Zalman HD160 HTPC Enclosure

How does it perform?

Once hooked up to a monitor, a TV and surround sound system it was time to put the media centre through a thorough testing. Bearing in mind we are not testing the system, but the shell we are putting it in so we simply ran something to occupy both GPU and CPU to their peak: 3DMark06 and Prime95 running in tandem did the trick nicely.

We also thought a little hard drive workout might generate some more heat for the fans to work with, so we set a huge 35GB folder of music and video to transfer from the 120Gb ATA to the 120Gb RAID array. We noticed hardly any difference in noise with the top vent open or closed so it was left closed for the duration.

The HD160 paired up with Zalman's silent cooling/power trio of CPU / GPU and PSU was a definite hit: with the speakers turned off during testing the noise emanating from the box was little more than what you would expect from a well-sorted watercooled system.

After the stress test we tested the HD160 in a home environment for a couple of days. It replaced a CD Player for music, a DVD Player for movies and Satellite receiver for the Freeview television channels. It was hooked up optically to a Yamaha DSP-A1 amplifier, a set of Mission Cinema 7 surround speakers and the image was displayed on a 41" rear projection TV.

The objective was to see if it could remain unnoticed whilst carrying out its multimedia duties. Being a bit of a purist I must point out that the sound and image will only be as good as the hardware you put it through and the source you play it from. When building a system inside the HD160 remember that quality comes at a cost be it monetary for good hardware or storage space for lossless audio and video formats.

After two days of using the system in its intended environment it was crystal clear that nothing we threw at it would faze it; throughout the test the HD160 was inconspicuous in its presence. The only time it was noticed was when a DVD was first placed in the drive, once it settled to the correct read speed, silence prevailed once again.

Everything wasn't smelling of roses for the HD160 though, and having such a high price and good build quality its shortcomings were painfully evident.




The VFD is useful - as you can see it displays all the standard information you'd expect from the MCE software, but being a veteran Matrix Orbital user, I was left thinking it could do much more. There are no options to change layout or add anything custom, which in a product this expensive you would expect. When listening to a song or watching a program that has a name longer than the length of displayed characters it scrolls, this could be distracting.



This is where it went all a bit wrong for the HD160: the IRTrans software bundled with the system lacks any instructions. Looking at the screenshots above there are many options and settings that seemingly are available, but without a manual trying to work them out is akin to shooting in the dark. One of our forum members suggests a visit to the IRTrans website to download the latest version and the instructions, but frankly without a mention of this in the included main instructions an inexperienced user would be stuck with using the standard settings forever.



The case fits in well with the Yamaha amplifier, and the Apollo Hi-Fi stand spiked into the floor eliminated all vibrations making it look and feel like it was a Home Cinema component, not a PC. When I fired up Counter Strike: Source through it the short falls of the equipment it replaced was evident.

A couple of things that were far too evident though were the power and hard drive access LEDs - they were far too bright and pointed directly to the main viewing and listening hotspot. I actually considered covering them up with black tape at one stage as the hard drive access light would flicker at the most unexpected moments.


Having played with it for long enough, here's what we thought...