HTPC FALL 2008 UPDATE

HTPC Component Details

Moving on to the HTPC itself, we wanted two options again for the enclosure.  First, the Thermaltake Mozart Sx.  It has a nice, low-profile with the ability to use a standard power supply, and an IR remote with the ATX power interface too, turning on and off the PC directly through the power supply pins, and using standby power only when the rest of the PC is off.  There is a sweet VFD in front as well, which can be programmed to show anything from filenames, times, to scrolling messages or other alerts.  Being a low-profile case, only three expansion cards can be installed horizontally through the use of a riser card.  Internally, it fits a full-size ATX motherboard. 

Nice clean look

Elegant front styling blends with Home theater components

Rear panel shows standard ATX PSU area, and three horizontal slots via riser card

Plenty of space internally

5.25" and 3.5" front-accessible bays and super-quiet inlet fan

2nd side inlet fan blowing over 2x HDD bays

Cabling for VFD, buttons, LEDs, and front ports

Inside view facing rear

Front panel

VFD - very freaking cool display

Front bays accessible via flip-down cover

Riser card - 2x PCI and 1x PCIe x16

The PCIe x16 part of the riser card

Nice remote which interfaces with PSU for Power On/Off

Case populated

The other option was the Silver PCs PC-C37B, which looks nice too because of its aluminum construction and monochrome paintjob.  It has two fans on the side for cross-ventilation:

Behind, we see that this case supports only MicroATX boards, and the use of low-profile cards - a bit inflexible.  Riser cards would have been a better solution.  Its black color would look great beside other AV gear. 

Our motherboard/CPU setup is GigaByte's 780G with an Athlon X2 4850e.  This combo is not super powerful, but has more than enough horsepower to decode full 1080 HD streams thanks to AMD's brilliant 780G chipset.  The MB has the requisite gigabit LAN connection back to the switch, and the server too.  It also has a TOSLINK SPDIF output for the surround receiver.  Here is our review on this magnificent board.

Now that we've got a dual-core CPU doing HD video decoding, it will definitely generate more heat.  We had to go with watercooling to eliminate any noise disrupting the drama of a great movie.  Our choice would be any fanless system, such as the Zalman Reserator 1 Plus with the ZM-WB4 AM2 waterblock:

For memory, we wanted something stable, with a lifetime warranty, and great heatsinks for maximum cooling preventing any memory errors which might disrupt an otherwise transparent HTPC experience. Crucial's Ballistix line of memory modules fits that requirement very well.  We went with 2GB of DDR2-800 memory:

The HDD of the HTPC should be a superfast, yet quiet unit.  We had many choices, but decided on the Savvio 15k.1 with Promise's TX2650 SAS controller.  We didn't need much space here because all that would be installed are the OS, and apps.  All the media will be stored in the server.  The Savvio has a 73GB capacity should be more than enough.  It wasn't being used anywhere else, so we may as well use it here.  Had we gone with the PC-C37B case above, the TX2650 comes with low-profile brackets to fit that chassis too.

For our optical drive, we had only one bay available so we really wanted a combo HD-DVD/BD but since HD-DVD is now dead, we figured we can get away with a BD-ROM drive.  The Asus one is our choice because of its reasonable price and splendid performance.

Lastly, powering this magnificent creation is the FSP Zen 400W fanless ATX power supply.  No other PSU we've seen has the correct balance of quietness, clean power, and 80+ efficiency.

Controlling the HTPC from the couch can be done mostly with the IR remote supplied with the Mozart Sx case.  However, typing and making precise mousing actions require a far better tool.  The Logitech diNovo Mini is just that - simply THE BEST HTPC wireless keyboard/mouse ever created.