This is an unusual departure from my normal case reviews. We've had some of Home Theater PC enclosures reviewed here before, but I've always passed on the opportunity to look at them. Me, I've always been a fan of BIG cases that have lots of room to stretch out and space enough to mount a half dozen or more 120mm cooling fans. Take the Cooler Master Stacker 830 for example; there is enough space inside to mount just about whatever hardware your heart desires... and then some. But lately, I have been intrigued by some of the HTPC's I've been seeing and the Cooler Master CM Media 260 looked like one of the better ones out there.

The idea behind a home theater PC is to make it as inconspicuous as possible while able to handle a plethora of different media types. Anyone can take a small form factor case, slap the right gear in it, hook it up to different types of media input, network it, then call it a home theater PC. So why should someone shell out the money for a case that is specifically designed for HTPC? It's all about the control...

Package

The Cooler Master CM Media 260 arrived in an appropriately labeled box and was adequately protected with Styrofoam sleeves and plastic wrap.

This wasn't the only box to arrive though, there was another box that contained, guess what, two more boxes. I'll get to the contents of those other boxes in just a bit.

The model that Cooler Master sent me is the KKN1 which means it is Black with a Black bezel and has the Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD) and IR receiver preinstalled and also includes the multimedia software. Some items that were included in the package were an ATX power adapter, remote, installation guide, multimedia software, and what I believe are two brackets for rack mounting. There was also the usual bag-o-screws.

The CM Media 260 HTPC Case

After pulling the CM-260 from the box I saw that the front was further protected with a sheet of adhesive plastic. I peeled that off, and there was yet another piece of adhesive plastic covering the window for the VFD. By now you can see that the CM-260 is designed to integrate with your other home theater components. However, I was still a bit surprised at the footprint this case has; in inches it is 16.93 x 3.5 x 17.32 (W x H x L). Somewhat large to fit comfortably with most modern home theater components. The large footprint does ensure that you can use mostly off the shelf parts for the innards. The CM-260 I received was Black and although Cooler Master does make a Silver model, their website states that only the Black one is available in North America.

On the left side of the case is the spring loaded cover for the only available optical drive and the receiver window for the IR. Flipping the lower cover down exposes a 3.5 inch bay, but I don't know what that would be used for. If you are advanced enough to build a HTPC, you are advanced enough to have left the floppy behind. It would have been more logical to move the IR to another area and allowed a second optical device to be installed for a HTPC rig. The large window in the center front covers the VFD.

On the right side of the case there are more smooth lines and another flip down panel. This panel hides the power button, reset button, a pair of USB ports, a mic and speaker jack, and an IEEE-1394 port.

Both sides of the case are similar and offer lots of perforations for plenty of airflow. The top is also perforated to help with the cooling. It is unfortunate that there isn't much included to help move air through those perforations. Removing two screws in the back and the top slides right off revealing what we've got to work with inside. The white box in the lower left is what contained all the multimedia components, instructions, and screws. This model has a total of three small fans included with it, a dual fan that is installed over where the RAM normally is installed and draws air out, and another between where the optical and hard drives sit that also draws air out. These are all 60mm fans and although quiet, don't really add a lot to the cooling of the internal components when everything is installed.

Here's the case with the box and dual fan removed. One the bottom left is where a small form factor or micro ATX motherboard is installed. To the right of that is where up to two standard 3.5 inch hard drives go. The top left is where the PSU get's installed (more on that in a minute). Notice the perforated bottom designed to draw air in for PSU's that have a bottom mounted intake fan. To the right of that there is room for a 3.5 inch device like a floppy, and an optical disk above that. Before you can start building it up though, you have to first finish tearing it down.

The first step in tearing the rest of the case down is to remove the interface card cover from the back. Then pull the big main rack from the center of the case. Two more screws and the power supply bracket slides right out, another single screw and the optical drive rack slides out. Finally, one more screw to slide the HDD rack out and you are left with an empty case. It took me no time at all to rip it down to nothing.