Choosing an HTPC case

Kovboi said:

When I started thinking about building an HTPC, I found the choice of case to be unexpectedly complicated. Although Silverstone tends to dominate the scene with their LaScala series, there is a lot of variety and various HTPC forums tend to have their own parochial favorites. Much also depends on how you are planning to use your HTPC: if you’re going to put together an overclocked gaming rig to make your buddies drool, you’re going to need something very different from the casual user who just wants to watch tv and DVDs and listen to music.

These are a few notes I jotted down while trying to choose a case:

1. Cooling

Cooling is the single largest concern with any HTPC case – the smaller the case, the harder it is to keep things cool. That means you need good ventilation and quality fans, but that can in turn produce greater fan noise that makes your HTPC more intrusive in your living space.

CPU: It almost goes without saying that CPU cooling is a lot easier to manage in a tower case. Be aware that large heatsinks (especially tower designs, like the Scythe Ninja) may not fit a lot of horizontal cases. Wide and flat heatsinks (such as the Zalman CNPS7700-CU or Thermalright XP-120) might be low enough, but could be too large for some mATX cases. Another potential concern with horizontal cases is that some coolers with heatpipes are designed to be positioned parallel to the ground and may not perform efficiently.

Case fans: The ideal HTPC would be fanless, but that’s simply not realistic for anything but a tower case (or, if you have $600 to burn, the A-Tech HeatSync 6000 looks interesting). Some familiar principles apply here: when you can’t go fanless, try to use larger (120mm) fans since they push as much air at lower speed than smaller (80mm) fans. Otherwise consider using a fan controller to undervolt your fans to 7v or 5v to further reduce fan noise. Don’t be surprised if you have to replace the fans that come with the case with the usual suspects like Nexus, Yate Loon, GlobalWin, Enermax, or Scythe.

UPDATE: the latest and greatest for silent cooling appears to be the Scythe Slipstream 500 rpm or 800 rpm versions.

PSU: For the power supply, look for cases with a side or bottom vent for the PSU. This is helpful for keeping it thermally isolated (ie, it does not draw warmer air from the rest of the system). This also means that the power supply fan doesn’t need to ramp up to speed at lower loads, resulting in a quieter computer and longer operational life for your power supply.

GPU: Together with the video tuner card, this is likely to be the hottest component in your system. Ideally a case will have vents around the video card area to facilitate cooling your video card. If you have a passive (fanless) cooling solution for your graphics card (especially the kind with heat pipes that wrap around the card), be sure to check the case clearance for compatibility.

2. Silence

For the most part this will depend on the components you put into the case, particularly the CPU heatsink and the power supply. But the more silent the components, the hotter they tend to be. Many HTPC cases that are component stereo size use smaller fans (60-80mm) that can be annoyingly loud. The good news is that these can always be replaced, if need be. Newer HTPC cases like the Antec NSK2400 now include 120mm quiet fans.

HDD: Hard drives can be surprisingly noisy when you silence everything else in your rig. Look for cases that have mounting brackets that isolate your hard drive(s) from the rest of the case, dampen their noise with rubber grommets, or even provide enough room to suspend your drives with elastic.

3. Form factor

The choice of form factor essentially comes down to two issues: aesthetics and expandability. Regarding aesthetics, this obviously is a highly personal decision. Many people will want a horizontal case that matches their entertainment center components. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with using a tower case for your HTPC, plus they are usually easier to open up and get into when necessary.

Regarding expandability, the form factor determines what kind of motherboard (micro-ATX or ATX) and the range of components that can be installed. Needless to say, there are some tradeoffs involved:
• The smaller the form factor, the less room will be available for additional 3.5” or 5.25” drives and PCI cards – something that may be a serious concern if you intend to have a sound card, network card, and two tv tuner cards. Tower cases have a clear edge here.
• Smaller cases mean smaller fans, as discussed above.
• Smaller cases also limit the possibilities for expansion, though you probably won’t be digging around in your HTPC case as much as your main rig.

