AOpen EZ482

AOpen has since the end of 1996 been manufacturing various hardware components and since 2003 it has also been delivering SFF barebone systems. We have tested one of its latest models, EZ482.

AOpen was founded at the end of 1996 and has since then been busy with manufacturing hardware based on the latest technology, while the first XC Cube barebone came out in 2003. In this review we’ve tested one of its barebones for AMD’s Socket 939 that comes with an integrated graphics circuit; a model known as EZ482.

AOpen has done a great job with its barebones, something you’ll definitely find out if you take a look at AOpen’s website and all of the awards that has been given to AOpen. There are tons of them that have been given by numerous hardware editors.

AOpen has many other models in the XC Cube family besides EZ482, 32 to be precise. This one is based on the ATi RS482 (northbridge) and IXPSB450 (southbridge) chipset. The fact that EZ482 comes with an integrated graphics circuit should make it a suitable HTPC.

We’ve taken the time to compare the EZ482 to another barebone we’ve reviewed earlier just to get a feel for how well it performs.

AOpen EZ482
Processor support	Socket 939 Pins (Support AMD® Athlon FX and Athlon 64 CPU)
Chipset	ATI RS482 + IXPSB450
VGA Chipset	ATI X300
Memory	2x 184-pin DDR-DIMM DDR 400/333/266 (200MHz/166MHz/133MHz) Max. 2GB
Expansion slots	1x PCI-Express x16 (Max. length 220mm) 1x PCI (Max. length 190mm)
Storage	1x Floppy 2x Ultra DMA 133 IDE 4x Serial-ATA
Back panel I/O	1x PS/2 Keyboard 1x PS/2 Mouse 1x IEEE 1394 (Firewire) (6 pins) 1x Serie port (COM) 1x Parallel port 1x GigaBit LAN (RJ45) 8 channel sound (7+1) Line-in 2x USB 2.0 1x Composite 1x VGA
Front panel I/O	SPDIF: Optic in/out, coax out 1x Microphone 1x Headphones (line-out) 2x USB 2.0 1x IEEE 1394 (Firewire) (6 pins) 1x IEEE 1394 (Firewire) (4 pins)
Power supply	275W
Fans/Cooling	Total of 2 fans (incl. CPU and PSU) Passive cooling for the northbridge
Size	320 x 200 x 190 mm
Weight	3.8kg (8.4lbs.)
Price	$300

AOpen presents a rich list of features where the power supply and interated graphics stand out the most. Just like the last barebone we tested, Shuttle SN25P, this one has 4 SATA, which is very impressive.

The fact that the PSU only delivers 275W of power may raise an eyebrow or two, will it really be enough?

The box the EZ482 came in is fully loaded with information about the content, a bit surprising seeing as the box is so small.

As it should be, all accessories are nicely packaged in a separate box to ease the installation.

The box contains several installation manuals, in different languages, and all necessary cables to connect the different units. The cables are rounded as to not impair the airflow too negatively. A nice extra is the polishing cloth (very similar to those used to clean glasses) to remove those nasty fingerprints that sooner or later will be visible on the highly polished chassis.

Let’s have a closer look at the chassis!

The AOpen EZ482 is pleasantly shaped with rounded corners and a chromed list on the front, all giving it a classical clean look. The one we have on the test bench is black, but it can also be had in silver. On the front we find, as we should, one 5.25″ slot for a CD/DVD unit and a 3.5″ slot for a floppy drive or an extra harddrive. At the bottom we find a little door hiding the front panel, which gives the possibility to connect USB, FireWire, headset and S/PDIF units.

On the rear are, except the regular connectors, the connectors for VGA and a Composite out. The built-in graphics on the EZ482 is based on ATi’s X300 chip.

The EZ482’s chassis is made of painted aluminum with amply sized punched holes to facilitate air flow inside the chassis. Practically the whole left side (when seen from the front) has punched out holes and on the right side they are grouped where the GPU fan draws in fresh air.

The left picture shows the side that holds the PCI and PCI Express slots. It will be interesting to see how the air flow will be affected when a video card will occupy the PCI-E slot, considering that the CPU cooler’s air flow will probably be completely blocked by the video card. But more about that later on.

The right picture shows the side where the CPU cooler evacuates the heated air. The chassis has two fans to evacuate hot air, one on the CPU heatsink the other inside the PSU.

The left picture shows two heatsinks, the larger cooling the Northbridge and the smaller doing the same with the Southbridge.

The PSU shipped with the EZ482 delivers, according to the specs, 275W. You might think that’s a bit little, so it will interesting to see if that will mean trouble when we start testing. Especially as we are going to put a power hungry 7800GT in there.

The heatsink, that comes with the EZ482, is of ample size. It’s made from copper, something that tends for good heat dissipation. The fan attached is proportionately large and that should mean that the noise level will be not so loud.

So what is there of interest in the EZ482 BIOS?

