X-bit labs

NMEDIAPC HTPC 288 SA: Affordable Case for an HTPC System (page 6)

Category: Multimedia

by Vasily Melnik

[ 08/22/2007 | 07:14 PM ]

Don’t worry about the ventilation of the main part of the case. Besides large vent grids in the top and side panels there is another one in the bottom panel, under the 5.25” bay.

This ventilation grid is going to provide enough air because the case’s feet are as tall as to allow proper circulation of air below it.

The feet are designed in the traditional style of HTPC cases. They look like the feet of some hi-fi device.

After you’ve installed your hard drives, you can now mount the rest of components, particularly the power supply…

…and the mainboard and with expansion cards:

There are no special tricks to this procedure. It takes mere minutes to install everything. The cables can be placed neatly, too. There are few of them and they can be easily tucked into the IR-receiver bay without blocking the installation of the IR-receiver itself. And finally you install your optical drive into the 5.25” box…

…and then insert the cage into the box:

You only have to make sure beforehand which of the mounting holes in the box to use.

The assembled system looks neat:

It’s all right with the airflows, too. The only downside is that the developers tried to make the case as low as possible and the top panel almost lies on the graphics card’s edge as the consequence. As a result, you can’t install anything higher than a standard graphics card into this system case. This is not a great shortcoming, yet you should be aware of it as you are selecting your hardware components. The specs of the system case are summarized below.

NMEDIAPC HTPC 288 SA

• Dimensions: 432x406x133mm (WxDxH)
• Material: aluminum front panel, steel chassis
• Cooling system: 80mm front fan and two 60mm exhaust fans
• Mainboard form-factor: microATX
• External bays: one 5.25” bay for an optical drive
• Internal bays: three 3.5” bays
• Front interface connectors: two USB 2.0, one IEEE1394, audio
• Max. expansion slots: 4

The descriptive part being over, we can now proceed to the tests.