Intel?s recently launched Grantsdale and Alderwood chipsets were received with abysmal fanfare. The scarce availability and premium pricing of motherboard and CPUs made the platform unattractive for most consumers. As Grantsdale/Alderwood motherboards start to trickle down the channel and become widely available, we start to see more manufacturers launch their small form factor systems too. AOpen is no stranger when it comes to small form factor systems. They started out with their Intel i865 based EX65 and have since released three more models, including the EX915 we?re looking at today. Though they?ve been around for quite some time, AOpen products aren?t as popular as Abit and/or Asus products. For the most part, AOpen products have always been tame compared to competitors, but always stable and feature rich.

The latest addition to AOpen?s ever growing small form factor lineup is the XC Cube Edition EX915. Currently AOpen?s SFF lineup is divided into four market concepts; Living Art, Metropolitan, Cyber Shock, and Home Digital Center. Essentially the different market concepts result in different front bezels, case colors, and motherboards. The market concept we?ll be looking at today is the gamer oriented Cyber Shock which AOpen touts as having cool looks and dazzling specs.

The EX915 does have the touted cool looks with a stylish bezel design. While most SFFs use plastic and acrylic front bezels, the EX915 has a mesh grille front bezel that looks stylish and aggressive. The large power button located towards the middle of the front bezel lights up blue when the system is turned on, the AOpen and XC Cube logos are placed appropriately and flows with the design. Covering the 5.25? drive bay is a plastic spring loaded cover that feels quite solid. The eject button extends out enough to make the button soft to push and responsive, compared to some buttons where you have to press in extra hard to get it to touch the drive button. Overall the front bezel looks cool and is made of high quality plastics that blend nicely with the aluminum mesh.

To prevent video cards from overheating, the side panel is vented directly by the expansion slots. 

Processor	Intel Pentium 4 LGA775 533/800MHz FSB with HT
Chipset	Intel i915G Grantsdale + ICH6
Memory	2 x 184 pin DDR SDRAM up to 2GB at DDR400
Audio	Intel AC’97 2.3 Audio + Realtek ALC655
LAN	Broadcom 5751 PCI-E 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
PSU	AOpen 275Watt 110/230V AC
Dimensions:	320(W) x200(D) x185(H)mm
Parallel ATA	One UDMA-100 Dual Channel PATA Port
Serial ATA	Four UDMA-150 Serial-ATA Ports with RAID 0/1
On-Board Video	Intel Media Graphics Accelerator (MGA900)
PCI	1 x 33MHz
PCI Express	1 x PCI-E X16
Other Internal Headers	1 x Floppy Disk (Mini) 1 x Fan 1 x CD-In 1 x Parallel Port 2 x USB 2.0

Rear Panel Connections

2 x USB 2.0 1 x Firewire 1394a (6-pin) 1 x PS/2 Mouse 1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x Audio Front Out 1 x Audio Rear Out/Line Input 1 x Audio Center/Bass Out/Microphone Input 1 x Optical Input 1 x Coaxial Audio Output 1 x RJ45 LAN 1 x Serial (9-Pin) 1 x VGA 15-pin DSUB 1 x Parallel Port

next >

---

• Size comparison, external design... (1 of 6)
• Internal design... (2 of 6)
• Assembly, test setup, test comments... (3 of 6)
• Benchmarks... (4 of 6)
• Temperature, noise level... (5 of 6)
• Conclusion... (6 of 6)