For most home and office desktop users, a keyboard and a mouse are the only user input devices needed. Today, an emerging question for how these devices connect to the PC then becomes “Stay wired or go wireless?” But because the built-in connectors required for a Windows mouse and keyboard are built into all PCs, only the type, look and feel, and cost of these devices typically come into play. Gamers may also add a game controller to their user input device collection, but that’s usually about it.

This changes dramatically when you’re considering an HTPC.

For all computer users some kind of display is essential to tell them what their computer is doing and also what they’re doing with their computers (as the characters popping up on my own monitor as I type this and every sentence for this book continually remind me). For most home and office desktop users a 15- or 17-inch cathode-ray tube (CRT) or liquid crystal display (LCD) is adequate; power users may up the size of the display to 19 inches or beyond. Some gonzo types may even elect to use multiple monitors so they can multitask more effectively, or simply because modern Windows versions let them do so.

Many computer users also have at least one printer available to them, often attached using the universal serial bus (USB) or perhaps a parallel printer port (although this is less common nowadays, even modern PCs still include parallel ports in the battery of standard connectors). Whether that printer is a laser or an inkjet or prints in color or monochrome, most offices and households keep at least one printer around.

Things change on an HTPC both in terms of displays (think TV and home theater) and in the lesser likelihood that a printer is attached to such a PC (although there may be one attached to another PC somewhere else on the network).

Cool Runnings
No PC will work without some cooling and ventilation. Even the relatively old model photographed for Figure 1 and 2 requires airflow of 50 cubic feet per minute (cfm) over its poky CPU. More modern CPUs require even more airflow, as do the bigger power supplies necessary to feed them the electricity they consume. The same is true for more powerful graphics cards, which now include fans to cool their fast and powerful GPUs (graphics processing units) as a matter of course.

In general, the more stuff you have inside your PC, the more important cooling becomes. It’s not unthinkable that added ventilation would be needed in the PC depicted earlier in this feature were it to house an additional hard disk or two, more memory, and a high-end graphics card, all of which it could accommodate with relative ease.

Cooling deserves even more attention in HTPCs than in ordinary desktops for all kinds of reasons. Continued…