The assembly of the HTPC was a piece of cake. The Micro-ATX motherboard fits perfectly inside the case. You have to pop out the backplate that was included with the case and use the backplate supplied by the mobo manufacturer.

Everything was marked clearly and the manual was very clear. The one suggestion I have is that if you plan on using a non-SATA dvd drive it is better to attach it before you put the mobo into place, since plugging that in could be a pain.

The one thing about this case is that the case fans are manually set (low or high) and aren’t controlled by the motherboard. Also, the CPU fan is set to run at a very high speed, and you have to enable the variable control for that in the BIOS.

I was very worried that the computer would sound like a jet engine. However, the case fans and the cpu fan are fairly quiet. The WD Green hard drives are also silent, and the computer is barely audible even if there is absolute silence in the room. With a movie or the TV on, you can’t hear it at all.

After I have some of the software set up, I plan on going back in and zip-tying all the wiring in place.