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Hardware Hacking

HTPC 4-Way Enclosure Roundup 102

Posted by CmdrTaco from the time-to-build-your-own dept.
Anony writes "Anandtech's Joshua Buss takes a look at four horizontal HTPC enclosures. He writes, "With the amazing rate at which full-fledged computers are dropping in price, it's really no wonder why they're starting to take over more and more roles that used to be accomplished by simpler machines. For everything from car stereo systems to hold massive music collections to kitchen machines for helping retrieve and store recipes, these "specialized" computer uses seem to only be expanding in number...Luckily, there have been many improvements made in this category since the inception of the HTPC, and as such, we were able to round up four very nice looking enclosures to compare in this article. Every unit is advertised as being able to handle a full ATX motherboard, and since the demands for a powerful HTPC are relatively high, we'll be giving these cases' cooling systems a vigorous workout with a brand new 3 gigahertz Pentium 4-based ATX test bed."
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HTPC 4-Way Enclosure Roundup More

HTPC 4-Way Enclosure Roundup

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  • HT == Home Theater (Score:5, Informative)

    by benhocking ( 724439 ) <benjaminhocking&yahoo,com> on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @08:38AM (#14089558) Homepage Journal
    It's unfortunate that one hast to actually RTFA to figure that out.

  • What happened? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Killjoy_NL ( 719667 ) <slashdotNO@SPAMremco.palli.nl> on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @08:42AM (#14089580)
    Did this article just pop on the frontpage under the novell article? Or did I just miss it??
  • "they're starting to take over more and more roles that used to be accomplished by simpler machines" - and Ahnold is about to lose his job as Ca Gov.... seems that the Terminator prophecy is just ten years later than the movies predicted.
  • Once you got the crucibles banged out, which the industry did many years ago (including full atx boards with all the frills), stamping down boards is cheap. And a lot of them don't get bought, ever. Wouldn't it be more expensive to build custom dumbed-down motherboards for these smaller but unique applications?
    • You are correct. Smaller boards seem to be in less demand, so those that need them sometimes end up paying more. Most boards throw every feature on that they can, even if few used any one particular feature, simply because adding features can be pretty cheap when done in rediculously high volume. It's tough to know who will want any particular feature, thankfully, providing a lot of them drives the costs down. This is why it doesn't make sense for people to complain that they don't need a particular set

  • 4-way HTPC? (Score:4, Funny)

    by joib ( 70841 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @08:47AM (#14089619)
    Obviously I *need* a quad cpu machine to handle my recipes database.
    • Obviously I *need* a quad cpu machine to handle my recipes database.

      Do people use their home theater PCs to handle recipes? I suppose it's possible, though a second-hand laptop would seem a better choice.

      Initially, I thought it was a 4-cpu system review as well, assuming it would be for recipes is new for me.
      • Apparently you failed to note the sarcasm. ;-)

        As for the recipes thing, it was from the blurb. I haven't actually RTFA (now that's a surprise here on /.).
    • How do you want to cook things on low-power CPU?
    • Just out of curiosity, would 4 Mac Minis count as a quad?

      :P
  • Seems to me that it would be a simple thing to casemod a system into an old stereo receiver case. At least then it'd look like it belongs there, my JVC receiver sitting on top of my old JVC receiver.

  • MythTV (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @08:50AM (#14089636) Homepage
    While we're on the topic of HTPC enclosures, does anyone know of a company that sells pre-built MythTV boxes? Or would anyone like to volunteer? I'm in the market for one but I really don't want to spend a lot of time getting the hardware to work right.

    • Re:MythTV (Score:5, Informative)

      by w.p.richardson ( 218394 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @09:04AM (#14089731) Homepage
      I would be willing to build one for you, if the price is right.

      Alternatively, you could get the "reference" knoppmyth hardware. I am by no means an expert in configuring Linux systems and I have had a working mythtv box for almost 1 year. I built the system from soup to nuts (order parts, assemble hardware, install, test, deploy) in 1 week vacation around the holidays last year. If you have two bits of knowledge, it would take even less time.

