Assembly

Installing the mainboard is an easy task, as the case gives you ample room to work with. The connectors are of the usual kind and the trusted and true Soundgraph installation method for power and USB connectivity is also present.


The hard drives can easily be installed outside of the case. Two of the three bays offer a one sided screwless design, which works well, while the third bay requires normal screws. This is then inserted into the case. As you can see the fan blows air across the end of the drive.


Installing the optical drive, requires the removal of the entire front. You better install the drive before anything else, so that you can pull the front off far enough. I made the mistake of installing the board first and using zip ties to clean all the cabling up, before installing the DVD+/-RW drive. The power supply is placed inside the DH-101 exacly as you would into any other case. Once all the cables were connected you can see that there are a lot of cables. As this is a HTPC case, the NVIDIA DualTV tuner was installed and the onboard HDMI capable graphic card of the AMD 690G chipset was used.


Turning it on may really make you think of this unit as a DVD player or home theater receiver. The blue glow of the graphical VFD fits perfectly to that of the power button. I will not got into a lot of detail about the display at this point. We have covered the unit extensively in the Soundgraph iMON Ultra Bay "Software Installation" and "Display in Action" pages. Feel free to take a look at these, as the display provided in the DH-101 comes from Soundgraph as well. It should be mentioned that the graphical VFD has a lot of very unique features and can display actual fonts and symbols from all languages. Windows XP MCE or Vista can also access the display to show all the needed information about a movie or song you are playing on your HTPC. While it offers more than a home theater enclosure may need, more is always good.