Zalman HD135 HTPC Enclosure

Up and Running

For a modern HTPC to rise above the rest it has to be powerful, flexible and capable of being the heart of your everyday Home Cinema system. To this end, we have filled the HD135 with enough oomph to keep it happy even under stressful loads. As the system inside is likely to evolve with the hardware available on the market, a distinct advantage over COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) Hi-Fi products, the case is likely to be opened many times during it's lifespan. Because of this, as well as ease of build, we will also consider ease of upgrade and repair in the review.

The system we are putting in the HD135 is:

• Gigabyte GA 81955 X Royal Motherboard;
  
• Intel Pentium 4 3.4EE LGA775 Fitted with a Zalman CNPS8000 CPU Cooler;
  
• 1GB (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2 5400 RAM;
  
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT fitted with a Zalman VF900 VGA Cooler;
  
• Terratec Dual Tuner DVB Card;
  
• 2 x Samsung Spinpoint SATA 120GB HDD;
  
• 1 x Samsung Spinpoint ATA 120GB HDD;
  
• Plextor SATA DVD-RW Drive;
  
• Zalman ZM460-APS ATX Noiseless PSU 460W

Once built, proper cable management was carried out to not impede airflow and the top vent was left in the closed state.

Zalman obviously recommends use of their own quiet components in the HD135, and having seen the performances of some of their cooling products in the past it seemed appropriate to use them for testing.

The CNPS8000 is a four heatpipe, low profile CPU cooler. It comes with the FAN MATE 2 fan speed controller so that you can tweak your fan speed to the optimum cooling/noise ratio. We would have liked to use the CNPS 9500 but the design of the case allows only CPU fans of 69mm or less in height, so be careful what you choose.

The second image shows the VF900 GPU cooler - this also comes with an Fanmate controller to manually set the fan speed. We kept it to the minimum at all times during testing. We also found that the vent holes on the underside of the HD135 were perfect to pass the fan controller out of the enclosure for fixing to the rear/side for easy post-build adjustment.

The ZM460-APS is Zalman's noiseless 460W power supply, and from our testing it definitely is noiseless. As the cool air is drawn in from the side the positioning of the side vent on the HD135 allows for fresh external air to be sucked in and pushed straight out, helping it keep noise to a minimum by keeping a low fan speed. Size is also very important when it comes to choosing the PSU, I'm pretty sure some of the larger PSUs on the market will simply not fit inside the area allocated for it.

The positioning of the fan/shroud combination is essential - the CPU cooler should receive maximum ventilation so you can leave the fan speed at it's lowest setting (50% and inaudible). To this end, the screws can fit anywhere on the top grill. Unfortunately only four of the holes are countersunk so place it anywhere else than where it is originally placed and the screws will sit slightly higher. This is a small, yet annoying, flaw that could probably be resolved with a 5 minute dremel session, but hardly recommended considering the cost of slipping on such an expensive case.

Once built, you realise how well Zalman has utilised the space inside. Suitable for both ATX and MicroATX, the HD135 has plenty of room to get your hardware inside and wiring arranged. What would be an issue is replacement of the drives, as once the motherboard is fitted it is quite difficult to remove the cages to access the side screws. Unfortunately, the HD135 doesn't have the same rubber grommets on the screws as the HD160 so vibration might be exacerbated by the aluminium build. Considering the cages slide in on runners there is also nothing to clamp them firmly onto the main chassis, let's hope Zalman have gotten the sizes exactly right in the design to avoid any niggling rattles.