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Let me introduce you to the SilverStone Fortress Mini. I have one under my desk, it takes standard components, screams quality, uses the same cooling principle and is near silent. Apple does not innovate nearly as much as some people think, but is quite adept at creating arquably valuable closed ecosystems, both hardware and software.

Or if you have 3 spare 5.25" bays you could use something like this http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/p_contents.php?pno=CFP52B&area=usa

From http://www.silverstonetek.com/qa/qa_contents.php?pno=HDDBOOST&area=usa

After the initial mirroring of data is completed, SSD and HDD will have the same front -end data. HDDBOOST's controller chip will then set data read priority to SSD to take advantage of SSD's much faster read speed. HDDBOOST's priority will be determined by the following rules:

1.When data is present on both drives, read from SSD.
2.When data is not present on both drives, read from HDD.
3.Data will only be written to HDD.

[...]

In normal operating system environment, a system drive gets written onto constantly until the system is turned off. Compared to using SSD only as the main system drive, HDDBOOST will only write to SSD once sequentially during system boot up when it activates mirror backup. This significantly reduces the wear and tear that normally occurs when writing data to SSD.

This makes no sense. How is it supposed to read from the SSD if the SSD doesn't have a current copy of the data because you only wrote it to the hard disk?

True, and everything sounded find until I read this
"Every time the system starts, HDDBOOST will initiate mirror backup automatically to ensure front-end data between the two drives are the same."

on every system start it's going to create a mirror backup, which sounded bad unless it works like Mirror RAID which doesn't take any time at all, it mirrors in real-time

So basically on every startup it mirrors the HD to the SSD, then pulls everything from the SSD until it needs to write data. Writing data goes on the HD, not the SSD. When starting up again the SSD mirrors all the new written data from the HD and continues on.

Sounds technically feasible and that should be faster and I'd love to see some benchmarks although I'm not sure how that'd work because reading data should look incredibly fast since it's on the SSD but written data goes to the HD so that'd be normal speed meaning a benchmark might not show amazingly fast speeds yet your PC should be noticeably quicker.

They are a bit confusing. The manual ( http://www.silverstonetek.com/downloads/Manual/storage/Multi-HDDBOOST-Manual.pdf ) though says, that the HDD has to be de-fragmented before usage. They don't mention other software, though they mention Windows here and there. The manual states though, that any OS supporting SATA will do.

(It's a Windows pussy thing again, you can freely ignore it).

Watch the movie - all will become clear:

http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/p_contents.php?pno=HDDBOOST&area=usa

Hard Drive DVD ROM Case

Other software:

0. Install DSL to hard disk, reboot, and configure

1. Upgrade (Apps->Tools) to gnu utils

2. Install gcc

3. Install zile (MyDSL) for editing convenience

4. Other software (for building natively and installation):

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.7/linux-2.6.23.tar.bz2

ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/grub/grub-1.95.tar.gz

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-2.4.tar.bz2

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/m4-1.4.tar.bz2

http://www.oberhumer.com/opensource/lzo/download/lzo-2.02.tar.gz

http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz

http://www/perl.com/CPAN/src/perl-5.8.8.tar.bz2

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.61.tar.bz2

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/libtool/libtool-1.5.24.tar.gz

http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/X11R3/src/everything/index.html

`grep bz2 index.html | sed s/^.*\.bz2\"\>// | sed s/\<.*// | sed s,^,http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/X11R7.3/src/everything/,`

http://gitweb.freedesktop.org?p=xorg/util/modular.git;a=blob_plain;f=build-from-tarballs.sh

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/expat/expat-2.0.1.tar.gz

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/libpng/libpng-1.2.24.tar.gz

http://www.fontconfig.org/release/fontconfig-2.5.0.tar.gz

http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/freetype/freetype-2.3.5.tar.bz2

http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist/libxcb-1.1.tar.bz2

ftp://xmlsort.org/libxslt/libxslt-1.1.22.tar.gz

ftp://xmlsort.org/libxslt/libxml2-2.6.30.tar.gz

http://xcb.freedesktop.org/dist/xcb-proto-1.1.tar.bz2

http://www.paldo.org/paldo/sources/pthread-stubs/libpthread-stubs-0.1.tar.bz2

http://www.paldo.org/paldo/sources/xau/libXau-1.0.3.tar.bz2

http://www.paldo.org/paldo/sources/xproto/xproto-7.0.11.tar.bz2

So I built a debian box (after looking at FreeNAS and OpenFiler and concluding that they were inadequate for the hardware I had already bought ...).

