And once again it’s time for another SFF article. The last one was well accepted by you readers and since there is a lot going on in the barebone front at the moment, much more than on the conventional mainboard front, we thought of blessing you with another SFF roundup. The competitors this time is AOen’s newly released EY65 XCube, EPoX’ EX5-300S Mini Me and Shuttle’s two latest creations ST62K and ST61G4. The two first mentioned are based on Intel’s trusted i865G chipset while the last two are based on ATi’s RS300 chipset also known as Radeon 9100 IGP.
And once again
it’s time for another SFF article. The last one was well accepted by you
readers and since there is a lot going on in the barebone front at the
moment, much more than on the conventional mainboard front, we thought of
blessing you with another SFF roundup. The competitors this time is AOen’s
newly released EY65 XCube, EPoX’ EX5-300S Mini Me and Shuttle’s two latest
creations ST62K and ST61G4. The two first mentioned are based on Intel’s
trusted i865G chipset while the last two are based on ATi’s RS300 chipset
also known as Radeon 9100
IGP.
Just as in our last SFF article we will in detail look at performance,
design, cooling and noise level so you at in the end of the review know more
about the individual cases than the manufacturers probably know themselves.
But we shall not begin right know, but first we will take a quick look at
what ATi’s Radeon 9100 IGP chipset has to offer.
ATi
is trying make its way, just like nVidia, onto the mainboard-market,
but the difference is that the company has aimed at mainboards for Intel’s processors. Radeon 9100 IGP is suppose to be lowbudget chipset with descent integrated graphics performance. Exactly how good the integrated graphics circuit we will let the performancetests be the judge of, it’s said to pulverize Intel’s own Extreme Graphics 2.
Other than that Radeon 9100 IGP doesn’t offer anything that neither of intel’s Canterwood and Springdalechipset does. Just as previously mentioned chipset Radeon 9100 IGP supports 800MHz FSB Pentium 4 processors
and Hyperthreading. The memory controller is of the Dual Channel
DDR type and supports up to DDR400 modules.
The link between the North- and southbridge has a maximum transferrate of 266MB/s. The southbridge IXP150, which we find in both of Shuttle’s barebones we have had the pleasure of testing, handles connections of periphery like USB.
ATi’s southbridges lacks Serial ATA support completely, but instead we have to settle with two regular ATA100-channels, which means you can connect up to a maximum of four IDE-units.
Further more the IXP150 only has support for 6 USB 2.0 units which is two less then Intel’s ICH5/(R) southbridges.
The integrated graphics circuit is said to be the greatest argument for the Radeon 9100 IGP chipset. We shouldn’t take out anything in advance though, but let the performancetests to show what this chipset is capable of.
By clicking on the links you can do a closer comparison of Radeon 9100IGP
and Intel’s
875-chipset resp. Intels
865-chipset.
Now that the theoretical part is done we will get to work by taking a closer look at the AOpen EY65 XCube.
AOpen
XCube EY65: Specifications
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|
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| Dimensions: |
(L)
300 x (B) 200 x (H) 185 mm |
| Front panel: |
2
x USB, 1x MIC, 1 x headset out, 2 x 1394 Firewire (one
6-pins & one 4-pins contact), S/PDIF in/out |
| Back panel: |
1
x VGA, 2 x Serial, 1 x PS/2 Keyboard & Mouse, 4x USB, 1 x RJ45,
1 x IEEE1394, 1 x Line in, Line Out, Mic In.
|
| Expansion slots: |
1 x 5.25″, 2 x 3.5″
|
| PSU: |
220W
|
|
|
| Mainboard Chipset: |
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| Processor support : |
Intel
Pentium 4/Celeron Socket-478, 400/533/800MHz FSB, HyperThreading
support
|
| Memory support : |
DDR 266/333/400, 2 slots
|
| VGA: |
Intel
Extreme Graphics 2 controller |
| AGP: |
1x AGP 8X
|
| PCI: |
1 x 32-bit buss master PCI
|
| IDE controller: |
2 ports ATA100, 4 units (ICH5)
|
| SATA controller: |
2
ports S-ATA150, 2 unit (ICH5) |
| SATA RAID controller: |
|
| LAN-controller: |
Broadcom 10/100/1000 Mb/s
|
| Audio circuit:
|
Realtek
ALC655, AC97 Codec + S/PDIF out on the back panel |
| FireWire (IEEE-1394): |
3 ports (1 on the back panel, 2 on the front panel, 1 mini)
|
| USB 2.0:
|
4
ports (2 on the front panel and 2 on the back panel) |
| other features: |
|
| Price:
|
|
AOpen
is a company with a long tradition of manufacturing almost anything that has any relevance to computers. In the company’s product portfolio we find among others mainboards, graphics cards, monitors, and cases, which makes the step to their very own barebone not that far. The highly expanding SFF-market is basically exploding and AOpen wants their share. Their contribution goes by the name XCube and judging by its looks AOpen will manage to their entrance to the barebone market without any problems. The case is, when it comes to design, one of my absolute favorites and it the interior is just as good as the exterior AOpen has managed to construct a real winner.
Today it’s uncertain when this case will reach Sweden (or northern Europe) and how much it will cost. We will return with an update when we know more. Hopefully the case should appear in a few weeks.
The
and accessories consists out of two ATA100 IDE-cables, one power cable , one Serial
ATA cable with equivalent power cable, installation manuals,
a CD with drivers and last but not least a convenient little screwdriver which on one side has a regular flat head and on the other side a cross head. In a little plastic bag the necessary screws and small piece of black isolation carpet are packaged. This should be placed on the back of any expansion cards to isolate them from any current.
| AOpen
XCube EY65: Accessories
 |
2
x ATA100 cables (one already installed in the case) |
|
1 x Serial ATA150 cable and SATA power cable converter
|
|
1 x mainboard manual, 1 x case manual
|
|
1 x Installation CD-Rom
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|
|
1
x Isolation carpet, 1 x screwdriver, cable ties and necessary screws |
You who have read the specifications above have already seen that the XCubehas a well designed case , whose mainboard offers the most you can expect from a well equipped mainboard today. Both IDE- and S-ATA channels are accessible and both comes with two channels. In the first case it means up to connected units can be used, while in the S-ATA case the maximum number is two. RAID-support is lacking sadly but on the other hand we have something else that is very fast, namely GigabitLAN.
