Close Encounters of the Small Kind

Close Encounters

Writing for AnandTech puts me in something of a unique position. Few brick and mortar stores carry a large selection of SFF cases, and looking at pictures online doesn't always tell the whole story. With AnandTech, we have a large number of SFF units, many still waiting to be reviewed. (A SFF roundup will be coming soon, in case you were wondering. This is just a preface to the roundup.) The plan wasn't for me to begin using one of these cases as my own system initially, but system instabilities with one of my own computers caused me to change my mind. While I RMA the motherboard that is apparently causing problems and wait for its return, I decided to adopt one of the SFF cases for my own use - but which one?

Understanding that aesthetics are a completely personal view, I checked out all of the cases. They all look pretty good, depending on your own taste - what I hate, someone is bound to love, and what I like, some will think is boring. In the end, I built two of the units just for purposes of a "test drive" and I picked what are basically the two extremes of the SFF genre.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

On the one hand, we have the ASUS T2-P Deluxe. Depending on your point of view, it may not even qualify as a true SFF design. Featuring two CD/DVD slots, a 3.5" floppy bay - the floppy drive is actually included with the case - and an internal 3.5" HDD, not to mention a ton of other extras, the ASUS SFF includes everything and the kitchen sink. (The manual states that a CD/DVD drive is also included, but it was not present in this unit. This is possibly due to the fact that this unit was sent for review purposes, but it could also just be an error in the manual. We will try to get the official word from ASUS for the formal review; for now, it has a spare DVD-ROM in it.) Audio, fast Ethernet, USB2.0 and IEEE 1394a Firewire are pretty much standard features on any SFF. Add to that a six-in-one flash card reader, gigabit Ethernet, a radio tuner and antenna, integrated graphics, 802.11G wireless networking, and even serial and parallel ports, and you have a package that leaves little to be desired in terms of features. ASUS does limit your expansion options in one area, however. Many of the extras are included on a PCI add-in card, so your expansion card options are limited to adding an AGP graphics card.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

The other unit is the latest from Shuttle, the XPC G5. Shuttle has been in this game longer than any other company, and after taking a look at all of the units stacked up, the design of their latest G5 model caught my eye. It's available in a few different formats: socket 775 with an 875P or 915P chipset and socket 939 with the Nforce3 250 Ultra chipset. Shuttle also has many other non-G5 XPC models that are worth checking out. Since the graphics card that would be used was an AGP model, PCI Express and the 915 chipset models were out of consideration. The system won't be used much for gaming, and the GPU would be the limiting factor anyway, so I ended up with the SB77G5 instead of the SN95G5. If I were actually to recommend an XPC model, I would choose the SN95G5 normally, but I wanted to try out a socket 775 system, as I had not yet done so. The features of the SB77G5 are similar to the ASUS T2-P Deluxe, only with less "extras". You get Firewire, USB2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, one 5.25" external bay, one 3.5" external bay, and one 3.5" internal bay. There's a good reason for the lack of extras, of course. The Shuttle XPC G5 is one of the smallest SFF cases out there.