Now a lot of mATX motherboards come with perfectly capable onboard video and audio, making a smaller case more reasonable. But that might not be enough for a widescreen gamer or a hardcore audiophile. The ability to add a new sound card, additional video card (for SLI or Crossfire), video tuner, and a wireless network card may make the choice for you. Other things to look for include easy access to front audio, USB and/or firewire ports, and IrDA capability.

Most importantly, measure the space where you intend to put your HTPC! When building my own HTPC, I narrowed a list down to about 5 cases but only one of them actually fit in my media center. If you have an enclosed media center like I do, you’ll want close to an inch of free space around the top and sides for air to circulate, and make sure it isn’t so deep that it hangs out the front or back.


4. IR Receiver: (contributed by silkshadow)

An IR receiver built into the case saves you yet more cable mess in your home theater setup because you don't need a USB based one. There is one caveat to this, and that is if you need to control a STB. In that case, I would advise to look for a case without an IR receiver built in because none of them have blasters. There are a few integrated IR receiver systems in use today:

A) IRTrans - This is the one I would recommend if it is implemented correctly. In setups like the Zalman HD160 they give you a power passthrough. In every IRtrans case I have seen, this feature is included but I have read cases where it is not, so check first. This keeps the IR receiver powered all the time. Makes it very easy to bring the PC out of standby or even do a cold boot from the remote.

The IRrans driver is very flexible since they use a "ir server" to monitor actions which is easy to pass through to various remote control software. It is currently supported by both Girder and HIP with Eventghost working on support for it. IRTrans is aggressive in getting software compatible with it and their support is top notch, in my experience. Though once in a while the email reply you get can be hard to understand as, for some of the reps, English is clearly not their first language.

IRTrans is MCE remote compatible out of the box. You don't need any other software to use a MCE remote. In fact, units which use IRtrans usually come with a MCE remote. This is good for many reasons but the most important one is that the MCE remote has become the standard for HTPC control, probably due to its cheaper price and wide availability. This results in all modern universals have support for it and so does almost all HTPC software out of the box.

B) Imon - Probably the most pervasive system mainly due to Silverstone which uses them exclusively. Imon is much tougher to get remote boot/wake function. It is possible but it depends on the implementation, your hardware and if you are able to do the tweaking necessary to get it to work. I have read this has been fixed in newer implementations but haven't seen that myself.

Their driver can be a bit too klunky and their approach has been to force you to use their remote software which is not flexible. Recently Girder added support for it but none of the freeware remote software supports it. This is a big negative, IMO.

Imon comes with its own proprietary remote. The Logitech Harmony remote series has support for it but others require you to do IR learning to program it and getting the mouse control to work is dicey. However, I feel that if you need mouse control on your remote, then your HTPC control setup is flawed. No HTPC software comes with support for it out of the box, which requires you to setup and fight with the Imon remote control software. I did this a couple of times with Silverstone cases and its not fun for an enthusiast level HTPC setup. I never got it to do exactly what I wanted and have since sold those cases and will not buy another case with Imon.

C) M-play OEM versions - This one is new but growing in popularity among case OEMs. Especially Korean OEMs. I have to be upfront and say I have 0 experience with this interface. I can say that it seems no one has support for it yet. So you are stuck with their software.

I have bought Vlsystem products before (their bay VFDs and LCDs) and I can say they are good quality and well designed. Their support is poor as they do not update software and do not respond to customer improvement requests. Email replies are difficult to understand, English not being the first or even 2nd language of their support personnel, but they do get back to you ... eventually. I once had to wait 3 weeks for a reply. I would be very wary of a system that relies on software produced by this company. They are not a software company and their stuff shows that clearly.

D) Niveus - I have to say that I don't know if this comes with any case anymore. It used to show up in a few but I haven't seen anything with it in a while. I had a case with this hardware many years ago so any info I have is going to be very dated. I could not get this to boot/wake my HTPC via remote. Again, though, I need to add that when I had that case USB wake wasn't even a term people used yet.