The XCube’s integrated network circuit is made by Broadcom and makes the network work in real high speeds. The circuit can deliver up to GigabitLAN speeds. Sadly though, few of us will ever experience this outside the home or office network.
Lets leave the lightning fast for a moment and focus on something slower. The XCube has thanks to its i865G chipset an integrated graphics circuit, which goes by the name of “Intel Extreme Graphics 2”. This is more then enough for 2D-use or playing less advanced 3D-games, but for you who takes gaming seriously keep away from it. Certainly the integrated graphics circuits have become enormously much better the lately but they are still far from an alternative to a rigid AGP-graphics card.
Sound and picture are two closely related phenomenon and the integrated AC97-codec, which can play 5.1-sound gives a good feeling. A solution that most users will find more then enough. Real audiophiles should think of buying a separate separate
sound card to optimize the experience.
Even if the XCube overall is a well balanced machine there are some areas where it comes short. One of these is that the case only has four USB 2.0-ports despite the southbridge support for eight. Two of these are placed on the front and two on the back panel. This is enough for most user however , but personally I would like to see at least six ports. Mouse, printer, gamepad and maybe a mp3-player occupies all ports fast. Naturally you can fix this by buying an external USB-hub with more ports but it would’ve been better/easier if AOpen simply has put two more ports on the back panel.
When on the subject periphery we might as well mention the Firewire-ports available on the case. Totally there are three ports, two on the front and one on the back. One of the ports on the front is a so called “mini”-port, which is a smaller four pin version.
The two remaining are usual six pin ports.
The AOpen XCube-mainboard has despite its small size almost practically everything you can find on a full size ATX-mainboard. The feature list
and the expansion possibilities are very good but it still feels like something is missing. It’s the feel of that his is the case with that little extra that won’t occur. Many manufacturers has for example LCD-displays and card readers on their barebones to make them different from others, and it those features I miss on the XCube. It’s small, good looking and has a damn good functionality but it feels like we have seen all of this before. The XCube feels however like a good piece of work but not spectacular.
AOpen’s
Xcube has as so much else on the barebone front a gray and silver design. The material is as it should be aluminum, but here they have chosen not to use brushed aluminum which makes the surface a bit rough and feels a bit like ??frostat glas??. My personal opinion is that it’s very hot and actually beats the brushed design easily. Overall the XCube has a very nice design. It’s very “clean” without a bunch of unnecessary stuff. The power button sits on the middle, it’s big and has a blue illuminant shine in the dark. The CD-players front is hidden and the front ports are easy accessible
since you don’t have to deal with the ugly plastic panels that manufacturers use to hide them. The
3.5″ slot is hidden behind a black plastic cover that is located a bit lower. Why they have chosen to make it in plastic when practically all the rest of the case is aluminum, even the CD-players cover, is a mystery. Until next time I think they should cover it with a matching aluminum panel or put a small LCD-display instead. The result had been so much cooler then breaking off the design with a bit a black plastic.
Enough bitching about the 3.5″ slot. The XCube remains, despite this little mistake, one of my favorite SFF-cases when it comes to design. It looks even better when you mount the small plastic bit that raises the front, that we mentioned among the accessories. you should note that the irregularities depend on the fact the the safety plastic is still glued on it.
We leave our obsession of looks for now and looks what the front and back panels has to offer when it comes to ports.
In the front we find two USB-ports, two Firewire ports, Headset-
and microphone-connections plus an optic output.
On the back we find the PS/2-ports for keyboard and mouse,
a COM-port, a VGA-contact for the integrated graphics circuit, a serial port
for connecting for example printer, two more USB-ports,
one Firewire port, one RJ45-networkconnector, one RCA-out coax connection, one
S/PDIF in contact plus the connections for the integrated sound circuit.
To open the XCube you go through the same procedure you do with most barebones. Three thumbscrews is loosened on the back and then you push back the cover and lift it up. The 5.25″ slot and the 3.5″ slot is a removable mounting cage. This can be easily removed by loosening two screws and pulling it backwards. With this removed the workspace is significantly bigger and the installation of other components much easier. Beneath the mounting cage is a smaller one that can hold a another 3.5″ unit. The small cage is attached by two slides and a thumbscrew. After loosening the screw installation of the hard drive is easy.
From Above |
|
|
HDD-cage |
|
The mainboard is equipped with both PCI- and AGP-slot. Using sophisticated sound and graphics cards is therefore not a problem, if the cooling on the graphics card isn’t to big that is. our testcard, a
Creative GeForce FX5900, is equipped with a very high heatsink on the above resulting in that we couldn’t close the case since it stuck out of it.(look picture in the middle below) Further this card takes up two more PCI-slots so we had to remove the I/O-shield of the graphics card to be able to mount it. This situation is far from good and therefore we want to make sure that readers out there meassure their graphics card before deciding to buy an XCube-case. Further we would like to encourage AOpen to compability test their cases a bit more precise. On the other side we had no problems mounting the PCI-card despite the large graphics card.
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The northbridge is cooled by a aluminum heatsink which is good since less fans means less noise sources in the case.
The number of DIMM-slots is limited to two and hold a maximum of 2GB memory. The DIMM-slots sits together with the IDE-channels in the front of the case mounted directly below the hard drives.
The southbridge controls among others both S-ATA-channels. There is no RAID-support though since AOpen chose to use the ICH5-southbridge instead of the RAID-capable ICH5R.
