As for the FIC IC-VG61 bundle, no surprises are waiting here. This system includes a PC case with a power supply unit, a mainboard and a processor cooler. Yes, yes, even though FIC suggests using regular coolers with their systems, just like Soltek, they do include a cooler like that in their package. This is regular Pentium 4 cooler from Evercool.

Of course, the drives are not includes into FIC IC-VG61 barebone set. So, if you wish to assemble a fully-fledged PC based on FIC IC-VG61, you will need to buy memory, a CPU, a HDD, and maybe also a graphics card, a floppy drive and an optical drive, if you need them.

The front panel of FIC IC-VG61 is not very much different from the front panels of Shuttle and Soltek barebones from the functional point of view. It features the Power and Reset buttons, power and HDD addressing indicators and the following connectors: 2 USB 2.0 ports, SPDIF In, Mic In, two audio Outs for a four-channel sound system, and PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse. To tell the truth, this is a very strange set of connectors for the front panel. Keyboard and mouse, for instance, are connected to the PC once and for all, so we didn’t quite understand why they placed the PS/2 connectors on the very front then...

The rear panel of FIC IC-VG61 features the remaining two USB 2.0 ports, two IEEE1394 ports and two serial ports. Besides, you can also see three audio connectors for a 6-channel sound system, SPDIF Out, RJ45 connector for local network, analogue D-Sub connector for the monitor and a TV-Out. Again, we wish we could also see a parallel port and a DVI Out there as well.

FIC IC-VG61 barebone system is based on CFI-S969 mainboard. To be honest, we were very much surprised when we saw this name at first. How come that FIC made a mistake in their own company name? But it appeared absolutely not the case. This mainboard as well as the entire SFF PC was manufactured not by FIC but by the Taiwanese Chuang Fun Industry Company. FIC simply orders barebone systems from Chuang Fun and then sells them under their brand name. Well, you can also get barebone systems directly from the manufacturer. They are also known as e-Cube and are sometimes sold under Arprotek brand name. so, if you ever come across Arprotek or Chuang Fun e-Cube you can be sure that these are almost the same solutions as Ice Cube from FIC.

As for the mainboard, it has pretty standard features set. Being based on i845GE chipset, it supports all processors from the Pentium 4 and Celeron families (they only need 800MHz bus support now :)), features an integrated graphics core, 4 USB 2.0 ports, 6-channel AC’97 sound. Due to Realtek and NEC controllers onboard it also supports 10/100Mbit Ethernet and two IEEE1394 ports. The mainboard is equipped with 2 DIMM slots, one PCI slot and an AGP 4x slot. In fact, the features of this mainboard are practically the same as those from Shuttle and Soltek.