Actually, for the most part I have gotten the parts. The only thing I’m waiting on now is the CPU (together with a tube of Arctic Silver 5 compound) and the wifi card. Hopefully they’ll come soon, because not having the CPU is a bit of a show-stopper. However, the case…
Ahh, the case. The Antec Fusion Remote. A lovely case, it seems. The construction feels fantastic, nice and sturdy, and the front looks wonderful. But, man! The thing is a beast! I swear that it’s almost as big as my desktop PC. The unit we have to put the HTPC on is just about big deep enough – so long as we don’t want any cables at all attached to the back! It’s either that (and what’s the point of having the HTPC if we can’t hook it up to anything?) or have the case hover over the edge of the unit, which’d look sloppy. No, the case, albeit probably very nice, is going back. But what to do? Every case I look at and like is about the same depth. All the really slim cases would also require me sending back my PSU, probably the wifi card as well, and possibly wouldn’t accommodate the graphics card. Thankfully I came across the Silverstone GD02 which will allow for a standard ATX PSU, a graphics card up to 11.5″ in length and still looks quite nice to boot. Best of all, it’s about 8cm shorter in depth than the Fusion Remote! I’m hoping that I didn’t need to go for the GD05 which is a further 4cm shorter than even the GD02, because I like the ability to have an external 3.5″ device on the case (for adding a memory card reader or similar further on down the line).
Now, the GD02 case doesn’t have a few things that the Fusion does. It doesn’t have a display on the front. To be honest, I’m coming around to the idea of that actually being a really good thing. Do I really want to have a really bright (from what I’ve read) display on the front of the case while watching a movie? No, I think that’d be distracting. It also doesn’t have a remote. Well, the diNovo keyboard with integrated touchpad should do the trick there. And it doesn’t have a volume control on the front of the case. OK, that’s only an added bonus and nothing I’d miss anyway.
So the new case was ordered yesterday from Scan (along with a 1.5TB hard drive), and bless ‘em, it’s already been dispatched and I should have it today! Whoever I ordered the CPU from needs to get in gear because I want to get buildin’! 
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