by Ilya Gavrichenkov
04/04/2003 | 11:21 PM
Barebone systems have become very popular lately. If the sets including a small PC case and a mainboard used to be acquired as a basis for an office PC, now these systems get more and more beloved by the regular users willing to get a nice solution for home use. This can be first of all explained by the fact that some barebone system makers have drastically changed their own attitude to these solutions. Now a barebone is not just a small low-cost system. This is a stylish-looking PC case with a mainboard inside, which boasts all the latest and greatest features despite its relatively small size.
The one to cause all these changes appeared Shuttle Company. Having predicted the growing demand for barebone systems among home users, this company suggested and put into life their own concept of Small Form Factor PCs. Barebones from Shuttle intended for SFF PC assembly are completely different from what the other manufacturers offered a while ago. Shuttle was the first company to pay due attention to the fact that SFF PCs were convenient, easy to use systems, and designed the whole family of excellent barebone systems shaped as small cubes and stuffed with the latest full-featured mainboards.
Shuttle “cubes” very quickly turned into bestsellers. The company, which had never sold any barebone systems before, very rapidly became the leader in this market. A very successful example of Shuttle cubes proved highly convincing, so that today there are a few more manufacturers ready to ship their SFF “cubes”. So today we are going to take a closer look at three different cubes based on i845GE chipset offered by Shuttle, Soltek and FIC.
All of them are of similar shape and size, and boast similar features, but still each has something unique about it. Let’s try to find out which cube of the three is the best: the good old Shuttle buddy or the newcomers from Soltek or FIC.
Well, let’s start with the classical solution. The first SFF system to appear in the market, which was designed as a “cube”, was produced by Shuttle Company. Today Shuttle offers systems built with all the newest chipsets. One of them, SB51G, is based on i845GE. Here are its specifications:
As we see, SB51G barebone system is intended for solutions with Intel Pentium 4 or Celeron processors compatible with Socket478 interface. The system supports all the newest CPUs with Hyper-Threading technology and 533MHz system bus. With the i845GE chipset inside, SB51G features an integrated graphics core, however, it also allows using add-on graphics cards, as it is equipped with an AGP 4x slot. The memory subsystem of Shuttle SB51G works with DDR SDRAM and supports both: DDR266 as well as the more up-to-date DDR333. ICH4 South Bridge used with i845GE adds the support of USB 2.0, ATA/100 and 6-channel sound. The additional onboard controllers integrated onto the mainboard PCB prove Shuttle SB51G with IEEE1394 ports and 10/100Mbit Ethernet support.
SB51G system features very typical appearance of a SFF PC from Shuttle. The system is assembled in a “cube”-shaped case, which is about 2.5 times lower than a standard minitower case. The case is made of anodized aluminum, and the front panel is covered with a thick piece of toned plexiglas.
SFF PC from Shuttle includes a PC case with a power supply unit, cooling solution and a mainboard. Unlike many other barebone manufacturers, Shuttle doesn’t bundle its systems with any drives. That is why you will have to buy a CPU, memory, a HDD, an optical drive and, maybe, a floppy drive and an add-on graphics card.
Let’s take a closer look at Shuttle SB51G now.
The front panel of Shuttle SB51G features the traditional LEDs indicating power and HDD addressing, as well as the Power and Reset buttons. Note that the power indicator is made of a very bright blue LED, which is not that common for regular PC case owners. Also the front panel of Shuttle SB51G is equipped with a few ports for easy connection of additional equipment. Among them there are 2 USB 2.0 ports, one IEEE1394 port, and optical SPDIF audio Out, headset and Mic jacks.
Besides the ports on the front panel of the case we have just mentioned, there are some ports at the back panel as well.
Here we can find two serial ports, D-Sub Out for the monitor, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 2 IEEE1394 ports, one RJ45 network connector, PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, an optical SPDIF In, and a set of sound ports for the 6-channel sound system. This way, Shuttle SB51G allows connecting a lot of different peripheral devices. The only thing that we wish were there is the parallel port.
