AOpen XC Cube EY65

The latest addition to AOpen's popular barebones XC Cube range is the Intel-based EY65. This series does away with the dropdown doors for the floppy drive/card reader and the front port bay of the original XC Cube. Instead, there's a black panel for the bay and the front ports are left open.

Installed with AOpen's UX4SG-1394 motherboard, the EY65 has most of the integrated features we've come to expect from a small form factor PC. The board uses Intel's i865G (Springdale) chipset and supports all Intel Northwood processors up to the 800MHz front-side bus (FSB) 3.2GHz P4.

However, the large processor fan is a little noisy when first turned on.

The two Dimm slots allow for a maximum of 2GB of memory (up to DDR400) to be installed using the chipset's dual-channel memory support.

The chipset also supplies the integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2 but, thankfully, if you want to play serious games there is an 8x AGP slot. Thanks to the size of the case, it can happily seat a full-height card, as can the single PCI slot. Also integrated is a Gigabit Ethernet port, while a Realtek ALC650 controls the 5.1 audio.

Two Serial ATA (Sata) and two IDE ports are supplied and, as a result of the space restrictions inside the case, the Sata solution produces the tidiest cable arrangement. AOpen even supplies Serial ATA data and power cables with one connector angled at 90 deg to make fitting even easier.

Finally, the barebones PC comes with a well-written manual full of colour photos describing how to assemble the Cube. The EY65 is a stylish addition to the family and very close to beating Shuttle at its own game.

Contact: AOpen
www.aopen.com

Specifications:

• Intel Pentium 4 Northwood processor
• Intel i865G
• 2 memory slots
• AGP 8x
• 5.1 audio
• AGP slot
• PCI slot
• 2 parallel ATA slots
• 2 Sata slots
• 4 USB2, 2 6pin Firewire, 1 4pin Firewire, 2 PS/2, 2 optical, serial, parallel, Lan, VGA, 5 audio