Glacialtech Altair A380 HTPC Case

Assembly

When assembling the case, the first thing after placing the mainboard in the chassis is connecting the front I/O. Do you notice something out of the ordinary? None of these have any labels. While some are obvious, like the USB cables, try connecting the front audio connectors at the right position, without a lot of research.


Installing the mainboard is no problem. As you can see, I have routed the cables as nicely as I could. The ASRock 780G board is perfect for such a case. The low profile Arctic Cooling heatsink cools a low power 45W Athlon X2 processor.


Installing the optical drive in the drive bay is actually much harder than expected. After about half an hour, I managed to get the BlueRay/HD-DVD connected to the power and SATA connector. Because of the limited space, angled connectors had to be used. Some optical drives will not fit, if they are just a tad bit longer.


After installing everything, simply place the cover back on the case and secure it with a screw. Let's fire up this puppy.

Finished Looks

With the drive cover placed on the LG optical drive, it fits perfectly inside the clean hole. The power button lights up with a blue ring, which looks very nice as well.