December 2004 HTPC Case Roundup
by Purav Sanghani on December 27, 2004 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
CoolerMaster Cavalier 2
CoolerMaster has been in the PC component cooling business for over 10 years and they strive for excellence as their name clearly states. Like many other companies such as Thermaltake and Zalman, CoolerMaster has gone a step further to provide not only heatsinks, fans, and power supplies, but also enclosures to house the components of a system.We had a chance to look at one of CoolerMaster's cases, the Centurion 5, this past September. It was simple, yet tasteful, and included many features that we look for in cases like tool-less drive bays, a quiet design and also a 350W power supply, which makes it worth every penny. CoolerMaster also has a few desktop/HTPC cases in their product line and we felt that leaving the Cavalier 2 out of the roundup would be a crime.
External Design
The bezel is designed to hide the typical look of a computer case to help the HTPC fit in with a home theater system. Upon first glance, the Cavalier looks like an amplifier with its large analog sound meter on the left side of the bezel. To the left of that is a large round Power button as well as HDD activity and Power LED beneath it.
The right 3/4 of the bezel is made up of a door, which smoothly folds down when pushed to reveal two 3-1/2" drive bays at the left of that section. The auxiliary ports, which include two USB, audio in/out, and a FireWire port, are placed directly below the 3-1/2" drive bays. There is also a wheel to control the volume of the audio out port. The reset button is placed under the ports on the right.
Click to enlarge.
The rest of the area, to the right of the 3-1/2" bays and auxiliary ports, is made up of two 5-1/4" drive bays.
Looking around the rest of the case's shell, we notice a few vents; one is placed on the left side of the case towards the front and one at the top of the chassis directly over the area of the CPU. We will talk about these more when we get inside the chassis.
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matthewfoley - Monday, December 27, 2004 - link
Great article! I'd love to see more on the HTPC area, including a processor article.I agree, benk. How could you choose the SilverStone over the NMedia? It runs hotter, louder, is more expensive and doesn't look as good.
Another thing I'd like to see in all of the cases is more room for hard drives. If you're going to store anything recorded in Media Center 2005, you're going to need tons of space, and the average user isn't going to want to have a separate file server. Then again, your average user isn't going to build a HTPC...
benk - Monday, December 27, 2004 - link
As noted, please fix pics in thermal section.That aside, great review. The pictures are extremely helpful. I would love to see added to them a comparative shot of all of the cases, or failing that a single chart that lists all of their dimensions.
My personal choice would probably go to the NMedia...if the temperatures are within normal operating ranges, and you're not overclocking (overclocking seems unnecessary in the HTPC arena), noise plays a much more defining factor in my purchase than thermal management.
Locut0s - Monday, December 27, 2004 - link
Ahh now these are what I'm talking about when I mean some nicer looking cases, even if I'm not in the market for an HTPC.mcveigh - Monday, December 27, 2004 - link
fix rollover pics on testing section :)great article! I love my htpc but am looking for a newer case I wish you had tested Ahanix D.Vine 5 with 2 siletX fans installed.
actually how about changing testing to include using identical fans for all systems. I know it's more work but this way you could see how casese compared based on design alone.