OrigenAE x15e HTPC mini-review

[teknubic]

Originally Posted by OrigenAE website

The Origen AE X15 home theatre pc chassis sets new standards in HTPC aesthetics and functionality.
Exquisite contemporary design coupled with an all aluminium construction, and the introduction for the first time in a HTPC chassis of an integrated 7” TFT touch screen Origen AE brings you, what has already become, a design classic and one of the most sort after pc chassis in the marketplace today.

I got this case because I wanted to use the entertainment center without turning on my front projector -- like for listening to music. I purchased from PCAlchemy, as I have before, and had great results. It came quickly and double-boxed.

I got revision 2 of this case. The changes, from what I can gather, are two 80mm fans in the rear of the case instead of one as well as moving the VGA pass-through connector to its own expansion back plate.

Assembly was straight-forward; everything was where it should be as far as motherboard standoffs, expansion slots and rubber-damped drive bay mounting holes. It went together quickly as far as the case is concerned.
The connectors for the front ports as well as the IR receiver, touchscreen and LCD were long and easy to understand. Plugging them onto the motherboard was a feat but my fingers are not at all dexterous.

After powering the case up and installing the OS, I could see that the power button light was going to be a problem. Because of its brightness, it would leave a red circle after-image in your vision after looking at it even briefly. Thankfully, there is a brightness control screw on the inside that, when turned all the way down, is basically off. The 7" LCD screen is bright as well. There are three 'on' brightness settings which are just fine because when watching on the big screen, it is turned off. The touchscreen itself is accurate and quick, though a stilus is still required for use in winamp even at its lowest resolution, 800x600. Once SageClient gets its music library support, I'll dump winamp and the stilus. One problem I did have with the touch interface was that the VGA pass-through is also the touchscreen input translator. The USB header here was wiggled loose from repeated connect/disconnect during cable-routing. This caused the touchscreen to not be discovered. A bit of solder cleared the problem up.

After using the case for a week, I decided the fans in the back were overkill and the noise was too much so they were removed. The CPU heatsink I chose has active cooling in that direction anyway.

Although the case is complex and expensive because of the touchscreen, it is exactly what I wanted in an HTPC and should be for years to come.


Asthetics
Useability


Price
Noise

[spike5884]

When you get a chance, can you please list out the hardware you put in the box. Looks like a real cool project I may have to under take in the future.

I am mostly curious how you get the SageTv output to the LCD and the video to the TV.

[teknubic]

chosen components:

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ CPU
ABIT NF8-V Pro Motherboard
1GB Corsair PC3200 memory
Gigabyte GeForce 6600 AGP video card
Plextor DVD±RW slot-load optical drive
CoolMax 300W power supply
Zalman 9500LED CPU heatsink
9-in-1 card reader

Originally Posted by spike5884

I am mostly curious how you get the SageTv output to the LCD and the video to the TV.

Short answer: I don't.
If I'm going to watch TV, the front projector is on. I have winamp set to open on the LCD monitor so if I want to listen to music, I just turn it on and use the touchscreen.
In the future, I'll use something like UltraMon to clone the displays at different resolutions and use the SageTV UI to queue up music.
Here's a bad pic of the big and little screens together. Notice they're not displaying the same thing. When watching TV, the little screen will be off. I turned it on just for the pic.

[Polypro]

Nice build. Did you look at the Siverstone LC18 as well? If so, what was your decision based on?

Thanks,

P

[teknubic]

I did know about the Silverstone; it was in between announcement and shipping when I bought the X15e. My thinking was that 2 optical drives in an HTPC was silly. How many people have 2 DVD players stacked on top of eachother in the entertainment center? So I got the OrigenAE case.
A short while later, I learned of competing and incompatible DVD formats emerging in the marketplace. It might be a good idea to have a couple optical drives now, I think.