Building Dream HTPCs: Steiger Dynamics Interview

bit-tech What specifications are the most popular – low end, mid-range or high end?

Due to our relatively high entry price which comes from the outstanding quality and features of our chassis, the most popular system configurations are in the mid to high-end range. That being said, our stand-alone chassis is also very popular in the DIY market. It is the only HTPC chassis out there with full custom liquid cooling support and that kind of build and finish quality.


bit-tech Are you PC’s made of off-the-shelf parts or do you include any customisation as well?

All our systems - and this also holds for the those still in the blueprints - feature exclusively designed chassis’ which are only available through us. All LEET HTPCs feature additional exclusive solutions like custom BIOS from Asus and patented fan decoupling gasket. We furthermore co-developed our custom liquid cooling with Swiftech, one of the leading manufacturers of cooling components.

The radiators we use are custom made by Swiftech for us. Furthermore, the LEET Monitor App was developed in-house and shows, among plenty of other things, live CPU and GPU clock speeds and temperatures, ping, drive space, and live speaker volume. It also allows for brightness control in dark living room environments.

bit-tech Do you have any advice for potential LEET system/HTPC owners? For example, is there software/addons/windows tweaks you recommend people try to make using their PCs easier?

Absolutely. There are two major components which have to be covered to ensure a perfectly smooth living room computing experience: First, the proper hardware setup and second, the software configuration. Our systems are delivered plug-n-play ready, pre-configured with countless settings and tweaks, ranging from DPI scaling to video codec, driver and OS optimization.

The TV and AVR however have to be set to game or PC mode to deactivate picture processing to reduce the input lag to the possible minimum. That being said, all newer TVs have monitor-like latencies, making them well suited for fast games.

Addons we recommend are Windows or XBOX Media Center as well as remote control apps like Splashtop and My Media Center from Ceton which work with most smartphones and tablets. For gamers and professionals, we recommend to use an XBOX controller or mouse and keyboard from the sofa.

We have tested most wireless devices on the market and can recommend the Logitech G700S mouse and K800 backlit keyboard which both work very well over a long distance living room environment. Our weapon of choice are however cabled mouse and keyboard placed on the COUCHMASTER, an ergonomic platform for the sofa which makes you feel like sitting in a throne. It comes with an integrated USB 3.0 hub delivers, in combination with our line of HTPCs, the ultimate living room computing experience.

Thanks to Martin Gossner and Steiger Dynamics for speaking to us.