Zalman HD135 HTPC Case High quality aluminum HTPC case by Zalman.

Author: Jouni 'Jipa' Vasama Published: 04.09.2006 Manufacturer: Zalman Product Group: Computer case In English Suomeksi

Closer look and Cooling

Insides

First nice feature in the case came obvious already when opening the case, its top is held in place with two thumb screws. Compared to the tiny five screws in the HD160 this is really an improvement. The basic design of the case is nothing special. Two HDD racks and one 5,25/3,5" rack in the front and PSU on the right side of the case. The case fan is located in a pretty odd place in front of the PSU.

Bottom

As I earlier mentioned, the case is very slim. Actually it's even slimmer than the PSU it houses. This is achieved by adding a hump at the bottom of the case. Because of this design the case can't house longer than normal extremely powerful power supplies. Also other of the two fans can be seen in the bottom in front of the PSU. Silicon pads in the case feet should prevent vibration from getting to a table or what ever is under the computer.

Ceiling fan

The air circulating system in this case is pretty odd. Because there's no room for over 60 mm fans in the back panel Zalman has decided not to add there any fans at all. Instead the two 80 mm fans are found from the base and the roof. The one in the roof pushes air into the case and the one in the base blows it out. As hot air attempts to lift up, I don't understand the point in this system. The fans are only 15 mm thick and when at full speed they make more noise than those in the HD160. There is no actual airflow through the HDD bays which made at least me pretty nervous. If one stacks all the six HDDs in, there will pretty certainly be some issues with the temperature. On our tests the HDD-temps stayed slightly under 50 degrees celcius.

Toolless

Tool-free installation is always a good thing and it's nice to see the engineers in Zalman have also noticed that. Besides the thumb screws in the roof, the installation of PCI cards is also toolfree. This is done with a metallic clip which locks all the cards at once.

Third design improvement in the HD135 is that all the drive cages are slide'n'secure-model which means they are just slid in the place and then fixed with one screw instead of four seen in the HD160. This is much faster and simpler than in the HD160 but unfortunately, and a bit surprisingly, there's no longer vibration dampeners in the HDD cages.

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