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Hardware Hacking

Ahanix D5 Media Center Enclosure 90

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-many-projects-ooo-ooo dept.
VL writes "Ahanix has delivered an enclosure that gives you everything you would desire in an HTPC. The versatility of using MicroATX or Standard ATX motherboards, the look and feel of high end audio/video equipment and a VFD information center that gives the added information of what is playing. It comes at a hefty price tag mind you, but in this particular situation, you get what you pay for." Now that's what I'm talking about. Anybody know of any other commercially available cases as well suited to putting in a stereo system?
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Ahanix D5 Media Center Enclosure More

Ahanix D5 Media Center Enclosure

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  • Price? (Score:5, Informative)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @10:42AM (#10678975) Journal
    Ahanix has delivered an enclosure that gives you everything you would desire in an HTPC.

    Everything but PRICE! [google.com]

  • My problem (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My only problem with it is that it can only fit one hard-drive. I like my 500+ GB MythTV machine and it just wouldn't work in this case.

    Considering the size and shape of hard-drives, you'd think they would add a couple mounting spots. They don't take much room and there's usually tons of empty space in these cases.

    • Re:My problem (Score:3, Informative)

      by weirdal ( 127848 )
      On their homepage [ahanix.com] they say that "Dvine 6 supports Micro ATX motherboard, three 3.5-inch storage devices and two 5.25 inch optical devices." ... With three drives you can get quite far :)
      • I was a bit to quick there... You are right. I was looking at their newest one (the D6)... The one reported here on Slashdot is their older model that only supports 1 drive :(
    • Um I have one, It has room for 2 Harddrives. One above the dvd and one below.
    • There's plenty of room to mount extra drive caddies inside. I've got a TB+ in mine.

  • That's hot (Score:4, Interesting)

    by invisik ( 227250 ) * on Sunday October 31, 2004 @10:48AM (#10679012)
    I hadn't considered assembling a HTPC before mainly due to cases (or lack of AV looking cases) and the fact that I have a ReplayTV. This case looks almost identical to my Denon receiver and Denon DVD players! Kudos to them, I may get one just to put my ReplayTV in! :)

    -m

  • It does look good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by airjrdn ( 681898 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @10:53AM (#10679042) Homepage
    Compared to the standard SFF's out there, it does look good. Unfortunately, it looks better than most of my regular tv-top items; XBox (with Media Center), Cable Tivo, Directv Tivo, etc.

    Heh, a blunder [thisoldgarage.com]

  • HTPC -- what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <<kt.celce> <ta> <eb>> on Sunday October 31, 2004 @10:56AM (#10679062) Homepage Journal
    Okay so I had no idea what the hell an HTPC was, but before reading the article I was sure it was some type of disease... I was wrong

    the Home Theater Personal Computer is no disease so rest assured you can breath again.

    Now I understand the use of having a computer as part of your home entertainment system, and I see the merit in wanting it to "blend" with the rest of the objects in said entertainment setup.

    Here's where I get a little fuzzy...

    Am I the only one who just tossed their pc behind the entertainment center all together? With remote control (SSH/VNC/ATI Remote/Wireless Mouse) do you really need it sitting out and about?

    As far as DVD goes, I already have a standalone player so there was no need to use the computer for dvd playback.

    And as far as gaming goes, my gamecube with the wavebird suits me just fine.

    So I guess I'm just wondering what this is useful for.

    • I can see a benefit. Imagine archiving your DVD library on your PC so it's all available at all times without leaving the couch? That would be pretty cool.

      And it can function like a TiVo/ReplayTV, but without the annoying monthly fee.

      And, besides, it's a geeky thing to do.

      • I dont get why putting it behind the entertainment system makes that not possible?

        I guess if you were to rip your "personally owned" dvd's one by one once a day, maybe, but I would assume that you would just schedule some time, and have an all day rip a thon and be done with it.

        Personally I just keep my dvds in a stack and when I want to watch one ... pick it up ... place it in the dvd player ... and hit play.

        Then again, I cant remember the last time I watched most of the dvds in my dvd collection any

    • *Am I the only one who just tossed their pc behind the entertainment center all together? *

      probably not. that's standard fare..

      or having the computer in entirely another room.

    • Re:HTPC -- what? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @11:35AM (#10679263) Journal
      With remote control (SSH/VNC/ATI Remote/Wireless Mouse) do you really need it sitting out and about?

      For putting discs in it, of course. I also happen to have a headphone jack I put on the front of mine that I need to access regularly.

      As far as DVD goes, I already have a standalone player so there was no need to use the computer for dvd playback.

