AOpen XC Cube MZ855-II Intel Socket 479 Intel 855GME 2 x 184Pin Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Mini / Booksize Barebone System - Retail

makes a great firewall

Reviewed By: Armo on 10/21/2006

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: i got this barebaone to be a firewall between myself and the world. i used a centrino processor in this bad boy and it booted up just fine. i had to do some research to see if this unit would work off a centrino or if i had to use a P4M.

the unit is exceptionally small which is great! its about 5 inches tall, about 7 inches wide and about a foot long. the small size made initial instalation of parts tricky. one this i didnt bank on was the kit comes with a converter for laptop cd rom drives from atapi 6 to IDE with a floopy connector. it also comes with a white front bezel for the cd drive to match the color of the case, it didnt fit on the particular cd rom that i had, but it being a firewall, it dosnt even use the cd rom. this unit puts out VERY little heat and with a 150 watt PSU its not gonna cost an arm and a leg to leave running 24/7

Intel Centrino 1.7
1gb of DDR333
10gig hard drive
no cd rom drive.

Cons: not even a con but the poer supply inside of the unit has only 1 molex and 1 floppy connector, the molex is for the hard drive and the floppy is for the converter for the cd rom drive.

its somewhat difficult to find low profile nic cards to go in this unit, but its not Aopens fault :)

Other Thoughts: i used this machine for nothing but a firewall, Smoothwall to be exact. The w.0 release of smoothwall didnt detect the onboard nic card, but the alpha release oh Smoothwall 3 did.

This unit looks powerful enough for normal everyday use by the average user. But i can say for 100%. It NOT a gamer machine unless you put a AGP card in it.

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Reviewed By: on 6/25/2005

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Comments: I've been testing for over 10 different cases to find the right one for my PC and now I've finally found it. It's small, runs almost silent, cool running, and looks good. The set up was tricky but not difficult, size is awesome being I have several W-PC & MACs on my desk. I am using this one for my digital photos to store and to process, also I installed a TV card. This set up may not be for gamers but for office work or photos etc anyone would be happy with this unit. Looks great next to my MACs.
Pentium M 1.8
1 GB 3200 memory
Toshiba DVD-RW
ATI Wonder TV card
Hitachi HD 160 GB

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