AOpen XC Cube EZ65 (A new look and perspective.)
XC Cube Yuppie and XC Cube Sporty

On to the show

With the original EZ65 we reviewed being in service by Graham as his primary machine, he was a little reluctant to allow us to put the screws to it until it tapped out.  That machine did hit a 275MHz FSB, though not stable, here recently.  This motivated us to vigilantly push things on these review units to find the stable ceiling.  Using a 2.4GHz C wolf in sheep's clothing P4 processor and a matched pair of Corsair XMS4400 DDR550 DIMMs

Test Bed

• Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz C chip

• 80gb Maxtor DiamondMax 9 SATA HDD

• 512mb Corsair XMS4400 DDR (x2)

• On board VGA

• Generic CD-ROM

• Windows XP Professional with all patches and service packs installed.

After several hours we found what appeared to be the wall of the EZ65.  Hitting 271MHz, making a quad bus speed of 1085MHz, it goes without saying that we were very impressed.  We confirmed this as stable by running SETI for 24 hours.

Conclusion

We gave the AOpen XC Cube EZ65 an Editor's Choice Award at the time of that review's original writing.  This was well earned and very deserved on the part of AOpen for its features and function.  Having support for Dual Channel DDR400; an AGP slot; SATA ports x2; Gigabit NIC; 5.1 audio; its exceptional quiet operation, performance and size precluded any lesser award or commendation on our part.  Adding in the newly discovered overclocking ability and exceptionally sharp looking new designs, AOpen has a hands down winner on their hands.  The only thing I can even think of how to improve the unit might be case venting on the side directly over where an AGP card would be placed to ensure cool operation of an add in high end card.  A quick note to further illustrate the size of the unit can be made in my telling you that Graham carries his EZ65 from place to place in a book bag.  The AOpen EZ65 is easy to get excited over and should be your choice if you are shopping for a small form factor machine.

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