      If you think a standalone DVD player is perfect, you don't have any imagination at all. How do you copy DVDs from your stand-alone DVD player to your PC? How does your stand-alone DVD player make backups of your DVDs?

      Even for just playback... How did you get a region-free, macrovision-free, DVD player, that will allow you to skip track 0 (forced trailers) and has progressive scan, outputs to RGB, SVIDEO, DVI, and Composite, for $40? (Price of a DVD-Rom) And that's the short list. Things like volume normalization (attenuation control) denoising and deblocking, are invaluable, and rather hard to find in consumer equipment. Plus you could easily do things like have stock-quotes pop-up ontop of the video being played, or any of millions of other things.

      • I can get one of those DVD players (well at the minimum region free, progressive scan, composite/component video and probably more i cannot think of) for $40, mostly because I had one a few weeks ago.
        Of course, I live in Los Angeles and on top of that I know where to get that kind of a DVD player. Trust me, if you had a bunch of region 1, 2, 3 and 4 DVDs, you would know where to look for one too.
        Don't expect a place like Fry's or Best Buy to have them. Heh.

    • Re:HTPC -- what? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @11:42AM (#10679299) Homepage Journal
      Maintainability? Looks? The VFD displays look nice. A PC behind the entertainment center means that the center is away from the wall more than necessary. I know one person that stores his HTPC in a closet with the relevant cables running out.

      Do game consoles do HD? PCs do, at least with certain Radeon models with a component video adapter.

      I have an HTPC, but I use it as a deinterlacer for a video projector. The projector's deinterlacer and scaler sucks, so I feed a video signal to a hardware deinterlacing board and the projector gets fed an RGB signal. A standalone deinterlacer + scaler costs twice as much as I paid for the PC and the hardware interlacer. There are some cheaper DVD players (around $150?) that have a hardware deinterlacer / scaler chip, but that ignores other video signals.
    • I use my HTPC to listen to my mp3 and view my media files. I can only selectively listen/view from all media files that I download. There is really no point to burn it to a dvd or CD an view them, it would be a waste of my time and money. Ahanix D5 is really attractive if it's at least $100 less. With Dell deals that you can get a decent computer for $350, a low end Denon receiver 1905 is around $300. $215USD for an empty shell with a 300W power supply is really too steep. I guess you can set it to t

  • Other cases (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Albanach ( 527650 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @11:08AM (#10679111) Homepage
    As ever, Coolermaster make some very nice cases also with more reasonable (circa $100) price tags that would be suited to such a PC. Here [coolermaster.com] and here [coolermaster.com] are some links. You do, of course, still need to add a PSU to these cases.

    • Re:Other cases (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nice but they don't have such a clear and clean front like Ahanix' case (and like most hifi-cases, for that matter).
    • The cases shown in the first link you mention only take MicroATX motherboards, which limits your options significantly.

  • nothing beats my 19" media center (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mistermark ( 646060 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @11:10AM (#10679119) Homepage
    Well... I've been busy finding such cases for the company I work for to build Media Center PCs... but personally, after seen, touched, feeled and used a lot of these cases, I can come only to one conclusion... Nothing beats my black 19" case media center [geektechnique.org]

  • Antec Overture (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Megane ( 129182 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @11:11AM (#10679122)
    I got an Antec Overture. It wasn't cheap ($120), and it's heavy (19 pounds empty), but it's better than the average case for being quiet, takes a full-size ATX mobo, and most importantly, it's horizontal. Tower cases don't fit very well on shelves, and it's a pain in the butt to have to use a sideways DVD-ROM drive. They also don't have hard drive bays that are mounted with rubber bumpers.

    It's not completely quiet, but then I've got a Duron 1300 in there. AMD fans are loud. Liquid cooling would probably quiet the thing down, but that's more trouble than I want to go to. I'd really rather underclock a faster CPU to the point where I could use a fanless heat sink, but AMD's anti-overclocking also prevents underclocking.

    • Re:Antec Overture (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Nice but you can't compare the Overture with things like the Ahanix D5. The Overture isn't a clean case at all, it's rounded and plastic and so on. No wonder it's much cheaper.
      • I see that mine is not the only post you've replied to like this.

        Look, if you want to spend three times the price just for looks, go ahead. It's your money, not mine. I'm not trying to rice out my AV systems. I just want to 1) get it to fit on a shelf and 2) not be so loud as to be distracting while watching videos, not to mention loud enough to keep me awake halfway across the house in the bedroom. Meanwhile, me and my JBL speakers are going to laugh at your oxygen-free directional speaker cables. (B

  • Wow (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by ozric99 ( 162412 )
    A slashversitment and pimp-my-site all rolled into one story! Way to go slashdot editors - you've excelled yourselves this time.

