A look at the Moneual 312 HTPC case

UPDATE: There is a fault with the IR boards on these cases and the triple tap text input on the remote control for Windows Media Center does not work.

This is my favourite HTPC case at the moment, the micro ATX Moneual 312.

It looks like a DVD player which is why I like it so much, it blends in very nicely with your exiting A/V equipment. It’s available in Black and Silver, I prefer the black myself. The case is made from aluminium and they are of good build quality.

I haven’t needed to install the IMON software from SoundGraph on these cases which is always a good thing, The volume knob and IR receiver just work out of the box with Windows Vista. The drop down front panel hides an array of ports including:

Mic, Headphone, Firewire x 1, USB x 2, Card Reader – MS/Pro/Duo, SD/MMC, CF/Microdrive, SM.

Inside there is room for the micro ATX motherboard, DVD or Blu-ray optical drive and two 3.5” hard disk drives.

There can be an issue with the eject button for the optical drive not working correctly, if the drive bay is not lined up exactly. This is the only thing I think could be improved. Overall a nice product for the lower end HTPC build.

Spec of the machine in my photographs:

• Motherboard:- Gigabye GA-MA78G-US2H Rev 1.0
• Chipset:- AMD 780G
• CPU:- AMD Athlon Dual Core 2.7 GHZ
• GPU:- Onboard ATI Radeon HD 3200
• Audio:- Realtek ALC889A 7.1-CH High Def
• Ram:- 4GB
• Hard Disk Drives:- Western Digital 500GB (OS) Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB (Data)
• DVD Writer
• PSU:- Cooler Master P/N RS-460-PCAR-A3 (312W)