Externals
Looks are hugely important in the SFF world. A slick-looking cube can sell on pure aesthetics alone, so AOpen needs to get it right first time.
We wonder if Shuttle and AOpen are informally competing against one another to create the most abstractish box cover. The boxes often show a group of good-looking people in various poses, with an inference that you could gain membership to this club by means of a simple purchase. This has nothing to do with the cubes' performance, it's just a personal observation after having more than 20 SFF systems through the doors of HEXUS Towers.
Stripping away the well-packed EZ18 SFF system reveals a very shiny front. AOpen manages to do what we've been screaming, in a nice way, at Shuttle to do, that is, have a front that hides optical drives and ports. The topmost cover's designed to hide the possible colour clash between a standard 5.25" optical drive and the shiny black exterior. A silver button just acts as a push-through to the drive's eject mechanism. The lower 5.25" cover, which hides a 3.5" bay, flips down by a simple press on the right-hand side, just where the raised spots are.
The flash-ridden shot gives the impression of the EZ18 chassis use of a mirrored front. That's not the case. AOpen's just used a highly reflective coating. The large power button breaks up the front nicely, and a small LED, just below, signifies hard drive usage.
The ports' cover flips down in the same manner as the lower 5.25" one. SFF systems are all about ports and high-speed connectivity. AOpen follows protocol to the letter. S/PDIF-Out, jacks for headphones and a microphone, a couple of USB 2.0 ports and, curiously, both 4-pin and 6-pin FireWire400 ports match other SFF's fronts. This is AOpen in minimalist mode. There's no wildly flashing lights, LCD screens or fancy dials. I quite like the sober, understated look.
More evidence of the coating's reflective ability. The shot's not completely gratuitous, as it shows AOpen's thoughts on SFF ventilation.
AOpen deviates somewhat from the Shuttle party line when it comes to placement of the PSU. The EZ18 uses the more traditional method of screwing the power supply into the rear chassis, so we can expect a conventional setup inside. 2 blanking plates hide the inevitable PCI and AGP slots. We also see an unusual RCA port (sound duties) right in the middle and to the right of the oft-forgotten parallel port.
The lower section is far more familiar to aficionados of SFF PCs. Our look at the specifications highlighted AOpen's use of NVIDIA's AMD-based nForce2 chipset, comprising of the IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) Northbridge and MCP-T Southbridge. We've often bemoaned the lack of video connectivity present for onboard graphics solutions, but we're pleased here. Dual VGA, S-Video and RCA outputs should appease all but ardent supporters of DVI. AOpen could have endeared the EZ18 further if it had managed to hook up a DVI socket. That, we suppose, will be the job of any AGP card.
High-speed connectivity is further in evidence here. 2 USB 2.0 and a single FireWire400 port all emanate from the feature-filled Southbridge. Then there's the usual audio, COM and PS/2 ports, as well as S/PDIF-In and the obligatory RJ45 jack. Aesthetically, a pretty cube with a decent feature set.