The Kind of SFF Cases I Can Get Behind - Sans MoBo

Okay, so I've expressed my disdain for the SFF barebones and followed up by essentially recommending a few.  That's weird, so I figured I'd run through a few options for putting together a decent 'SFF' by buying a small case made for micro-ATX motherboards.

My Trigem Kloss has a certain layout.  It's somewhat similar to the shuttles and the MSI MEGA series that are still on the market.  It's less like the three boxes I pointed out in the last post.  There is a whole crop of bare cases that copy that form as well.

The Antec Aria SFF case (NSK1380) is fairly similar to my Kloss' form.

I like Antec and they generally make high quality cases.  It seems fairly well thought-out.  It accepts a standard micro-ATX motherboard with four expansion slots, a single optical drive and can house three hard drives.  It comes with an efficient 380 watt power supply.  Silent PC Review has a write up here (and a users review here).  As are most Antec cases, the NSK1380 is a little rich for this cheap-tech guy.  It's something I'd really only seriously consider after a substantial rebate, maybe at around $50-$60 for a final price.  

Speaking of rebates, a similar case by APEVIA, the X-Pack 420 can currently (early march 2008) be had for $60 (after rebate) with free shipping.  It also accepts a micro-ATX but fits two optical drives, three 3.5" drives, and comes with a more powerful 420 watt PSU.  While Anandtech highly recommends the case in their review, Bi-tech does not follow suit in theirs.  Personally, I wonder why they didn't add the bracketing to mount another pair of hard drives on the other side of the optical drive bays, as the Antec Aria SFF does.  I'm not a gamer, so the handle on the front isn't something I'm really interested in, and the little LCD isn't classy enough to be a selling point.  But I haven't taken a hard look at it or read through the user reviews on newegg.

The Silverstone Sugo SST-SG01 follows a similar boxy form factor.  And like Antec, Silverstone cases are held in high regard for their build and materials quality.  This case has two optical bays like the APEVIA, but just two 3.5" hard drive bays.  It's also even a little bit more expensive than the ~$100 Antec.  Interestingly, it looks a bit long, and I can't help wonder (as I'm on a home server kick presently) if it could fit a 3-drive hot-swap rack with a short-depth PSU.  I like the looks and it might make a classy little media/file/backup server.  Speaking of PSU's though, unlike the others, it doesn't come with one, even though it's more expensive.  Tom's Hardware was pretty positive in their review with just a few caveats.  And as they noted, it may be more expensive but this is an all aluminum case built to a very high standard.  Below is a little video of a guy recording the 'before' portion of a before & after comparison for a fan quiet swap.

The Thermaltake LanBox Gaming cube is very similar, while the one most readily available adds a handle on top and has the acrylic windows that I just don't care for.  But what's truly interesting is that one of the two 5.25" drive bays is really a 7" bay designed to fit a pop-out LCD monitor but can be used for an optical drive if you prefer, or just can't afford to splash out on the monitor.  Overall, the guys at ExtremeMHz, Hot Hardware, and Big Bruin recommend the new one in their reviews (here, here & here).  

I've slipped in a video from YouTube that I found so awesomely horrible but which goes over the case pretty well including showing the 7" LCD installed and another showing the LCD in action on another Thermaltake case.

ThermalTake also offers the LanBox Lite, which is more my speed in terms of appearance, having ditched the acrylic windows and handle, but unfortunately lost the 7" drive bay right along with the rest.  Otherwise, the layout is pretty much the same.  You can find reviews from TechPowerUp and Extreme Overclocking here & here.  Of course it also shed about $50 in the process as well, so that's not so bad.  I was just really starting to fixate on having a little 7" touch screen on the front of a little SFF box though.  

I guess I'll have to pay attention to the VF1000BNS model over at Directron and stay on the lookout for deals to be had.  Then of course, there's always the LanBox HT (home theater I presume), reviewed here by t-break...

I'll also link the AeroCool M40 as well.  It's just a little too much in the looks department for me but someone else might find it appealing.  Here are some reviews from ProClockers, Hi-Tech Reviews, a thread on TheBestCaseScenario, and a few videos.  and the M40 at zipzoomfly.

The sad part about these three computers is just that the SFF that fits a micro-ATX motherboard flat in the horizontal position just isn't all that S in the FF.  It would be quite nice if Flex-ATX motherboards (the dimensional standard used in Shuttle cases) were a bit more available for the end consumer.

