can have in the living room under the TV, i have looked at the silverstone and coolermaster cases but they seem a bit on the large side. I am in the uk so if anyone could recomend any other cases & tips on quiet pc components that would be great.

Many Thanks Jase

[sixgun]

I am looking for a HTPC case that i can have in the living room under the TV, i have looked at the silverstone and coolermaster cases but they seem a bit on the large side. I am in the uk so if anyone could recomend any other cases & tips on quiet pc components that would be great.

Many Thanks Jase

I'm looking into building a HTPC for my living room at the moment.

Currently, the Hiper Media slimline case looks nice to me. But i'm having difficulty finding a decent ( and not too expensive ) microATX board to go in it.

I've looked into the Asus K8N-VM CSM, but according to quite a few people on the Asus forums it has major stability problems, due to it over-volting the CPU in certain circumstances.

Anyway, check out the Hiper Media case.

http://shop.mediacomputers.co.uk/acatalo...Cases.html

Regards.

[neilraymond]

i'm using the hiper media case with an aopen i915GMm-HFS motherboard. the board wasn't cheap, but it does have vga, component video and dvi output all onboard, which is handy (although i've only used the vga so far).

there are some issues trying to get the board to fin in the case as the supplied heatsink is to tall and the mounting hole pattern is non-standard, but i eventually got a slightly modified zalman graphics card cooler to fit. i'm really happy with it now, it's quite, it runs cool (uses a pentium m chip, although that's not cheap either) and i've not had any stability problems.

hope this helps

neil

[McBainUK]

I am in the uk so if anyone could recomend any other cases & tips on quiet pc components that would be great.

Look no further than here. Lots of useful info, esp in the 'recomended' section. Practialy built my new htpc based on these (see sig).

[Torque]

I have the older version of this:


It is almost the same size as my Yamaha reciever. I put an Antec SL400 PSU in it and used two of those quiet panaflo 80mm fans (one on the heatsink for the CPU, and one on a 60mm-80mm funnel for the exhaust port). It is very quiet and I'm really happy with how it blends with the rest of my AV components: http://www.coloradodesigns.com/pics/HTPC...center.jpg

[lif]

I could recommend ASUS Pundit-R (or PH1 as newer model). In my mind it is very elegant in living room and rich of features. But recommending not to use much PSU power as when load is high (and also temperature) the PSU fan will make some noise (although CPU fan is extremely quiet event with 3,2GHz Northwood on full load). In forums people have been complained about its SPDIF on front, but it is pseudo problem. SPDIF cable could be rerouted from inside the case without breaking anything and front door could be let closed so the cable comes out from rear.

[spyork]

I have the Coolermaster ATC 610 similar in design to the one Torgue pointed out. I'm looking to get rid of this case as I no longer have a need for it. If anyone is interested let me know. BTW...I live in the US. Thanks...

[sixgun]

Thanks for the tips everyone.

Problem is, with my current A/V shelving system, i am limited to around 130mm high and 300 mm deep, width the same as a VCR/AMP

I could, at a stretch, remove one of the glass shelves and just have a double height one. But i'd really like as slimline a case as possible.

I've been looking at the coolermaster series. Just to give myself a bit more future proofing by allowing more that one expansion card to be fitted.


The plan is to have just the HTPC and amp. Replacing the MVP, Divx network player, and freeview box with the HTPC.

So, i want to try and set GBPVR up to do live tv via the DVB card with the buffer on the local disk, then have the recordings coming from my existing setup effectively replacing the MVP, so i can play xvid/divx and get proper widescreen display working.


Anyone know of any cases as "sexy" looking as the hiper media, but slightly larger to allow 2 or more expansion cards.

[River_Styx]

You could also look at the Enlight EN-7473.
Not expensive at all ! In the Netherlands you can buy it for about 65 euro's.


Enlight EN-7473

[wtg]

Warning... Warning... Warning!!

Be very careful with a CoolerMaster case. I have a CoolerMaster Cavalier case. I bought it used and like it's look veyr much, even if it is heavy and deep. However it uses a proprietary power supply and when I added a new hardware and needed a beefier one, that's when the trouble began.

My case had a 300W, and with 2 tuners, NVidia 6200, GB lan, 2 300GB harddrives and a DVD-ROM, 300 watts wasn't enough. It would just reboot after a few minutes and looking at my BIOS system inspector I could see my 12V lines were fluctuating when I plugged in the second harddrive. No problem I thought... go to a 350w PS.

The Cavalier case uses an ATX PS with proprietary dimensions, so I had to order from them. They sell a 350w replacement that I thought would work well. I started trying to order one in January... I just got it today! I'm not kidding.

I called them more times than I can recall... nearly without fail I'd be told to leave a message and someone would call me back. Most of the time, no one would. The few times someone would, they'd tell me they were out of stock but to call back in two weeks. Repeat. Then repeat. Then repeat.

Emails were answered only a little more often. Sometimes I'd be told it'd be 3 weeks, one time told it was because their plant was closed due to the Chinese new year... always call back in 2 or 3 weeks. Once I got a person's name, I tried not to let go. Direct emails to person still often went unanswered. Eventually I'd give up and email support again, and sometimes I'd get someone new and start all over.

I finally got a new guy in support and he consistently returned my emails during the last 6 weeks. I'd check in with him every 2 weeks and he'd at least reply and say they hadn't come in yet. I was so thankful to get a response I could hardly even complain that I was getting the same story all the time.

Like I said, I started this in January and, miracle of miracles, they finally came in stock last week. I ordered and received it today, almost 4 months to the day.

My advice, avoid CoolerMaster like the plague. Especially do not order a case that has propriety components. Support from them is atrocious, and in the case of propriety components, what can you do if you don't get it from them?