I used: SilverStone GD01 case (it has room for 7 HDs and big, quiet fans), an Asus AM2 board with 6 SATAII connectors and 2 x gigabit ethernet, I installed a low power Athlon X2 BE-2350 and 2GB RAM as well as 6 Seagate SATA disks with 250GB each. I partitioned the disks to contain a small (2G) partition for RAID-1 and swap (2 x RAID-1 for the root/boot fs - Linux can't boot from software RAID 5 yet, 4 x swap partitions) and the rest of the disk is used for a 5+1 disk RAID-5 setup.

Performance is very good, I can saturate at least the gigabit ethernet LAN connection of my desktop PC both at reading and writing (it chokes at 44MB/s - local speeds are much higher, mail me if you want a benchmark run) and I can also run various server stuff on the box that a normal NAS wouldn't support. The box is extremely quiet, so I'm very pleased.

box may not looks so good in the living room

and particularly price

If I were building a dedicated HTPC on the Windows side (unlike the general purpose C2D HTPC I own), I might use an AMD EE/SFF CPU, MicroATX motherboard, and I'm partial to Lian Li, so probably this case, although SilverStone also offers some good HTPC cases. I'd also use a faster hard drive than the Mini, possibly a RAID. Dealing with multi-GB files all the time has got to be dog-slow on that thing. It's slow enough on the 2x500 GB RAID-0 I use now.

If I wanted HD (which I probably would), I might go for a Core 2 Duo E6700 instead. My current E6600 (OC @ 3.2 GHz) still almost maxes out on certain HD movies. The Mini wouldn't stand a chance of playing them without dropping frames. Also, I'd choose quiet cooling from SilentPCReview. They're really the pros as far as quiet HTPCs go.

the pc in that pic is using a standard off-the-shelf HTPC case from Silverstone:
http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-lc16m.htm

nice case (I use one) but not exactly total innovation if that's really what they're using.

EXACTLY... I can't believe you were the first person here to realize this

Though I think it's even more simple then that... _DRM_
The problem with OSs like Windows Media Center is that it's just too damn locked down out of the box it can only play propriatary formats if you want to play anything else people have to hunt down codecs and it still complains/wants to convert everything. I would imagine that if apple ever came out with anything they'd want everything converted to their own propriatary formats. The only USEFUL media center PCs are those based on OSS or hacks such as MythTV or Xbox Media Center.

I think cost and appearance also add to it as well. If dropping $1500 on a new LCD is a big deal then dropping that much on a Media Center PC that's fairly locked down in it's capabilities is just stupid. An HD-DVD player is a big investment in the home-theater world and it's only $500, to a consumer a simple device to play music and video files and browse the web should be LESS then that.

As for Appearance home theater people don't want some hulking plastic PC tower sitting in their rack.. heck they don't even FIT properly in a home theater rack. There are companies that make NICE HTPC cases that properly fit in that domain, like Ahanix or Silverstone. I've got an Ahanix MC302 in Black housing a Xbox Media Center and it looks right at home with other Hi-Fi equipment... I woudln't know where to put a PC tower... there's no place for it in my home theater rack.

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, or some of the silverstone cases http://www.silverstonetek.com/product-case.htm, or perhaps (although personally there's something about this last that doesn't feel quite right) the http://www.ahanix.com/dvine5.html.

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 or Ahanix 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.

I have a good MythTV setup now, utilizing an old 900 MHz Athlon, a PVR-250MCE, a NVidia GeForce 4MX. It works just fine (requisite note about time versus money here... I have more time than money). The thing I'd really like is to get rid of the tower case. I spraypainted my ugly beige case a nice black, but what I really want is one of these:

http://www.silverstonetek.com/product-case.htm (Scroll to Lascala Series).

These look sooooo nice! Unfortunately, nice == $$ in this case (no pun!). I'd really prefer the LC-11M, as it has the display with the IR receiver built in. A little bit of checking shows that these displays and IR components have LIRC and LCDProc support, so Linux should 'just' work.

Anyone care to buy me one... for testing?

