Dh 101 Htpc Case: Digital-Camera-Near.com

Dh 101 Htpc Case

Dh 101 Htpc Case
by Thermaltake

List Price: ~~$239.40~~
Category: CE
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Customers in the UK, Buy this product at amazon.co.uk for British Pounds

Digital Photo Product Details

Manufacturer: Thermaltake
Model: VF7001BNS
Product features:

THERMALTAKE VF7001BNS DH 101 HTPC CASE

Accessories:

Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Dh 101 Htpc Case

Customer Review: surprisingly good!
Summary: 4 Stars

So having been an IT consultant for 15 years (and successfully avoiding PCs - I don't want to look at computers on my own time), I finally plunged into the HTPC market. It was time with my 40GB of music and other media.

I decided to go moderately high-end on pretty much everything so that I could build the computer and not touch it for at least a few years. Certainly there are other cases that get better reviews and probably have more functionality (and are much more money) but I have to say, this is far more than I expected. For the price, I am quite satisfied.

Physical aspects: The case is well made. It's solid and very nice looking. Holes are in the right place to allow for good airflow but also to direct noise away from the front (have done a lot of research about noice and HTPCs). The fans that come with the case do push a lot of air, but they are very loud. I changed mine out (120mm-Scythe SY1225SL12L in the front and two 60mm-SilenX IXP-34-16) for a total of $40. They are slightly less in CFM, but signifcantly less in terms of noise. So far, no heat issues at all (have a Core i7 920, Asus P6T Deluxe v2, 6GB RAM, WD Green 1TB drive). It's all working great.

The software is a bit clunky and I think the manual was written by someone who's first language was not english (which is ok; it's clear enough and makes for an interesting read). It's basically two pieces of software: iMedian which can be a media library and play music/movies/etc. but I have iTunes for that (more on that in a minute) and iMon which drives the front LCD panel and the remote. I haven't used iMedian and don't intend to, but I am slowly figuring out how I want to use iMon. So far, it does everything I want it to do and more. It can stream across the front display the name of the song and show a graphic equalizer (the obvious things, and yes even for iTunes - see below) and other neat stuff: it will stream system performance info (like CPU util and RAM usage), news (configurable from a variety of sources such as AP, Reuters, Yahoo, etc.), and weather from over 600 cities (you can select as many or as few as you want). Plus other goodies like checking your email (though I have friends over often enough to think twice about personal emails displayed for all to see).

A note about iTunes. Most HTPC cases are largely integrated with Windows Media Center (MCE) and I am pretty much an exclusive iTunes user (it just started that way back when iTunes was pretty much the only real game in town and I don't have the time or patience to have multiple media libraries or file types). I am happy to report that the remote has a preconfigured template for many other media programs beyond MCE including iTunes. The only problem/feature is that the computer has to have iTunes open AND selected (i.e. has to the active program) in order for the remote to work. Otherwise, it will control whatever software window is active. I may opt to disable the template for IE (as an example since I really have no intention of ever using the remote to control IE.

The bottom line is, and I find this true in the corporate computing world just as much as I do in my own living room, technology these days can pretty much do whatever you want it to do (within reason, yes and of course there are some trade-offs and compromises to be made). The larger issue is deciding *how* you want to make use of the technology. Certainly for me that's been the biggest undertaking in building my HTPC. I am pretty sure that the features of this case will accommodate all but the most extreme use-cases. And it looks good, too (which is important).
Happy hunting!

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