ReviewsReviews
Small Formfactor Fisticuffs^
Screw the Mac Mini! Build your own micro PC
J
ust when you thought small
formfactor machines were get-
ting boring, FIC and Aopen
arrive to jazz up what’s become a
rather predictable category.
—GORDON “LEE HARVEY” UNGFIC Piston
Neither boom box nor nuke, FIC’s
Piston is the wackiest small formfac-
tor we’ve seen to date.
Built by the company that
brought us the fabulous Condor
SFF, FIC’s Piston offers its own
innovations in small-formfactor
design. First, it’s cylindrical, which
makes it good for, umm, we don’t
really know what. Second, it fea-
tures an integrated DVD decoder
chip that lets you play DVDs or
audio CDs without having to boot
into the OS. This is a nifty feature,
for sure, but on our unit, we had to
manually select our video output
mode every time—once set, the
device should have remembered
our selection. FIC said it was look-
ing into the problem.
Building the Piston was easier
than we expected, but that’s only
true if you buy a unit equipped
with the optional optical drive.
Wrestling the drive into these
cramped quarters would be a bitch.
As it is, we struggled to install the
PCI Express videocard, thanks to
a tight-fitting power cable. The
Piston has only enough room to fitmedium-powered
single-slot PCI-E
cards, so don’t
expect to jam a
6800 Ultra or x850
into the Intel 915G-
based box.
The Piston’s biggest
downfall is its nonstandard
shape. A cylindrical case just
isn’t convenient. You can’t stack
anything on the unit, and the plas-
tic rod on the PC’s underside that
keeps the case from rolling off your
desk and down the stairs is flimsy.
Plus, the Piston runs extremely hot,
trading cooling-solutions for quiet
operation, and it is indeed quieter
than other Pentium 4 SFF boxes
we’ve seen recently.
Unfortunately, unlike FIC’s
Condor, the Piston’s unique design
doesn’t appear to offer any real-
world benefit.Aopen EY 855-II XC Cube
In the last few months, small form-
factor PC’s have found themselves
on a collision course with modern
computing. Can SFF manufacturers
manage the temperatures of today’s
hot components, while maintain-
ing a reasonable quietude?
Up until now, we haven’t seen
small formfactor machines that offer
truly silent operation. But leave it to
Aopen—the first company to intro-
duce a “hybrid” desktop mobo using
the Pentium M CPU—to do the
same with its EY 855-II XC Cube.
Like the Aopen mobo we used in
our February 2005 “Silent PC” how-
to, the XC Cube runs on an Intel855 chipset with integrated graph-
ics. Of course, you can ditch the
onboard graphics for an AGP card.
If you’re shocked at the prospect
of using old-school AGP technol-
ogy, stop reading here, because the
XC Cube only offers a 4x AGP port.
What’s more, the board lacks sup-
port for SATA drives, and RAM is
limited to DDR333.
The EY 855-II’s strong suit is its
silence. Though it’s a tad loud when
running a 7,200rpm drive, with a
5,400rpm drive the machine runs
silent—even under a full load.
Should power users even consider
Pentium M and an 855-based box?
If you’re more concerned with raw
power than noise, you shouldn’t.
The XC Cube is better suited to fill-
ing the role of unobtrusive PC. With
a 5,400rpm hard drive and onboard
graphics or a fanless AGP card, the
XC Cube is as quiet as an SFF gets.
Who knows? In time Aopen
may integrate Intel’s PCI-E Pentium
M chipset with a SFF design.MA XIMUMPC JUNE 2005
The FIC Piston
looks like a
bomb, but it
doesn’t make
much of an
impact.medium-powered6800 Ultra or x850
into the Intel 915G-The Piston’s biggest
downfall is its nonstandard
shape. A cylindrical case just
isn’t convenient. You can’t stack
anything on the unit, and the plas-Shhh , the Pentium
M in the Aopen XC
Cube lets you chew
code without the
processor din.doesn’t make
much of an
impact.BEER BELLYIntegrated TV tuner, “instant-on” DVD,
built-in speaker.$500, http://www.fica.com6
BEERMA XIMUMPCVERDICT
Odd shape, tight fit for videocard, no additional
add-in card slot.PISTONPentium M, baby!No SATA, and limited to DDR333 and AGP.
$320, http://www.aopen.com7
*ELLO #UBES#UBI#LESMA XIMUMPCVERDICT
EY -II 8# #UBE7.75“9“13.75”8”14 ”