      There are a couple of companies that sell these pre-built, but they are expensive, to the point of being in the price range of a Windows Media Center box with similar specs. The obvious advantage of mythtv is no DRM, etc., but you would need to know how to troubleshoot if something went wrong. Without setting it up, that would be potentially bewildering...

    • I suspect companies are put off by possible legal consequences. A typical MythTV install contains a load of software which is patented (various codecs) and some software which is even illegal in certain jurisdictions (deCSS). Whilst an individual putting together a system themselves is probably pretty safe from patent lawyers, a company making money out of it would not be...

    • Re:MythTV (Score:3, Informative)

      by kebes ( 861706 )
      Interestingly, I asked the exact same question [slashdot.org] some time ago. If you look at the replies to that post of mine, you'll see some others who said they might be willing to negotiate building a MythTV box for someone else (you can check into those if you want).

      If you're interested, what I ended up doing was building it myself. It really was a fun and manageable project. I added this wikibook [wikibooks.org] to describe the process (which also mentions some alternatives to building your own MythTV).

      Even without much linux
    • i built mine a while ago using a via epia m10K board. works ok and i also use a remote with it. cost me $1500 total with everything in a slimline VCR style package. fairly easy to do, but YMMV. its better you build it yourself since you can tweak it and stuff. i use debian myself with a 2.4 kernel image and use XFS with a compressed ext2fs boot image on bootable dvdrom (to prevent my tweaks from destroying anything vital until i decide to update the dvd).
       
    • Sure,

      I'd build you one, parts plus a little bit for christmas, how soon would you want it? Silver or black, full height, or half height (half is more what you see today's components at, but I believe (mostly) that full height are a little cheaper to come by.

      Single turner, dual tuner, satellite, HDTV, etc... give me some details and I'll give you a qoute. I've built a few in the past for friends. Lets talk...
    • I'd have to say that I agree with others here. Pretty much anyone who built a MythTV box once can build one for you... but why? If it broke, who would you call to fix it? I know I for one wouldn't want to be on-call for people with problems with Myth unless I was making a good living at it.

      Try Knoppmyth, or go to The Fedora Myth(TV)ology site [wilsonet.com] for the excellent Fedora guide which I followed myself and built a very good and stable Mythbox. So far going on 7 months and two major revisions of MythTV (0.16 to
  • I forget... did he invent the Buss Bar, or the System Buss? Google no help here.
  • For many of the jobs they suggest - Kitchen machine, music hub, lower end specialist stuff - I personally would much rather go with Mini ITX.

    eg Via
    http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/spearhead/min i-itx/ [via.com.tw]

    with a nice compact case
    http://www.mini-itx.com/store/ [mini-itx.com]
    http://www.bigbruin.com/html/morex_3688.htm [bigbruin.com]

    I guess really what Im saying is I would perfer a Mac Mini :o)
    • I would say that there are two sizes below the cases they describe...microATX cases which are about 4" tall, and the miniITX cases you describe. Either of these seems preferable to the enormous cases in this article.
    • If you want flexibility to go beyond those simple tasks, small cases are too crippled by the inability to add PCI cards. It might be OK if you're sure you'll never need new capabilities down the road, but my HTPC/fileserver is a 7-year old computer which never would have lasted so long without the flexibility to add:

      1) a linux-compatible sound card with optical outputs for my stereo.
      2) a pci to pcmcia adapter for a wireless card
      3) a second video card (one outputs to the TV, the second to the kids' moni

    • I guess really what Im saying is I would perfer a Mac Mini :o)

      The Mini is a nice box, but it's not an HTPC box, despite what Slashdot users want to think.

      Things you might want in an HTPC that the Mini doesn't have:
      • Lots of disk space. TV, ripped DVDs, and music all take up space. Notebook drives aren't going to cut it, and your only option for adding drives to the Mini is to buy external FireWire drives/enclosures - another added expense.
      • Multichannel / Digital audio. I'm sure that there is some USB gadget th

  • Nobody else reads HT and thinks of Hyper Threading?

    --
    Superb hosting [tinyurl.com] 2400MB Storage, 120GB bandwidth, ssh, $7.95

  • Why a 3GHz Pentium? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mark2003 ( 632879 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @09:07AM (#14089748)
    Wouldn't a low power Pentium M be more sensible - otherwise the fans will drown out my TV and the cost of the power would bankrupt me.

