Assembly

Installing the mainboard is nothing out of the ordinary. The chassis is extremely compact so you will not have any extra room to work with. All the extra cables from the front I/O and the VFD along with that thick power cable running along the edge of the case take up any unused space.


Before inserting the optical drive, you need to secure the unit on the included metal tray. Make sure you install the hard drive in the side of the chassis first and then place the filled tray into the case.


After inserting both the optical drive and the 3.5 inch hard drive, you can make out the board underneath all the cables. Luckily this is not the type of system you open up frequently and all the cables fit perfectly fine. Some were a tad long, which may cause a bit of frustration trying to keep the area around the CPU cooler free and clear, while others - like the unused firewire cable can simply be unplugged. As this is not your everyday chassis, do not expect to get away by investing the same time you would when using a mainsteam midtower enclosure.

Finished Looks

After closing everything up and turning on the unit, all the troubles are forgotten. The compact LM100 Mini looks great with that blue VFD up front. The power button lights up in the same color as well. The one big downside is the noise level of the enclosure. Sure, the OEM CPU cooler is not quiet, but the two rear fans are quite noisy as well.


After dimming the suroundings, you can clearly see the VFD. I will not go 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 LM100 Mini 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.