GlacialTech Altair A381 HTPC Casing Review

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Product: Altair A381 iMON
Manufacturer: GlacialTech
Supplied by: GlacialTech
Price: USD229/RM823
Launch Date: Sep 2008

HTPC or Home Theatre PC which is not a new stuff as it have been in the market quite some time ago. What is HTPC? Basically it is a device which combines the functions of computer and digital video recorder. Today, we are going to bring you a HTPC case from GlacialTech; Altair A381 which was just released in Sep 2008. Wonder how this A381 looks like and how it performs? Let us go through together.

Company Profile

GlacialTech Inc. was established in June 2001 by a team of 8 world-class researchers (PHDs) and three factory owners. Its technological areas of expertise include specialized thermal theory, soldering and mounting technologies, mechanism design, test and verification environment build-up and advanced conduct material development.

As a total thermal solution provider, GlacialTech is committed to using lighter weight materials, lower noise and lower manufacturing cost to deliver superior cooling solutions. All this has brought about the increased value for our customers with lighter system board loading, quiet working environment and optimal price performance. Price performance, noise performance and weight performance are our three cooling design philosophy. Having acquired ISO 9001 and 14001, GlacialTech commits itself to using green materials for its products designs and to perfecting green manufacturing processes in manufacturing its products.

Features

- Home theater appearance
- Aluminum chassis design
- Low down inside temperature with best airflow design
- Remote controller support Microsoft Vista or iMON software
- IR receiver support remote controller, wireless keyboard, and wireless mouse
- Front I/O port for easy access
- 270W quiet flex PSU
- 2 blue LED case fan
- Card readers is included
- System information display with VFD (option)
- EMI clip of top cover for grounding
- iMON modules (option)
- 4.3" LCD (option)
- Bluetooth and wireless inside (option)

Specifications

Diagrams

Part List

Package & Contents

First of all we would like to thanks to GlacialTech for the well packaged of this review sample which arrives safely at our doorstep. The packaging box of the GlacialTech Altair A381 describes all the important features and specifications of this HTPC case which looks attractive and informative. The packaging box comes with a handles for user to carry them this case easily as this HTPC case is not light at all.

The GlacialTech Altair A381 is protected by two high quality of foams to ensure this case is well protected because HTPC is not cheap. Besides casing itself, there is a rectangular accessories box comes along with this case which contain all the accessories of this GlacialTech Altair A381.

The accessories of GlacialTech Altair A381 are software/drivers CD, power cord, remote control, 2xAAA batteries, aluminum optical drive bezel & 3M double sided tape, power on connector, user's manual and some screws. The Aluminum optical drive bezel is used to stick on the optical drive with the 3M double sided tape but this is not applicable for slot type of optical drive.

As usual a remote control is included for GlacialTech Altair A381 which this is a compulsory item for a HTPC system. Else it makes no different than a normal computer. The remote control is a very rich features remote controller. The big round button in the middle actually works as a mouse where you can control your HTPC system's mouse movement on your comfortable sofa.

GlacialTech Altair A381 iMon Exterior

GlacialTech Altair A381 has total four models; standard, VRD, iMON and one more which is still not yet official launched which is touch LCD version and support iMON software. Altair A381 touch LCD version looks very attractive but the price should be attractive too; you pay what you get. Let us explain further on these four models; A381 standard is the most basic version, A381 VFD which support Vista, comes with 6 media hot keys and display some system information on the VFD, and A381 iMON supports iMON which is a software to control various media application and windows system by using the remote control. GlacialTech has two colors for selection for Altair A381; silver and black which are the common colors for HTPC system.

Thanks again to GlacialTech for sending the iMON version of Altair A381 to us for reviewing and sharing with all of you here. Our unit here is a black one which looks extremely cool and will able to match with most of the user's home theater systems. For the exterior of GlacialTech Altair A381, basically it is made by two kind of material; aluminum for front bezel and normal steel for the overall casing exterior. The front bezl finishing is very good but for the rest of the casing like top panel, side panel are quite rough. Rough surface doesn't mean not good as some people will like rough surface which is easily for maintenance and not easy to get sracthes. The overall gross weight of Altair A381 iMON is around 8.6KG with dimension of 430 x 100 x 405 (W x H x D) mm.

