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HTPC 4-Way Enclosure Roundup
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."
It's unfortunate that one hast to actually RTFA to figure that out.
Ben Hocking
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Did this article just pop on the frontpage under the novell article? Or did I just miss it??
This is the sig that says NI (again)
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...
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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.