Internals

The fan behind that rear grill we looked at earlier is a Jin Yih Shyang 0.16A 12v DC cross flow unit with a 3500RPM motor and rated at around 38dB and 0.45 m3/min, which by my calculation is around 16CFM. Clearly I'd be lying if I told you the fan was silent but it is surprisingly unobtrusive and considering most users will be playing DVDs, MP3s or games through the system it's unlikely to be a distraction. What it does do is keep air flowing in an otherwise confined space and allow more options with regards the CPU you can get away with. Though I haven't had a chance to try it I'm reliable informed that the CF-S968 will happily tun a P4 3.06GHz so if that gets teamed up with a nice toasty graphics card like a 9700 Pro then I'm a lot happier knowing here's some method of active cooling happening. Of course if it bother you that much you can always unplug it but I really can't imagine many people will find it's operational noise a problem.

Those who need more cooling would probably get away with a side cut blowhole towards the front below the removable 3.5" drive cage or at the top but with the fan mounted externally. You'd probably have to remove the handle for this and a nice 80mm Aluminum/Chrome fan would probably do the job nicely!

All the front connectors are mounted on a single PCB so although you'd be left with a row of defunct holes on the front needing camouflage you could actually relocate them if you're feeling adventurous.

The single 5.25" drive cage is fixed permanently but the dual 3.5" cage is removable to assist with fitting motherboard components and of course the drives themselves. Although a regular Philips screw is fitted for safety during shipping you can bin this when you get home leaving just a single thumbscrew to undo for cage removal.

Although easily avoided with a little care that battery is just asking to be knocked clean off. It didn't interfere with the Radeon 9700 Pro I used for testing but I can't believe there isn't a graphics card out there somewhere with a rogue capacitor that simply can't be used because of the battery placement. This is one of those situations where the old ways were best and perhaps the battery and holder should connected to the motherboard on a couple of long wires and able to be placed anywhere it needs to go with a piece of velcro.

The power supply is a 150watt Laconic (Taiwan) unit which should be fine for most modest usage. I hope we see slightly beefier units offered for those who need the extra juice but I was able to run a Radeon 9700 Pro along with all the other components and I used a "Y" splitter to run a couple of 80mm case fans at the same time and all seemed well. Ampages on each line seemed perfectly acceptable.