Introduction

Today we got the opportunity to meet the latest member of the Zalman. Until now their enclosures focused on passive cooling, large cases with plenty of heat pipes which cost quite a bit and take up quite a bit of space. With the HD160 Zalman is shifting the focus in a new direction: the living room. The HTPC market is growing rapidly, with easy to use software like Microsoft’s own Windows Media Center (MCE) even the novice user can set up and configure a system in a short period of time.

Zalman wants a piece of this HTPC pie and their HD160 is aimed to fit right into your multimedia center; with sleek looks and expanded functionality.



About a month ago I tested a small HTPC case from Global Win, it’s diminished size makes choosing the right hardware a bit harder and the it’s not always easy to make everything you want fit inside. The HD160 from Zalman is a larger beast, with support for full size ATX motherboards.

So what makes this case different from any old desktop case? The front panel has received lots of attention, with a VFD display, infrared eye, a large volume control button and stealth panels for your optical drive. A multi format memory card reader is also build in the front and with the case you get a relabeled MCE remote control.


In the box ...

One HD160 Case

One Remote Control

One Install CD

One Optical Disk Cover

Two Batteries

One ATX Power Cable

Other cables and screws

User’s Manual



This heavy case comes shipped in a sturdy box; the case survived its long trip overseas well.

Specifications

Let’s look at the specifications:



Four hard drives inside a HTPC is quite luxurious; the front I/O ports have Firewire and USB support, you can also hook up a microphone and/or headphones. The case comes in 2 colors; we are reviewing the “black” version. Despite its larger size the net weight is very acceptable thanks to aluminum panels. Cooling wise the case has 2x80mm fans installed in the rear over the CPU cooling area – a small voltage choosing connector (12v/5v) is included and can be used to slow down the rear fans.

More information can be found on Zalman's website.

While having silent case fans is important for building a quiet system, the power supply and CPU/video card cooling is equally important. For the purpose of the review Zalman included 3 products to help keep noise levels down.

Power supply: ZM460-APS

Video Card cooling: VF700-Cu

CPU Cooling: CPNS9500 LED

To give you an idea of how easy or difficult the HD160 is to work with I will talk you to through the entire installation on the next pages ->

Installation

Let’s start by opening up the case. Detaching 2 or 3 screws at the back can open a regular case. There’s a difference when you want to open the HD160. To remove the top panel you need to unscrew 5 screws (2 on each side and 1 at the back). With this case, we’re not talking about regular screws, but smaller ones colored black. This way they blend in nicely.

Once you’ve opened the case, you can see a lot of connections. Next to the standard led connections, on/off button and reset button, there’s also a header for the front USB ports and the fire wire port. Furthermore there are 2 extra USB headers. These are needed for the flash card reader and the module, which is used for the part of the Media Center (MCE). But I will tell you more about this later.



Now we’re going to start the actual assembling. Step by step I will install the parts.

Optical Drive

The optical drive needs to be prepared a bit before it can be installed, you need to remove the current front drive plate and replace it with Zalman’s own. This one is attached using a piece of double sided tape.

Installing the drive inside the case was not as straightforward as I’d hoped, the small custom drive buttons kept fallen down inside the case and they are not that easy to recover in that area. In order to install the optical drive in its rack you need to remove the rack which is screwed tight onto the bottom plate. It’s quite a time consuming process.

Once the drive was screwed into place, the rack needed to be reattached. The space between the rack and the side panel was very limited, which made it very hard to place the screws. A screwdriver with magnetic head can be very useful in situations like this. Because I didn’t have one at the time, I also had to remove the side panel, add 6 very small screws to the “to be removed list”.



Hard Disk Drive

Next the hard disc drives. The installation is similar to the optical drive, and I encountered the same issues. In a regular case, a HDD is attached with 4 screws. Zalman has another way of handling this. By removing the upper half of the HDD rack, you can see 3 rows with 2 pins. It appears as if they’re rising out of the mousse (2nd photo from the left, top row).

You put your disc on these pins. The pins represent the 2 screws at the bottom. Next you put the upper half of the rack back into place, and you tighten the screws. Finally the other side of the HDD is screwed into place. To prevent shocks, there are already some rubber rings in place. A regular screw wouldn’t do the job; therefore there are some special longer screws present.

The entire construction of rubber and mousse on both sides of the disc is to reduce vibrations.

