Bundle

The bundle itself is nothing to get excited about but it's certainly got the basics well covered. A single, dual connection IDE cable would possible have made more sense than two single connection cables but that's only a minor observation as most people with two IDE devices would probably prefer to have both as master devices given a choice.

The inclusion of an optical SPDIF cable was a surprising but welcome inclusion considering the CF-S698's potential uses.

Another nice touch is the inclusion of a half height DVI card that lets you stay with the theme of compact computing and add an LCD monitor rather than a traditional CRT unit.

HSF

Stock cooling out of the box comes courtesy of the CoolJag 367A-1C. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of info available on this particular cooler but using CoolJag's own definitions it's not too hard to figure out that what we have is an all Aluminium sink with a 60x60x10 fan.

The fins are formed using a technique known as skiving which essentially means the base and fins are all made from a single block of Aluminium rather then the fins being attached as a separate soldering or clamping process. In simple terms this is done by slicing into the block of Aluminium to create the fins and folding them up at right angles to the base. The result is a cost effective cooler with maximum heat transfer properties.

I'm not quite sure what the curve in the fins is for. When the fan's mounted on top this curvature can help keep the air in contact with fin surface more effectively but with the fan at the side I would imagine the only possible benefit would be a slight reduction in the tendency of the fins to vibrate and make a noise.

The base finish was very good though there are a few machining swirls on there. It was far from flat however as I discovered when I sat the base on the edge of my engineer's rule but flat enough I think to be effective across the width of the CPU contact area.