Theydon Bois
Distinguished Member
Building a HTPC for my mate, who really liked my 'Silver box' and asked me to spec one up for him. He originally thought about Blu-ray, but as I pointed out, thats the part that adds a lot of extra cost due to the software requirements - approx £150 for software and drive on top of the cost of the base HTPC.
Parts List, total cost, just over £500
He liked my case, but the room he had for clearance in his rack was smaller, so he needed a lower profile case. Smaller cases normally cost a lot more, but this Silverstone ML03 was very reasonable. It has its limitations, more on that later though.
The case itself. It does not have the hidden slot that my case does, just a normal 5.25" bay that is open. If you do not have a drive, then the plastic slot hides this opening much like in a normal PC case. The front is nice and clean looking, reset and power button, USB slots and headphone slots, and a large grilled top over the space where a CPU is located for cooling.
Inside is the optical drive bay on the left, and a small singular raised drive caddy on the right. The right hand side of the case is a grilled wall, and I think you can install four 8cm fans along that side. Four low profile slots for a motherboard, and a daughterboard based full height card can be installed assuming your board comes with one.
Parts List, total cost, just over £500
- CPU/GPU - AMD A-Series A6 5400K Black Edition FM2
Heatsink - Artic FM2 Rev 2
Motherboard - Asus F2A55-M AMD A55 (Socket FM2) DDR3 M-ATX Motherboard (Optical + HDMI)
Hard Drive - OCZ 60Gb SSD
Hard Drive - 3Tb WD Green
OS - Windows 7
Remote - MCE
Case - Silverstone ML03
RAM - 4Gb Corsair
PSU - Corsair 430 Non Modular
Assorted Cables - Assorted cables (Optical, SATA angled)
Keyboard/Mouse - K400 Logitech
He liked my case, but the room he had for clearance in his rack was smaller, so he needed a lower profile case. Smaller cases normally cost a lot more, but this Silverstone ML03 was very reasonable. It has its limitations, more on that later though.
The case itself. It does not have the hidden slot that my case does, just a normal 5.25" bay that is open. If you do not have a drive, then the plastic slot hides this opening much like in a normal PC case. The front is nice and clean looking, reset and power button, USB slots and headphone slots, and a large grilled top over the space where a CPU is located for cooling.
Inside is the optical drive bay on the left, and a small singular raised drive caddy on the right. The right hand side of the case is a grilled wall, and I think you can install four 8cm fans along that side. Four low profile slots for a motherboard, and a daughterboard based full height card can be installed assuming your board comes with one.