But, while I lament about that, The slim-design cases, like the ASUS P1 and P3 mentioned in the previous post, are less divergent from the Form Factor when built to accommodate a micro-ATX motherboard.  I found a couple interesting prospects to look at.  

The APEX DM-387 and HEC 7630BS have layouts very similar to the ASUS P3 barebones with four low-profile expansion slots in the rear, although I think the APEX case is a wee bit more professional looking.  

The HEC also comes in a little cheaper (on newegg's site at least) due to the free shipping.  Both manufacturers offer better looking slim cases on their site, so out there in web-world somewhere, they must exist.

I'm probably too cheap to buy any of the cases though.  The SFF box cases don't really have that small of a footprint, they can't be put on the floor or hidden under a desk and they aren't really big enough to stack something on top, like the component-shaped HTPCs, so they won't fit in an entertainment rack nicely.  The slim cases aren't bad I suppose and as home servers become more common, their limited number of hard drive bays won't really matter much.  They're obviously designed with business purchasers in mind but that might change some.  We'll see.

The SFF barebones PCs I don't like less than the others

In the last post, I heartily rejected the long-term practicality of small-form-factor (SFF) barebones PCs.  In particular, I was ragging on my old box that's stuck in the past, nearly un-upgradeable.  The problem is the motherboard and chassis are a custom pair, so I can't just browse for a new motherboard online to attach a more modern CPU to.  Okay, that's one problem - the other is that mine is a hot, loud pentium 4 rig that I don't really want to use as a 100 watt router, firewall, or severely space-limited home server.  But...

If you're dead-set on a small-form-factor barebones PC, the current line-up of processors provide a little bit of future proofing.  Today's SSF barebones PC contenders seem to be ASUS, MSI, and Shuttle for the most part.  There are others of course, but these are currently the most widely available. 

There are a few I kind of like and with an AMD AM2 socket or Intel LGA775 socket (with a chipset for the core CPUs, like core 2 duo or quad core processors, rather than the old P4 and D units)  motherboard you can run them fast and hot now with a powerful processor and then when that fast and hot turns into slow and hot in a few years, you can swap in a low wattage CPU like the AMD Athlon/Sempron LE with their 45 watt TDP or the Intel Conroe-L Celeron with its 35 watt TDP.  With a processor from one of these lines you can drop the power consumption down to around 50 watts or so and be fairly comfortable using it as a file server or something else that runs around the clock in the background.  Somehow I doubt these barebones come with truly tweak-able BIOSes but if so, you could potentially undervolt the processor even further and see a box with a Conroe-L Celeron (420/430/440) get down to 40 watts or so.  Add an eSATA controller card and you can pair it with an external hard drive box and make a reasonable file/media server.

Sadly, I haven't really noticed anything new in the the SFF department recently.  Shuttle has kept up with the development curve fairly well but makes a pretty formulaic box.  The rigs I see on offer from MSI and ASUS are the same ones that have been around for the last couple of years.  

In terms of making purchasing decisions, I'd probably go with a motherboard with decent on-board video capabilities.  The AM2 socket and Nvidia chipset with GeForce 6150 make for a solid choice and provide DVI and VGA dual monitor support.  The more powerful integrated graphics route will let you run the box cooler, less cramped, and yet still be relevant.  If your idea is to end up with a headless box for server purposes then the graphics chipset doesn't really matter and the weaker graphics processing unit might cut down on power consumption.  Low-end video cards are pretty cheap too and still out-perform the IGP unit so you can be fairly well served with a low-profile Nvidia 8400 GT or ATI 2400 XT.

There are a few barebones I kind of like - namely the ASUS T3, P1, and P3.

I actually prefer the ASUS T3 in black, but it's only listed in old, weak Intel garb at newegg and the pictures are difficult to make out.  The AM2 socket ASUS T3 offers DVI and dual monitor support out of the box.  I have used the Nvidia GeForce 6150 for an HTPC build I put together last year.  The latest Nvidia drivers really bet a lot of milage out of the 6150 IGP setup, that HTPC has both a 720p LCD HDTV and a 22" LCD monitor (1680x1050) connected and runs HD from a PCI tuner pulling in over-the-air HD without much issue.  The P3 also has an onboard eSATA port on the rear I/O panel, which is a big plus for storage expansion. 