  • Silverstone Cases (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Other nice looking HTPC cases can be found at Silverstone http://www.silverstonetek.com/product-case.htm [silverstonetek.com]
  • A 'case' is just some sheet metal and a bit of pretty plastic..

    Just make your own.. If you cant work with plastic, wood works well as a subsitute..

  • This Case (Score:2, Informative)

    by mustangsal ( 597422 )
    This case has been out for over a year. I bought one last winter, and threw together a HTPC running MythTV. I love it. I needed more space then 2 HDs, so I mounted 3 drives in another machine, and shared /mounted them via nfs(and another via samba)
  • I have been looking for a nice case to build a MythTV box in for some time now, and those few which are available and look good cost a lot - $100-200 at least. Too damn much.

    Then the other day in cheap electronics shop I noticed number of new DVD players $30-$40 range(Xoro, Yakumo, shit like that). Nice cases. Should be possible to throw out the the original innards and build a pc into them. There would be few problems though, power supply and height - they are about 1U height. Perhaps somebody has alr
    • Reusing the drive would be a trick. Except for a few of the old Apex models, I don't know of any that used an IDE connector, so you'd have to have an adaptor if you are lucky enough that it is a computer compatible drive.

      The power supplies in those things barely seem capable of powering the DVD player, I don't think they can even take a VIA board + hard drive.

      The display panel might be reusable but I expect that you'd need to be able to reverse engineer electronics signalling.
  • Hard disks, fans and the medium quality audio components they stick on most PC boards these days.

  • I have the black one. They also have some nice sound dampening options. It costs about half as much as the one shown in the article and it looks great.

    http://www.coolermaster.com/index.php?LT=&Langua ge _s=&url_place=product_list&p_class=290
  • I jumped the gun on this one by a few weeks and have purchased and assembled my new and shiny HTPC. Looks awesome, but I'm missing a few things...
    Frontal USB/FireWire, Additional internal storage, a functional built in remote system, (have to use an external receiver).
    I was given the impression this would be the ultimate case for me, but I was wrong. Not that I don't like it, I was just slightly mislead on the actual functionality... Now you can buy an add on kit for a new VFD that has the IR Receiver bu
  • http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/slim_pc/slm /pro_slm_detail.php?UID=546 [msi.com.tw]

    I saw this at Fry's recently - was pretty impressed, includes motherboard, Linux support unknown.
  • They may have the look and feel of high end audio equipment, but a component that uses fans is not acceptable. And hard drive noise just makes matters worse. It would be more interesting if it at least incorporated some sort of baffling and sound deadening to mitigate the problem. But as is, it seems like a lot of money for pure looks.

    • Re:look and feel only (Score:2, Informative)

      by scootr1 ( 159749 )
      They may have the look and feel of high end audio equipment, but a component that uses fans is not acceptable.

      A lot of high end receivers use fans, as well.
      • Hi-End and receiver? Oh, you mean those ~2000 usd goodies that crams everything and a 8 channel amplifier on top of a 200W claimed power usage?

        Anyway, the point is - there is no such thing as a Hi-End receiver. This is entirely a components territory, occasionally with separate chasis for power supplies and reccomended use of monoblocs for optimal quality.

        On the other hand, this is /.. Should I add a reference to NothingHill Carnaval Normal?
      • "High end receiver" is pretty much an oxymoron. I have separate components (which I bought used for less than many of the costly receivers), and there are definitely no fans.

  • I have an Ahanix D4 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dsavitsk ( 178019 ) on Sunday October 31, 2004 @12:37PM (#10679591) Homepage
    I have the Ahanix D4 which is similar but larger, and it is not all it is cracked up to be.
    - I had to replace the "silent" power supply with a quieter one,
    - the VFD software they ship is terrible,
    - the build quality -- for anyone who owns actual high-end audio equipment -- is not actually that good,
    - there is no dampening material in the case,
    - getting the top off is near impossible and is bettered by other manufacturers, Ahanix esentially mackined a nice faceplate to put on a crappy old fashioned case,
    - while the D4 says there is room for 5 total drives, I managed to get 3 in mine (partly because usinf an ATX board fills up on drive bay while other internal wires fill another),
    - the front door just falls open rather than glideing smoothly (like would an actual high-end piece of equipment)
    - the company lists it as shipping with 2 silent 80mm fans, instead it shipped with 1 loud 60mm fan

    Anyhow, it works and it may be better than most things out there, but it is kind of crappy.