Here is the mainboard used in Shuttle SB51G barebone system:
The mainboard used in Shuttle SB51G is Shuttle’s own FB51 solution. Although it is of pretty small size, it nevertheless, feature the entire set of advantages typical of the full-size ATX mainboards. FB51 is built on a pretty modern i845GE chipset and supports Socket478 processors with 400MHz and 533MHz FSB, as well as Hyper-Threading technology. There are two DDR DIMM slots on the mainboard, which support DDR266/DDR333 SDRAM. As for the extension capabilities, the mainboard is equipped with an AGP 4x and one PCI slot. In fact, these slots should be quite enough, especially keeping in mind that there are a lot of onboard controllers integrated onto the PCB.
Due to ICH4 South Bridge, the mainboard supports 6 USB 2.0 ports (as we have already said, two of them are located on the front and two on the back panel of the cube, while the remaining two slots haven’t been laid out). Three additional IEEE1394 ports have been implemented via the VT6306 controller from VIA; 6-channel AC’97 sound is provided by Avance Logic ALC650 codec and 10/100Mbit Ethernet support is ensured by the Realtek RTL8100B controller.
Since Shuttle SB51G is intended for advanced users, the BIOS Setup of FB51 mainboard boasts some overclocking-friendly functions. In particular the mainboard allows adjusting the FSB frequency within the range starting with 100MHz and ending with 165MHz with 1MHz increment. Unfortunately, there are no other options available like the opportunity to change the processor Vcore or AGP/PCI bus frequency. But we should be happy with what we’ve got. The traditional barebone systems have never had any overclocking-friendly functions at all.
The small form-factor system from Shuttle required a special power supply unit. The engineers decided on a 200W PSU from the Taiwanese Achme company, which appeared considerably smaller than the regular PSUs. 200W of power generated by this unit should be more than enough for the CPU, add-on graphics card, hard disk drive, optical drive, mainboard with the memory and a few USB devices. This power supply unit worked very well. Its only disadvantage appeared very high heat dissipation under heavy workload. As fore the power supply connectors of this unit, there are 5 additional “tails”, which serve to power not only the HDD, optical drive and a floppy, but also the second HDD or an add-on graphics card requiring extra power supply.
Shuttle engineers paid a lot of attention to the cooling solution used in their barebone cube. The company engineers tried to make sure that the cooling solution used is not only efficient from the thermal point of view, but also produces not too much noise. Therefore, Shuttle SB51G is equipped with just a pair of fans. One of them is situated inside the power supply unit and is probably intended to cool down the insides of the PSU in the first place. The second 80mm fan is placed on the case rear panel and blows the warm air outside the case. Its rotation speed depends on the processor temperature and equals 2500rpm in regular working conditions. Moreover, the same fan sends the air stream through the heatsink, which receives the heat from the CPU via the special heatpipes. Despite the seeming bulkiness of this cooling solution, it proved quite efficient.
As for the system design, we should give due credit to Shuttle engineers for the great job they did. You will easily fit even a full-size graphics card, like GeForce4 Ti4600, into this case. However, since the AGP slot is located very closely pressed to the case side, you will be unable to use graphics cards with large cooling solutions onboard, such as GeForce FX or ABIT solutions with OTES cooling system. Due to the fact that there is no CPU heatsink, and the heat is transferred to the remote heatsink via the heatpipes, there is quite enough room inside the case, even though it is of relatively small size. This ensures proper air circulation inside the case cooling down the other system components. It looks as if the only thing that can upset you during the Shuttle SB51G system assembly is the necessity to place some cables in a not very common and easy way. Besides, we were a little surprised to discover no round cables inside, which we consider to be very helpful and efficient in a system like that.
The second participant of our cubic SFF PCs test session appeared Soltek platform. In fact, Soltek used the same design concept from Shuttle, but they modified the cooling solution, made a few changes to the external appearance of the system and used a mainboard with somewhat different features set. However, in general the specification of Soltek EQ2000M is hardly very much different from Shuttle SB51G. Take a look:
Soltek EQ2000M system, like Shuttle SB51G, is based on i845GE chipset and is designed for Intel Pentium 4 and Celeron processors with 400MHz and 533MHz bus and Hyper-Threading technology (or without it). The differences in the specs of these two systems are the bigger number of USB 2.0 ports and a different IEEE1394 controller by Soltek EQ2000M. However, these were just the specs, and in reality these are far not the only differences between the system from Soltek and the system from Shuttle discussed above.