When it come to ease of use AOpen’s XCube is overall very good. The installation
shouldn’t take longer then half an hour even for the inexperienced user. The instructions are easy to follow with color pictures of the entire installation. The only we can give a thumbs down for is the AGP-slot that could have been placed closer to the case’s middle or made the case a couple of millimeters wider. The way it look snow owners of big graphics cards such as our Creative GeForce FX5900 won’t be able to use the case or use it in a respectable way. Plus for the design but AOpen has to correct the AGP-problem un till next time.
The XCube cooling consists out of a big aluminum heatsink
with a polished copper bottom.
This type of construction has become very popular lately since it gives good performance and considerably cheaper then a pure copper heatsink. Further the heatsink’s weight is kept down by only making parts of the heatsink in heavy copper. The fan is placed sideways which is a bit unusual. The thought behind this is that the hot air will blow away from the heatsink and out through the holes on the side of the case. As it should be the fan is adjusted by the heat to keep down the noise.
The heatsink is prepared with some sort of coolingpaste but we recommend that you remove this layer and apply a paste of higher quality, like for example Arctic Silver.
The mounting of the heatsink is really thought through and very simple. You simple hook the two metal grips on one side and then press down the hooks on the other side until they fasten on the plastic cage around the socket. Since there are big area where you can press hard on both sides you only need minimum force to fasten the heatsink. To remove it is just as easy.
When it comes to performance the XCube’s cooling makes a good effort, which you will see in our overclocking test.
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|
Fins |
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That only leaves the noise. How quiet is the XCube case really? Sadly we have no dB-meter so you have settle for our own very subjective opinions.
The XCube is unfortunately a very loud thing about the same level as ABIT’s DigiDice, possibly a bit quieter. The northbridge is certainly cooled by a passive heatsink meaning that the noise comes from the cpu cooler and the PSU-cooling, which has an active fan that makes a a lot of noise together, especially the cpu cooling.
As long as the work load is kept down the noise level is ok, but as work load increases so does the fan speeds which in turn increase the noise considerably. Noise sensitive persons is going to to want to replace the cpu fan with something more quiet or use some sort of rpm-regulator
The XCube case is simply way to loud for its own good especially compared to the comparably quiet barebones from Shuttle and Soltek has on the market today.
AOpen sticks with the Phoenix AwardBIOS this time as well, which we welcome with arms wide open. Experience tells us that these usually are very nice to work with.
We start as usual with the really interesting, the overclocking settings.
These are in fact really interesting and keeps up really well with the tough competition on the barebone market. The FSB can be set anywhere between 100-400 MHz and the CPU-voltage between 1.10v-1.85v in 0.0250v steps. So there are good possibilities to squeeze every MHz-performance out of the processor. It’s not just the cpu settings that decides how effective the overclocking will be and this is AOpen well aware of. As the processor speed increase the AGP- and PCI-bus frequency increase, which can cause instability. This is simple to work around since you can set the AGP-frequency to any value between 66-98 Mhz. The PCI-clock can also be set individually but since it is dependent of the AGP-clock and vice versa it’s enough to change either value.
The memoryratio can be set to DDR400/320/266 or Auto
depending on what type of memory you are using. When it comes to the voltage on the memory modules it can be set anywhere between 2.6v-2.775v
in 0.0250v steps.
The AGP-voltage can be set to values between 1.5v-1.85 in 0.05v
steps.
|
BIOS-settings
|
| FSB-frequency: |
|
| AGP-frequency: |
fixated
or anywhere between66-98MHz |
| CPU-voltage: |
1.1v-1.85v i 0.0250v steps
|
| DIMM-voltage: |
2.6v
– 2.775v i 0.05v steps |
| AGP-voltage: |
1.50v
– 1.85v (0.05v steps) |
The remaining BIOS-settings goes by standard layout. In the section Advanced
Chipset timings we find all we need to configure the memory’s timings. The PC-health section shows system information such as temperatures
and active voltages, and we can also activate the temperaturecontrol for the fans here. The Integrated peripherals section contains the settings for the mainboard’s integrated functions.
Advanced Chipset Features |
|
PC Health |
|
OnChip PCI Device |
|
AOpen has supplied the
EY65-chassit with a very powerful BIOS. The overclocking settings are very good and gives the user the possibility to really pressure their components to the limit. The only thing we really miss is some form equivalent to Intel’s “PAT”. ABIT’s DigiDice
is for example equipped with a so called “Game Accelerator”
which raises the mainboard’s performance to Canterwood-level. Who knows, maybe a future BIOS-update may contain such an optimization.
As expected it was perfectly painless to overclock the XCube. 230MHz FSB was the result, which also is the highest frequency we have had for our processor with air cooling.
Barebone case number two is from EPoX which shows up their debut case
EX5-300S Mini Me.
EPoX
EX5-300S Mini Me: Specifications
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|
|
| Dimensions: |
(L)
300 x (B) 200 x (H) 180 mm |
| Front panel: |
2
x USB, 1x MIC, 1 x headset out, 1 x 1394 Firewire, 1
x PS/2 Mouse, 1 x PS/2 keyboard |
| Back panel: |
1
x VGA, 2 x Serial, 1 x PS/2 Keyboard & Mouse, 4x USB, 1 x RJ45,
1 x IEEE1394, 1 x Line in, Line Out, Mic In.
