Ahanix MCE701 (built in touch screen) mini review

Perhaps some of you have seen this new HTPC enclosure from Ahanix with a built-in touch screen:

Ahanix MCE701

The price was right (much cheaper than the Silverstone LC18), my old HTPC (in a Digitalis home theater case) had died, and the missus approved a full new purchase. So I got one, set it up over the weekend, and am now enjoying the results.

Overall, it's a great case, made mostly from machined aluminum. You can get it in black or silver, I got the silver. It looks very nice in the home theater rack, and the touchscreen rocks! A great way to nav through MCE if you don't want to have your hdtv on all the time you use it.

A couple of notes:

* Setting up this enclosure is not for the inexperienced homebrew PC maker. The documentation is sparse to the point of ridiculous, three slender pages of highlevel pictures and about 50 words max. There is no information whatsoever about the touchscreen, or about the front panel connectors. Compounding this is the fact that the USB and firewire connections are the "we broke out each pin individually so have fun" variety. The ASUS Qconnector system that comes with ASUS motherboards and gives you a little labelled brick was very helpful in doing this.

* The touchscreen driver CD they include is painfully out of date, like four generations old. It wouldn't even recognize the panel. I sleuthed out a new set of drivers at
this site

which worked great.

* At least for my Pioneer DVR-109 DVD burner, the cutout for the DVD slot is too low (or the burner tray too high) to use the included aluminum replacement slot cover.

* In general there is lots of room in the case, and very good airflow, with two 80mm rear fans right where they should be. One oddity is the vertical drive bay right behind the touch panel. By this I mean that the drives get mounted vertically.

* Sliding the enclosure lid on is harder than it should be.

* The screen is surprisingly good, and highly usable with the 10ft interface. Although it will accept a 1280x720 signal, I am running it at 960x600 so that Windows itself is viewable - at 720p it's just too tiny to see. Touch screen with MCE is good, but could use some interface tweaking for touchscreen use. I understand this is coming with Vista Media Center.

* There are some bizarro unexplained buttons below the touchscreen. The only useful one is the auto correct screen position.

* What's inside:

AMD X2 4600 AM2 slot
ASUS M2N-SLI
2 gigs DDR2/800 RAM
400 gigs of HD space
NVIDIA 6800 (had to economize somewhere)
Auzentech Xplosion 7.1
HDTV Wonder
Theater Pro 550

Happy to post any pictures if anyone wants to see.

wn

So it's not connected at all to my TV right now - I need to get a VGA splitter. Once I do, I'll set the whole thing to 1280x720 - the touchscreen accepts it, even though it's not the native res. So I'll go 720p to both which should be fine.

I'm using the lower res because the PC itself is still burning in and I'm tweaking settings, so I need to see the non-10ft text

So here are some (admittedly poor) pictures. You will note that the thing that's really evident is that the DVD drive doesn't have the matching aluminum slot cover, so it looks unfinished. I'm trying to figure out whether the Pio drive is just different from other drives, or whether I'm doing it wrong, or whether the slot cover is just not made right. The total lack of instructions doesn't help .

Still very happy. My wife loves the constantly running My Pictures slideshow on the touch screen - so does my kid.

Also, for the person who asked - core temps are 36-41, including when playing DVD video. A whole lot cooler than my barton 2500, which basically heated the house.

Will

So I seem to recall this being a problem at first as well. You need to go to the Display Properties-Settings-Advanced-Monitor tab and uncheck "Hide modes that this monitor cannot display." Click ok and then reopen the properties box again. That gave me all the choices, and everything I tried worked. I have an NVIDIA 6800, so it should work for your better 7600 card.

Maybe you can help me. Does the DVD slot cover fit correctly on your dvd drive? If so, which model DVD are you using?

Thanks
WN

The little dongle of which you speak does nothing (at least in my system it doesn't). I think you likely have a PS problem - thats' always been my issue with no POST. Do you have another PC you can test the case switch with?

Thanks for the info re the optical drive. Do let me know whether the new PIO fits.

Interesting that it's the same case as the Origen (which costs way more). Wonder if their documentation is better. The Voodoo pricing is ridiculous.

WN

Thanks Kaelaria. The Origin docs are much more useful. I had already gotten the door off - my Ahanix "manual" somewhat fracturedly mentions it at least. The issue for me was that the little aluminum cover that needs to be stuck on with the double sided tape seems misaligned. So it didn't sit flush with the case with the drive closed.

I did solve it this a.m., however. I needed to pull out the little black plastic feet that are inserted into the slots on the inside of the cover. I was then able to stick it on nicely. Looks good!

WN

Not sure I'm on board with "not even close." They are at a minimum cousins - the ahanix, uneed, dign, d.Vine brands all share the same lineage, at least originally, and all are of Korean design and manufacture, though it now appears that all the uneed brands will be called Origen, and Ahanix is doing its own thing. They both have a pretty standard xenarc/egalax touchscreen controller with very similar wiring, both there and the front panel. The better guess is that they are both spins off the same reference design. Certainly the build quality should be higher with the X15 (better be for $300 more). But completely different? nah.

BTW, the 640x480 is easily solved, see above.

wn

This comparison makes me laugh when comparing a $600 and a $350 PC CASE - both are absurd indulgences that must be hidden from a wife. In any event the analogy may be apt for a reason you didn't intend: only an idiot would buy a Porsche when there is a VW that offers equivalent performance in all the areas one cares about. I could easily afford either (the case or the cars); here I chose the "VW" case.

In any event I have no doubt the Origen case is superior in all sorts of ways which you will enlighten us about.