You can see the Soltek EQ2000M looks not quite like Shuttle SB51G, and boasts a completely different front panel. Soltek designers proved outstandingly resourceful and made a mirror front panel for their system. We should say that it does look very nice, and is very likely to become a hit among women-users, who never miss a chance of checking their looks (guess what they usually use the rear-view mirror of their car for?). At the same time, however, you should keep in mind that fingerprints and dust are very visible on any mirror surface that is why the owners of Soltek EQ2000M will have to acquire a new handy habit of cleaning there system every now and then. As for the entire case of the system, it is also made of anodized aluminum, just like the system from Shuttle. Although we have to admit that the SFF case from Soltek looks not very neat. The top of the Shuttle system is polished-off very thoroughly, while the upper part of the Soltek EQ2000M case still bears the traces of the milling machine.
We should also point out that the bundle of Soltek EQ2000M is a bit smaller than that of Shuttle barebone system. The Soltek EQ2000M barebone solution includes a SFF case with the power supply unit and a mainboard. The processor cooling solution is not included: Soltek suggests using regular coolers here, such as the ones bundled with the CPUs, for instance. Also Soltek EQ2000M doesn’t include any drives, which means that you will have to buy a CPU, a cooler, memory, a hard disk drive, an optical drive and maybe also an external graphics card and a floppy drive.
The front panel of Soltek EQ2000M carries two LEDs indicating the power and HDD addressing, as well as a few ports. Among the ports available on the very front are: SPDIF In and Out, a Mic and headset jacks, two USB 2.0 ports and three IEEE1394 ports. To tell the truth, I doubt that you really need three IEE1394 ports on the front panel, and I would prefer to have some extra USB 2.0 ports instead.
There are not so many ports on the rear panel of Soltek EQ2000M. besides the usual PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, there are three audio connectors, two serial ports, D-Sub Out for the monitor, 4 USB 2.0 ports and a connector for 10/100Mbit Ethernet. Just like Shuttle, Soltek laid out no parallel port, although there is a special spot for this port on the system case. By the way, I think it could be even better if they also had a DVI-Out for the monitor.
Now let's check what's inside:
Soltek EQ2000M system is based on a special SL-B8A-F mainboard. Although it is of pretty small dimensions, there is a Socket478, two DIMM slots for DDR333/DDR266, one PCI slot and an AGP 4x slot for the possible upgrade of the integrated graphics subsystem. It is really unbelievable, but this small board equipped with an i845GE chipset and ICH4 South Bridge also features Realtek 8100B network controller, Agere FW323-05 Firewire controller and Realtek ALC 650 AC’97 codec. Thanks to this rich set of onboard chips the system supports 6 USB 2.0 ports, LAN and three IEEE1394 ports. All in all, this is a very solid looking set of features. Add SerialATA and the system will be close to perfect.
As for the overclocking-friendly options, the BIOS Setup of this mainboard does have some trumps to boast. In particular, you can adjust the FSB frequency from 100MHz to 200MHz with 1MHz increment. This could be a great attraction for overclocking fans, but unfortunately, the mainboard used in Soltek EQ2000M doesn’t allow changing the processor Vcore and setting AGP/PCI buses frequencies. So, we can say that Soltek EQ2000M boasts limited overclocking options. Maybe it is the complicated CPU cooling inside the SFF PC case that pushed Soltek to these limitations.
The power supply unit, which we found inside Soltek EQ2000M appeared the same small 200W pulse solution from Achme, like the one we saw in Shuttle SB51G. This way, there remain two power supply cables left after we have connected all the devices to it. They will be really handy if you decide to install some additional equipment requiring extra power.
Unlike Shuttle, Soltek engineers decided not to work on any specific cooling solutions for their barebone system. The cooling inside Soltek EQ2000M is arranged in almost the same way as in any other large PC case. There is a standard 800mm fan rotating at 2500rpm and blowing the air outside the case, which is fastened to the rear panel of the system. The small fan inside the power supply unit is too weak to blow enough air through the case that is why there is an extra fan in Soltek EQ2000M. Soltek suggests using common processor coolers, such as a standard boxed version, which fits ideally inside the system. Moreover, Soltek EQ2000M features active chipset cooling. It’s really hard to say whether this measure makes much sense, because Shuttle SB51G system managed to work stably without active cooling of the same chipset North Bridge. As a result, Soltek EQ2000M features 4 fans altogether which definitely tells on the noise level of the entire system. As you remember, Shuttle managed to do with only two fans inside its cube. However, it is still too early to draw any conclusions as the noise level tests are to come later in this article.