    Why do we always assume we need a high end generalist device for a specific usage that could be satisfied with a lower power and cheaper alternative?
    • You must have a really quiet TV and burn $20 bills for electricity. A midrance P4 system will run at about 70-100 watts idle, my high end system runs 170 watts idle, 220 watts full tilt. As for fans, just get a well designed case and quality fans, and you won't hear them.
      • Your P4 idling at 170W is going to add about $12 plus change to your power bill each month if you leave it on all the time at 10 cents/KWH. While that wouldn't kill me, it's still going to add up to about $150 per year.
        • Which is less than the average cable bill, or 4 tanks of gas.  Which do you want more?  Remember, this IS slashdot.

          P.S.  I live in a dorm, which means free electricty.  Feel free to stop by with an extension cord. 

    • Re:Why a 3GHz Pentium? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The P-M may consume little power but they're pretty expensive. The motherboard selection is also much smaller than for the P-4. The best bang for the buck at the moment is probably a low end (3000+) 90nm Athlon 64 on a socket 939 board with a GeForce 6100 chipset. They're cheaper and consume far less power than the P-4. One or two years down the line you can just swap out the CPU for an Athlon X2 4800+ when they become affordable.
    • A fast CPU is required if you want optimal image quality with resizing/noise-reduction/sharpening filters (e.g. piping your video through ffdshow for instance). Unless you own a DVD player that costs a few/several grand, an htpc is a good solution that costs much less and does much more.

      And no, you can't enable "Hardware Acceleration" (to reduce cpu usage) in your video card for mpeg2 video (e.g. DVDs) and still pipe your video through a software post-processor, it's either one or the other. So a fast cpu
      • Nice post, I've been meaning to look into this. The guide you link to is a little outdated though by the looks of it. At first glance it would seem easier to do this using VLC, where there is an option to increase the quality of the ffmpeg filter from the default 0 to 6, although having just tried this I don't notice any increase in CPU usage and the picture is of the same quality. What am I doing wrong?
        • I've never used VLC + ffmpeg so I don't really know exact what the ffmpeg filter settings do, I would think it's some sort of post-processing like deringing and such.

          As for the low cpu util, the cpu horsepower is needed most when resizing using the lanczos algorithm, especially when upscaling a dvd image to 1080i. Because of the size of the image, you have to blur/sharpen before resizing, but people still hit ~70-80% cpu util that way, with high end cpus.

          So if VLC allows it, try resizing your dvd video to

    • Preach it, brother.

      I'm always amazed when I see an article about building a MythTV system and discover they recommend using high performance processors and video cards. The only reason in the world you'd need muscle in the processor is if you're using cheap tuner cards that don't have the encoding chips on them.

      But if you're buying a faster processor and the various other bits it takes to make it go, the cost difference pays for the better tuner card. All you get is more noise since your processor needs

      • For analog signals and xvid/DiVX/MPEG2 playback, a P3 is more than sufficient, as you already know. Have you tried decoding those bright new shiny H/X264 video files using mplayer, vlc, etc? My P3-based 1.3GHz Celery just sits there at 100%. All I get is sound and a nice black screen or a frozen frame. Maybe your 2GHz Celery has enough juice to plow through an H/X264 video. Maybe it's a problem with the linux codecs. I still watch most of my video on this machine running MythTV and a Hauppage PVR250, but xv

      • Re:Why a 3GHz Pentium? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Hast ( 24833 )
        The frontend needs to be powerful if you want to decode HDTV. 1080p requires a really good CPU/GPU combo to playback without framedrops.

        The reason you would want a backend with CPU power instead of hardware encoders is because software encoders are typically higher quality. It's hard to do multi-pass encoding and similar if you are recording real-time.

        Naturally these don't apply to everyone, but there are reasons for getting a high powered HTPC.

  • JHTPC Cases (Score:5, Informative)

    by Silwenae ( 514138 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @09:08AM (#14089755) Homepage
    I'm surprised the reviewer stuck to some of the major case makers in the review (Antec, Lian Li).