|
| Expansion slots: |
1 x 5.25″, 2 x 3.5″
|
| PSU: |
200W
|
|
|
| Chipset: |
|
| Processor support: |
Intel
Pentium 4/Celeron Socket-478, 400/533/800MHz FSB, HyperThreading
support
|
| memory support : |
DDR 266/333/400, 2 slots
|
| Integrated graphics circuit: |
Intel
Extreme Graphics 2 controller |
| AGP: |
1x AGP 8X
|
| PCI: |
1 x 32-bit bus master PCI
|
| IDE controller: |
2 ports ATA100, 4 units (ICH5)
|
| SATA controller: |
2
ports S-ATA150, 2 units (ICH5) |
| SATA RAID Controller: |
|
| LAN controller: |
Realtek
RTL8101L 10/100 Mb/s |
| Audio circuit:
|
Realtek
ALC655, AC97 Codec + S/PDIF out on the back panel |
| FireWire (IEEE-1394): |
VIA
VT6307, 2 ports (1 on the back, 1 on the front) |
| USB 2.0:
|
6 ports (2 on the front and 4 on the back panel)
|
| Other features: |
Blue LCD display on the front
|
| Price:
|
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EPoX
is one of the many mainboard manufacturers that has laid their eyes on the Small Form Farctor
market. Their contribution is called EX5-300S but goes by the nickname Mini Me from the Austin Power’s movies cloned mini villain with the same name. The case is their first try on the SFF-market which has it’s ups and downs. They lack the long experience of developing SFF-systems that for example Shuttle has of course, but if you want to look at it from the bright side it can mean that maybe you won’t follow old tracks. Shuttle’s many barebones are by design very similar which is both and bad, while manufacturers like EPoX has to find their own ways. Hopefully it will mean that new and unique solutions will pop up solving old problems with existing barebones. Judging by the specifications EPoX
seem to have done their homework. The case’s functions should satisfy even the most demanding user. Besides, they have a blue LCD-display on the front and everybody knows that blue displays are cool as hell.
EPoX
Mini Me will costs about 2700 SEK in the shops which puts it in the same range as ABIT’s DigiDice. Shuttle’s more exclusive Springdale and Canterwood models cost a couple hundreds SEK more while the somewhat older Springdale case SB61G2 is a couple of hundreds SEK cheaper. Therefore 2800 SEK has to be looked at as a fairly reasonable price. Certainly it’s more then most luxurious mainboards costs but then you also get an incredibly good looking case plus a PSU.
The availability is also very good. EPoX doesn’t seem to have any delivering problems when these letters are put down since the green stock flag is waving at all EPoX retailers.
The and accessories consists out of two ATA100 IDE-cables, one power cable , one Serial ATA cable with equivalent power cable, installation manuals, a CD with drivers and last but not least a convenient little screwdriver which on one side has a regular flat head and on the other side a cross head. In a little plastic bag the necessary screws and small piece of black isolation carpet are packaged. This should be placed on the back of any expansion cards to isolate them from any current.
| EPoX
EX5 Mini Me: Accessories
 |
2
x ATA100 cables (one already installed in the case) |
|
1 x Serial ATA150 cable and SATA power cable converter
|
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1 x mainboard manual, 1 x case manual
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1 x Installation CD-Rom
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1 x Isolation carpet, 1 x screwdriver, cable ties and necessary screws
|
Mini Me’s featurelist is just as impressive as the competitors. Intel’s very successive Springdalechipset,
in this case the i865G, offers both integrated graphics
(Intel Extreme Graphics 2) and support for two Serial ATA ports.
Alas, we don’t have any Serial ATA RAID on the
Mini Men since they have chosen to use the cheaper ICH5 southbridge instead of the RAID-version ICH5R.
Except the S-ATA ports we have to regular ATA100 IDE-channels on the board. Summarized, you can connect more drives then you can place in the little case. Something that you can also connect are USB-units and speakers, more precise six of each. We can find four USB-ports on the back and two on the front. The sound connections are on both the back and front panel. The back panel’s contacts supports 6-channel sound while we have to settle for a headset and/or a microphone on the front. Since we are on the subject sound we should mention that there are also S/PDIF
in- and out connections on the back.
Firewire are represented with one port on both front and back.
Finally we have a blue LCD-display plus a 6-in-1 memorycard reader. We will return to these two features in the chapter “Unique features”.
EPoX has without doubt assembled an impressive list of features for their Mini Me case. Very few barebones on the market can compete with Mini Me in terms of functionality. Further it’s nice to see that they have chosen, like ABIT, to use a blue display and a memorycard reader. Two very practical feature that get an endless amount of appreciation from me at least.
The Mini
Me is made in silver colored brushed aluminum. It’s pretty, it’s light and it’s to damn easy to get greasy fingerprints on the case. The front is also made mainly from aluminum only hatches, the display and the silver details is made out of plastic. Concluding I think that EPoX has made a good job and has ended up with a clean design, the rest is up to you.
The connections of the Mini Me case has already been discussed in the last section, but we can go through it one more time somewhat quick. There might be some negligent people out there that needs to have their memories refreshed. So, in the front we find two USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire port, microphone- and headset in plus the PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse. The front ports are good and all but putting the PS/2 contacts here something i personally don’t think was such a great idea. Mouse keyboard are devices that usually are always connected which makes it in my opinion better to have them on the back to hide the cables. USB-, Firewire devices and headsets/microphones are usually the things you connect in or remove at needs which makes the front ports very useful. To permanent connect keyboard and mouse on the front seems to be a less good idea.
beneath the CD-players 5.25″ slot sits a 6-in-1 memorycard reader that can read/write Compact Flash/Memory Stick/SmartMedia/SecureDigital/MicroDrive/MultimediaCard.
This is an awesome feature that many MP3-player/digital camera/Palm
Pilot owners is going to love.
Last but not least we have the LCD-display and its function buttons on the front but theses are going to be examined more thoroughly in the section about the case’s unique preferences.
Lets take a quick look at the back. The serial port takes up the most place, which is used to connect printers and such stuff. Below it we can see the S/PDIF in- and out connections plus the VGA-contact for the integrated graphics circuit.
The next bunch of ports consists out of four USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire port,
and one RJ-45 network connection. On the far edge we find the connections for the integrated sound circuit. Finally we have a blue COM-port halfway up the case’s back. (the left side of the picture).
The case cover is easily removed by loosening three thumbscrews on the back and by simply push it backwards a little and the lifting it From above we are reminded of the of Shuttle’s barebones.
Instead of a u-boat fan we find the PSU mounted on the upper back case side. Further we find a significant difference at a closer inspection. The CD-player is mounted at the Mini Me’s upper edge. There is no mounting cage that you need to remove in other words. you can remove both the card reader and the hard drive cage can be removed to increase the workspace when installing everything.
