Aopen MZ855-II

Aopen has stuck by the small form factor (SFF) PC and pioneered the use of Pentium M processors in desktop motherboards. It therefore comes as no surprise that the latest member of its XC Cube clan, the MZ855-II, combines both technologies.

The MZ855-II is much smaller than other SFF cases and weighs just 1.85kg in its bare state. To help keep the MZ855-II as quiet as possible, an external power supply is used. The only fan in the case is the one cooling the CPU, and Aopen quotes a noise level of just 22dB when the system is working at full capacity.

Built around a Socket 479 and i855 chipset combination, it supports either 400 or 533MHz FSB Socket 479 Pentium M or Celeron M CPUs. Two Dimm slots accept DDR200, 266 or 333 up to a maximum supported memory of 2GB.

As for design, the case is finished flawlessly in piano black and Aopen even includes a cleaning cloth. Three thumbscrews hold the cover and once inside you are confronted with two plates, the larger of which holds the power module for the external supply.

Once this plate is removed it's easy to access the CPU cooler, single PCI slot and, as the board uses the i855 chipset, the AGP 4x slot. Due to the small size of the MZ855-II, any cards for these two slots need to be half-height, which are sometimes difficult to find.

The top half of the drive cage accepts a slimline, notebook-style optical drive while an ATA (there's no Serial ATA support) hard drive sits in the lower half and has rubber mounts to lessen vibration noise.

As with all XC Cubes, the MZ855-II comes with a full manual, a quick-setup poster and most of the cables you will need.