Internals I
If asked what aspect of a SFF system matters most to us the answer would have to be ease of installation. Most cubes carry a similar feature count, most look good, but the disparity between the effort required for installation is bigger than it should be. So some cubes make it a doddle, others make you want to rip your hair out. Let's see how AOpen does.
As is the norm for SFF systems, the aluminium top comes away by removing three thumbscrews and gently levering it towards the rear. There's no written rule as to how best to design the internal layout. It's up to the manufacturer in question. AOpen uses a traditional removable drive cage and squarish PSU. This method is as good as any.
Bringing the camera angle down for a side-on shot shows a couple of interesting things. The removable tray features a sideways section that'll house a hard drive, much like Shuttle's Zen SFF. Secondly, the cooler takes up a large portion of the central motherboard section. It uses a sideways-mounted fan to blow cooler air through the aluminium fins and out to the far side. Both AGP and PCI slots sit infront of the 20-pin and 4-pin power connectors. It's all tight, but you shouldn't have to remove any cabling when building up the EZ18.
As seen from the other side. Notice how the large cooler almost interferes with the power supply's cables. This has a knock-on effect that makes CPU installation unnecessarily difficult.
It's almost impossible to secure the right-hand side of the cooler to the socket's lugs. One can't use a screwdriver to force the metal clip down because the PSU blocks out the route. The clips tension is such that it can't be pulled down by hand. What makes this predicament worse is the bare core on all Athlon XP CPUs. After a horribly annoying 10 minutes or so, I was forced to remove the PSU (no mean feat in itself) to free up enough workable room around the socket. Why isn't the socket orientated such that the lugs are rotated 90 degrees?. Bad design.
AOpen, wisely, decides to use heatsink for both bridges. NVIDIA's nForce2 chipset is the beneficiary of dual-channel memory support that makes its presence felt when onboard graphics are used. An Athlon XP CPU run at 166MHz FSB can take advantage of 2.7GB/s of memory bandwidth. Dual-channel support pumps a theoretical 5.4GB/s, with the extra bandwidth feeding the onboard GPU's memory requirement. That's why the IGP isn't a token gesture for 3D work.