The memorycard reader has to be removed with a screwdriver but the hard drive cage can be easily removed by loosening a thumbscrew and pull it out sideways. The mounting of the hard drive cage is pretty interesting since it is rotated 90 degrees 90 grader sideways so that the harddrives back we will be right at the IDE-ports.
That way the IDE cable has the shortest possible distant to the IDE ports.
The EPoX Mini Me can only hold one hard drive as standard but if the need should rise you can remove the memorycard reader and free up another 3.5″ slot. Alas the memorycard reader has to be sacrificed in such a situation. Two actual hard drive slots would have been nice.
After removing both the memorycard reader and the hard drive cage the workspace is good. The socket is placed in the middle of the case’s back next to a big black fan tunnel that ends at a grid on the case’s back. Through this tunnel the cpu cooler blows the hot air that is generated by the CPU and northbridge. As you can see on the pictures the northbridge is placed right next to the socket. For this EPoX has their own cooler that covers both the northbridge and CPU. The cooler will be dealt with in a later section about cooling and noise, until then we can say that it is a big aluminum chunk with a copper base with two active fans.
The Mini Me case is equipped with an AGP slot and a PCI slot. If you use a graphics card that takes up two slots the PCI slot can in most cases not be used. In some cases you can solve this by remove the AGP card’s back plate but this doesn’t guarantee that you can fit a PCI-card there. The graphics card cooling can for example be so tall that card still doesn’t fit. Our testcard for example, a Creative GeForce
FX5900, is so large you can’t mount a PCI whatever you do. Further more it’s really narrow working in the back. The heatsink on the back is large it’s touching the hard drive cage. By linking the cage’s edge in a space between the heatsink we finally managed hard drive holder isn’t even worth trying to install since it won’t go in all the way since the graphics card is in the way. People with big graphics card, such as ours, will get much more fun with another barebone.
The are two DIMM-slots and they are located on the right side of the case seen from the front. To install the modules goes in flinch of an eye with the hard drive holder uninstalled, with lot of space. On the picture below to the right you see the area around the southbridge. Here we find both S-ATA-ports, southbridge, BIOS-battery, VIA’s VT6703 Firewire circuit and the ClearCMOS jumper. The last one is very poorly placed behind the IDE-ports which makes it hard to reach.
It doesn’t get any better since the head of the jumper is very hard to to get a grip of. Therefore resetting the CMOS becomes a big work when system is completely installed.
It shows that this is EPoX first try making a barebone by the small but fatal mistakes in the design. The developing team seem to have spent hours investigating existing barebones since much looks familiar to the more establish but crappy placement of the AGP-port is going to affect the final grade big time. The fact that the CMOS-jumper is really stowed away doesn’t make things better.
If you don’t have a monster graphics card and can live with the CMOS-jumper’s placing
EPoX Ex5-300S is still a nice concern.
The Installation is simple and is a painfree besides the above mentioned complications.
EPoX is clearly on the right track with the design but more work is needed to earn a tap on the shoulder. If they have managed in their work with their own selfdeveloped cooling we will reveal in the next section.
The big aluminum heatsink has a copper base plate. The heatsink itself is enclosed in a metalcasing with two 60mm
fans with mounted on either side of the casing. The thought behind this is that the diagonal fan is suppose to suck in the equivalent amount of cool air over the verical heatsink. The rear fan then blows the heated air away from the CPU and out of the case via the black plastic windtunnel which we mentioned in the previous section. The construction itself isn’t spectacular but the interestin is that the cooler covers both the CPU and the northbridge.
The piece that touches the northbridge is not made of copper though instead EPoX has chosen to add a small piece of aluminum to even out the height difference between the CPU and the northbridge circuit. Why they didn’t make this piece out of copper is a minor mystery.
Top with supportslides |
|
Top without supportslides |
|
hard drive and CD-Drive cages |
|
Below you can see the bottom of the heatsink and the flanges that is hidden beneath the casing. As you can see from the pictures cooling paste has already been applied but for optimal performance we recommend switching to any of the commercial cooling pastes such as Arctic Silver for example. There is also a heat repelling material pre-applied, a small T.I.M (Thermal Insulation Pad). This shouldn’t be exchanged for regular cooling paste since it is rather thick and a regular thin layer of cooling paste would mean that the cooler wouldn’t touch the northbridge with sufficient pressure. In any case you should check that the cooler touch the northbridge with sufficient pressure if you decide to replace the TIM.
|
|
Fins |
|
Installing the cooler is done in no time. You simply slide the cooler under the wind tunnel and then attach the front and back with the two hooks.
When it comes to noise the EPoX 3G-Tek-cooling passes with some grace. Despite the two CPU
fan the level of noise is kept to a pleasant level. Contrary to other barebones the fans in the Mini Me case works at constant level and the speed doesn’t vary every time the CPU’s workload is increased in a major way. Instead of going between total silence and unbearably loud the Mini Me cooling work on a constant pleasant level of noise independent of the workload.
EPoX Mini Me
is equipped with a large blue LCD display in the front. The display shows
system information bus is also conncted to the enclosed software for music
playback and then information about the currently playing music file is
shown on the display. On the images below we can see some of the information
that the LCD display can show such as clock frequency, the amount of RAM,
the harddrive’s size and the monitor resolution. Via the enclosed EX5
program, something in style with ABIT’s uGuru, you can also set that the
temperature values for the CPU and system and the fans speeds are shown on
the display.
The front |
|
The CPU’s clock frequency |
|
Through the
control centra which you can see at the bottom left of this page we access a
row of practical functions. Furthermore the control centra also works as a
music player. In the system diagnostics section we can configure the fan’s
speeds and eventual warning signals which shall be given at certain
temperatures. The MagicFlash section lets us update the mainboard’s BIOS
directly in Windows. The latest BIOS version is downloaded from the EPoX
site and then updated directly in Windows. A couple of mouse clicks is all
that is needed for the procedure. Unfortunately there is no possibility to
update the board’s BIOS from a file on the harddrive, so you can only update
directly from the internet. In most cases this works very well, but
sometimes the site’s servers can be down, overloaded or so, or you simply
don’t have access to an Internet connection and then it’s nice to also be
able to update the BIOS manually. Admittedly one can update the board’s BIOS
manually through the DOS prompt but since the
EX5-300S completely lacks a floppy drive interface this means that you have
to flash the BIOS from a CD-ROM or some form of flash drive.