The ASUS P1 can be had with a similar AM2 socket motherboard with the 6150 on-board video including DVI and dual monitor capability.  It's very similar to the T3's motherboard offering but lacks the eSATA.  Both the T3 and P1 have only two expansion card slots but they are full height.

The P3 is similar to the P1 but a little more professional looking and with four low-profile expansion slots rather than 2 full-height like the P3 it has a bit more expandability.  I find the shuttle stuff a bit over-priced and the current line-up of MSI stuff a little bland.  And watch out for anything that doesn't have a gigabit LAN port.

I think I've made it clear, I'd personally avoid these little boxes with their non-standard motherboards.  That said, there are some interesting little boxes out there these days and they're much more capable and versatile than mine has ever been.

Why SFF barebone PCs are a bad idea...

In 2004 I was looking into spending a chunk of change I had been alloted for a PC purchase. I had been given a new laptop sometime earlier for a work project, so I didn’t need to spend the cash on a laptop as it was originally intended. Like my previous purchase, I decided I’d go big and maximize my dollar by building my own system (sort of). I wanted something fresh and new and a lot of LCD real estate. I had introduced myself to the likes of googlegear.com (now zipzoomfly.com for obvious reasons), newegg.com, and tigerdirect.com. I was looking at media-centric small form factor (SFF) PCs and thinking about getting twin 17” LCD monitors. I found the MSI MEGA 865 Deluxe and thought, “This is what I need! I don’t want to have something stuck under a desk somewhere, and I don’t want to have something monstrous if I have nowhere to hide it. This will be great for my growing library of music and videos, and I can sit it right there on my desk.” It seemed like a great plan.

Some MSI MEGA 865 Links:
www.msicomputer.com
www.hardwarezone.com/
www.xbitlabs.com
www.firingsquad.com

At some point in my planning I came across Trigem’s Kloss barebones PCs and started to plan my build around the KL-i915a rather than the MSI. It may have been because of the innovative internal design but I think the real reason was the PCIe-x16 video card slot and gigabit ethernet. It was a forward looking chipset versus the older MSI feature set.

picture from www.tomshardware.com

Some Kloss i915a Links:
Unofficial KlossPC resource links (not sure who made this but thanks)
Driver Guide's Trigem listing
Tom's Hardware review
Silent PC's review
The Tech Report's review

I finally pulled the trigger and bought my supplies: The Kloss KL-I915A (~$350), a 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor (~$180), 2x512 MB of ram (can’t recall the price >$100), an MSI XT-TDI128E (~$150 I think) X600XT video card, and a WD SATA hard drive. All told, my total for the computer was probably around $800. Upon getting it, I discovered a fault in the onboard NIC, as it wasn’t letting me connect. I found out my warranty was managed by some seemingly random company, AMAX, and had a bit of a tough time getting them to deal with my problem as Trigem was going bankrupt, less than a month after I bought the computer. Once I finally got to talk with a tech at AMAX, he figured out there was a real hardware issue and I returned the computer for diagnostics and an eventual motherboard swap. And it only cost me ~$40 in shipping if I remember correctly. Everything worked as it should upon return.


Unfortunately the Kloss never got much use. My laptop was plenty sufficient back then and as it was with me all day, it was kept current. The Kloss languished and I eventually came to resent it somewhat. It’s was bit loud and it’s only gotten more so. Between the PSU fan, the rear 7 cm fan, the whinny video card fan, and the 92 mm CPU heatsink fan, there’s plenty of noise. And the 2.8 GHz Pentium processor (model # 520) didn’t help keep things under control in the heat department. I can get it to idle at 45 degrees C if it’s in a cool, well ventilated spot, but put it into an even moderately confined space and the idle temp will soar towards 60. I’ve also been trying to watch my energy consumption lately and the P4 Kloss sucks about 130 Watts at idle with the video card (compared to 60 Watts of the cheap ~$100 AMD Sempron-based PC I’ve built fairly recently). If I dump the cards (video and otherwise), disable just about every unused port in the bios and the like, I can get it down to about 90 watts. Using ‘Silent’ mode, a motherboard over/underclocking feature built into the Kloss with a button on the front, set to 50% (~1.5 GHz) I only saw about a 2 Watt saving over the ‘Normal’ mode, and maybe a slight reduction is ‘suck-hole’ fan speed (the least obtrusive of the fans).