GlacialTech Altair A381 iMON comes with a character VFD display where it can display two rows of characters in blue color. The displayed information can be tuned by iMON software in window which is provided by A381 iMON model. Seven media hot keys are available for GlacialTech Altair A381 iMON which are made by silver aluminum as well. On the right side of the front panel, there is a volume control switch and it works as a system On/Off power button as well by pressing it. This could be something miss out by the user if he/she doesn't go through the user's manual and end up like us to power on the system by using the remote control.

Optical drive bezel isn't come along with the case front panel as GlacialTech has provided as separated optical drive bezel in the accessories box where uses need to stick the bezel on their tray type optical drive. At the bottom of the optical drive, there is an aluminum door which contains the card readers, audio jacks and two USB ports. This media aluminum door is good as it can protect the all these front I/O ports from being dusty.

Here is the back panel of GlacialTech Altair A381 where there are many square ventilation holes to further enhance the system cooling as cooling is one of the major concern for HTPC system. On the right side of the back panel, you will able to see a small power supply. This power supply is not an auto switching PSU between 110V and 240V, so pleasure make sure it is switched to correct voltage input else you may blow up the power supply instantly once you power up the system. However this shouldn't an issue if you purchase the case from your local reseller.

On the top panel of GlacialTech Altair A381, there are also many square ventilation holes which cover up half of the top back panel area. This area is just right above the CPU, MB location so it is used for providing the fresh air to cool them down. Most of the time HTPC is always slim size so add on card like video card, sound card is a problem for HTPC because it is hard to get a half height card in the market unless you can get it from some OEM computer brands like Dell or purchase the riser card from GlacialTech which able to support up to two full height card.

Overall GlacialTech Altair A381 has only two active cooling fans which located on the left and right of the case. The first picture above is on the right hand side of the case which is an intake fan to provide fresh air to cool down the CPU and second picture is the exhaust fan which is used to blow out the hot air that circulate around the inner case.

At the casing bottom of GlacialTech Altair A381, there are four high quality gold color case stands which looks cool and with this, the HTPC case look much more similar with the digital video recorder that we used to have in the old time.

GlacialTech Altair A381 iMon Interior

After some discussion about the exterior of GlacialTech Altair A381, now let us focus on interior portion of this case. As you can see, the interior of this casing is similar with most of the desktop cases where it is made by solid steel and painted in grey color. In order to let users to have more varieties when comes to HTPC, we would like to see something more special like fully aluminum case from GlacialTech which is not only looks cool, light but good for heat dissipation as well.

GlacialTech Altair A381 comes with a 270W quiet flex power supply. 270W PSU may not enough for desktop but it is more than enough for a HTPC system because HTPC has very limited hardware supported like maximum 1 optical drive, 2 HDD and high end video card is not supported due to market limitation of half height card. The connectors of this 270W are just enough and we would like see the PSU cables are sleeved as HTPC always has ventilation problem. For the ventilation portion, GlacialTech includes two 60mm blue LED fan which operate with 1500RPM and 19dBA.

GlacialTech Altair A381 can support up to two 3.5" HDD and one optical drive. Here are the optical drive and HDD brackets which require to be removed in order to install the HDD or optical drive accordingly. The HDD brackets are installed on the casing with additional sponge rubbers to protect the HDD shock which is important because HDD is a sensitive computer device.

Left picture above is the card reader, USB and audio jacks' cable connection while right picture is the VFD display connection. All these connections look complicated and messy but luckily user doesn't need to connect these cables by themselves (preinstalled) even though user's guide has stated all the connection clearly.

In order to power up and transfer data signals from motherboard to VFD display, here are the cables connections that user need to take note. The VFD display or iMON system is powered up by connecting to 24pins power connector from PSU and the USB cable is used for transferring the data signal to VFD display to show all the messages that is tuned by the users.

