AOpen XC Cube EZ65

Manufacturer: AOpen 
Supplied by:  AOpen
Street Price: $320

by Dean Barker (11/19/2003)

Introduction

Is it bigger than a breadbox?  How about a toaster?  When I first saw these mini cube PC's I thought the same thing everyone else did that never played with one, "isn't that cute but it can't have any real power though I bet."  I was right about the cute but very wrong about the power.  AOpen is bursting onto the Cube PC market with two models; one based around the Intel Socket 478 and the other around the more AMD Socket A.  These Cube PCs include the case, mainboard and power supply.  Add your own CPU, drives and memory and you got yourself a small but ballsy machine. 

The Socket 478 model called the EZ65 is what we are reviewing here today.  It's mainboard is based around the Intel 865G chipset.  This allows for use of 400/533/800MHz FSB processors, 266/333/400MHz Dual Channel DDR, on board VGA, Sound and NIC.  What's nice about the NIC is that it is Gigabit.  Meaning it supports transfer rates of 10/100/1000 mbps.  The Socket A model called the EZ18 is based around the venerable nForce2-GT chipset.  The EZ18 supports 200/266/333MHz Dual Channel DDR, 200/266/333MHz FSB Socket A processors, on board VGA, Sound and NIC.  Sorry, no Gigabit here.  Let's turn our attention to the EZ65 model and look at the official specs.

Specifications

• Application: Pentium 4 Socket 478 (400/533/800MHz FSB)

• Motherboard: AOpen UX4SG-1394 (i865G Chipset)

• Memory: Dual Channel DDR (266/333/400MHz)

• VGA: On board Intel Extreme Graphics AGP8x

• Sound: On board AC97 5.1

• NIC: On board Gigabit 10/100/1000

• IDE: ATA100 x 2

• SATA: SATA150 x 2

• PCI slots: One

• AGP slots: One

• Construction: Aluminum with plastic front bezel

• Colors: Available in White, Blue, Red, Grey and Black

• Dimension: 300mm (D) x 200mm (W) x 185mm (H)

• Weight: 5.5kg (with all drives, CPU and memory installed)

• Drive Bays: (1) 5.25" External bays
  (1) 3.5" External bays
  (1) 3.5" Internal bays

• USB: Two ports front, two ports rear

• IEEE1394: One port front, two ports rear (6/4 pins)

• PSU: 220W

• Front Panel: SPDIF, Speaker, Mic, USB 2.0 x 2, IEEE1394 6-pin x 1, IEEE1394 4-pin x 1

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