HTPC Cases With LCD Screens: Bringing Bling

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

SilverStone CW03: Appearance, Fit And Finish, And User Experience

Appearance, Fit, and Finish

The CW03 is a tall HTPC case, and is over an inch taller than the Thermaltake DH102, in fact. This gives it a more substantial appearance compared to its competitors. Other than this, it simply looks elegant and classy both in brushed metal or black metal. The sample SilverStone sent us was brushed aluminum and definitely looked like it belonged in a high-quality home theater.

As we already mentioned, fit and finish is what SilverStone is all about and the CW03 doesn’t disappoint. The case offers extremely high-quality construction with features including a flush-mounted thick aluminum cover, flush-mounted nuts instead of steel-tapped holes for screws, steel-reinforced ribbing for structural stability, and sound-dampening materials around the hard drive cage.

User Experience

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The SilverStone CW03 offers enough space to make component installation fairly simple. One interesting limitation is that the case includes motherboard standoff locations only for standard ATX motherboards. Users with motherboards that have different standoff location holes are expected to use the holes they can and put plastic standoff spacers in the incompatible locations. This is likely because the threaded holes are actually nuts embedded in the case metal, and it would be much more difficult to add multiple sizing options.

The only real frustration is adapting your optical drive’s eject button to work with the universal one in the case. While SilverStone does provide adhesive pads to extend the button to fit, in our experience these pads fell off. We were able to make things work with a little ingenuity and an old adhesive case badge we had lying around, but it’s a notable irritation.

Otherwise, the SilverStone CW03 is a great case with which to work. If build quality, external and internal drive space, and a rack-mount option are high on your list of priorities, the CW03 is the perfect choice for you. Because of the structural rigidity, it is also the case you might choose if you want to put other home-theater components on top of it. However, if budget is more of a concern, you would be well served with the Moneual 972 or the Thermaltake DH102.

Don Woligroski
49 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Hamsterabed
    Nice Review, I agree with your take on cost but if i had the funds i would defiantly get one of these cases for an HTPC. the Moneual looks like the one I would get. This review was nice and balanced and took into all the different factors affecting the cases. noting that the screens were very similar and that the remotes were identical was something I was very happy to see as well as using the fan less psu as another control. A note of how the VGA cables get to the out side from the touch screen would have been a nice note but the pictures demonstrated it accurately showing that they have a pass through to the back video card area.

    A+ review in my book
    Reply
  • cruiseoveride
    ... and we're supposed to put these "hub caps" on my car?

    Seriously, this looks so cheap. Who is going to put it on a rack with $20k worth of audio/video equipment.
    Reply
  • average joe
    I like the rack mounting feature of the Silverstone. But I like the other case better. I think a rack would fit my sparse industrial theme.
    I have a fairly small space. Lots of Ikea furniture.
    Reply
  • DiscoDuck
    The touchscreen to me seems a bit of a waste. I prefer to use a standard computer monitor and a HDTV connected to a video card setup in a way that creates a workstation in the front wall of my hometheater with a slide out shelf for keyboard mouse. That way it can be a workstation/gaming machine from chair and HTPC from armchair via remote. I use mce2005.
    Reply
  • JeanLuc
    Why would you want an expensive touch screen interface on HTPC? The whole point of having a HTPC is use can operate it remotely from your sofa. I would also like to have seen what motherboards these cases can support whether it be a micro ATX or full ATX motherboards.
    Reply
  • cleeve
    Yeah, I have to agree with you fellows and I tried to get that across in the review; any productive use for these screens is a bit of a stretch. The only thing I could come up with is using the frontview media player to access music if you didn't want to power up your screen; I have a projector with a limited bulb life and I don't want to turn it on to listen to my music library.

    But thanks for reading it anyway, I hope the info was useful to you guys.

    And thanks for the kind words, Hamsterabed!
    Reply
  • cleeve
    JeanLucI would also like to have seen what motherboards these cases can support whether it be a micro ATX or full ATX motherboards.
    I mentioned on the first page "All three offer full ATX compatibility", that includes MicroATX.
    Reply
  • I have been waiting a long while for an updated HTPC review. I was hoping to see what kind of components you gurus would use, but this case review was very helpful to me too (been thinking about using an AMD GPU with the HDMI, but was interested in seeing some overall system power requirements of running an HTPC. Don't want a huge jump in electric bills). I was mostly considering building an HTPC for my dad. He's old, and likes to listen to music. He streams internet radio, but sits in the uncomfortable computer chair. With one of these cases he could easily select music AND be able to play a movie using the same box, without a learning curve that would frustrate him. Thanks for the write-up, I hope you can do another one soon!
    Reply
  • neodawg
    nice review, I have the DH101 which is the same - the 7in touch LCD, but it does have the remote and small 2x5 in blue black lcd, that displays computer/media information, i didnt find that the case was flimsy at all, maybe a little without the cover, but once the cover is on it is like a rock. I have to agree with you on the touch LCD, another good idea on paper, but in real world it is an epic fail.
    Reply
  • cadder
    I've thought about this issue in the past and there are times when I might want to use the small screen and not power up the big screen-
    1) to set the PC to record something, say I get up in the morning and remember I wanted to record a certain broadcast, I can do that from the small screen
    2) to take a quick look at the weather maybe
    Actually I've thought about this with respect to just having a large screen and a small screen beside it, sort of the next step beyond "picture in picture". So maybe the touch screen aspect isn't useful but the screen itself might be useful, and if a person didn't want to use the touchscreen in the front of the case, they could use a small monitor or tv setting with the equipment. Some people might want the HTPC to set in the furniture along with the BluRay player and TV tuner, but others might have a more extensive setup with a place to sit and work, video games, multiple screens, etc.
    Reply