Installation, Testing & Performance

After all these explanation and theory of GlacialTech Altair A381, now let us go through the installation portion. We started with the optical drive and HDD installation where users need to remove the brackets and install the optical drive and HDD. These steps are simple and shouldn't cause any problem for anyone.

Previously we have stated that GlacialTech separates the optical drive bezel from the front panel and here is the finish installation of the optical drive bezel on an optical drive which installed on the GlacialTech Altair A381. This step is simple as well but users need to align the 3M double sided tape correctly in order to get the perfect placement on the optical drive. Everything looks cool with this optical drive bezel but please take note this bezel will not work with slot type optical drive.

Here is the complete installation on GlacialTech Altair A381 and so far the cable routing is a major problem from the overall issues that we have encountered. Although GlacialTech Altair A381 can support motherboard up to ATX (standard desktop motherboard) and E-ATX but it is advisable to use small motherboard on such HTPC systems which will give less problems for you. For the CPU cooler, we have used GELID Solutions Silent Spirit without the fan due to the height of this GlacialTech Altair A381 case is not allowed. Another picture above is showing the blue color fan which looks cool but I believe certain people don't like it so it is good if GlacialTech could have a switch or selection for users whether they want the LED fan or normal fan without LED.

Once the driver and software are installed on the HTPC system, the VFD display will show the default setting in iMON such as system information, weather, news, email and etc. all these setting can be fine tuned by the users manually. The blue LED display looks nice and matches with the chassis blue LED fan.

Software

The driver and software installations are simple and standard with the rest of window software and GlacialTech has the live checking & update to ensure users have the latest software in order to maximum the beneficial for the users.

Here are the rest of the setting that can be tuned by the users for fully utilize the iMON software for this HTPC system. There are many features and setup can be played around which is interesting but a bit time consuming for the first time setup.

Here are the some screenshots and functions for iMON software such as onscreen keyboard and etc which is controlled by the remote control. For more iMON software information, you may refer to here.

Since HTPC is a combination device of computer and DVR, here is the iMON application screen that allows users to use the HTPC system as DVR functions for music, video, picture viewing and etc. All these files in order to be played by this software are required to be defined first in the setup else it will not able to scan the files of the system.

Test Bed
Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3
Heatsink : GELID Solutions Silent Spirit
Memory : 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory
Hard Drive : 250GB 7200RPM Western Digital
Graphic Card : OEM Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
Optical Drive: 16x DVD RW
System BIOS: F7
Operating System: Microsoft Window XP SP2
Benchmark Software: Gigabyte Easy Tune 6
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

For the testing, since the hardware like motherboard, CPU, HDD, are same then the system performance should be the same. Hence we will focus on the ventilation of this case; GlacialTech Altair A381. We compare a CPU and system temperature of this HTPC case and standard desktop case, we found that the system and CPU temperatures are higher than normal desktop case; around 5-10°. Hence we recommend this casing for those systems comes with pretty low power consumption hardware components like SSD hard drive, integrated video card, or maybe Celeron/single Core/Atom CPU. Cooling is very subjective topic and as long as the temperature is not impacting the system performance like hang or slow respond then we will consider it is still acceptable and we don't found any issues on GlacialTech Altair A381 case although the system and CPU temperatures are higher.

Conclusion

Altair A381 is the latest HTPC casing from GlacialTech and it has great improvement over the older version and we hope to see continuous improvement and enhancement for next upcoming HTPC casing from GlacialTech like fully aluminum casing. Overall GlacialTech Altair A381 is a stylish HTPC which comes with many great features and there are few models for selection like standard version (149USD), VRD (199USD) for those budget user and high end versions; iMON (229USD) or touch LCD (TBD) models which gives further enhancement and features over the standard and boring HTPC system.

Pros:
* Aluminum front bezel
* Comes with great functionality remote control
* Support up to ATX & E-ATX motherboard
* Support great software; iMON
* Comes with VFD display for iMON & VFD models
* comes with card reader, front USB and audio jack for easy accessing

Cons:
* PCI riser is not include and hard to get half height card
* Ventilation need to be improved further
* It could be expensive for certain people

Thanks to GlacialTech for providing this sample for us to review.