Printed Circuit Boards

After the CPNS9500 CPU cooler was installed on the motherboard, the assembly went into the HD160. Because this is identical to other cases, there’s nothing specific to say. A Pinnacle TV card and Geforce4 MX480 equipped with the VF700-Cu were screwed into place.

Power Supply

Finally we have the power supply. It happens often that I wait until the end to install the power supply. This way I can hide the cables without having to get them out again.

You can’t screw the power supply into the case just like that. In the case you can find a special holder. You need to take this holder out of the case, so you can screw the power supply into the holder. This seems like a lot of work, but there’s a reason why you need to do it like that.

While high speed movement of air is the main cause of noise you should not overlook vibration noise which can be more annoying. Zalman tries to reduce this noise to a minimum by placing as much shock absorbers as possible. Remember the HDD? The power supply is installed with the same screws and rubber rings and then placed into the case. To reduce the force the “hanging” power supply is exercising on the rear panel, the power supply partially leans on a rubber cube which is attached to the bottom of the case.



Silence

Since this is a Home Theater PC silence is very important. The fan speed of VF700-cu cooler as well as on the CPNS9500 Led CPU cooler can adjusted. The 120mm fan of the power supply Zalman 460 is very silent as it doesn’t need to spin very fast and it draws in fresh air from outside to cool the inside of the PSU.

The fans in the back are attached by vibration absorbing elements in the same way the power supply and HDD are attached. Rubber shock absorbing elements are also placed between the case, fan and screws.

The feet of the case, which look a lot like the classical Hifi installation feet, absorb the remaining vibrations. They have chrome finishing and are filled with soft rubber.

On the inside a band of mousse surrounds the upper panel.

Cooling

In the rear panel of the case there are 2x 80mm fans of Zalman. They are connected to a molex splitter, which allows them to switch between 5 volt and 12 volt. 7 volt is not available. The Zalman CPNS9500 cooler, which has a wind turbine look, anticipates on this, and also follows the airflow. Hot air, partially sucked in from the HDD region, is quickly removed from the case. When you use a cooler that doesn’t follow the airflow, e.g. a boxed cooler or third party cooler which blows air down onto the motherboard (Like Zalman’s own CNPS7xxx series) you can open a ventilation hole in the top panel to supply fresh air.

Of course you can think about disabling the rear fans, but this has a very negative impact on the cooling. And there’s no reason not to put them on 5v as they are dead silent at this setting.

The fan on the power supply doesn’t push out hot air, but sucks in cool air from the outside to cool the PSU, so while it doesn’t help the case cooling, it does help keep noise levels down as the power supply will not get overheated. Lower temperatures also mean better efficiency and more stable volt lines. So to keep the inside of the case cool the 2x80mm fans are vital.

MCE ?

The HD160 comes with a MCE remote control – it can only be used with Windows MCE, so if you want to use another operating system, for the time being, you are out of luck.





While MCE is based of Windows XP isn’t not quite the same, you need to buy it separately, at $110-130 it’s not very cheap. So to use all the functionality of the HD160 you have to add this cost to the total.

Furthermore you are restricted to your choice of hardware components when running MCE, as not all TV tuners are supported. It would have been nice if Zalman gives the end user the choice of what Operating System and software they want to use.

Zalman does include a relabeled version of the Media Center Remote with the case; this remote normally costs you $50-80. The VFD is clear and bright and can be read from quite a distance. After you’ve installed the supplied drivers and application from the Zalman’s Cdrom the VFD and remote spring to life and will show useful bits of information. Song titles, applications started, time played and other informative text scrolls over this little screen when you’re using MCE.

I first tried to install the drivers on a regular Windows XP system, but this gave not the expected results, the remote simply refused to work and the VFD only reacted when using certain applications (Windows Media Player). So the use of MCE is really required.




Conclusion

Zalman delivered a very complete solution with the HD160 casing. As known from Zalman their finishing is excellent. The provided functionalities such as the flashcard reader, VFD display, MCE remote control and well thought out case cooling make this a total and effective HTPC solution.

But not everything is sunshine. The installation takes some time and some things, such as the drive racks are hard to install/service. You are also pretty much obliged to get Windows Media Center if you want to use all the HD160’s features.

While this case and its extra’s make for an interesting product in my opinion it just can’t justify the above average asking price.

PRO
Excellent finishing
Complete package
Winning combination when it comes to cooling and silence.

CON
Installation takes some time
Some features only work with MCE
Expensive ~€340/$270 at the time of writing

Questions/Comments: forum thread