My New HTPC All Finished - Antec Fusion

[Lone]

Well after quite of bit of time spent setting this machine up (much more software not hardware!) I have finally got it running perfect as and now in the living room stable enough for the girl to start using Below is a pic of the setup and the specs on the machine.



For those who cant find it, the machine is the amp looking box at the far left, absolute perfect fit (within a 1cm all round) into our tv cabinet, and I only took a lucky guess that it would fit!

Antec Fusion Case with VFD (Highly Recommended!)
AMD AM2 Athlon 64 X2 3600+ Dual Core CPU
MSI K9VGM-V mATX M/board
AVerMedia TV Hybrid +FM (A16A) PCI
MSI ATI Radeon X600XT 256MB
1024MB Corsair DDR2 RAM
250GB Samsung SATA HDD
54Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter
Samsung DVD/RW Drive
MCE Remote (Well worth the buy)

Also just want to say its been great finding this forum as there has been heaps of helpful advice on here!

Also I was orignally going to run MCE on the machine and try to and after about 3+ different attempts on installs with it I ended up giving mediaportal a go and no way in hell am I going back, I would pay more for this then I would for MCE as its almost the same, but heaps more configurable! Great work everyone, you have my life sooo much easier!

[NeoLuddite]

Your system looks really good, congrats on finishing it! What type of connection do you use from your HTPC to your TV? And do i see another DVD player there? Whats the deal with that?

[Lone]

Thanks I use just a s-video connection from the video card to the tv, no point for anything fancy with the TV I have at the moment, but the card has a DVI port which will be used when I get round to buying a LCD TV

Yup that is a DVD player you see in the middle section, its the DVD player we used before we had the machine but its task now is to do the audio as it has a built in amp and the audio signal goes from the pc to it to the surround sound setup

[Jasey_wasey]

Nice one!
Good Job it fits in the gap, if you're anything like me, you wouldn't find another case, you'd buy a new TV Cabinet, or modify that one to make it fit

Jay

[tomoqv]

Looks very nice indeed! I am considering an Antec Fusion for my next HTPC project too. I have a question though, that is not really related to HTPC design, but rather to the placement of the subwoofer in your picture. Is it OK to have it so close to the PC and TV? I have Logitech Z-5500 speakers and read somewhere that preferrably the subwoofer was to be placed no closer than 3 ft or something from a PC to avoid interference. Does anybody how important this is?

Tomas

[Bram]

I love the Case. To bad it's mATX. But still, it's very cheap!

[Spragleknas]

Yes, the Fusion is great. The NSK2400 gives even more bang for the bucks (half the price of fusion).

Silent PC Review has a great review for these cases. I never seem to sto beeing impressed by Antec - although I don't have one myself, I have built several rigs on Antec cases, and there are always new and clever solutions.

[Froad]

Looks really great!

Thinking of starting of my HTPC project with the Antec Fusion case as well.

One thing worries me though; from what have seen posted in the forum there seems to be problems to get the included VFD to work with MP if you still want the volume knob and remote to function properly. How did you solve this?

[Lone]

Is it OK to have it so close to the PC and TV?

Most modern speakers are magnetically shielded but I cant confirm on that one but now you have me worried! But to be honest the TV is worth all that much (just a 68cm CRT) and wouldnt mind an escuse to replace it. But the PC might be a bit of a worry but nothing I have encountered since Ive done the setup (over a month ago now).

It is a bit of a shame that its mATX only but thankfully the prices on those boards have come down a heap compared to what I remmeber them being a few years ago, but still have limitations of just how many extra cards you can have still

I never seem to sto beeing impressed by Antec - although I don't have one myself, I have built several rigs on Antec cases, and there are always new and clever solutions.

Couldnt agree anymore, I have had my time of doing some pc setups in the past and just some of the things in the case blew my mind like the vertical 'floating' hard drive setup to keep things quiet and just the setup inside to seperate loud componenets to keep noise down.

One thing worries me though; from what have seen posted in the forum there seems to be problems to get the included VFD to work with MP if you still want the volume knob and remote to function properly. How did you solve this?

At the moment Im using the builtin 'External Display' plugin (using the 'Soundgraph iMON USB Driver' Port-USB, Columns-16, Rows-2, Comm Delay-1) which works fine in displaying all the mediaportal info BUT the volume knob doesnt work. Its not biggie as we have the MCE remote being used anyways for volume.

But you can get the volume knob to work using the standard ANTEC drivers but you want have anything on the display. But to be honest, you barely ever look at it!

[geov]

Very nice...you now have me excited about the "Antec Fusion Case"
Do you think a Hauppauge PVR500 would fit into this case? What's the maximum Height & Depth that the case would allow for a PCI-card?

Cheers
GeoV