GMC AVC-S7 Slim HTPC case

Author: Jouni 'Jipa' Vasama Published: 18.12.2007 Manufacturer: GMC Product Group: Computer Case In English Suomeksi

Closer look

From the behind you can see the small micro-ATX power supply on the right, a hole for the motherboard I/O connections on the left and a horisontal slot for a PCI-card in between. You can also see four little screws that hold the roof and the side panels in place. Four screws seems a bit overkill for such a small case. Especially when the panels don't even support the case. One or two thumb screws is all that's needed here. The roof can be pretty hard to remove, because there's no grips of any kind there to put your fingers.

Internal design is pretty simple. The PSU is on the left side of the case, in front of it there's the single 3,5" slot for a HDD and then there's the slim DVD-drive. As you can see here, the case is supported with two bars on each end and an extra beam on the middle. This explains why the roof/side panel doesn't really have to support the structure.

Also while looking at the internal layout, you can see that there's not a single case fan in the entire chassis! Poor airflow combined with restricted space can cause some nasty overheating issues, but then again this case isn't meant for too powerful systems. The roof and the side panels are perforated, but a bit surprisingly the bottom is made of a solid sheet. Some holes in the bottom could improve the airflow remarkably.

Next to the PSU one can see the PCI riser card. It's a combination of normal and flex, as the connector that comes to the PCI-slot on the motheboard is in the end of a ribbon cable for maximal compability with motherboards. The slot where the card is inserted is fixed in place, so the card always fits nicely in place. With the motherboard we used on the test rig the ribbon cable hide some extra connections (firewire/audio) under it, but they were still usable with a bit of organising. All together I believe the riser card works well with all mainboards.

Power Supply

The power supply that came installed to the case is a SFX-270A1 model made by Sirtec. It's a 270 W micro-ATX power supply with active PFC. A sticker on the casing states that it contains two ball beared fans. The connections are following: 24 pin ATX, 4 pin (P4), four peripheral connectors, one S-ATA connector and one floppy connector. The amount of peripheral connections is rather surprising, as there's room for only one HDD, the optical drive has a floppy power connector and there's really no room for any graphic cards that would require extra juice. The case also takes one peripheral connector for the front panel lights, but there's still atleast two excess connectors left. In a way it's good that the manufacturer has included some future-proofing, but as the space inside the case is so limited, even the extra cables can be considered as dead weight.

Inside the PSU everything seems to be in place. The heat sinks aren fairly small, but will be enough for such a small unit. The fans are made by T&T and the accurate model for these is 6015M12B. These are specified for 12 V 0,25 A (4 W) which is pretty much for 60 mm fans. Luckily the manufacturer's site states that this model has temperature controlled fans.

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