A well known disadvantage of the desktop style cases over a more conventional tower design is heat dissipation. A tower is generally bigger, and heat tends to migrate upwards where it is expelled from the top of the case by the power supply. A desktop cases have no such thermal properties on its side, and the layer of warm air just sits over the top of the motherboard slowly cooking it. Accent has been careful to ensure that the HT-200 is adequately ventilated however, and as mentioned before there are two 60mm mounts present. To keep things quiet I made use of a Zalman CNPS 7000 CPU cooler for my Pentium 4 2.4C CPU, and two Papst 60mm case fans, some of the best quality units available, excelling in both performance and quietness.
For comparison, before I made the transplant, I took some readings on the same specifications in my Coolermaster 710 tower case. Based around an Antec / Chieftech chassis, the Coolermaster is an excellently ventilated case. My one had one Papst intake and one Papst exhaust, both 80mm. My system temperature was measured at 39 degrees (it's been surprisingly warm here in the UK recently) and the CPU 42 degrees idle. Around half an hour later when the transplant was complete, I don’t think the ambient had changed significantly, and after another half an hour of warming-up time, in the Accent my temperatures were 38 degrees system and 42 degrees CPU once again. I think these excellent temperatures are largely due to the fact that the twin 60mm exhaust fans line up perfectly with the hottest region within the case. Overall, a highly impressive showing.
If used as part of a Hi Fi stack, there might be a warm amp and a hot DVD player above and below your HTPC. Wisely, Accent has included air vents on the underside of the case, and soft feet as well to ensure that there is some clearance between the various separates. Once again, the Accent’s styling is firmly routed in the Denon camp with this aspect of its design!
