Ahanix D5 Media Center Enclosure

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?

Comments

Price?

[swordboy]

Ahanix has delivered an enclosure that gives you everything you would desire in an HTPC.

Everything but PRICE!

That's hot

[invisik]

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

[airjrdn]

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

Re:My problem

[weirdal]

On their homepage 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 :)

HTPC -- what?

[SuperDuG]

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.

Re:HTPC -- what?

[evilviper]

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.

Re:HTPC -- what?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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.

Other cases

[Albanach]

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 and here are some links. You do, of course, still need to add a PSU to these cases.

nothing beats my 19" media center

[mistermark]

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

Antec Overture

[Megane]

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.

Silverstone Cases

[Anonymous Coward]

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

This Case

[mustangsal]

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)

Cheapo DVD-player cases, anyone?

[Zurgutt]

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 already tried that and can share experience? Maybe some specific model is more suitable for conversion then others? (reuse PSU, drive, display panel?)

Great case, Missing options...

[Mechamse]

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 built in, but that is another $150 or so... But does come with a great remote.
I'm all for these cases, but I was shocked to see what it was missing. Now the D.Vine6 is amazing as it is fully packed, but is restricted to the microATX board...

Re:look and feel only

[scootr1]

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.

I have an Ahanix D4

[dsavitsk]

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.

MicroATX only though

[DeepEyes78]

The cases shown in the first link you mention only take MicroATX motherboards, which limits your options significantly.

the Rolls Royce

[4alexnyc]

I opt for quality whenever possible. http://www.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...!

Rack mounted is nicer anyhow :)

[timothy]

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 the biggest thing it's got going. However, the "high end look" I'd prefer is that of Acoustic Research's amplifiers. Hmmm, looks like AR got bought out by Audiovox, so make that "the look of AR's amps circa 10 years ago." If stereo equipment -- and computers -- would just all be made with 19" rackmounting in mind, the world would be a brighter place, and children would never sing off key, and I would never sing at all, just in case.

timothy

Silverstone Lascala

[iso]

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.