Installation Cont’d
When the cage is freed from its retaining screws you would think the next logical step would be to grab the integrated handle and gently pull the drive from the cage. Well you would be wrong! The next thing you have to do is uninstall the iMON LCD assembly as it sticks far enough back into the hard drive area as to block the cage from lifting out!
To yank the LCD assembly out, you simply press in on two long black plastic retaining wings (one per side) and then push down on the top of the iMON assembly. It will rock back and out of its hole allowing you to GENTLY remove it. When this is accomplished you can then continue on with the hard drive installation.
As with many drive cages, you have to use the integrated bottom screw holes to mount your drive to it. This in an of itself is not a big deal but what makes this a convoluted and curse worthy process even more annoying is this drive cage is oversized so your drive doesn’t just slide into place. Rather, you have to position the drive in the cage so its screw holes line up with the drive cage holes, then snake a finger inside the top of the cage and press down while at the same time screwing in one of the four screws. If you have large fingers this can be considered a royal PITA to accomplish. Where space is at such a premium why did Antec waste so much here? Was this originally going to be a dual drive setup and was later changed to a single?
Regardless of the reasons, once your drive is in position you can reinstall the drive cage, the retaining screws and then the LCD assembly. Which segues nicely into out next issue with this case: which designer thought it would be a good idea to have the end-user muck around with the fragile LCD assembly in order for them to install a simple hard drive? Space may be at a premium in these little encolsures, but they could have either taken a quarter of an inch from the drive assembly area to allow the cage to clear the LCD assembly; or simply have made the case a quarter inch deeper. We are not talking about inches or feet here, and an extra quarter or even half of an inch would not have been noticeable. Instead we are left with this seemingly Rube Goldberg installation process. This to us is unacceptable and more importantly makes the iMON LCD / IR receiver feel like an afterthought which had to be shoehorned in late in the design phase to appease some PHB or
PR wag.
The next phase of the installation process is the optical drive installation. The optical bay cage is removable and flips up and then out for easy installation of your drive. Just like a regular 5.25 bay, you slide your drive into position and then freeze it in place with standard screws. To make sure the drive is in position, the mounting hole has an alignment notch to make this a snap. When this is accomplished we simply slid the cage back into place and lowered it back into position.
Once the optical drive is in position, the ejector button built into the case should line up with your drive button. If it does not you are going to need to find a work around or replace it with one that has the button in the standard place.
With the majority of your shiny new HTPC complete the only major things left to do is the installation of your CPU (and its heatsink) and your cables. We like to start with the CPU and HSF and then move onto the connectors.
As for the various connectors and cables which need to be plugged in we like to start with the front connectors (power, reset, USB, eSATA, etc.), then install the power connectors starting with any and all peripherals and then finishing off with the motherboard power cables. However, since the LCD screen and IR receiver need to be installed we would recommend starting here and then going on the rest so you don’t end up forgetting them. There is nothing more embarrassing then having to tear down your new system, trouble shoot why the LCD and remote is not working and after hours of searching figure out you simply forgot to plug in the power and USB connectors for it.
With everything done you can reinstall the Link Bar and replace the top panel since you are now done. Of course you still need to plug in the power cord, your monitor (or TV) and your various peripheral goodies but this is variable from entertainment center to entertainment center so we are going to call it a day here and leave it up to you to meld your new HTPC into your existing setup.