EX5 Control Center
|
|
Temp
|
|
RPM
|
|
The Magic Screen
function lets the user create his/her own Power-On and Boot images which
then are stored in the mainboard’s BIOS chip. A simple and fun way to give a
personal touch to the computer. The memory stick reader are you already
familiar with. It is a 6-in-1 memory card reader which is capable of reading
and writing Compact Flash/Memory Stick/SmartMedia/SecureDigital/MicroDrive
and MultimediaCard.
Magic Screen |
|
The CPU’s clock frequency |
|
EPoX Mini Me is
equipped with a whole lot of fun functions which creates a better overall
value but just as in the case with the ABIT DigiDice there are some cons in
the implention of some. The memory card reader is great and works flawlessy,
so does the software for creating boot images and the system monitor program
but then the problems start to arrive. The BIOS update works too, somewhat
good, but the option of manually selecting the BIOS image should still be
there.
The enclosed music playback program works kind of well but it takes a whole
lot more before I will give up WinAMP..
The display is a feature which you simply have to like at least visually. In
terms of functionality there are a few problems. First, the display is
hardwired to the enclosed software and thus it can’t be used with other
programs such as just mentioned WinAMP. Furthermore the buttons on the front
feel quite unecessary since it’s more convenient to use the mouse to
complete such a task instead of reaching for the front panel’s small buttons.
Sure, they fill their function if the case stands somewhere a bit away from
the monitor and if it’s used as a “Music station” but then again we have the
problem of not being able to navigate through our music collection in a nice
way as in a Windows enviroment. If I am to say something to the music
playback’s function’s defence it would be that it is good that one can use a
lot of different music source ssuch as CD/DVD/HDD/Flash-minne etc.
but on the other side it is nothing that we can’t do with WinAMP or another
music player.
Overall EX5-300S offers a whole lot of functionality above the ordinary but
unfortunately the implementation is not always the most successful one. Here
is clearly a lot of space for improvements in further models..
EPoX BIOS’ has a tendency to be real uneven. Sometimes they’re the pure
enthusiast BIOS where all limits are gone and sometime they’re more limited
than the BIOS you could find in your mom’s old Compaq. This makes me a bit
more happy since both ABIT and also Shuttle on the later time has showed
that also barebones can be really overclocked if the right conditions are
there. Thus Epox should also dare to give us an accomplished overclocker
BIOS.
In the mode of an enthusiast I proceed t othe section "Power BIOS" which
should contain some juicy overclocking settings which I’ve dreamed about.
While I’m in there it shows that EpoX sadly enough didn’t go the same way as
the competitors but instead we have to satisfy ourselves with one of the
most restrictive BIOSes I’ve ever seen since time of the Pentium II.
Admittedly the processor’s FSB can be adjusted to a whole 350MHz in 1MHz
intervals, something that wasn’t that topical for that time, but it doesn’t
help much when there’s not a single voltage setting to adjust. Neither the
memory, CPU nor AGP voltage can be adjusted. The section’s name "Power BIOS"
suddenly feels very misleading.
The rest of the settings is made up of the memory ratio, choosable between DDR400/320/266
and settings for the AGP clock which ban be set through presets or manually
in 1MHz intervals. Dissapointed I leave the section and explore the rest of
the board’s BIOS instead.
|
BIOS
settings
|
FSB
frequency: |
100-350 MHz (1MHz intervals)
|
AGP
frequency: |
presets or manually in 1MHz increments
|
CPU
voltage: |
–
|
DIMM
voltage: |
–
|
AGP
voltage: |
–
|
The rest of the
BIOS feels like any AwardBIOS. For example the Advanced Chipset Features
section handles temperatures and voltage values while Integrated Peripherals
leads us to under menues where we can configure the board’s integrated
features. In short, nothing really noticable here.
Advanced Chipset Features |
|
PC Health |
|
OnChip PCI Device |
|
Honestly I
expected a lot more from EPoX concering the mainboard’s BIOS. The settings
are way too restrictive, thus you can hardly expect any great overclocking
capabilities. We want to point out though that EPoX has a tendency to
release BIOS updates which releases the restrictions and gives the user full
control over his/her BIOS a time after the release. Thus there is still some
hope that we might see a lot of overclocked Mini Me cases in the future.
Until then EX5-300S becomes a product for those who do not think in MHz.
Without
voltage settings it was pretty clear that our Mini Me wouldn’t set any
overclocking records. 220MHz was the highest stable FSB we could attain with
the default voltage settings.
We leave the EPoX Mini Me
for a moment to become familiar with one of Shuttle’s latest inventions,
the ST62K Zen.
Shuttle
XPC ST62K: Specifications
|
|
Case
|
| Dimensions: |
(L)190*(W)170*(H)280
2.1Kg (N.W.) 5.2Kg (G.W.)