  • When or if I get around to building a HTPC (college student with no parts budget)I want a box with an unfinished aluminum enclosure. That way I can anodize/die the case whatever color I please.

    Being that I'm an ME student I could just build such a box from sheet aluminum, and that VFD can be had through the mini-itx comunity. http://www.mini-itx.com/store/default.asp?c=9&cur r ency=2 [mini-itx.com]
  • To me, this is just a little but too large. I would much rather see something in a pseduo-rack mount chasis (e.g. low profile) with a rise card for the expansion slots. Personally, I have pretty limited height in my "media center" so I opted for a nice black mATX case that sits on it's side.

    And as many have mentioned already, I think the price is a big issue here as one could buy an older Tivo/ReplayTV and mod the crap out of it for under $50. If you mess it up or can't get it to work it's no big loss.

  • the Rolls Royce (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 4alexnyc ( 826658 )
    I opt for quality whenever possible. http://www.atechfabrication.com/ [atechfabrication.com]. You do pay for the quality, but I figure this case will be with me for a long time. The company is basically a one man outfit, but the nice part is you can always send the case back for new modifications. Of course, I'm already salivating over the touch screen option which I didn't get...!
  • And was not terribly impressed for the following reasons:

    - Has an annoying "PC/HDTV" button on the front that's a remnant from when they sold it in Asia with an HDTV "tuner module" that you can't get here

    - The HDTV tuner module sat in a slot the size of a power supply in the back. This is now an empty area covered in a sticker!

    - I've never been able to get the IR remote/VFD and ATX power to work the way I expect.

    - You can't do simple stuff with the VFD like remote the annoying startup banner. Definitely
  • ..the cases from Uneed [iuneed.com]. I even read somewhere that Ahanix produces Uneed's cases under license. Take a look for yourself, for example at this case [iuneed.com] - the same 8mm front bezel, the same VFD module..
    • Sure looks like it, this taken from another Ahanix D5 review here..

      http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=dvine5_1 [htpcnews.com]

      Up until recently Uneed International made these cases for Ahanix for the USA Distribution but as of this writing they have severed their contracts and Ahanix has moved manufacturing from Uneed International to another manufacture. In the coming weeks we are expecting to see a whole new lineup from Ahanix due to the fact that Uneed International says they have the patents on these cases and their
  • It's a metal box.

    However pretty it may look, it's still just a metal box.

    Where did they get the idea anyone would pay $200 for it?
    • However pretty it may look, it's still just a metal box.

      Isn't the same true for a car? And don't people easily pay $20.000 for it..... Oops, I forgot, it's a moving metal box :-).
  • Not that I have any rack-mounted computers just yet ;)

    I do like the look of some high-end stereo equipment -- in fact, the visual aesthetics are (I put forth as an idea) what gets a lot of people interested in that whole nutty domain. I'll concede otherwise when Stereophile is available only as an audio magazine delivered in a plain brown wrapper ;)

    This case doesn't look bad -- hard to go wrong with brushed metal and right angles :) -- but from at least a few of the comments in this thread, looks may be t
  • Just to clarify any confused Slashdot readers, this is an advertisement. Check the 'submitter'.

  • Silverstone Lascala (Score:3, Informative)

    by iso ( 87585 ) <slash.warpzero@info> on Sunday October 31, 2004 @10:20PM (#10682645) Homepage
    I picked up a Silverstone SST-LC03 [silverstonetek.com] (black) to use as my HTPC enclosure. It's a beautiful looking case, and while expensive, it's not nearly as bad as the one in this article. They also have the SST-LC03V [silverstonetek.com] which has the LCD display on the front, if that's your thing.

    I'm very happy with the SST-LC03. It takes a full-sized ATX motherboard and power supply. I picked up a quiet power supply and a Zalman AlCu heatsink and the unit is nearly silent.

    Silverstone also sells the SST-LC02 [silverstonetek.com] which is similar to the LC03 but a lot thinner. It too takes a full-sized ATX motherboard, but unfortunately the small size didn't go over very well with my Athlon XP 2000+. It's a fantastic case as far as looks go, but it's just too small for a modern hot chip. I still have the LC03 by the way, so if anybody's interested in buying it off me, let me know.

    Anyhow, I strongly suggest the SST-LC02. Great case.
  • http://www.cappuccinopc.com/dg1.asp [cappuccinopc.com]

    I don't have one but they look pretty nice... I've had good experiences with their Slimpro series.

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