For matx fanboys - Silverstone SG01 Evo

[burnz]

finally decided to take a couple of pics, and put it up... haven't quite seen matx gaining much popularity here, but i seem to have a growing affinity for small form factor systems these days... i've got a little work in progress now to create a matx monster... anyway, here's my completed HTPC housed in the Silverstone SG01, which is a kickass casing (and by my reckoning the only one in India? hehe)... have another SG01 on the way from s'pore to house my next pet project...

just a couple of finishing touches left to complete my HTPC below... my MSI 8500GT HDMI gfx card and a Gyration media center RF/IR gyroscopic remote, both of which just arrived yesterday

 

[bottle]

wow really nice , always wanted one (matx casing) but have too many hdds and other junk peripherals so was never able to get one

what are the temps like compared to a normal case ?

 

[burnz]

^^ temps are higher than normal casings, but still manageable... using stock AMD cooler, my X2 4200+ runs ard 45C idle and ard 60C under load... the casing also comes with a two 80mm intakes and one 80mm exhaust...

hdds are not a problem, since i have this rig hooked up to a 4-bay external sata hdd enclosure for 2TB of storage

only major issue is lack of PCI/PCI-e expansion options... i think 1 big gfx card, 1 sound card and 1 other pci card (wifi, tv tuner etc) is the max it can take...

cable management is also a hassle using small cases, but a modular psu coupled with some short 20cm sata cables would take care of that...

 

[TechHead]

Very sweet! Plays HD movies well?

 

[burnz]

^^ yes sir, silky smooth in full 1080p glory

though the cpu utilisation is kinda high at 60-70% when playing 1080p using just CoreAVC software decoder and WMP to play HD content... hence i got the 8500GT hdmi from newegg to take the load of the cpu and have proper gpu hardware acceleration for decoding .264 media... should bring cpu utilisation back down to 5-7%...

my HD-DVD drive (the x360 one, which works fine under usb in vista) and some HDDVDs should be arriving in a week or so, then i can test those out as well...