10th April 2007

Cases for new computers

posted in Technology, Hardware |

The Zalman home theater PC cases look like reasonable options for both computers. I’m not especially fond of the tower form factor so I’m fine with a horizontal machine for the workstation PC also. The Zalman HD160XT is kind of cool but costs more than $500 and I don’t really need the little 7″ LCD touch-screen. The other two options are the HD160 and the HD135. The space I have for the Media Center box is about 7.5″ high (and I need to leave some space for cooling) but either of these boxes should fit- the bigger one is 6.2″ high, the smaller one is an inch shorter but can still take full height video cards and 5(!!!) internal hard drives. The 160 is a bit less than $300 at newegg, although since I don’t feel a need for more fancy stuff on the front of the case the smaller one (which isn’t available yet) might be the right choice.

These have a reputation for being very quiet. If there was a smaller version with only room for a Micro-ATX motherboard and maybe not as many drives, that might be ideal, but maybe that just isn’t going to happen.

I also wonder if the BTX form-factor is dead. This was a big announcement from Intel about a year ago about a new case design but there are almost none available.

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  1. 1 On June 25th, 2007, Zalman HD135 and HD160 » AlexHopmann.com said:

    […] Earlier I mentioned looking at the Zalman HD135 and HD160 cases for the new media computer I’m going to build this summer. I was at Frys earlier today and had a chance to check them both out in person. The HD135 looked much nicer than the HD160. The HD160 doesn’t use thumbscrews to get the case off- you have to remove 5 normal screws to open the case. Now, hopefully you aren’t doing that often, but it sounds like a major pain when you do. The HD135 seems to have plenty of room for everything, tons of drives, and its a bit smaller height (although slightly deeper but that should be ok). […]

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