Digital Trends

Hy-Tek Tek Panel 300

May 17th, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

Features and Design (Continued)

The motherboard is supported by a custom riser and all of the drives and peripherals have custom-built mounting brackets. Since the Tek Panel is often used by the military in demanding locations, Hy-Tek told us that each unit has to pass a “drop test”. They use 1/8-inch aluminum throughout and ensure each fastener is tight by applying Locktite to them all. All of this attention to detail makes the Tek Panel as beautiful on the inside as it is on the exterior.

With a weight of just under 50 lbs, the Tek Panel 300 can be easily mounted on a wall or on a flat surface, and Hy-Tek includes brackets for both mounting options.

The display used in the Tek-Panel is an LG L3000A, but Hy-Tek buys just the bare display with just the glass and inverters as they use their own enclosure. This display is ultra-bright at 450cd/m2, compared to the typical 250cd/m2 of similar displays. It is a 15:9 ratio display that handles 1280 x 768 pixels, features a 400:1 contrast ratio and boasts a 25ms response time.

Inside of the Tek Panel is a work of art - everything fits perfectly and no space is wasted.

All the connections for input and output can be found on the bottom of the unit, in the back. Accessible are all of the motherboard connections such as PS/2, USB, 1394 (Firewire), parallel printer port, serial port, 10/100 Ethernet port, and the on-board audio ports (which were disabled due to the use of the Audigy). To the right of the motherboard ports is the input power connection. To the left are the connections for the video card and the sound card, aligned parallel to the motherboard with internal risers. Lastly, is the actual input connector for the display, which was hooked up to the output of the video card with an 8-inch DVI cable.

On left side, facing the front is the vertically mounted DVD/CDRW combo drive. This is a typical tray-load design, but we had no troubles getting optical discs to stay in the tray, as you might expect from a tray loading drive mounted in this fashion.  The front of the drive sticks out slightly from the case while viewed from the front. From the front this doesn't create any noticeable aesthetic concerns, but from the side it looks a bit out of place.