Soltek EQ2000M barebone system is very successfully built up and looks similar to Shuttle SB51 from the inside. The large graphics cards and full-size PCI cards will fit into Soltek EQ2000M without any problems. However, having placed its AGP slot very close to the side of the case, Soltek deprived you of the possibility to use graphics solutions equipped with big coolers (like the ones of GeForce FX based cards). Moreover, there are quite a lot of connectors close to the other side of the AGP slot, which may cause some problems even if you use a CGA card of the regular size. For example, when we installed ATI RADEON 9700 PRO into our Soltek EQ2000M system, the cables plugged into those connectors were about to block the graphics card cooler every now and then. But, you know, if you manage to curve the cables successfully and forget about this problem, the cables placement inside Soltek EQ2000M will look more reasonable than by Shuttle’s solution. When you assemble the system, all cables lie down naturally by themselves. Although we would also suggest using aerodynamic round cables in Soltek EQ2000M, we wish the company shipped them.
Small form-factor PC from FIC differs a little more from the two solutions described above. Although this is also a “cube” SFF system, the company engineers decided not to follow into their competitors footsteps with the idea of an aluminum case and a pretty unusual front panel. Moreover, FIC IC-VG61 is the only system of the three with its own unique product name: Ice Cube. Well, we will see later on if FIC IC-VG61 really looks like a cubic piece of ice, and now let’s check its official specification:
As we see, the specifications of FIC IC-VG61 are very similar to those of other systems reviewed here. The solution is based on the same chipset with the integrated graphics core and supports the same Pentium 4 and Celeron processors with 533MHz and 400MHz bus. Just like the rivals, it also supports Hyper-Threading technology. What is different here, it’s another Firewire controller and as a result, fewer IEEE1394 ports, and a different power supply unit. However, the major difference between FIC IC-VG61 and other products is its looks.
Although FIC IC-VG61 is almost of the same size as the systems from Shuttle and Soltek, it looks completely different. The thing is that the front panel of this SFF PC and its back panels are covered with thick transparent Plexiglas, which probably explains why they call it “Ice Cube”. We should also point out that the case of FIC IC-VG61 itself is made of aluminum, which doesn’t matter at all actually, because with the thick plexiglas panels the aluminum thermal capacity as well as its looks do not have any practical value. However, the barebone designers from FIC didn’t feel satisfied by just using plexiglas panels for the case. They also provided the top of their system with a handle made of plastic and plexiglas. Do you often carry your system with you? Frankly speaking I don’t think that this handle is very functional, so it looks more like a design element. But although it makes FIC IC-VG61 look really stylish on the one hand, it will not let you put anything on top of your system, on the other. Therefore, we wouldn’t call this an advantage. Luckily, you can unscrew this handle in no time.
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.
As far as overclocking is concerned, the options offered by this mainboard are quite common for barebone systems. You can manually set the FSB frequency to any value from 100MHz to 166MHz. And that’s it. No voltages adjustment, no means to change the AGP/PCI frequencies. Well, maybe the overclocking-friendly barebone systems are still to come later...
The power supply unit of FIC IC-VG61 is not a standard thing. It is a small 220W PSU from the not very well-known Chinese Laconic Company. But the absence of great popularity didn’t tell on the PSU functioning quality: we didn’t discover any problems with the power supply unit during our tests. Moreover, we found this PSU somewhat better than the Achme’s solution, as it heated much less than the latter. Moreover, Laconic PSU is equipped with a switch at the back panel. However, Laconic PSU also appeared a bit larger than the solution from Achme and features fewer cables to connect the devices. There were no free cables left after we connected the HDD, the floppy drive and the CD-ROM. It means that you will not be able to use graphics cards requiring extra power or any other additional equipment without a power-bale splitter.