|
| Front panel: |
1
x Reset, 2 x USB, 1 x Line in, 1x MIC, 1 x Line out
|
|
Rear panel: |
1 x DC in,
1 x Clear CMOS, 1, Tv-out, 1 x VGA, 1 x PS/2 Keyboard & Mus, 2
x USB, 1 x RJ45, 1 x Line in, Line Out, Mic In, 1 x Com, 2 x Firewire
1394a
|
Expansion
places: |
1 x 5.25″, 2 x 3.5″
|
|
Power supply: |
180
W
|
|
Mainboard
(FT62)
|
| Chipset: |
ATI
RS300 (MCH) + IXP150
|
CPU
support: |
Intel Pentium 4/Celeron Socket-478, 400/533/800MHz FSB, HyperThreading support, No Willamette support
|
| Memory: |
Dual
Channel DDR 200/266/333/400, 2 slots
|
| VGA: |
Radeon
9100 IGP
|
| AGP: |
–
|
| PCI: |
1 x 32-bit bus master PCI
|
IDE
controller: |
2 ports ATA100, 4 units
|
SATA
controller: |
–
|
SATA RAID
controller: |
–
|
LAN
controller: |
Realtek 8100C 10/100Mbit
|
| Audio:
|
Realtek
ALC650, AC97 Codec + S/PDIF in/out on rear bracket
|
| FireWire (IEEE-1394): |
VIA
VT6307, 2 ports on the back
|
| USB 2.0:
|
4
ports (2 front and 2 on the backpanel, up to a total of 6 via 2 x internal)
|
|
Other features: |
Shuttle I.C.E. heatpipe
cooling
|
| Price:
|
|
Shuttle’s
ST62K differ a lot from the earlier Shuttle barebones which we’ve looked
at. The most obvious is the appearence and the size. The new ST62K
is smaller than the predecessors which means that some compromises had t
obe done. For example the power supply is external and is connected to the
case through a seperate power cable. Furthermore there is no AGP port on the
ST62K. The users have to satisfy themselves with the integrated GPU in the
chipset, the Radeon 9100
IGP. How the graphics card’s performance is we leave unsaid for now but
users who want a barebone which is supposed to be capable of playing really
demanding games should look after a case with an AGP port. Shuttle’s ST62K
makes itself best at work of at the small home office.
Shuttle’s ST62K
is still such new that we can’t exactly say what the case will cost on the
shelves. Komplett.se lists the case for approx. 300€ excl VAT which sounds
very much and since the calculated delivery time according to them is not
until late March we can expect the price to drop a whole lot till then.
Namely, the price of today is everything else but competitive for a case
which among other things completely lacks S-ATA and AGP support. The
availability today is also almost non existant but assume that this will
change drasticly within the coming weeks.
The ST62K is
delivered with everything the user might need to quickly and smoothly
install the necessary components thus get a bootable computer. We get two ATA100 80-ribbon
cables where of one is premounted in the case. For the premounted cable is
also an extention cable delivered to give some more playroom at the
installation. Since the case’s integrated graphics circuit also have TV-out
Shuttle gives you a TV-out cable. Now only a video cable for the TV is
missing and the case is ready to be connected to each man’s TV. The big
black unit which you see in the image to the right is the case’s external
power supply which can deliver up to 180W. The pros with the external
solution is that the case can be made smaller. Admittedly you have a large
black box laying next to it but then again it can be hidden somewhere under
the desktop to make things look a bit nicer.
Shuttle
XPC Zen: Accessories
  |
|
2
x ATA100 cables + 1 x short ATA100 cable
|
|
1
x mainboard manual, 1 x case manual
|
|
1
x Installation CD-Rom for the barebone
|
|
1 x external power supply + 1 x power cable for the external PSU
|
|
1
x Slotcover for one 3.5″ plats, 1 x Tv-out adapter, 2 x spike
feet
|
|
Thermal paste,
Cable-Ties and necessary screws
|
Both Shuttle’s SB65G2 and SB75G2 which we looked at in our previous
SFF-roundup were filled with features. ST62K on the other hand doesn’t quite
bring that tradition along. Don’t get me wrong, there are admittedly some
nice things integrated in the case but they are clearly less than what the
earlier mentioned models offers.
Future ST62K ownest have to make it without both AGP port and Serial ATA
support. Here it is only P-ATA (IDE ATA 100) and the integrated Radeon 9100 IGP
GPU. Even if the lack of Serial ATA might not scare away many potential
buyers I think that the lack of an AGP port will, at least for consumers who
buy the case for home usage.
The rest of the feature list is a joy. Here there are plenty of USB 2.0
ports, two FireWire ports, S/PDIF in/out, 10/100 Mbps NIC and Realtek’s ALC
650 6 channel audio circuit which more or less has become the standard of
integrated sound circuits.
Conclusive I can say that the ST62K feels like a perfect case for the office
or for those who work at home and put great value at nice design and that
the computer takes up very little space. The case offers everything you can
wish in terms of connectivity for peripheral equipment so in the end it is
only the lack of the AGP port which is really a strong reason for not to buy
the case. If the integrated graphics circuit meets your needs and you don’t
have any S-ATA harddrives the Shuttle ST62K really feels like a nice product.
Clearly something to consider for those who are thinking of upgrading their
system.
The design of the “Zen” case admittedly strongly reminds about the
earlier Shuttle barebones but some has still changed. First of all the front
is now white and in plastic. Now some of you may mutter over the plastic
choice, a material assosciated with cheap mass manufactured articles, but
let me assure you about the plastic, it is no ordinary plastic. One would
almost say that the front could be described as ridiculously I-Mac inspired.
It is about white, some semi transparent with a little feeling of frosted
glass beneath. Hopefully it will be clear from the images. The rest of the
case consists of just as on the earlier Shuttle cases of brushed aluminum, a
material that simply is ridiculously pretty.
Let us look
some closer at the front and rear sides of the case. We begin with the
front. A minor irritation thing that all Shuttle’s barebones has
suffered from during the years is that the CD and Floppy trapdoors
aren’t hidden. If you install a beige or black unit you simply have to
live with that the unit’s front is not matching the rest of the case’s
front. This actually feels very boring considering that several other
manufacturers has shown that it is quite simple to “Stealth-mod”, or
hide, the ugly trapdoors.
The front
on the Shuttle ST62K is as usually on the Barebone systems also equipped
with a row of connections. Here we find 2 x USB-portar,
earphones plug, microphone connector, a Line-out connector and the
power- and the reset button. Nothing unusual here, the front follows the
standard layout.