We didn’t expect to find a lot of adjustments in the BIOS as an SFF is not exactly aimed at those wanting to tweak their system indefinitely. It is possible to adjust the FSB all the way up to 400 MHz, so it will be very interesting to see how high we will reach when we’ll overclock the system. With the fact in mind that the HTT multiplier can’t be changed, the chances for us to reach that level is slim to nothing.

There are very few memory adjustments. It is possible to set the memory to 100/133/166/200MHz, something we expect from a system of today. What concerns other memory adjustments, the only one is the Tcl value, it can be set to 2/2 or 5/3. During this testing we will set Tcl=2 as we know the memory we’re using are capable of handling this.

On the HW monitoring page of the BIOS we see all the different temperature, fan speeds and voltages of the system. It is possible to set the fans to different speeds to control cooling and noise level in the computer. We will have this set to “Smart Control” throughout the test.

It is not possible to set any CPU voltage in the EZ482’s BIOS, however it is possible to set one for the DDR memory. The options are from 2.6V to 2.9V and Auto.

The adjustment possibilities in the BIOS are limited, but the most necessary are there and if you have no intention to overclock or in any other way tweak your system, these are good enough.

For a person with experience in building computers, it is very possible to assemble all components without reading the manual. For those who aren’t so experienced, the manual is an excellent aid and as long as you do as it says, not much can go wrong.

We start by removing the part where the DVD/CD drive is mounted. The harddrive and floppy drive/extra harddrive will also be mounted here.

The Molex and SATA connectors for the harddrive are angled to minimize clutter.

The motherboard has two expansion slots, one PCI and one PCI-express x16. As the number of available PCI cards still is quite large, it is good for the EZ482 that it has such a slot. For those that want to, it makes it possible to install a more powerful sound card or a separate TV card, just to mention a few things.

In this review we will test the onboard video card as well as a Geforce 7800GT. The EZ482 only has three Molex connectors, which limits the amount of devices that can be installed. A Molex splitter is needed in order to install more drives. If you want to use two harddrives, a DVD burner and a video card that requires additional power you will have to buy a splitter separately, as one is not bundled with the EZ482.

Upon installing our 7800GT card we notice that it obstructs a great part of the air flow in the case, which will prove to have a negative impact on the temperature measurements further on in the article.

As is expected for a barebone, all cables are carefully cut to length, in order to keep the interior free of clutter. This gives us some trouble when we try to install the video card, as we had to use an extension cable for the power to reach the card.

The EZ482 has 4 SATA connectors, but only room in the case for two harddrives. If all four connectors are to be utilized, the extra drives have to be external. The fact that the SATA connectors are located in the front of the case will be cause some problems as the cables will have to be drawn all the way through to the back of the case.

Test system
Hardware
Motherboard	AOpen EZ482 (ATi) Shuttle SN25P (nForce4) DFI Lanparty SLI-D (nForce4)
Processor	AMD Athlon FX-55 (2600MHz)
Memory	Corsair XMS 3200XL DDR (2x512MB) 2-2-2-5-1T
Video card	nVidia GeForce 7800GT XFX Extreme For EZ482, also the on-board video card ATi X300
Harddrive	Western Digital SATA 250GB 8MB cache
Software
Operating system	Windows XP (SP2)
Drivers	AOpen EZ482: ATi Catalyst 5.5 Shuttle/DFI: nVidia nForce4 6.70 Video card: nVidia Forceware 81.98
Benchmark programs	SiSoft Sandra 2005 SR3 SuperPi AutoGK 3DMark05 1.2.0 3DMark06 1.0.2 PCMark05 1.1.0 AquaMark3 Far Cry 1.33 UT2004 DOOM3 Battlefield2 1.12
Other benchmarks	Noise level Temperature

As references, both motherboard and barebone, we have chosen the DFI Lanparty SLI-D and Shuttle SN25P, respectively.

First off the CPU and memory will be put to the test.

Starting off is SiSoft Sandra, where we’re going to run three of the many benchmarks in the program.

Not much differs between the three systems, which is in order as the benchmark mostly stresses the CPU. AOpen performs slightly worse, however, which can be explained by the fact that the default BIOS settings have the CPU running at 2.60GHz with AOpen and 2.61GHz with the other systems.

Next up is Sandra’s memory benchmark.

Here the AOpen performs worse than the other two, probably because of the lack of memory settings. We used the most aggressive settings available, which resulted in 2-4-2-8-1T while the other systems managed 2-2-2-5-1T.

AOpen falls slightly behind the other two test systems when calculating Pi to 1 million decimals.

Even when converting an MPEG-2 file (141MB) to .avi, AOpen is a few seconds slower. The difference might seem small, but if the file would have been bigger then so would the time difference. As a percentage, AOpen EZ482 is roughly 5% slower than the DFI board.

Among the most common benchmark programs are Futuremark’s 3DMark05, 3DMark06 and PCMark06, as well as Aquamark3 from Massive Publishing.

