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An Independant Review By The Good Guys Wednesday 2nd February 2005 Direct from HTPCnews.com, here is a review of the long awaited HT-400 Series HTPC Case by American Enthusiasts. By Jay Padua HTPCnews.com Accent HT-400S/B with Imon Part 1. Introduction The Accent HT-400 by Kanam Electornics has been a buzzword for quite a while in the HTPC community, there was quite a bit of anticipation for this case since its release was announced early this year. Lots of pictures goin around but it seemed to be a white white elephant since there were no signs of it in the market... until now. Kanam Electronics is a respected name in the HTPC case industry, known for its high quality build and high-end look, but it also comes with a high-end price. Its not as expensive as the Atech cases, but definately a few notches above Silverstone in terms price, in the opinion of most, Accent cases are absolutely slick (I happen to own an HT101) and will definately blend in with your Hi-tech AV gear. Kanam has made some improvements in their design over the older HT100 and HT200 as you will find out in this review so without further adeu I present you (drum roll please...) the HT-400. Part 2. What's Included In The Package For this review I we will tackle just the physical aspects of the case first since I am writing this with the case just out of the box. We will delve into this more when I start assembling the case with all the components in. The case arrived in the standard Accent HTPC box.  I took out all the Styrofoam and plastic, and just laid it on the table to admire its handsome looks. It looks very stylish indeed. It has no flip open doors, like its predecessors, only a drive tray bezel. The intention is to hide the Optical drive (DVD-rom/DVD-RW) behind the back plate only to reveal the tray when pressing the eject button. This feature will definitely hide the fact (visually) this this is indeed a PC. The only thing that might expose it as a PC would be the USB/Firewire port and the reset button. But still it does a good job looking like a piece of high-end AV equipment.  Upon removing the case cover, the following were neatly packed and boxed inside the case:
 Part 3: The Case Now lets take a closer look into some parts and the case itself.  The front plate is really beautiful, 8mm thick silver brushed aluminum, nicely cut and precision milled. The VFD window sits right underneath the drive tray opening. The front USB and Firewire ports look pretty standard and connects directly to the motherboard USB headers, as for the Firewire port, this requires probably a firewire card since it uses a firewire extension cable. The power and reset buttons have been improved, being made of aluminum as compared to the older models where the buttons were plastic and painted. Oh and did I mention AV style case feet?  The DVD rom drive was easier to install than I expected. You just have to remove the tray bezel on your DVD-rom drive and nothing else. Once the tray bezel is removed, just apply new aluminum tray bezel with the included double stick tape (really strong tape I might add) The plastic faceplate can remain on the DVD drive. You have to remove the drive cage in order to insert the DVD drive in the tray. Right behind the HT-400 aluminum Faceplate (where the drive bezel is supposed to be) there is in fact a small recess about 2mm, this sets the DVD rom in the exact position and lines up the DVD tray with the tray opening of the front plate. The aluminum eject button just lines up with the DVD rom's plastic faceplate button. It fits quite snugly too.    Case itself measures 430W x 150H x 402D (mm). The length is standard AV equipment measurements so there's no need to worry about it not matching up to your amplifier. Measuring only 402mm depth, it will fit quite nicely in the standard AV cabinet unlike other cases that are quite lengthy. The case itself is made out of steel but the case cover is made of aluminum. The chassis is very well cut no sharp edges. It has two steel support rods that hold up the back side to the front plate. It actually very simple and has no extra metal parts inside like other PC cases to add to the weight only 2 drive cages (1 5.25 and 3.5) The Hard drive cage can hold up to 3 Hard disks. This case was designed to fit an ATX motherboard and an ATX powersupply, so for those power users this is good news. If you would notice, DVD drive cage might interfere with the AGP slot. I measured the distance from the back plate to the DVD drive cage, and it measures exactly 22mm this did not have the DVD drive in the cage yet. If your video card is about 20-21cm in length or less, then your AGP card can fit. Larger full size cards might not fit, all though I have not had the chance to install one yet. So if you plan to get this case measure your AGP cards length first. Height wise, there is enough space even for a Zalman heatpipe cooler. Part 4: Cooling Looking closely under the 5.25 drive cage, you can see there is ample space for air to flow into the case. To those of you with experience in modifying cases, this would be a perfect spot to cut a 80mm hole and fit a case fan which can serve as air intake and DVD drive cooler at the same time. In my personal opinion this a great opportunity to improve case cooling if necessary since the airflow will go straight to the 80mm exhaust, also cooling your DDR Memory sticks in the process. The 80mm exhaust is an improvement from the previous design which used to be 2 60mm fans which wont push as much air as a single 80mm fan and is relatively louder. Good news is, the included 80mm fan is quite silent! Another improvement from the old design is that the case now has ventilation slots on each side of the case cover. Looks like a well ventilated case indeed.   Part 5: The Internal electronics, Imon Receiver and VFD Kanam has built a special PCB to accommodate the Imon Internal receiver. There was a bit of confusion a while back about the VFD and the Imon receiver being one unit and both USB. Well, as you can see the PCB is totally separate from the VFD. The VFD is a Samsung 16x2 parallel port VFD, same VFD used in their previous cases and comes with the parallel port connector. Being a parallel port driven this VFD is compatible with a lot of 3rd party LCD/VFD utilities and software.  You may not notice this in the picture but right beside the VFD you will see two little solders, (I just wanted to point that out since I cant take a picture of the receiver) that's the back of the Imon receiver. On the lower left you see another connector labeled CN1 USB, well that's the internal USB connector which should plug straight into your motherboards USB header. Ok hold on right there... The case comes with 2USB headers connectors already so the IR USB header connector would be a third one. So for those of us whose Motherboard only has 2 internal USB headers, we might have to sacrifice one USB front port for the Imon internal receiver. The good news is that, since this receiver is connected internally then the we can expect to be able to turn on your HTPC via remote. Part 6: A little bit of info on the Imon remote Since I have not assembled the whole HTPC yet, I have still yet to test the internal receiver, Imon remote and the Multimedian software. I will go more into that another time, but till then, here's a look at the Imon Multimedian Remote.  This remote is the Imon MM Remote and has specially formatted buttons to be used with the included Imon Multimedian Software. Multimedian is Imon's new front end to control a lot of HTPC functions.. yes its a front end. Play DVD, MP3 Watch TV,browse your Hard drives, even connect a DV Cam via firewire. Looks pretty impressive. To learn more about Multimedian and Imon you can visit their website at http://www.soundgraph.com Part 7: Conclusion Well there you have it, our first look into the much awaited HT400. Overall this case deserves a serious look, especially if you want your HTPC to seamlessly blend with your AV equipment. Simplistic internals, Improved cooling, and the fact that it can take Full ATX motherboards and a Full sized ATX power supply. This case is simply just stunning to look at and it really has that expensive look to it... I wont really get into the price because price may vary from different distributors and how they packaged the case. Its not as affordable as the Silverstone's HTPC cases or nearly as expensive as the A-tech's custom cases, so that would roughly give you an idea on the price range, anywhere between $200 to $300. This is really one of the most visually stimulating cases i've seen, not to mention good internal design. Pros:
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