Although the insides of FIC IC-VG61 are cooled down in a pretty standard manner, this system still can boast some outstanding ideas, which are worth mentioning in our article. The SFF cooling solution from FIC looks as follows. The PSU is cooled with its own fan blowing the air outside the case, the chipset North Bridge is equipped with a passive heatsink, the CPU is equipped with its own classical cooler, and there is a special cross flow fan blowing the air outside the system case. There are two things we would like to draw your attention to here. First, take note that the CPU fan is nearly touching the HDD chassis. However, since it is sucking the air in, the air stream doesn’t heat up the hard disk drive. On the contrary it cools the HDD quite efficiently. As for the cross flow fan, this is a very rare solution for standard PC cases, however, solutions like that are often used in air conditioners. The major advantage of this cooler is its small size. It is only due t this smaller fan that FIC engineers managed to place a larger power supply unit into FIC IC-VG61 case. So, there are three fans in FIC IC-VG61 altogether. This is less than by Soltek EQ2000M, but more than by Shuttle SB51G.
Inside FIC IC-VG61 everything looks very similar to what we have already seen by Soltek and Shuttle. The case allows using large graphics cards, however, you will not be able to install full-size PCI cards into the available slot. Since the AGP 4x slot is located very closely to the case side, you will not be able to use VGA cards with massive cooling onboard. As for the cables placement inside the FIC IC-VG61 case, we have to admit that FIC engineers deserve all the laurels: the cables are placed in the most optimal ways, the cables are of the minimal length, they never disturb the airflow and never hinder easy system assembly. We would like to say that in terms of internal component structure, we liked FIC Ice Cube system most of all.
We tested all the three SFF systems based on i845GE chipset with the following equipment:
We used the above listed components to assemble two fully-fledged systems in each of the described barebone solutions: one system used the integrated graphics core and the other one used ATI RADEON 9700 PRO add-on graphics card. We ran all tests in Windows XP Professional. The BIOS Setup of the systems tested was set to show maximum performance.
During our tests we checked not only the systems performance but also such important parameters as noise level and thermal conditions.
First of all, we will check the temperature changes. Really, what do we need a constantly overheating system for? Designing an efficient cooling solution is one of the most complicated and more important tasks of the cubic SFF system developers.
At first we assembled the systems, which used the integrated graphics core. The graph below shows the temperature of the working systems in idle state, that is when there are no applications running.
Even in this pretty primitive test the temperatures inside the system cases are very different. The highest temperature was detected inside Shuttle barebone. The thing is that there is only one cooler in this system that blows the stream of air through the system case and cools down the CPU at the same time. Of course, the systems from FIC and Soltek boast lower temperatures inside the case due to an extra cooler.
Now let’s figure out what happens to the temperature values if we load the CPU to the full extent.
Well, the CPU temperature grew up by well over 20oC. But the overall picture remains the same: Shuttle SB51G copes with this task worse than the competing solutions. FIC IC-VG61 and Soltek EQ2000M with a classical CPU cooler onboard manage to keep the processor temperature at a lower level and hence the overall temperature inside the case appears lower. However, 67oC under full workload is not that dramatic, because the CPU can work stably in even harder thermal situations. The only thing that we were quite concerned about in Shuttle SB51G system was high temperature inside the case. 48oC is a pretty dangerous temperature for a hard disk drive, as it may affect the service time of the drive that is why we wouldn’t recommend to use thermally sensitive HDDs in a Shuttle barebone system, just in case.
Now let’s install an add-on graphics card and see how this change will tell on the case temperature. At first we ran the test in idle mode:
ATI RADEON 9700 PRO graphics card is a solution dissipating quite a bit of heat. The only card that can generate even more heat is probably the new NVIDIA GeForce FX, but these systems were lucky to have a cubic case too small for a graphics accelerator like that. Anyway, even ATI RADEON 9700 PRO made the cooling systems work much harder. This card managed to raise the case temperature by 3oC and the CPU temperature by 6oC.
Well, and what will happen in the Burn mode? Let’s check it out!
Nothing bad happened. The CPU temperature and the temperature inside the PC case grew up just a tiny bit. All three systems worked absolutely stably in this case, without getting overheated. In fact, this is the most important outcome of the entire thermal investigation. The cooling solutions of all three SFF PCs with “cube” design proved quite efficient, even under heavy workloads.