    HTPC's, IMHO, are still very much a niche product, and the specialty case makers like a Silverstone [silverstonetek.com] or Ahanix [ahanix.com] would seem more appropriate.

    The review focused on some of the bigger cases out there - when you realize how big the assortment is to choose from, from mini-ITX to slimline to full size, there are quite a number of choices out there.
    • And both Silverstone and Ahanix feature (at least some) cases with built-in VFD's -- damn near essential for HTPCs
    • And don't forget the all-important question of why the hell would anyone want a beast as big as these cases (see TFA) for an HTPC? Half of them lay claim to fitting an entire ATX board like it was some sort of accomplishment. Personally, I'd certainly rather have something slimmer.

    • I'm suprised that these are actually seriously targeted as HTPCs. When I think of home theatre I think of movies and TV. What I saw in the article were 4 big cases with no soundproofing and lots of fans. Apparently we all need more HD and fan noise in our home theatres. These manufacturers have completely missed the point IMO, they need to make cases which look nice, are unobtrusive, and make -no- noise...

  • Anandtech.com is on slashdot enough, you'd think they'd have some better servers by now.
  • I bought a box at a garage sale for 10 bucks to put FreeBSD and musicpd on for playing my ogg collection. The only problem was there was annoying 60hz hum on the output of the crappy soundblaster 16 card that I was using. I tried a number of things, including building my own shielded interconnects and trying to shield the powersupply.

    Then I thought: this may be a ground loop. So I disconnected the powersupply ground (at the plug) and the hum went away, leaving a very clean sound.

    Dangerous? Yes. Effect
    • Soundblaster 16s are crap, there is your problem. You can dig newer cards out of the trash, ones that won't burn your house down, and don't have ground loop issues.
    • I had a ground loop problem once too.

      I solved it by putting the 'puter and the stereo in the same wall outlet. AFAIK that isn't a 100 % foolproof solution, but it worked for me.
    • Here's a better solution for hooking up to your stereo: a Linux-compatible (so maybe FreeBSD too?) sound card [pricegrabber.com] with SPDIF optical outputs to your receiver, for less than $30 shipped.

      Be careful to get the "AW850 Deluxe" and not the confusingly similar "AW850 D" - they're different! It wasn't easy to find a cheap, OSS-supported digital sound card that can handle various sample rates, but this one works.

      • Yikes, a lot of replies. I like yours best though :) I've never tried ferrite, I might have to try picking up a large core and see what happens. As for the ground loop isolator, I've heard a little of these but I'll probably need to spend a little more than 16 bucks to get one with a good transformer (or to build one myself), as lower end ones end up rolling off some frequencies and distorting some as per here [epanorama.net] While a nice card might solve the problem, I did try several others (my roommate collects older/us
    • Get a piece of 12-16 gauge wire. Crimp a ring terminal onto each end. One end goes to a screw somewhere on the stereo's case, one end goes to a screw somewhere on your PC's case (to which your motherboard and therefore sound card is, or should be, grounded). Now ground is ground on both devices, and your risk of dying due to a problem in the PC power supply is decreased (presuming the stereo uses a 3-prong plug or you fix the plug on the PC).

  • Not works of art, are they? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jules Bean ( 27082 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @09:20AM (#14089860)
    Maybe I have pretty high standards, but I want a PVR/HTPC to fit in with my HiFi equipment and TV. I thought these four were rather ugly, to be honest.

    I quite like the Accent HT-400 http://www.arisetec.com/products/HT-400.htm [arisetec.com], or some of the silverstone cases http://www.silverstonetek.com/product-case.htm [silverstonetek.com], or perhaps (although personally there's something about this last that doesn't feel quite right) the http://www.ahanix.com/dvine5.html [ahanix.com].
    • I agree. Most of the HTPC cases that I've seen haven't been works of art. However, that's because they are so generalist. The closest that I've seen to having a nice looking HTPC is the Bose Lifestyle systems [bose.com]. While these aren't strictly HTPCs... they techincally are... (just like an XBox360 is technically a PC). The drawback, of course, is that these suckers start at such a ridiculously high price (oh, and they aren't MythTV type boxes... but music playback type of boxes). Another good whole house audio so
    • I have to agree. I used the Ahanix D5 as the basis for my HTPC. Full ATX board, extremely clean and high quality design/build. People think its a large DVD player until I tell them otherwise.

