What?!? This thing is so fugly, I'd never put that on the lowboard... Also funny how the article mentions the blending with other home theater surroundings, yet the images do not show any of it. Seriously guys: Put a toaster on the lowboard and hide that thing next to the receiver and bluray player *inside* the lowboard; looks much better but retains the WTF look of visitors plus you can make a quick snack while using that equipment without losing visuals.
$399 for a low-profile case, integrated CPU cooler, PSU, and motherboard is actually fairly reasonable. Figure they're charging around $150 for the case alone which isn't cheap but not at all extortion.
Thing is, it's actually quite large-- it's 18 inches wide. I had an old NSK2480 desktop case used as a HTPC many years ago that was NOT small and it was 17.5" wide! It's likely going to be larger than your high-end receiver. That will fit in a home theater cabinet, but just barely.
What I _really_ want is something like that skull canyon NUC with a double-height PCI-e riser slot stacked on top of it to hold an 11" videocard. That would be suhhh-weet.
I wish the skull canyon NUC had a PCIe slot, too. It's totally go against what Intel is doing with the NUC though. The closest small footprint powerhouse ITX build I've done is the Silverstone FT03 mini, and it's still an order of magnitude larger than the skull canyon NUC. It's just hard to engineer a 300mm video card expansion along with adequate cooling into a small chassis. Many have failed spectacularly like that POS steel Prodigy case with almost no ventilation.
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Daniel Egger - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
What?!? This thing is so fugly, I'd never put that on the lowboard... Also funny how the article mentions the blending with other home theater surroundings, yet the images do not show any of it. Seriously guys: Put a toaster on the lowboard and hide that thing next to the receiver and bluray player *inside* the lowboard; looks much better but retains the WTF look of visitors plus you can make a quick snack while using that equipment without losing visuals.ddriver - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
that's why it is called bulldog - cuz it is fuglyChapbass - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
Whats a lowboard? What country do you live in?Daniel Egger - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
A lowboard is a piece of furniture (like a cabinet or a shelf) with rather short height you place underneath the TV set, just like shown in the image.Samus - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
Chapbass clearly has never been to IKEA but who can fault him ;)at80eighty - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
I'm glad they got rid of the inlays. This just became a serious contender for my next pcFreihEitner - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
That mini-ITX system looks like it's about the size of my original 1980s PC-XT clone. That's huge for mini-ITX!Samus - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
I was thinking the same thing. Considering there is an SFX PSU in there I can't believe it doesn't fit an mATX board!schizoide - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
$399 for a low-profile case, integrated CPU cooler, PSU, and motherboard is actually fairly reasonable. Figure they're charging around $150 for the case alone which isn't cheap but not at all extortion.Thing is, it's actually quite large-- it's 18 inches wide. I had an old NSK2480 desktop case used as a HTPC many years ago that was NOT small and it was 17.5" wide! It's likely going to be larger than your high-end receiver. That will fit in a home theater cabinet, but just barely.
schizoide - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
What I _really_ want is something like that skull canyon NUC with a double-height PCI-e riser slot stacked on top of it to hold an 11" videocard. That would be suhhh-weet.Samus - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
I wish the skull canyon NUC had a PCIe slot, too. It's totally go against what Intel is doing with the NUC though. The closest small footprint powerhouse ITX build I've done is the Silverstone FT03 mini, and it's still an order of magnitude larger than the skull canyon NUC. It's just hard to engineer a 300mm video card expansion along with adequate cooling into a small chassis. Many have failed spectacularly like that POS steel Prodigy case with almost no ventilation.JoeyJoJo123 - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
Nah dude. Even my FTZ01B is big. It's too bulky to fit in my backpack. The case is about a 5" x 14" x 14" sized box.This isn't any more compact or portable than a mini-ITX tower.
zodiacfml - Saturday, May 28, 2016 - link
Not bad. It could do away with the mesh grill in front to reduce the noise going directly to the user.