Epox CF-S968 e-cube P4

The cube PC design, as pioneered by Shuttle, is becoming ever more popular. There seems to be nearly as many variations on the cube as on the normal desktop or tower design.

Epox's e-cube comes in both P4 (CF-S968) and AMD ( CFS768) versions, and combines style with good build quality - but a high price. It even comes with a built-in handle, which is ideal for LAN parties.

The CF-S968 is a barebones system with a pre-installed Chyangfun motherboard and CoolJag CPU cooler. The board supports Intel Celerons and Pentium 4s with 400 and 533MHz FSB speeds, and uses Intel's i845GE chipset. There are two DIMM slots that support a maximum of 2GB of RAM (PC1600, 2100 or 2700).

You can either stick with the integrated graphics of the i845GE or, for better performance, use the AGP slot - the added bonus being that the case accepts full-height cards. There's also a PCI slot, but with so much integration, the only thing you'd want to add might be a modem or Wi-Fi card. For your drives, there's a 5.25in. bay and two 3.5in. bays, one of which has external access.

The front and rear I/O panels show just how many features are supported by the motherboard. The front panel houses a FireWire port, two USB 2.0 ports, four audio ports and a single S/PDIF input port. The rear panel holds two PS/2, single VGA and serial ports, two more FireWire and USB 2.0 ports, a single LAN, three audio ports and another S/PDIF input port.

The downside is that it's a bit noisy in operation, the main culprit being the crossflow exhaust fan housed under the power supply. If this is disconnected, the noise level drops considerably, but you have keep a watchful eye out for heat build up inside the case.

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