I bought this case for my HTPC last year and am pretty happy with it. Comes with Imon Remote and VDF (digital display on the front of the case, which can display time, date. cpu& ram useage, email alerts, news, weather etc).
Some thoughts on the Case for anyone interested in one:
1. it has VERY bright LED's on the front. I found this distracting when trying to watch the TV and so did some googling about it. Many users report that they find the brightness of the LCD's annoying (there are a lot of Google results on how to dim them). Even in a well lit room they're bright. In a dimly lit room they really stand out.
Fixes vary. Some users adding compounds to the front of them to limit the radiation of light. Personally I ended up disconnecting the LCD's completely (the vfd is on when the machine is on, and I dont really need to know when the computer is accessing a hard disk). Variable resistors may be an ideal route but some knowledge of electronics would be required.
2. The VFD is two lines of text. Our couch is about 3-3.5 metres away from the HTPC and its not possible to read the VFD from that distance. This makes the VFD a bit of a white elephant unless you want to get up from your chair and walk closer to the machine every time you want to read it. Does not appear to be able to be configured to use both lines as one to enlarge the text. The Font cannot be altered as far as I know. I have no idea why it was designed like this or why its still in production in this format, but there you go.
3. The imon remote is a nice unit with plenty of buttons and a sensible button-layout. Its also very easy to set up with MP. Just a matter of programming the buttons to corresponding keystrokes or importing an existing .imo file (like the one attached). The colored buttons can be programmed with shortcut'r plugin. There's plenty of info in the Forum here about how to do it.
4. On the upside, the case has heaps of room inside and is very easy to cool. It has space for (I think) 6x 3.5" drives and 2x 5.25" so oodles of available real-estate for storage expansion. Its also full-height so no issues with low-pro heatsyncs or video cards. Cooling is straightforward with 2x 80mm case fans and additional slots at the front of the case for 2 more if required. I also really like the iMON remote which works great with MP.
Basically im happy with the case and I would use it again if I was to build another HTPC, mainly because the price was good ($185AU) if I had a higher budget though, I would look for something with a better front display.
Some thoughts on the Case for anyone interested in one:
1. it has VERY bright LED's on the front. I found this distracting when trying to watch the TV and so did some googling about it. Many users report that they find the brightness of the LCD's annoying (there are a lot of Google results on how to dim them). Even in a well lit room they're bright. In a dimly lit room they really stand out.
Fixes vary. Some users adding compounds to the front of them to limit the radiation of light. Personally I ended up disconnecting the LCD's completely (the vfd is on when the machine is on, and I dont really need to know when the computer is accessing a hard disk). Variable resistors may be an ideal route but some knowledge of electronics would be required.
2. The VFD is two lines of text. Our couch is about 3-3.5 metres away from the HTPC and its not possible to read the VFD from that distance. This makes the VFD a bit of a white elephant unless you want to get up from your chair and walk closer to the machine every time you want to read it. Does not appear to be able to be configured to use both lines as one to enlarge the text. The Font cannot be altered as far as I know. I have no idea why it was designed like this or why its still in production in this format, but there you go.
3. The imon remote is a nice unit with plenty of buttons and a sensible button-layout. Its also very easy to set up with MP. Just a matter of programming the buttons to corresponding keystrokes or importing an existing .imo file (like the one attached). The colored buttons can be programmed with shortcut'r plugin. There's plenty of info in the Forum here about how to do it.
4. On the upside, the case has heaps of room inside and is very easy to cool. It has space for (I think) 6x 3.5" drives and 2x 5.25" so oodles of available real-estate for storage expansion. Its also full-height so no issues with low-pro heatsyncs or video cards. Cooling is straightforward with 2x 80mm case fans and additional slots at the front of the case for 2 more if required. I also really like the iMON remote which works great with MP.
Basically im happy with the case and I would use it again if I was to build another HTPC, mainly because the price was good ($185AU) if I had a higher budget though, I would look for something with a better front display.
Wales
). Great HTPC case.
