SFF Roundup, Part I: Socket 478 and 754 Systems

Wrapping it Up

We hope that you've enjoyed this massive article, and if you actually read everything, thanks. Unlike many other reviews where we're looking at a more focused topic, SFF reviews are almost like reviewing an entire system. Even with all that we've said, there are bound to be overlooked areas or areas that we glazed over. If you have any questions about the particular units and our experience in using them, feel free to ask in the comments section or drop us an email and we'll do our best to answer. For now, we're happy to present our Editor's Choice award.

For the combination of features, aesthetics, and quiet computing, we're happy to award the Aopen XC Cube EA65-II our Silver Editor's Choice. It gets nearly everything right and can easily function as the center of an entertainment system. You might wonder why we chose not to give it the Gold Editor's Choice, and the answer is simply that the socket 478 platform is getting a little old. Higher performing units that use socket 775 and 939 are available, and we'll be taking a look at those in the near future. As a HTPC, it should easily last for several years, however. If we get the chance, we'll take a look at the updated EA65-IIa from Aopen to see how the newer TV/FM Tuner and InstantON 2.x affect things; we hope that the updated model can support TV-Out functionality with an add-in card in InstantON mode, as that would truly make the unit a HTPC device.

Our Bronze Editor's Choice goes to the Biostar iDEQ 210P, and it is an easy recommendation. The 210P has many features and a reasonable price, and the addition of a TV tuner card like the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 would bring the total cost to about the same level as the Aopen. Our biggest complaint is the color-cycling power button, which can thankfully be obscured with the sliding door. The internal layout and extras like a second HDD bay and a mini-PCI slot give you a lot of value for your money. Performance on the whole was also better than the Pentium 4 systems, which was expected.

Of the remaining units, the ASUS and Shuttle are both reasonable alternatives worthy of an "honorable mention", depending on what you like. Coming from the ATX case market, it's refreshing to go through five systems and encounter so few problems! The only unit that we really have misgivings about is the Foxconn e-bot. If the cost was lower or the number of features was higher, it would be less of a problem. As it stands, however, it's simply too much for too little, and there were some performance and stability problems – with a high-end graphics card – that would deter most people from taking that route.

The world of SFF computers is really quite exciting, particularly if you're tired of the noise levels that typically come from desktop PCs. The one item that we're missing is a super small HTPC design with low noise levels. Apple's Mac Mini has shown some of what is possible, and it is much smaller than even the smallest SFF PC. It is also lower performing, of course, and it runs a different OS that some people might not be interested in using. We'd really like to see an ultra-compact PC with VIVO functionality and an even lower noise level packed into a case roughly 1/4 the size of current SFFs. With the attention that the Mac Mini has garnered, we might just see such a system in the next year. We can only hope.

As we said earlier, we're open for suggestions on any other areas that people would like addressed. We do have about twelve additional SFF units for review coming up in the next month or two, and now that we have our basic testing methodology determined, it should hopefully go a little faster than this first roundup.