Review: Origen AE X11 HTPC Enclosure

by Matt Davey on 25 September 2006, 10:35

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Internal Appearance - Continued

Hidden behind the HDD caddy is the power button and VFD, mounted on a number of different stand offs.

The cables for the VFD aren’t the easiest to fit and we found ourselves having to remove the HDD caddy to have a realistic chance of getting all wired up.


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With it all wired up another issue was discovered – the VFD actually floats, not touching the front of the chassis at all and completely open to the elements.

Even during our fairly short testing time the display attracted dust at an alarming rate, and cleaning it is by no means easy.


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Inside the back of the X11 sit two 80mm fans, both connected up using standard molex connectors which performed fairly well in terms of noise but didn’t provide enough airflow in our opinion.


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Fitting the rest of our test hardware into the X11 revealed another potential irritation. The cables for the front ports on the X11 don’t follow the standard cabling spec. that other case vendors have adhered to in the last year or so.