Streacom F7C EVO HTPC Chassis Review

Today I will be taking a look at the F7C Evo M-ITX chassis from Streacom, another entry to the competitive world of HTPC chassis and a part of the market that has seen something of a revival in the last couple of years with the rise in high performance M-ITX motherboards.

I’ll admit, until I saw this chassis I had never even heard of Streacom, but they’re a relatively new company that formed in 2010 so it’s understandable that they’re still finding a name for them selves in some markets.

“To design, engineer, manufacture and supply a range of computer products and accessories that push the boundaries of form, function, quality and value.” – Streacom

They’ve already established a solid product range that features active and passively cooled chassis, valve amplifiers and home entertainment solutions to name but a few, and Streacom seem to have a good team behind them from around the world and various parts of the industry that should favour them well in terms of an end product.

Priced at around £75 for the chassis, it’s not exactly cheap but it’s not terribly expensive either and there is a high demand in the HTPC product for products that have a premium edge about them, given that the “under the TV” spot is extreme important in many people’s home cinema setup, it’s often worth the extra investment to get something that looks good. New entrants to this Streacom range will however need to make a further investment into the Nano 150 PSU that basically acts like an external PSU, which at £77 is a little expensive, but not overly so for a decent quality PSU. So for the purpose of this review I’m going to consider this a combined setup of PSU and Chassis at a total cost of around £150.00.

• Chassis Material: All aluminum, 4mm thick extruded body
• Available Colors: Silver / Black – sandlast finish
• Motherboard Support: Mini ITX
• Hard Drive Bays: 1 x 2.5″ + 1 x 3.5″ or 2.5″ (shared bay)
• Optical Drive Bays: 1 x Slim slot loading drive, universal eject button
• Front Ports: 2 x USB2.0 (*USB3.0 Ready, cable sold separately)
• Expansion Slot: 1 x Low Profile Expansion Card
• Cooling: 1 x 80 x 80 x 25mm fan (not included)
• Max CPU Cooler Height: 42mm without 3.5? installed (32mm with 3.5? installed)
• Dimension: 240 x 250 x 100mm (W x D x H)
• Power Supply: NanoPSU & AC Adapter (not included)
• Remote Control: MCE compatible IR receiver & remote (not included)

Both the chassis (left) and the PSU (right) come in a tidy black box, it’s fairly minimalist and gives little to no details about the product, but a box is just a box after all.

The PSU is very interesting, the small PSB with the braided cable fits into the interior of the chassis, the PCB is in fact the 24 pin motherboard attachment and the all in one (2 x SATA + 4pin molex + 4pin 12v) cable plugs right onto the back of the 24pin connection, that’s the only two things you need inside your PC. The PSU is really that big brick that you can see, which is similar to that of the old Xbox 360 block and this can easily be hidden under your TV unit, helping to keep the chassis small by taking components out of the box, simple but effective.