I teased a bit earlier in the week on testing out the Tower 12 BS with the Zotac IONITX-A-U board.  One of the main reasons for me to tackle this project is our 14 month old son likes to get into everything.  So it is a must to consolidate and hide all electronic gear (that he loves).  Here is a photo of the Zalman HD160 being replaced by the Danger Den Tower 12:

So really it is a major size difference!  I have a few photos of the build to help you see that benefits of this very cool case and motherboard.

So starting out I sourced some Noise Blocker 80mm fans from FrozenCPU.  When I do it again I think I'll step down to the next lower RPM.  They are very quite...but I want silent (no air whoosh at all).  The new revision of the Tower 12 has an independent fan mount panel separate from the front.  Zip ties to the rescue for the fan wires (they were nicely sleeved!):

This seemed to be the easiest way to assemble the case and route the wires.  I'm doing a fairly quick build here so I'm not sleeving or going crazy with the wires.  I'll be adding more hard drives in also so it will need to be redone in the near future.  The motherboard only has two fan headers.  The only splitter I had handy was a 4pin to 4pin and three pin.  That works just fine.

I now mount up the hard drive and route the SATA cable behind the motherboard since there is plenty of room.  The back side panel is going to be black so I don't have to worry much about those wires.  Now just install the USB header and route the cables under the HDD.  Almost done.

Now just put the top on and it is movie time:

Now it is time to move this into the house and lug out the huge aluminum case.  It is so nice to be able to run an HDMI cable for video and sound!

This project is almost done.  Just need to tidy up the wires behind the sub and case and change out some furniture (the wife has a plan).  I've watched a few TV show streamed from the network connected HDHomerun TV tuner.  The images look fantastic on the Clear QAM HD channels.

What a great way to do an HTPC case or even a Network Attached Server.  This IONITX board really shines in this area.

Tower 12 Gallery (SmugMug)