The driver was ok and it has support from Girder, Eventghost and HIP. They offered software but I never installed it. Back then I just put girder on.

It came with a proprietary remote and I had to teach my Pronto the codes. Checking Harmony's database there are Niveus codes and I would guess it would work without configuration on a harmony.

As far as I know, those are all the IR systems that can come in a HTPC case. Please add more if you run across a case with another system and if you have newer experience with any of the systems I am less familiar with.

In closing I would like to add one thing. IRsystems embedded in HTPC cases are almost always accompanied with VFDs. I find the embedded VFDs to be more than useless in a HTPC. There are some cool things you can do with a VFD, such as MeediOS' music control so you can pick and play music from the VFD and not turn on your TV. However, it all comes to naught because you can never read what it says since you are sitting far away and they are small. IMO you need at least a 6 line 40 character VFD for it to become useful (using 3 lines for 1 line of text). So buying a HTPC with a VFD, should be only done if you want the embedded IRsystem that comes with it. IMO, the IRsystem is the reason you tolerate a case coming with a VFD. If the IRsystem doesn't match your needs then save the money for a good external blaster and a large VFD or a small LCD screen (now that is useful, especially if touchscreen).


5. Bling bling:

An LCD touchpanel means that you don’t need to turn on your tv if you just want to listen to some music (or broadcast to other pc’s on your home network). You’ll pay a serious premium for this upgrade, however, which is a lot more expensive than just turning your tv on long enough to choose what you want to listen to.

A two-line LED display like the Matrix Orbital can come in handy for displaying MP3 id tags, case and cpu temps, or available hard drive space while recording marathon sessions of (ahem) public access television.

There are a range of front panel devices that fit in a spare 5.25” bay that are useful for monitoring system and cpu temperatures and double as fan controllers. They can also give your case a distinctive look, which can be useful for crossing the spouse approval threshold. You can find quality front panel devices from Cooler Master, Zalman, Sunbeam, Thermaltake, and Aerocool, such as the ones listed here.

6. Recommended cases:

A quick note: I got rid of the lengthy and dated list of reviews and replaced with a select few recommended cases.


Antec Fusion 430 (http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=15739)
Price: $180-200 (side)
Form factor: mATX
Fans: 2x120mm

Reviews:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=989&num=1
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1158
http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/Antec_Fusion_430/index.php
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/01/17/antec_fusion_430_htpc_case/
http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/Antec_Veris_Fusion/index.shtml
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/fusion430/


Silverstone LC17 (http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/p_contents.php?pno=lc17&area=usa)
Price: ~$140
Form factor: ATX
Fans: 2x80mm (rear)

Reviews:
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=377
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=875
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/sslc17/
http://www.3dgameman.com/content/view/107/48/
http://www.viperlair.com/reviews/cases/silverstone/lc17/
http://www.procooling.com/index.php?func=articles&disp=144


Silverstone GD02 (http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/p_contents.php?pno=gd02&area=usa)
Price: ~$160
Form factor: mATX
Fans: 2x80mm (rear)

Reviews:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=994708


Zalman HD160 (http://zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=190)
Price: $250-300
Form factor: ATX
Fans: 2x80mm (rear)

Reviews:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article603-page1.html
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=412
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/multimedia/display/zalman-hd160.html
http://www.htpcnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=122&Itemid=33
http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/hd160/
http://www.dvhardware.net/review79_zalmanhd160.html
http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/Zalman_HD160/index.shtml
http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2006/04/18/Zalman_HD160_HTPC/1.html


CoolerMaster CM Media 282 (http://www.coolermaster.com/products/product.php?act=detail&tbcate=168&id=2555)
Price: ~$140-160
Form factor: ATX
Fans: 1x120mm (rear)

Reviews:
http://www.tweaknews.net/reviews/cooler_master_cmmedia_282/
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/cooler_m_282/

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