The internal video card falls way behind a 7800GT, which is completely in order as there is no comparing the on-board card with a high-end card such as the 7800GT. When we run the benchmarks with a 7800GT the results are remarkably better, however the ATI chipset doesn’t quite manage to perform as well as the boards based on the recognized nForce4 chipset.

Just as in 3DMark, the setup with the on-board video card has difficulties trying to perform as well as that with a 7800GT installed. Seeing as PCMark05 benchmarks other parts of the system as well (CPU, memory, HDD, etc.), the difference isn’t as big as in the 3DMark tests. In this test, just as in the other ones, AOpen falls a bit behind the other systems, even when using the 7800GT.

The pattern of AOpen EZ482 performing slightly worse than the NF4 chipset continues in Aquamark3.

To better know how the system performs, we have added four gaming tests. The four are Unreal Tournament 2004, FarCry, Doom3 and Battlefield2. All tests are done with the same adjustments to both the integrated and 7800GT cards.

The tests above obviously show that the integrated graphics card can’t handle the more demanding 3D games. But combining the AOpen EZ482 together with a high performing graphics cards, it delivers an adequately good result though not quite as good as NF4 based systems do.

How will the AOpen EZ482 handle itself when it comes to overclocking?

The EZ482 comes with a PSU that, according to the specs, delivers 275W. Having a powerful PSU is, as most that overclock know, a condition for overclocking. If the PSU can’t handle the power increase from the overclock, the result is usually a BSoD. Of course, the PSU is not the only part that ensures an overclock. The other parts used in the test system have all proven them to cope with a bus frequency of over 300MHz which will test the EZ482 to the fullest.

As there are no means to change the voltage to the CPU in the BIOS, this test will be a simple one. We will lower the CPU multiple to a “safe” level and then we’ll raise the bus frequency until the system becomes unstable.

As the table above clearly shows, the EZ482 (even combined with a 7800GT) is not something an overclocker will like. 12,5% overclock is what the system managed and anything beyond resulted in a BSoD or that the system reverted to the default settings in the BIOS. The reason for EZ482’s inability to reach high overclock levels can mostly be blamed on ATi’s chipset but also on the lack of adjustability in the BIOS.

As in our previous test of the Shuttle SN25p, we will start with, something many are interested in, the sound measurements. A silent computer is becoming more important the more time you spend with one.

The sound measurement where made at the same level as and 50 cm from the chassis. With our latest test, the Shuttle set the bar and we have compared those two. Just as then we have measured the sound level on three occasions, during system boot, under load and at idle. The fact that the sound level was the highest at system boot in not weird as all fans operate at full speed, the sound level then drop as the system boot into Windows. The table above shows the difference to be small and to Shuttles advantage.

Unfortunately AOpen hasn’t got a program, of their own, that measures temperatures. However, Speedfan is one that can read the temperature sensors in the EZ482, and that is the program we have used.

You can’t expect low temperatures with such a small cabinet, but that the temperatures would reach such levels was a bit of a surprise to us. As the table shows the temperature rose to 70°C/158°F under load, which we find too high. As the 7800GT card covers the most part of the air intake for the CPU cooling, we chose to also show the temperatures we measured when using the integrated graphics (IGP). When using the integrated graphics the temperatures were dramatically lower when compared to the temperatures measured with the 7800GT.

How well does the AOpen EZ482 perform as a whole? We conclude that on the next page.

From a designers point of view AOpen has succeeded with the EZ482. Its size and looks will surely appeal to those wanting a small computer on their desk or as a HTPC in the living room.

Because the EZ482 has an integrated graphics card, it is very well suited for office work or as an entry level computer, where a more powerful graphics card, to handle the more demanding games, will be a later purchase.

The interior design, however, leaves some to wish for. The fact the AOpen doesn’t include more cables is something that pulls down the overall grading. To be able to do our tests we had to find an extension cable for the graphics card’s Molex connector. To equip the EZ482 with 4 SATA connectors is over the top since there isn’t room to fit more than 2 inside the case.

The amount of heat that the EZ482 makes and not really manages to evacuate is a reason for the overall grading not reaching top notch. The temperature, under load with an add-in graphics card, reaching up to 70 °C will be added to the Negative side for the EZ482.

One thing impressing is that the PSU, of only 275W, is able to run a system under full load in all applications.

Something that definitely goes on the positive side is the price. The price of an EZ482 is well below the competitor for this test.

AOpen EZ482

Positive: + Price + Sound Level + Manuals + TV-out + Exterior design Negative: – Heat – Lack of cables – Placement of graphics card relative to air flow – Adjustments in BIOS

Even though the temperature levels are a bit high and that there are some design mishaps inside the chassis, we can still recommend the EZ482 to those not in need of maximum graphics performance, considering the integrated graphics and the fair pricing of the unit. If you however have the need or interest of upgrading your computer in any larger extent there are better options than the AOpen EZ482. In short, AOpen has developed a good barebone without any major flaw, but it still kind of blends into the background.

NordicHardware wishes to thank AOpen for providing an AOpen EZ482 for testing.