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Archive for the ‘htpc’ tag

Mini-ITX Hi-Fi case anyone?

Posted on 31st May 2010 at 02:49 by Richard Swinburne with 18 comments

While we've had our concerns about the Mini-ITX bandwagon, it's still a trend that we're broadly in favour of. After all, small, potent PCs can be great.

One of the nicest - and smallest mini-ITX cases we've seen comes from Taiwanese company Lutec's retail brand, SEED.

SEED is a shoehorned acronym of "Saving Energy Efficiency Directly" - the brand promotes mini-ITX and low power chassis, as well as a few 80Plus ATX PSUs and some laptop accessories too.

Mini-ITX Hi-Fi case anyone? Checking out SEED's latest mini-ITX chassis
Click to enlarge

Our interest was perked with the MU-380: a gently rounded and elegant aluminium mini-ITX case. It measures a very tiny 315 x 215 x 63mm, which also limits its compatibility to Atom-esq products under 6cm tall.

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Reader Advised HTPC Buyers Blog, Oct 09 #1

Posted on 27th Oct 2009 at 11:28 by Richard Swinburne with 38 comments

Richard Swinburne
Yep, you read that right, I want your help in designing a Home Theatre PC reference guide to go on the site and in the mag.

I get constantly asked for one, but we simply don't test enough HTPC hardware to be as widely knowledgeable as I'd like in order to recommend a setup with 100 percent confidence.

The difficulty is that HTPCs vary by country; in the UK we don't have analogue HDTV (cable) access like the US, not to mention other issues, like varied internet TV services and user need - does it need terrabytes of storage or is gaming compatibility a priority, for example?

With that in mind we want your advice; what have you seen that works? What would you recommend to others that fits the spec below?

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Will Boxee’s $6 million help make media PCs less rubbish?

Posted on 14th Aug 2009 at 08:17 by Alex Watson with 18 comments

Alex Watson
Last Friday we sent the latest issue of Custom PC off to the printers – and it’s back already, looking mean and moody with a water-cooled PC on the front – so it means this week I’ve been starting my tasks for the next issue. First up, the letters page, and I’ve just answered an interesting one about media PCs.

Specifically, why they’re rubbish – I had a long email from a reader detailing a pretty tortuous experience building and setting up a media PC. Despairingly, he’d turned to us to see if we could alleviate any of his misery.

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Custom PC Issue 101

Custom PC Issue 101

We take Intel's new brutally fast 6-core processor out for a spin. As it uses the new LGA2011 socket we also Labs test seven new motherboards, seven coolers and seven memory kits to find out which should accompany your new CPU.

Get 3 Issues for just £1
PC Hardware Buyer's Guide September 2011

PC Hardware Buyer's Guide September 2011

Our monthly guide to getting the best components for your PC build,...
Hardware 29 – We are not Server Admins

Hardware 29 – We are not Server Admins

Now that both Intel and AMD have released their next-gen, super-fast...
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