The rear of the case differs some though. At the most left we see the
power connection for the external power supply. Right next to it we find
the VGA connector. Under that one we see the TV-out contact but also
something which more manufacturers really should apply to their
creations. Shuttle has namely mounted an external button for clearing
the CMOS. In other words to cure instable overclocking settings you no
longer have to open up the whole case but the CMOS can be cleared
directly from the back side of the case. If we continue to the right in
the picture we see the S/PDIF output, two FireWire ports and two USB 2.0
ports. Above these we see the COM-port and the RJ45 NIC connector. The
next pair of contacts is the PS/2 connectors for mouse and keyboard and
next to them we find the audio connectors which can deliver up to six
channel surround sound. At the top left on the rear we can also see a
small rosa/pink dot which covers the S/PDIF input. The ST62K
is undeniably a powerful little thingy.
Then it’s
time to open up the beauty and see what hides inside. This is done by
three thumb screws on the back side. When these has been removed it is
just to pull the case backwards some centimeter and then lift it off.
From above the case looks just like any other Shuttle barebone, well,
almost. Everything is a bit smaller and furthermore we can see two rails
in the cage which contains the only harddrive and the CD-ROM at place.
In these rails the harddrive cage no# 2 is fitted which is placed
sideways where the rear end of the harddrive will end up just above the
IDE connectors. It is here where the short IDE cable come in handy. As
opposed to earlier versions you can’t remove the large harddrive cage
which contains the CD-ROM but only the smaller secondary cage. This
makes the work in the case a bit more difficult since you’ve got a
smaller space to work with. What is nice though is that the small
harddrive cage is seated with one thumbscrew and the rails which we
mentioned earlier. To remove it you just remove the screw and then pull
out the cage along the rails.
Top view |
|
HDD-cage #2 |
|
Speaking of
nice details we can state that Shutle has mounted many of the internal
cables with help of cable holders and rails so that the cable troubles
stays at a minimum. The image to the bottom left shows an example of
this. If we take a look in from the left side, seen from forward, we see
that there is only one place for expansion cards. It is about one single
PCI slot so a seperate graphics cards is out of the question. To the
right of the PCI spot we can also get a glimpse of the both IDE channels
which the ST62K is equipped with.
The socket is placed close to the rear in the case to make the distance
between the heatpipes and the exhaust fan as small as possible.
Nice
‘n’ Clean |
|
1 x PCI |
|
Socket |
|
The number of DIMM slost is limited ti two which is normal in cases of this
size. The DIMM slots can be found on the right side of the case, still seen
from the front. To install the memory is not really of any bigger problems
assuming we remove the smaller harddrive cage. The right image below shows
the both IDE channels and we can also spot the chipet’s cooling which
consists of two black passive heatsinks. The passive heatsink solution helps
to keep the level of noise down.
2 x DIMM |
|
2 x IDE |
|
Shuttle
has got a long experience of building userfriendly barebones and ST62K
continues on with that tradition. The installation of the ST62K goes well
despite the minimal amount of space. The lack of an AGP slot makes us not
having to worry about a too large graphics card which we must lead the
cables around. That only the secondary harddrive holder can be removed
neither really becomes a problem since you still easily can access the
memory slots. Apart from the memory one do not need to access the minimum
space beneath the harddrive holder, thus the minimum space does not become a
problem. The heatpipe solution is also mounted in a kick and I must say that
they have succeeded very good overall with the user-friendlyness in the
ST62K. The sideway rotating secondary harddrive holder with its shorted IDE
cable is of a genius design, for example.
And then it’s time to look at the cooling and the level of noise.
ST62K uses Shuttle’s patented I.C.E Heatpipe-cooling. The cooling consists of three parts, a big two-split heatsink with a copper core where the two parts are bound via heatpipes, one 80mm fan blowing air out of the chassie and a fastening device with which you fasten the heatsink on the CPU. The heatpipe cooling serves the purpose of taking up the CPU’s heat with the copper core heatsink, then transport the heat via the heatpipes to the other part of the heatsink. There are more heatsinks on the other side and thinner to give maximum heat dissipation. The fan is placed with a cover on the other part of the heatsink and blows air through the heatsink out of the chassie. A pretty simple construction that works like a charm. Below you can see the cooling when it’s installed.
It’s beginning to feel naggy to say it but this is also about a Phoenix AwardBIOS. Shuttle has used this BIOS-type for a long time now and apparantly there were no reasons to change it even though you’ve used a new chipset.
ST62K’s BIOS differs from what we’re used to. Overclocking settings usually get its own BIOS-section but in this case they’re in the section called “Advanced Chipset Features”, where we find memory settings and eventual chipset optimations.
We start off with looking at the overclocking settings. The FSB is increasable in 1 MHz increments up to 15 Mhz over the default-value which far away from the 200+ Mhz many other motherboards let us overclock the FSB with. Admittedly it’s almost impossible to reach bus speeds at 400 MHz but the 300 MHz-border has been broken by many capable overclockers, so we’re not talking about imaginary numbers. To reach an overclock at 15 MHz on the FSB you don’t usually have to change the CPU voltage very much, if not nothing. This BIOS’s CPU voltage is set to 1.5875v. Other voltage changes are not available. The memory ratio is adjustable at DDR200/266/333/400/AUTO/SYNC and the CPU bus speed at 100/133/166/200. Unfortunately this is all there is in the overclocking settings but we could quickly bring up the memory timing settings before we left this BIOS-section completely.
To sum up the motherboard’s BIOS it follows the standards in sections for integrated features and system surveillance.
We could from the start tell you that Shuttle’s ST62K wasn’t intended for overclockers and we can clearly see that by the card’s BIOS. The most important BIOS-settings are there but that’s pretty much it.
Third party manufactured chipsets usually don’t stand much of a chance against Intel’s chipset. When it comes to overclocking this is also the case with ATi’s RS300. As we’ve seen from the above the BIOS-settings are already restrictive but not even these we could maximize fully before we had problems. The highest stabile FSB we could use was 207 MHz which is equivalent to a FSB-increase of 5 MHz in the motherboard’s BIOS. The clock generator is apparantly anything but exact since the final clock frequency exceeds the one we configured in BIOS with over 2 MHz. Summing up that we managed to get 100 MHz extra processing power out of Shuttle’s ST62K, which is nothing to chant about.
