HTPC Chassis

To have a PC in the living room means that it needs to looks like more like a HiFi components than a regular PC chassis. Since most HiFi component are horizontal instead of the regular vertical orientation of a PC chassis, most if not all HTPC chassis are horizontally oriented.

There are many choices for HTPC chassis with some really really cool but also very expensive. Some Korean brands even have a mini vga display in front of the HTPC chassis. I was searching around and found a very nice but not too expensive chassis offered by an online forum.  It have a large power switch that looks like a volume control knob with a blue ring, a blue LCD panel that displayed 2 temperature sensors for case and cpu with a middle display for CPU fan speed.

This chassis is large enough for better air circulation but small enough to fit inside my 4 slots tv cabinet. The front panel have 2 USB ports and a HD Audio connectors for mic and line out.

The placement of the power supply was a bit weird as it was just behind the power knob and the power supply fan is blowing down towards the chassis.

One of the biggest issue of having a PC inside a tv cabinet is the heat dissipation , and heat creates a lot of fan noise as the CPU fan needs to spin faster to cool down the CPU. With a stock CPU cooler, the annoying thing is that the CPU fan was spinning more than 6000 rpm when running on full CPU load and does not cool down later as the heat does not escape from the tv cabinet.

This is a photo of the chasis with a stock CPU cooler.

I had to cut a hole behind the tv cabinet and installed a 120mm silent CoolerMaster fan that will blow air towards the rear o f the HTPC chassis. I also swap one of the chassis fan to blow cool inside the chassis instead of sucking hot air from the chassis.