      What doesn't feel right about the D5? Its shorter than most full-size HTPC cases that allow an ATX motherboard, at the expense of using a proprietary compact PSU. Its all aluminum and comes in silver or black (I chose black). All of my standard components fit without modification.
    • Well, there's no accounting for taste. I like the Overture, and already own a case from Thermaltake (the Tsunami Dream) for my PC that is somewhat similar in styling. I think the Accent case you linked to is butt-ugly, though I like the Ahanix D.Vine and some of the Silverstones.
  • There's a myriad of HTPC cases, but very few chips and motherboards.

    I am very disappointed with the availability of "alternative" platforms. Very few places sell the VIA C3 chips. The VIA C7 only exists in press releases. Some companies sell the chips but not the motherboards! Most of the motherboards have on board video that doesn't include DVI/HDMI which makes them no good for home theater anyway. The Transmeta Crusoe is a good option, in theory, but I've never found any place that sells them.

    I've be
  • My complaint is with the temperature benchmarking. Why on earth use a 6600 GT? I mean we are talking about an HTPC case, and maybe I am alone in thinking this, but if I am making a PC for home theater use, I want a card with some power, but I also want a card with TV tuning.

    This test should've used an AIW either the AIW 2006 edition (overpriced AIW 9600), the X600-AIW or the newer X1800XL AIW (for the truly crazy people). For an HTPC where power is not the ultimate requirement the AIW 2006 edition should
    • For HDTV with Linux, the only option is nVidia, and even there, you have to accept the proprietary drivers. So for MythTV, the AIW is nearly useless.

      On the other hand, you don't need anything faster than a 5200. In most cases, even a Geforce 4 440MX is good enough. The only reason for something more powerful is for gaming.
    • According to firingsquad.com's review of the 1800XL AIW, you're better off getting a separate video card and the TV Wonder Elite, since its scaler is better than the AIW's. Or you might want to get an HDTV tuner; I don't think any of the All In Wonders have that.

      Personally, I'd probably want a separate HTPC and 3-D gaming computer, but it depends on your setting, and whether you might need to use both at the same time.
    • You don't need a 6600GT, but its not because its lacking a TV tuner. A lot of people that build an HTPC for Tivo-like functionality (and are demanding a full ATX board in the first place) intend to use standalone hardware-encoding cards like the Hauppauge PVR150 card. The 6600GT is a fine card for gaming, possibly overkill for HTPC duty unless you're outputting to a HDTV and using it to decode DVDs.

      I had a Geforce 4 Ti4200 in my HTPC until the fan on it died recently (for the 3rd time). I picked up a GF5200
      • I also had a Geforce 4200 fan die on me and decided to get a fanless Zalman cooler rather than a new fan or a new card. Also for some benchmarks the 4200 will out perform the 5200. For an HTPC i'd rather have quiet than fast, but that's just me.
    • *sigh* an AIW? really? *sigh*

      I think a gigabyte passive/heat pipe non-GT 6600 would have been a better choice.

      If we're heat/stress testing this puppy add one of those ATI theater pro 550's tuner cards.

      I dunno there's some good info/insight about the cases they used, but somehow i'm left dissapointed with the "shoot out" *shrug*

      e.

  • I've got one of these (Score:3, Informative)

    by philj ( 13777 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @10:21AM (#14090456)
    Hoojum Cubit 5 [hoojum.com] - in chrome.

    Very sexy :-)

  • mCubed HFX ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dago ( 25724 ) on Tuesday November 22, 2005 @11:27AM (#14091379)
    Unfortunately, they missed a unique case : the mCubed HFX [mcubed-tech.com]. Altough it is a little pricey, it features heatpipes between the CPU/GPU and the case that will dissipate the heat (with fins). There's also an optional "emergency fan", as well as other gadget (VFD display, remote control, ...).

