Assembly (continued):
On the other side you can see the mounting for the floppy drive/card reader and second optical drive. Due to the fact that you cannot get in between the two sections, Cooler Master wedges the 3.5" drive bay cover into place with screws just through the cover. When a drive is installed, the blind side is held into place by bent tabs. At first I thought this wouldn't hold a device securely, but indeed it works well. The picture on the right shows some of the case-to-motherboard connectors hooked up and tucked under the optical drive.
Having a modular power supply makes installations like an HTPC so much better. Only using the cables necessary cleans things up very nicely. After the power supply wiring was all taken care of, it was time to install the Radeon 8500 video card and the Leadtek capture card. There were no surprises here; installation is just like any other PC case, no riser cards are necessary due to the height of the case.
The pictures below show the back of the CM Media 250 after installation of all the gear, and the DVD-ROM installed in the front. The DVD actually matches and blends very well into the case, however the flash from the camera reflects very differently off plastic than it does the brushed black aluminum.
In Use:
I loaded Windows Media Center Edition onto the hard drive and then moved the system to my entertainment center to test for two things; temperature and noise levels. When you are using a home theater PC, noise is a big issue. You do not want to hear fans spinning away during your favorite movie or music. The other side of this of course is heat; if you have very quiet fans sometimes they do not move enough air to keep the components cool.
The two 60mm fans Cooler Master have included with this case seem quiet enough for 60mm fans, but I could hear them just a touch in the background. The top of the CM Media 250 did get a bit warm to the touch, however the CPU temperature only climbed 2-3 degrees Celsius over the temperature I monitored with the motherboard not mounted in a case at all. At no time did I feel temperature was going to be an issue, however, this is by no means a hot running system. There is no overclock on the 2100+ AMD CPU, and the video card runs nice and cool, too. If however, your goal was to have a gaming capable HTPC, you might be wishing for much more airflow than the two 60mm fans. There really is no room to add too many more fans, but a single 120mm fan would move more air and be quieter in the process.
Cooler Master sells an optional media kit for the CM Media 250 and its other HTPC cases, the CM Media 260 and 270. The media kit consists of a programmable USB controlled VFD display, an IR receiver, and the IMON remote control complete with a full version of media control software. Look for a complete review of the Media Kit installed in Cooler Master's CM260 HTPC case at BigBruin.com very soon.