Wow - - that's going to be a very nice box. I don't know if it has all the space you want, but I went with the BEAUTIFUL black aluminum case from Silverstone http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-tj06.htm. This is the fourth case I've bought from Silverstone, and, like all the others, it's simply a pleasure to work with. Great machining and finish, unusually well engineered. Doesn't hurt that they're nice on the eyes, too. I used Lian-Li aluminum drive drawers to finish it off. My drives are 250G Seagate 7200 rpm units.

A number of computer makers have been designing cooling zones for a while. Sun and Apple design their machines so that the CPU(s) have their own zones that are separate from the cards and PSU. The air flows directly from front to back over the CPU units. Dell to a lesser extent has this but some of their CPU fans are perpendicular to the board and they use a plastic elbow to direct the airflow toward the back.

I would think that optimized motherboard/case design would be a better solution that this huge fan. If the scale is correct, not many normal ATX cases can accomodate it anyway, so you need a redesign anyway. An example where they have rearranged the case to create separate cooling zones is the Silvestone TJ06. The only other option I can see is liquid cooling.

I was planning to house it in a Silverstone LC08 case, with a slimline DVDROM drive and bring the YPbPr signals out to extra connections on the back panel. The case can also accomodate a 3-1/2" hard disk drive, but that might run too hot without active cooling.

Still, the idea of using networked Myth backends with PVR250s, pre-ripped media, with HD playback capability at the front-end is appealing.

Were you *blind* when you bought that case? It's hideous.

Of course it's not as nice as my Silverstone Glacier, but it looks a damn site better than a standard beige box.

It's not the best looking of the small formfactor boxes, but it's one of the few that has 2 5.25 drive bays, which was a must-have feature for my friend. She thinks the system rocks, and it's her opinion that counts.

I created a mythtv box from an EPIA MII12000 (1.2GHz). I put it into a georgeous Silverstone LC06 case. I switched the fans with silent ones, chose silent optical/HD drives. The end result is just awesome. In fact the 12000 is way overpowered for what I am doing - thanks to onboard encoding in the Hauppauge PVR card I use, and decoding in the EPIA motherboard - and the CPU sits at 10% most of the time. The 800MHz CPU would have been a better pick, and then I would have had less heat = 1 less and slower fans.

Thats the good side...

Behind the scenes there were months of trying to debug random crashes. There is a known issue in the DMA on the MII12000 and others. VIA have refused (scroll to bottom) to respond, even on bulletin boards where they often frequent. They know about the problem because they have fixed in windows driver updates released late last year.

There was a happy ending, for me anyway. If I rebuilt the kernel with CPUFREQ off and only i386 code (a real pain with Fedora Core 3 because it defaults to i686) then everything seems stable.

But I have serious reservations about their support for linux, and would have reservations about dealing with them again.

I hope you can return whatever ugly case you bought, because there are some pretty nice looking ones out there... you just have to look really really hard.

Cases:
Silverstone LC09 (Mini-ITX)
Ahanix D4
Soldam Alphia

Barebones:
Shuttle SB86i

Complete PC:
Hush

Most of these are not as cool looking as my Mac Mini, but then, you wouldn't be limited to 1.43GHz G4 and laptop hard drives.

This is mine. Stacks nicely with other A/V equipment, a little quieter than an XBox. I put a Zalman flower heatsink in it with no fan since the case fan lines up nicely with the CPU. (uATX nForce2 board, YMMV) $140 including power supply.

Happy hunting!

http://www.atechfabrication.com/

http://www.ahanix.com/

http://www.silverstonetek.com/

Kanam has some nice cases, but I can't seem to be able to find their website any longer. However, you can buy Kanam cases from a number of places, like:

http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Cases/ht 400.asp

The Hush case can't be bought by itself. Same goes for a similar case from another German manufacturer - Mappit. I had a Hoojum Cubit 3. Very pretty, but limited, due to poor ventilation and of course, small size.

• Antec
• Silverstone - if getting an HTPC case, be careful to get one that doesn't have cooling problems with your CPU of choice. HTPC cases with higher numbers in their names are generally better at cooling.
• Travla
• Ahanix
• XOxide carries their own brand of cases, plus a lot of the other ones on this list.
• Arisetec (formerly Kanam)
• CoolerMaster
• Logic Supply

I picked up a Silverstone SST-LC03 (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 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 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.

I picked up a Silverstone SST-LC03 (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 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 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.

I picked up a Silverstone SST-LC03 (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 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 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.

Other nice looking HTPC cases can be found at Silverstone http://www.silverstonetek.com/product-case.htm