Assembly

Motherboard installation is easy and is no different from what one would normally see. The HDD and optical drive mount is easily removed using four screws and allows access to the large insides of the LM300 Touch Pro. The cables are all marked and it's pretty straightforward on where they need to be connected. The manual however, is rather difficult to follow and offers no explanation of the included mounting hardware. Also, the wiring diagrams may be a bit hard to understand for a novice builder. There is plenty of length for all of the wires and installing them to the motherboard is quite easy.


The power supply easily mounts to the case using four longer screws which are included with the case hardware.


The HDD and optical drives are mounted from the bottom to the mounting plate. The plate can accommodate two hard disks and a single 5.25" optical drive. Once mounted, the plate is set back in the case, then butted up against the optical drive front panel and screwed in.


With everything installed and hooked up, the look is rather clean and pleasing. All of the wire clutter is neatly tucked underneath the drives and it leaves plenty of room for airflow to the motherboard and other components. The drive plate sits high enough to accommodate today's largest graphics cards and there is even room for a tower style CPU cooler.

Finished Looks

With the Luxa² LM300 Touch Pro all put together and powered on things are looking good. The LCD screen looks good with a surprisingly small pixel pitch and it's quite easy to operate by using the touchscreen, remote control, front panel buttons or the typical mouse and keyboard. One thing rather noteworthy which can be a bane to HTPCs is the power button. The LM300's is not too bright and won't be distracting as it has an illuminated, yet dim sky blue glow. The rear fan itself makes no noise, though there is some wind noise coming from it but after putting the LM300 Touch Pro into an enclosed television stand, the noise is barely noticeable and will not distract from any media entertainment. Looking at the back everything is neat, tidy and familiar looking. The LCD VGA cable plugs into one video card output while the card's other output would be reserved for that 102" LCD home theater display of yours.


The included iMon software is intuitive and easy to install. Navigation is very well designed using large on screen buttons for the touchscreen. It incorporates a full media player ranging from music to movies and from online television to displaying system properties. Ideally one would set up iMon to load during Windows startup for exclusive use of the program as it includes everything one would need for their HTPC software. The LCD touchscreen is well calibrated out of the box and works as it should. The remote control also works very well, has plenty of shortcut buttons and it operates the mouse pointer smoothly and efficiently.