    Add a fanless powersupply, internal or brick, and you've got a nice silent HTPC.

    dirkvader.de [dirkvader.de] has a review with a Pentium M, this site [teschke.de] with an Athlon64 3500.

  • When I read the title I thought that this article would feature some nifty non-pc like designs. Wrong. They're just SFF PCs, some with a hide-away drive bay, except for possibly the last one which has some artistic curves.

    I've built two mythboxes now. The first is of the Shuttle G2 variety [shuttle.com], which works nicely, but still looks very PC. The one I built for the girlfriend is a much prettier ASUS Pundit [asus.com] which is very aesthically pleasing. It's not "booksize" as advertised (unless you read
    • I saw Synertron at LinuxWorld Boston - http://www.synertrontech.com/products/embedded_com puting/twister/ec-twister.html [synertrontech.com] Great case, but they're not set up as direct to consumer.

      They have variations that do TV in/out and SPDIF.

      From the site:
      Twister case is a FANLESS solution for our motherboard. The material of the case is mainly ALUMINUM. The purpose of the Twister case is to cool off the processor without using the FAN because there is always the possibility of the failure of the FAN which will dam
      • Great link my friend. With the exception of the lack of optical drive, that looks perfect. The problem is, how much are they going to charge for one of those? If it's reasonable, I would definetly bump up my research of the Via C3s and make that my next project.
  • I hear a lot about HTPC and built a few systems for myself at home. In general I like both Myth and Windows and would love to make this a real DVR but I have one problem. It is not the case, the mobo, or the CPU (I love the Pentium M in my box, almost completely quiet). The BIG problem I have is with the video card/tuners that are out there. I can not seem to get a good signal out of anything that I have tried. I am not sure if it is the tuner or the output (vid card). What I really want is something

    • Re:My HTPC woes (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hi,
      you may want to try out the MSI RSI482-4 ILD motherboard. It has almost everything integrated including the HDTV out. It's a video component out which outputs 480p/720p/1080i to feed into your HDTV. If you like to go digital ( with all the newer TV sets out now ) you also can hook it up using the DVI out.I've put together such a system and couldn't be happier. Using mATX as opposed to some VIA ITX based solution imho is a much better idea anyway btw. since you caneasily modify or upgrade such a system.

      Da

  • As usual, almost no mention of how you're supposed to control the damn thing once it's built. Hanging an external IR receiver off the side seems contrary to the aesthetic considerations that would lead one to shell out for one of these cases in the first place, so I assume that some or all of them have built-in IR receivers. (IIRC, the article did mention a remote control that came with one of the cases.) It would be nice if they would actually discuss the subject, however.
    • Buy an ATi All-In-Wonder card; they come with an RF remote control. The remote uses a small receiver that attaches via USB. The receiver is easily hidden from sight, since it does not need to have an optical line-of-sight to the remote. The remote itself allows you fabulous control over all the ATi applications, and even has a mouse/cursor button that lets you drive the PC easily. Fairly decent tool, all things considered.
    • I actually prefer something seperate, preferrably USB for ease of use. The reason is you can actually hide the *entire* HTPC, and just have the simple IR reciever out. My first mythbox, an Shuttle, is somewhat attractive, but easily fits behind a door in shelf-system. Cut out some extra ventilation holes and you have the best looking HTPC ever, one that you never see.
  • I recently bought a Pinnacle Showcenter 1000g after spending forever on trying to slap together a HTPC using old pc parts. The showcenter is a really nice unit for what it cost me ($64) It does everything I wanted ..mp3's,divx,xvid..etc.. The only bad point is that I can not record tv shows on it. All it does is stream moves and videos via wireless off my HD into my entertainment system. If someone wants something easy to setup the showcenter might be your best bet if you can get them for under $100.
  • I have had an HTPC in my stereo cabinet for ~3 years now. About 6 months ago I switched motherboard/cpu/etc and put it all in the exact Antec case the review describes. For the most part, the case is perfect. It only has two small problems: (1) the front of the case is silver, and it's basically impossible to find silver DVD drives so you end up with a sore-thumb black or beige drive in your shiny silver case, and (2) the Antec case is so open to air flow that noise from inside the case is poorly muffled. M

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