Let's see what we have received

I wish to thank Vidabox for sending us a review sample.

As I already did meet them at the ISE 2010 show so I had a good idea what should be delivered. But why have couriers no respect for there parcels?

Luckily the Vidabox box is made very well with Styrofoam and thick layers of carton.

No harm was done to the case and I let the courier go free.



As I already removed the protective wrap with the inspection, I was pleased to see the black case unharmed. Long trip from New York USA.



Inside besides the lovely case we find the very unique mounting material. Nice screws with rubber; this gives an ultra shock free use of the HDD's and Optical reader. But i prefer a solid state drive for an Operating system. SSD's getting cheaper and more mainstream now. For data we will use normal hard disks. This mounting system is also used for the Optical drive. DVD or Blu Ray whatever you prefer. But let's show this further in the review.




Besides the mounting screws we found some motherboard screws, black screws for the PSU and a few spares, just in case you lose some. Good thinking here! Very customer friendly as those will be hard to find.

A one page manual (available online too), small speaker, some spacers and the optical bezel.



Let's call in my beauty full assistant and have a look at this case

Out and Inside

The vCase3 front is made from black brushed aluminum without any LCD/VFD displays. On button and a reset button plus 2 leds for power on and HDD activity. If u use this HTPC case you mostly connect it to a LCD/LED TV/Display and all info will be on that. More important is how it looks together with your receiver/amplifier or any other products to get the sound/video going.
Keeping it simply fit most perfectly as long those are black.

May I show you some pictures before we get in the help troops and extra hands?




So is this all? No way, hidden behind a flip door we find 2 USB ports and a card reader for most common cards today. And 2 similar LEDs as we already have.



By removing 6 screws the top will go off and we have access to the inside.



On left side we find a 80mm fan and at the right side lots of open holes, like on the cover. Even above the IO shield place plenty ventilation holes are made.

This case is made extremely anti noise. Like the top cover has damping foam to prevent vibration noises. The whole HDD/Drive mounting system is for same reason. Very simply mechanism for 3 HDD's and the Optical drive.

A kid can do this, speaking of that let's bring in my assistant. She can inspect this case for me and hopefully give it a child friendly advice.



Already happy with the small weight ( no hardware installed ) she started to have a look inside.



And this means using eyes and hands. I already checked for sharp edges or she wasn't allowed. Never the less same verdict as her daddy. Well designed child hand friendly case.

Time to make this case into a real HTPC… but my assistant needed her beauty sleep first.

Child's Play or not?

Building a HTPC is 100% similar to building a PC. Maybe HTPC cases are a bit smaller compared to regular cases. But the most cases have sharp edges and sometimes hard to get hardware in.

Vidabox made a small case but with a very good design. Besides the lack of sharp edges, the unique mounting for HDD/ODD and the use of normal power supplies, it's still spacious enough.

For me it shouldn't be any problem to put in the hardware, as I did/do this for a living. But what about my little helper? That should be an ultimate test I guess. Under supervision of daddy.

Ready ?



NO no electric screw drivers



How easy can it be? So easy she lost interest already! No challenge here for now. Dad you wrap it up and close the case.

Well done job, for Vidabox and Anne!

So what do you need to make this?

- Low noise PSU
- mATX motherboard with cpu and memory
- Low noise CPU cooling
- Hard drive or drives (place for 3)
- Optical drive.
- Low profile add in cards.
- Operating system

Putting in the ODD. Mounts with the rubbered screws, placing it inside the case
and part one is done



Using the DVD bezel gives a much better result



If you use a Blu Ray player just add a extra BR sticker on the online order system. Here you can also order the Vidabox Premium Wireless ACC-KBLTB Keyboard .

Plug it in baby

Any system needs power, so a low noise 500 watt PSU should be enough, as no high end gear will be used. Except 8 gig of memory and SSD.

Four screws like almost any other case.



Time to mount a harddrive.

Slide in slots for the rubber screws with a locking system. Very easy and good solution.



This way you can put in 3 HDD's and one ODD. But I want to have a SSD as a OS hard drive. Here you need some 2.5 to 3.5 adaptors and you’re done.





I see some space left behind the PSU, can we put a small SSD here?
Sure we can, and even 2 for a raid OS. But this is not supported by Vidabox.



Using a socket 775 motherboard and an Intel Celeron 352 with a 8 gig set of memory, until we will upgrade this with a new set of AMD.






As this HTPC case only has one build fan in line with the space for 2 HDD's, we can only see if this works on regular HDD's. Stressing the HDD with ATTO benchmark give me a nice 23 degrees cooled by the build in fan.

Disable this fan and using the same benchmark we got 30 degrees



Fan seems to be a bit noisy. Shutting it down was noticed by my family.

Special offer and last word here

A case with hardware is nothing without an operating system on it. I will use Windows 7 Ultimate 64 version, but there are several other solutions for a fine HTPC.

In the end I only used one small SSD and one 250 gig HDD as all my data will come from my Home Server. Streaming this to my LCD television with sound processed by my receiver.



Chilling with the wireless keyboard and matching my receiver in the living room, I can only have a big smile on my face here. Looks great and the keyboard has enough range in the living room.

Vidabox made a special offer for the Madshrimps readers:

The vCase3 will be $149.99 (111.55 € ATM) after a $50 off coupon for [M] readers!
The coupon code is: vCase3-[M] This is effective immediately until end of 2010!

But Vidabox offers more for the complete digital Entertainment & control.

Here is my situation in my network at this moment.



With my living room now working fine with this set up, we want more.

Having a plasma screen in the bath room and LCD's in the 3 bedroom's plus one home cinema room with a big 3 meter screen's plus 7.1 sound system (including ass shakers)

They all need streaming data.

Look at what Vidabox can offer and what they introduced at ISE2010



We only can recommend these products to you, and even with others on the market, Vidabox makes products just with a BYTE more.