Gadgetory

home theater pcs are becoming more appealing for entertainment solutions in your home due to practicality price and the additional features that have evolved over time that enhance the overall experience today were taking a look at the home theater enclosure from NVDA PC a company that focuses particularly on htpc enclosures and accessories the model we have here is the HTPC 7000 B it's a smaller sibling to their larger similar chassis and sizing is really important for cases like this one which should fit in most of home entertainment cabinets and the case is priced at $80 just for the enclosure with the accessories sold separately and we are also taking a look at the optional wireless keyboard that is sold for around $50 which should also act as a universal TV remote but first let's take a look at the case this unit resembles the typical format for any of the entertainment devices such as a blu-ray or a DVD player or an audio hub so it's meant to blend them on your media center it is constructed out of thick black steel and has an exceptional build quality the front of the chassis has a really nice brushed aluminum plate with a reflective strip that contains the power and your reset buttons with silver chrome accent and they also light up and blue for the power and red for the hard drive activity lights which actually may become a bit distracting if the unit is directly visible and next up is the USB 3 and a regular USB port placement of which can be problematic if the camera and has glass doors and we also have the colored audio ports which should have had the silver chrome accents like on the power and reset buttons just to keep things uniform now the front LCD is optional and displays the standard information like your volume channel number of playback time and others and is meant to work with your Windows Media Center now the front labels display the functions the HTPC would be suitable for and with the blu-ray drives becoming more affordable the optical bay door has the blu-ray logo the case it's on solid 4 case feet with rubber surface which should prevent from noise vibration and scratches on the bottom panel ventilation is cutout for your power supply with more venting available on the right which can utilize a small intake fan and the left side panel has to exhaust fans which are the primary drive for the airflow it's unfortunate to see the top panel is completely closed without any ventilation cutouts which would make sense as heat rises and help in the thermal Dept alright let's take off the top panel and get inside the 7000 beep on the bottom right there is the 3.5 to 2.5 inch drive mounting plate then there's a 2 exhaust fans and the motherboard area which support Mini ITX and micro ATX ports with 4 full sized expansion slots and all the front cables including the internal USB 3 cable unfortunately without an adapter and then there's the optical drive mounting bracket and support for a full sized ATX power supply which on many htpc cases is not supported alright so the case supports three drives all in fairly inconvenient spots and the first drive is installed on this mounting plate positioned behind the front panel and the plate has rubber grommets for reduced noise vibration and it also supports 2.5 inch drives now the dry SATA and power ports are fairly difficult to get through especially after connecting a 24-pin motherboard cable so it's not exactly made easy especially if you have to replace the drive and moving on to the next drive it is installed beneath the optical drive on the same bracket which unfortunately doesn't have any rubber grommets a place that would be the most required as optical drives usually produce quite a bit of abrasion and combined with a 3.5 inch drive you have yourself a potential noise problem and this is what the driver installed and the bracket is secured back on on spot however with power supply is longer than 160 millimeters clearance for this drive won't be possible and so the third Drive can be installed at the back of the optical drive being secured to the back panel and practically sits on top of your power supply now this seems to be an excellent way to squeeze the extra storage room for such a small enclosure but you must use a shorter optical drive in order to have clearance and installing a system into the case and the APC State's graphics cards and length of 11 inches are supported but unfortunately with all the Abel's coming from the power supply graphics cards only in length of 10 inches we'll still have clearance and some may have issues with the power ports facing the back and before we conclude let's check out the wireless keyboard which uses a regular USB wireless receiver and this is a plug and play device so no need to install the drivers and we recommend plugging in the receiver at the front of your computer otherwise the connection gets lost after about 4 meters if the receiver is plugged in at the back and the unit is fairly small and lightweight and fits in the hands nicely so no issues in the Economics Department however the build quality tends to lean towards the cheap plastic feel which is reflected by its price the right side of the unit has a joystick for mouse navigation which actually can be quite frustrating the precision of movement is not there and navigating to a small button on the screen can be challenging as the joystick has issues recognizing movement on an angle so this is a quiet disappointment however the rest of the buttons on the keyboard come in quite handy for example the scroll wheel and the left and right click aren't easy to reach spot and the rest of the shortcut controls like the new web browser page which you can zoom in and out or close or even go back and obviously we have all the media controls for playback volume and navigating within the menu now we recognize it's quite a challenge trying to squeeze the entire keyboard in such a tiny space and in total of 80 keys have been placed in the middle of this unit and while you have all the controls right at your fingertips it was almost impossible trying to use the keyboard for any serious typing and that's because the keys are so close together this makes it prone to many typing errors but for quick internet search with rare use and if you have small hands this actually isn't bad at all now the keyboard runs on triple-a batteries which can be recharged using the provided mini USB port and we have the battery charging and battery low indicators which are very useful on the back of the keyboard we have the universal TV room with our support but unfortunately no more TV functions such as TV guard or even channel I put down and now with all these functions this is not an alternative to a good mouse and keyboard combo but a decent all-in-one solution that is space efficient so let's summarize the 7000 B brings some good and some bad first a relative of small stature will be attractive for users with limited space with its simple and elegant aluminum front panel and an extremely solid construction throughout and actually decent hardware options for the inside with three drives full sized ATX power supply and two exhaust fans to keep the system cool all in such a tiny enclosure the major gripe we have about the chassis are the certain limitations on storage based on your hardware which are not outlined in the manual and may cause confusion lengthening the chassis perhaps just by one inch would have made the installation of all three drives without any clearance issues but this is meant to be sort of a value htpc enclosure with excellent build quality with some compromises on internal functions and the wireless device manages to cramp in a mouse a keyboard and a TV remote all in one small housing that would be easy to store and provides many useful shortcuts for browsing the web and to use with Windows Media Center however this device lacks the solid quality feel and the a pointer Mouse is not practical at all even for basic navigation and the keyboard keys are pretty tight making typing difficult and a relative inexpensive price for this keyboard with so many functions the compromising quality is definitely there and that concludes that are used for the NVIDIA PC 7000 V and the HTPC KB 100 thanks watching and we'll see you in the next one