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Omaura enters the HTPC market ... its chassis offers solid build quality with room for expansion. 

Little is know about Omaura, but this company looks very promising. They specialise in computer chassis for Home Theatre (HTPC) systems, and are based in Xiamen, Fujian Province in China. Our sponsors Specialtech have become one of the very few distributor of Omaura HTPC chassis in the UK. They recently visited Omaura's factory in China for some "hard" testing of their TF-11 chassis. Checkout the YouTube video ... HERE

This year, we've have seen an increase in HTPC products, with manufcaturers producing mATX motherboards with built-in HDMI connectivity, HD audio and high performance integrated video, and of course ... HTPC chassis. It's no wonder, that we're now seeing a lot of other manufacturers, especially new ones, producing all sorts of HTPC products to cater for this market.

I myself, always wanted to build a HTPC system for high quality HD video playback and audio, with the main aim of being able to put the unit underneath the rest of the Hi-Fi system. However, I never really got the chance to look into it properly. Most of the HTPC chassis were either too expensive or too large. If I wanted one ... it should at least be "Hi-Fi"  size ... not too bulky or too high in height. So when I got the chance to look at the Omaura HTPC chassis I was surprised to see the size of the chassis. It looks great ... low profile, sleek and compact.

In this review we'll be taking a look at the Omaura TF-8 HTPC Chassis. This chassis is primarily constructed of solid steel, and feels and looks very robust. The build quailty seems to be very good from our first impressions. We'll be using a Abit AN-M2HD mATX motherboard with built-in HDMI output and onboard graphics, along with an AMD AthlonX2 5000+, 750W PSU, Pioneer DVD-RW drive and a 250Gb Samsung SATA hard drive.

Let's find out how easy it is to build a complete HTPC system using the Omaura TF-8 Chassis ...