However, we still have only one leader in this test: this is FIC IC-VG61. Soltek EQ2000M fell just a little behind and Shuttle SB51G without an extra cooler for the CPU turned out the very last one.
Another very important parameter for a SFF PC is the noise the system like that generates at work. Since the cube systems are first of all positioned as home solutions, the noise level does really matter a lot. I doubt you will enjoy sleeping next to a PC roaring like a wounded buffalo.
To test the noise level we used a special device:
We measured how much noise different SFF systems produced by placing the device 50cm away from the working “cube”. You should also keep in mind but as the workload on different system components increases, their temperature goes up and the cooling fans start rotating faster. This is valid for the CPU as well as for the PSU. Therefore, the noise level depends a lot on the processor and PSU workload. So we measured the noise level in idle mode and when the processor was fully loaded. Just like in the previous case we ran the tests for the systems using the integrated graphics core as well as for the systems working with an external graphics accelerator (ATI RADEON 9700 PRO).
The first measurements were taken without the graphics card:
The results obtained are quite logical. Those systems, which are equipped with more coolers, produce more noise. The Shuttle SB51G system with only two coolers onboard is the quietest “cube”, FIC IC-VG61 is a bit noisier with its three coolers, while Soltek EQ2000M with 4 coolers is the noisiest solution. However, we should stress that even Shuttle SB51G with the lowest noise level among the systems tested cannot be called a quiet solution. It was almost as noisy as the regular desktop system. That is why it would be incorrect to claim that “cubes” are quiet systems.
Now let’s see how the situation changes if an external graphics card with an active cooler is used:
When we added an external graphics card, all three SFF systems got almost equally noisy. The matter is that the major noise-makers are not the big fans creating the air flow inside the case, but the small fans installed in the power supply units. As the PSU workload increases, they heat up much more and the fans cooling them down start rotating faster and faster. As a result, the noise produced by these not very big but very unpleasantly sounding fans eats up all other system noises, so that you can hardly hear them. This should be a signal to the small power supply unit makers: they really need better quality fans. As a result, we see very clearly that small form-factor systems in fact produce as much noise as regular desktops and sometimes even outpace them here.
Since the systems reviewed are based on one and the same chipset, i845GE, their performance is about the same. The diagrams below show the systems’ performance in the major benchmarks with the integrated graphics core and the external graphics card used.
Here are the office tests and digital content creation tests:
The systems performed equally fast, so we wouldn’t single out any leaders here.
Now check streaming data processing benchmarks:
It is evident that the most efficient memory subsystem belongs to Soltek EQ2000M, which allows it to show the best results in these benchmarks. However, we still wouldn’t call it an indisputable leadership.
Let's have a look at major gaming tests:
Small Form-Factor PC from Shuttle appears a little faster than the rivals in the gaming tests. However, we wouldn’t take this “little” into account, as it is really an insignificant advantage.
So, we have to state that the performance of all three systems is almost the same in all tests that is why this factor shouldn’t be taken into consideration when drawing the final conclusions.
SFF PC market keeps growing. New companies come there with new products, alternative solutions appear. Everything indicates that very soon small PCs in extraordinary cases will become as popular as the regular desktop systems. Highly original design of SFF PCs and their features set, which are as attractive as those of large systems will definitely win the heats of many users. For instance, we have been using these systems for everyday work for quite a while now.
At the same time, SFF PCs are not free from some drawbacks. First of all we wish these systems were not so noisy. We hope that manufacturers will pay due attention to this problem. Moreover, even though there are a few competing companies in the SFF PC market, they are still priced quite high. In particular, Shuttle SB51G or FIC IC-VG61 are now selling for $290, which is quite a lot for a mainboard and a PC case.
If we try to compare the three systems tested today, it will be really hard to single out a leader. Shuttle SB51G boasts original cooling system using heatpipes, which allows it to produce less noise, but at the same time the temperature inside this system case seems to be too high. Soltek EQ2000M ensures efficient cooling, but produces as much noise as a regular desktop system. FIC IC-VG61 seems to be the best-balanced solution here, however, I don’t think that everyone will be happy with the peculiar design of this system. Therefore, if you are planning to get a SFF system, we suggest that you look through the systems description in our article once again and select the solution, which you yourself like most.