Not too long ago, we took a look at Fractal Design’s Define R3 ATX chassis and came away impressed. Today, we’re going to examine the R3’s younger sibling, the Define Mini Micro-ATX tower chassis. The Define Mini holds a lot of promise with six 2.5”/3.5” internal and two 5.25” external bays, six fan slots, support for expansion cards up to […]
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We learned from our recent chassis poll that a number of you are using tower or desktop style enclosures for your home theater PCs (HTPC); thus, we felt that we should expand our chassis reviews to include more products in these form factors. Today, we take a look at the SilverStone TJ08-E Micro-ATX tower chassis. The TJ08 Evolution is an […]
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We learned from our recent HTPC chassis survey that a good number of you are using standard tower and desktop enclosures for your primary HTPC. If you’ve gone shopping for a Micro-ATX tower chassis, you’ll quickly find that there are few decent options available that are modern, can fit one or two powerful GPUs, have adequate cooling and have small […]
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The quest for the perfect and smallest home theater PC (HTPC) is one that has gained momentum over the last few years. We have seen the proliferation of these small form factor (SFF) Mini-ITX cases first hand in our reviews of the Habey EMC-600B and another offering from Wesena, the ITX7 chassis. The Wesena ITX2 is essentially the little brother […]
Read moreIf you’re into really large HTPC cases, this may be the guy for you. My preferences generally run the other way though – preferring to push the hard drives into another location where the rattle doesn’t matter as much. The CW02 from Silverstone’s Crown Series is crafted to allow users to really appreciate the design of this high quality HTPC […]
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When selecting the perfect chassis to serve content to the audio/video stack a different set of attributes is required than what is typically demanded from a home theater PC (HTPC) enclosure. The ideal server must be able to scale to support multiple hard drives, keep everything cool and not sound like a shop-vac in the process. With eight 3.5” hard […]
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The quest for the perfect home theater PC (HTPC) case is always a challenge even in today’s world where there is a healthy amount of chassis to choose from in all shapes and sizes. While some people prefer an HTPC chassis which stands out in their A/V stack there are plenty of people that want something quiet, subtle and most […]
Read moreThermaltake has been making cases for a while, but usually they’re on the flashier, gamer side of things. This offering has a nice look. Notice the red on the front, which I actually don’t mind all that much, but it might not fit in with your specific environment. The Thermaltake Element Q mini-ITX case was made for space-limited conditions, such […]
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I love Lian Li cases–they’re easy to use, aluminum so they’re lightweight, and well built. What I do wish however is they would get a little more creative on their stylings. But hey, I guess I’m happy enough that they continue to produce HTPC-style cases! Pictured below, the PC-C60 measures 445 (W) x 182 (H)x 410 (D) mm, it supports […]
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Historically one of the hardest parts about going DYI (do it yourself) with a small form factor (SFF) home theater PC (HTPC) has been finding a nice mini-ITX case that actually looks like it belongs in the A/V stack. Until recently enthusiasts have had to choose between “the cube” and killing the pig for a benchmark chassis like the OrigenAE […]
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