The PSU sits right below where the expansion slots reside on the motherboard, and it seems it heats them up quite a bit. I get video crashes every once in a while (and quite easily under stress). I tried adding a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 at one point and while it worked better than I though for a P4 system with 1GB of ram and an older X600 Video card, it obviously was susceptible to the heat emanating from the PSU, as it would start to become unstable after a bit of use.


I haven’t really known what to do with the Kloss recently. It’s never been my ‘main’ PC and it isn’t even my current, primary desktop rig. It really just sits. I now think I’m going to pass it onto my parents. It’s not a current PC but it’s still a step up for them and more than they need really. Besides, they give their home PC such spare use that it will sleep most of the time, so the high power consumption shouldn’t be of any consequence.


I’ve pretty much come the resounding conclusion that while SFF PCs seem like a great space-saving idea, they aren’t, especially when it’s sitting unused because it has absolutely no upgradability. The Kloss’ design ingenuity that inspired the split thermal chambers ended up producing a custom motherboard that I can’t re-purpose elsewhere and necessitated a custom PC chassis that I can’t fit a modern motherboard into. Couple that
with Intel’s customer-unfriendly chip designs which won’t allow a Core series (core solo/duo, core 2 duo/quad) 775 socket chip from working on a P4/D series 775 socket compatible motherboard. The whole thing becomes a throw away box rather quickly. In that way, it’s like a laptop, but without the mobile functionality.

So I haven't mentioned what came of the twin 17" monitors (I think they were 17" rather than 19"... I think). At the time they were about $350 apiece. I ended up scrapping the 2 x 17" @ $350/monitor when I stumbled upon a $100 rebate on a Samsung 213T 21.3" LCD monitor for $700.

Photo grabbed from pcmag.com

It has turned out to be the just about the only saving grace from this build, along with not actually paying for it myself. I still use it and it's great. I'll write more about it when I write about my monitor experiences, which will also include a 19" Hanns-G LCD I scored for $126 and a 22" Westinghouse I picked up for $200+tax during a black friday sale in 2006.

Some Samsung 213T Links:
PcMag.com review
Neoseeker review
AnandTech review

My first foray into cheap tech was with my first 'laptop' - which was also my first computer purchase in general. It was about ten years ago and I was a frugal college student flush with savings from previous employment. I was looking for the Cadillac Bentley of laptops. Of course, in hindsight, they all sucked but at the time big screens were better and smaller form-factors were still huge. Exhibit A: my AMS Tech Rodeo 3010ECX with it's 14.1" screen (that I don't really show). You may be saying to yourself, "AMS Tech... whaaa?" They were somewhat like the 90's version of http://powernotebooks.com, which basically sells ODM (original design manufacturer) computers as something you've never heard of rather than Dell or Compaq or whatever. And they don't tack on the brand name price either. So I got the best 1998 money could buy for as little money as possible. I think it was about $2100, which was cheap for the very exclusive 14.1" TFT screen and pentium MMX processor. HA!

It actually turned out to be a pretty reliable computer, all things considered. It still works and these are current pics. Sadly, it's pretty useless 10 years on. The power supply has to 'warm up' before it will hold a charge, and since the battery is obviously shot after all this time, there's no buffer anymore.

It's a portly 2.5" from the table to the top of the lid. You can s see in the pic to the left the modem dongle port, the door for the two PCMCIA slots
, the whinny little fan , and power plug.

cd drive and floppy... not sure cd writers even existed back then.





It has this odd little flap that allows for access to just the LPT1 printer port. They also hid a USB port behind
one of the legs... odd but functional.




I don't even know what all these ports do anymore. The only one we need these days from this selection is the USB, but this one is a 1.0 version. I imagine in another 10 years our laptops port line-up will be similar to the Macbook Air's - but with functionality.


It even came with a 'handsome' case. A little IBM red-look there.

Honestly, it was the biggest waste. I guess I used it for about four years. What a time-suck. I guess I got mild value out of it in that I could work at home, but I could have saved massively had I just gotten a desktop. I never took it anywhere. I actually packed it up every day and put in the closet so someone walking through the house wouldn't be tempted (we left our doors and windows open 24/7, even with the house empty for the day - and never had a single thing stolen).

It was the first misadventure, but definitely not the last...